Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese diaspora author, screenwriter and award-winning social advocate. She has published six books, including essays in Talking About a Revolution and a series for younger readers, You must be Layla and Listen Layla. Today we’re going to be talking about her latest, literary fiction debut, At Sea.
Zainab has spent her life on oil rigs living the fly in fly out life. It’s meant missing out on a lot, including a relationship with her sister. Now she’s in Perth on a promise that she will see her sister through the birth of her first child. This could finally be the chance to repair their relationship.
When Zainab’s boss Bryce calls her back from leave to investigate strange goings on on the rig Clarissa Clyde, she knows this could be her big break. Zainab’s reluctant to leave Kareema but thrilled at the opportunity to take charge as a tool pusher.
Joining a rig near the end of a drill isn’t easy. As a woman on the rigs Zainab knows she won’t get an easy ride, let alone an open door to the mysteries plaguing the Clarissa Clyde. The rig is almost too perfect and the team are rough but nothing she hasn’t handled. She is determined though, and haunted by Bryce’s words, ‘Make sure everyone gets out alive’.
The hook for me with At Sea was Yassmin’s writing. I wouldn’t normally gravitate to a thriller set on the high seas but I know from experience Yassmin tackles big ideas. I also know she’s worked on rigs herself and so I was intrigued at how she would treat this world that seems so strange from the shore.
Immediately with Zainab we come to understand that this is a man’s world. Her position as a tool pusher should give her some authority but there are men on board who would still demean her as par for the course. The novel works to understand this dynamic as both a moral problem, but also a product of the hyper-real world of a perilous lifestyle. Zainab grapples as much with her own ability to answer disrespect and violence in kind, as she does with any absolute morality of the actions.
Life on the rigs is contrasted with the world Kareema offers; life on land, life with family. It’s the kind of world that Zainab has been avoiding. We see that Zainab, along with many of the men on the rig struggle with the demands of these separate lives. But why are these demands so disparate?
The plot and the action of At Sea is gripping and I found myself drawn into the claustrophobic spaces and the alien vocabulary of drilling. While I understood very little of the processes involved in these mammoth endeavours to pull oil out of the ocean, the storytelling is such that the precision and the danger is never far from the character's, and therefore the reader’s mind.
This is a mystery but not in the conventional sense. While Zainab is tasked with uncovering some sort of conspiracy or coverup, it is tantalisingly obtuse and she is never sure if the danger is real. Within the cauldron of life on a floating petrol bomb she must grapple with whether it is better to continually rock the boat in the name of safety, or to maintain an unexamined conformity for the sake of group cohesion. The trick is knowing and the wrong choice may not be discovered till too late.
The twinned tensions of Zainab’s role as a woman with authority, and the possibility of impending catastrophe are constantly stoked. Zainab feels obligated to speak up but cursed not to be believed. Much like Cassandra, Zainab can only watch on as her situation deteriorates.
At Sea sets out to achieve a lot, and broadly meets this aim being smart and pacey, technical and philosophical. It asks a lot more questions than it answers but that’s perhaps more a reflection on the world which also refuses to listen when it doesn’t want to hear.
