This is the second book I've read this year about women living under some form of fundamentalist-adjacent Islamic patriarchy (the other was the soul-crushing Tali Girls) and initially, I expected Straight to run along similar lines. After all, the first half of the book is mostly about how Jmiaa and other women begin with high hopes that are gradually crushed by the men and institutions in their lives. Jmiaa describes the men she sleeps with in graphically humorous detail, alongside her small acts of rebellion (after her husband pimps her out to a friend without telling her he's about to do so[!], she decides to "stop using soap down there" so he'll only ever stick his penis into a "disgusting pussy").
Her husband leaves her for some get-rich-quick scheme in Spain, so she begins doing sex work for herself, and, when she's caught by her mother in law around the midpoint of the book, it seems like her story is going the way of a younger prostitute whose story we hear earlier, who was forced into prostitution when one of her coworkers catfished her for nudes then emailed them to everyone, leading to her exile from polite society. But instead, while working one day, she is approached by a young woman, referred to for most of the book as Horse Mouth because of her large, white teeth, who's writing and directing a film about a prostitute and a layabout who rob a bank, and wants to interview Jmiaa to flesh out her script.
Spoilers below, including the end of the book.
These meetings lead to Jmiaa being offered the lead role in the film, which is eventually picked up, shown at festivals in the States, and widely acclaimed, and the story ends with Jmiaa in Mexico, working as an actress on a telenovella ("the first Moroccan woman ever to star in a Mexican television program"). So ultimately, Straight becomes a rags-to-riches story, not at all what I expected around the midpoint. I kept waiting for the inevitable final tragedy but it never arrives--the novel ends with Jmiaa a success, having escaped the strictures of the society that drove her to her state early in the story.
The title of the book does double duty. First, as an aphorism, since we see the grimy realities of sex work under the patriarchal systems of Morocco firsthand through Jmiaa's narration. And secondly, as a bit of a joke, since Horse Mouth literally takes Jmiaa "out" of her circumstances by turning those very circumstances into the material that enables her liberation.
Religion plays an interesting role in the story. While in Tali Girls, the main characters seem to grow more and more disillusioned with fundamentalist Islam as the novel progresses, here there's an almost Calvinistic fatalism at play. The sex workers, even the cynical Jmiaa, talk a lot about God's will and invoke their own versions of "the best of all possible worlds" throughout, and in the cases of Jmiaa and Samira, a friend who goes with her to the States then Mexico, they beliefs seem to be vindicated.
There is something uncomfortable about a novel like this, that shares partial stories of perhaps a dozen women in terrible circumstances, then gives us a happy ending of sorts with only two of them, but upon writing this review it occurred to me that perhaps this is the point. After all, Jmiaa feels a bit of empathy for the other women she comes into contact with, but mostly she seems to feel contempt, frequently commenting to the reader that they're foolish, whining, stupid, etc. When she's plucked out of her circumstances through what we could almost call a deus ex machina--Horse Mouth is practically messianic--she sees it as a just reward for her own intelligence and cunning: her final words in the story are "I told you I was sharp".
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