"Bilal's Bread' by Sulayman X

 Bilal has problems. He's a Kurdish Moslem immigrant in America in the aftermath of 9/11. His father was killed by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein; his family is poor, depending on the wages of his two older brothers and the bread his mother bakes. He is sixteen and coming to terms with being homosexual, something taboo in his Islamic school. Since the age of 9, he has been sexually and physically abused by his older brother, Salim, an angry and frequently violent man.

When I was about half-way through this carefully-written novel, I thought that the story was over but I was wrong. Time and again another tragic plot point punched me in the face. The tension continued until very nearly the final page. 

There was a moment towards the end when the lump in my throat and the water in my eyes made it difficult to continue (especially since I was reading it on a long train journey and I didn't want to start crying in front of the other passengers in the carriage). This book certainly carries emotional dynamite.

And yet the characterisation is, on the whole, simplistic. There are goodies (the Imam and his son, Bilal's sister Fatima) and baddies such as Bilal's headteacher. There was a moment when wicked Salim's back-story suggested he might be damaged rather than evil but that rug was swiftly pulled from under our feet. Bilal himself has a journey to make from confusion to understanding and from submission to self-assertiveness but the most interesting character by far was his mother who was the only truly complex human being depicted.

It was written in the third person mostly from Bilal's perspective but it was driven by the issues. As a result, dialogues became carefully structured explorations, with the participants making quite long and carefully reasoned speeches. This extended into Bilal's thoughts: the reader was told what was happening rather than being shown and allowed to work it out for themselves. To take a trivial example: "Whenever Hakim was drunk, he tended to get a bit emotional. He usually wanted to make sure that Bilal didn't think he was a bad person. Bilal didn't. Hakim never seemed to remember that, so they wound up having the same conversation again and again." (Ch 1) This could be shown rather than told.

Perhaps there was too much plot; had the book been more character-led it would have been slower and longer.

There are sexually explicit scenes and descriptions of violence. It felt like a YA book but perhaps best suited to the older end of that, around the sixteen years old that Bilal himself is.

But wow. I was weeping in the train. That's a testament to any book.

Selected quotes:

• "When she started talking about the old days, it meant she was tired - tired of the struggle in America. Tired of not being able to speak English, of not being able to get along properly. Tired of the daily battle just to survive." (Ch 11)
• "Muhammad stood up and began clapping. It was a solitary, forlorn sound in the auditorium." (Ch 14)

October 2025; 240 pages

Published by Alyson Books, Los Angeles in 2005

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Outline of plot: spoiler alerts:

• Salim sexually abuses younger brother Bilal including oral sex and anal rape. Emotional abuse includes threatening that if Bilal does not please Salim, Salim will fuck their little sister Fatima.
• Neighbourhood thugs bully Bilal when he is delivering bread.
• At a sleepover, Bilal has consensual gay sex with his best friend Mohammed.
• Salim discovers Bilal has been surfing gay porn at school.
• Salim thrashes Bilal and throws him out onto the streets. Bilal takes refuge with Malik, the local Imam, Mohammed's dad.
• Bilal confesses the physical abuse to Mr Malik who threatens that if Salim continues to beat Bilal, he will go to the police.
• Bilal confesses to Mr Malik that Salim rapes him.
• Salim tells Bilal that he was gang-raped by Iraqi police while their father was forced to watch. Then the dad was shot.
• Salim beats Bilal again and breaks his wrist. At the hospital, the statutory reporting procedures come into play, including anal swabs for semen, and Salim is arrested.
• Bilal's mum wants Bilal to drop the charges so that Salim can come home.
• Hakim reveals that Salim used to rape little boys back home in Iraq.
• Salim commits suicide in his cell the night before his pre-trial hearing.
• Bilal uses a poetry competition to out himself at school.