The Physician

By

Noah Gordon

A novel… rather lives full of colors, events, suspense and information. It is the story of the British orphan Rob. J from the 11th century who became a barber-surgeon, who dreamt to study medicine under Avicenna supervision. This was a condemned matter and a crime punished by death, at times when heretics were burnt. He disguised as a Jew to manage the matter.

He made you live everything in the novel with him for the first time… Everything seemed bizarre and different, frightening and severe, rough and disgusting, charming and astonishing…

The novel presents variety: Jewish traditions in a vivid way, some of Islamic instructions through the eyes of a disgusted western Christian, the occidental barbarity and the oriental savageness, the total ignorance and loathing the other _regardless who or where_, the colorful clothes and places, geography, medicine and its instruments, drugs and herbs between East and West, and tools of entertainment and war… All those contained by the novel…

Since Orient is one of the important themes, the familiar orientalistic superior tone is exist in the novel… In an orient built on eunuchs, cuckolds, gays, savages, obscene figures, believers in superstitions, sunk in the hidden pleaser of harem, a question emerge in your mind; is there any one who is decent or respectful?
It seemed nobody like that but the Jew; the Jew was the only one who seemed loving to his family, enlightened, peaceful, high-minded, while the Muslim was the lewd and wild. They were three Physician friends, Rob J. the Christian, Mirdin the Jew, and Karim the muslim. I thought Rob J. would grow in understanding all religions because of this friendship, but he only grew in understanding Judaism, since Karim was playboy, busy in his pleasers didn't teach anything but recklessness, while Mirdin did teach Rob J. decency, family, beside his religion.

You wonder how such people made a civilization, medicine and maristan? Rob J. realized that after the Greeks brilliance illuminated all of medicine, the world fell into darkness. P.504. You ask yourself what about Muslims achievements such maristan, or even Ibn Sina whom Rob J. fought the world to reach? Well, it seemed to Rob that it was not more than imitating the Greeks.
Eventually, of course as usual, the European Rob J. proved that he was the most open-minded and developed among all.

I know it is almost impossible to read a book or novel about Orient or Muslims without this arrogant tone. However, in this novel it seemed extra dissonance, because it was the tone of a 20th century man, i.e, the writer, not Rob j. who came from the darkness of medieval; an environment of total ignorance and miserable poverty

Regardless what mentioned before, it is an exotic breathtaking novel, soaked with adventures. The writer is a real storyteller.

I wish it became a British TV series.

Salma Al-Helali

1/2010