Aliyyah

Chris Dolan

(Vagabond Voices, £8.95)

Reviewed by Hugh MacDonald

My last viewing of Chris Dolan was in Bishopbriggs Library as he and his fiddle added a soundtrack to World Book Day. In the interval, he signed copies of his first crime novel, the excellent Potter's Field.

Dolan then nattered about his writing for television and radio, his non-fiction and his poetry. He was heading off to his day job as a lecturer the next day so I refrained from talking to him about his Ascension Day, on my shortlist for Great Glesca Novel.

So with this sort of hinterland it was irresistible on leaving the library that fine evening to speculate on what Dolan might do next. A radio series in Swahili, maybe? A sonnet played out while charming a snake, perhaps?

No, Dolan has given us something more surprising. An Arabian tale with a Scottish accent.

Of course, it is more than that but it is necessary to dwell briefly on the superficial before investigating the profundity of a novella that has a wonderful simplicity and a powerful impact.

First, it is beautiful. The cover and illustrations by Mark Mechan are superb. The writing is similarly deft and confidently drawn. It is also a genuine Arabian tale in that it will resonate with those who consumed such tales in childhood. Dolan was such a boy and he has an affection for the form that does not restrain him from tampering with it mischievously but to extraordinary effect.

There is also a duality at the heart of the book that pays tribute to Robert Louis Stevenson. Aliyyah is inspired by an RLS story, Olalla, but it has a resonance too with The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde. There is good and evil at every turn in Aliyyah.

It is part love story, part mystery and part investigation of memory and loss. At least, two of the major characters suffer from an amnesia that both distances them from events and perhaps protects them from them.

But at the centre of Aliyyah lies an investigation of contradictory views on belief, even life. It can be read simply as an Arabian tale of a soldier rescued from a helicopter crash and taken to a home where a wise old man, an enigmatic older woman and a beautiful girl live insulated from a war raging nearby. Dolan states no country, no date, no precise war. The flawed and wounded hero is a Scot, Captain Tom Haldane. The old man is almost certainly a cleric, but no religion is stated.

This is straightforward, captivating. But as the reader becomes beguiled with a prose that suggests there may something ethereal stirring in the compound, Dolan invests the tale with weightier matters.

There is a devastating condemnation of Western invasion of Arab states when Duban, the old man who has nursed Haldane back to health, remarks: "You want to make changes, revisions in the lives of others without knowing much about them."

This is more a headbutt than a nod to the realities of geopolitics in the Gulf and beyond. But Dolan swiftly and assuredly moves to the spiritual, the soul of the story.

As Haldane grapples with a modern problem of how to fix a radio transmitter, he seeks to impose a rational solution on Duban on the matter or non-matter of a deity. This is the eternal problem of unbelief encountering belief with the possibility or even probability of confusion, anger and discord.

There is a separation between Duban and Haldane but their shared humanity produces scenes of immense feeling and even mutual appreciation. Haldane, the son of a minister, is troubled by his lack of faith rather than sustained by it. Duban takes solace, wisdom and messages from thousands of years of mystical thought and writing. The resolute, stubborn soldier is faced by an opponent who uses gentle but powerful words to disarm his belligerence over the absence of God from his life.

The duality, even ambiguity continues to the end of a tale that gathers an astonishing momentum. Duban is given the best lines. He states with certainty that "peace breeds, strife consumes", he points out that "only a fool has found wisdom, the wise seek it". This is all irrefutable but when Duban asks Haldane to make an act of faith, his refusal sets in train a dramatic conclusion.

All this is contained in about 120 pages, including illustrations and acknowledgements. It is some trick. Bring on the sonnet snake-charming.