Abdulrazak Gurnah’s The Last
Gift (2011) portrays the silence of the
migrant Abbas who married an orphan Maryam who was raised by different parents
until she found herself in love with Abbas. She abandons her last foster
parents Ferooz and Vijay and
marries Abbas. Abbas after working as a
sailor , fitter and finally an engineer whereas Maryam works as a cleaner in a
hospital. The couple move from Birmingham to Norwich to Exeter. One day Abbas
collapses and diagnosed with diabetes. He
who used to be solitary in mind and independent becomes dependent on Maryam.
The latter has keen yearning for reconciliation with her foster parents whom
she left long ago. Their children Hanna and Jamal come back from where they are
studying and recollect their relationship with their father. Hanna changes her
name to Anna and tread an independent path whereas Jamal who is vague in
mind aspires to realise his
creativity. Abbas plunges himself into deep silence and recollects his poor
childhood, struggle in getting himself
educated, school life in Mfenesini Though his miserly father was
reluctant to send him for higher education, his brother Kassim and sister
Fawzia came to his rescue.
The narration goes back and forth. Abbas
reminiscences, Maryam’s car taking of her husband, Anna’s life with Nick and
Jamal’s struggles to establish himself are narrated in jumbled sequence. The
Childrens’ anticipation and frustration to know their father’s history are
mentioned. Hanna who came to be called Anna moved out of her father’s orbit
of affections. She expresses wonder when
her mother informs that her father was listening to audio books of poems. Abbas slowly plunges himself into his own
reveries, Maryam expects her children to take care of each other and reconcile
with her father. While Jamal was passionate in his causes, Anna was different.
To Jamal, “moving is a moment of ruin and failure, a defeat that is no longer
avoidable , a desperate flight, going from bad to worse, from home to
homelessness, from citizen to refugee , from living a tolerable or contented life to vile horror.” (73)
Jamal while observing his
neighbour, white-haired and dark-skinned painting his shed ruminates over the
phenomenon of migration . “He knew that it was a clutter of
ambition and fear and desperation and incomprehension that brought people so
far and enabled them to put up with so much. And they could no more resist the
coming than they could the tide or the electric storm.” (87) he thought that he
could be South Asia or South Arabian,
Yemini. Millions are like that who belong and not belong in places they
live but find happiness in small achievements
Anna’s boy friend nick got a post
at university and after commuting from Wandsworth to Brighton he suggested moving to university .
She gave up her job and followed Nick. Anna
had a recurring dream in new house in which she aw a house partly derelict and she saw someone whom she
could not identify. In the dream, she climbed a narrow stairs and force open a
door and explained to some one invisible how to repair. When she recounts her
dream to Nick, he could not make any sense of it and inquired if she was
feeling guilty regarding her dad. She resented her father’s restrictions on her
dress and overconcern about her boy friends about whom she maintained silence.
But her relation with her mother was more
intimate. When Nick invited her home, she preferred to visit her parents first and then went from Norwich
to Chichester where Nick’s s parents lived.
the novelist shows how alienation grows in
family reactions of migrants who suffer from insecurity, loneliness, cultural
change between their native country to where they migrated. Anna found it
stressful to maintain intimacy with her parents as she wanted to find her own
path of adventure and meaning. The generational gap too contributed its mite to
the feeling of separation among the family.
“ They were adrift, out of their depth, lonely together. They had done
this deliberately , she thought, cut themselves off , living timorous lives,
expecting slights and disregard.”.
This feeling of guilt and been
traitorous is common to all where the children growing wings flyaway from their
parents leaving the latter in their empty nest . this was inevitable but it would not
alleviate guilt feeling in the children. The parents too have to reconcile to
the new condition as they cannot force the children to stay back in view of the
latter’s future.
Anna visits nick’s family Chichester and finds that they feel
discomfort regarding her. Nick’s father Ralph is an engaging conversationalist . His mother Jill was a professional who ran aa hospital and Anna
thinks that she could intimidate her mother Maryam. Ralph argues that correcting historical
injustice could lead to new injustices in Zimbabwe. Ralph says some people
cannot tolerate whereas others see injustice as natural order of things. He
inquires her if she read Orwell. She who studied literature gets impressed by Ralph’s write reading but still feels some sort of discomfort in her brief stay with Nick’s family . “He made these
comparisons without insistence, wit out enthusiasm, as if they were calm
observations of civil truths. She wondered that ralph did not seem to notice
the abrasive underside of his comparisons , which was a smug suspicion of
everyone else’s unsteadiness.” (106)
Gurnah brings out the delicate likes and dislikes in family
relationships. Maryam at first gives up he job and tends to take care of Abbas. The chores needed to be learnt and
done with as little disgust as possible. After a while , she wants to join and offer her services at a refugee
centre. The novel unravels the difficult
relation between the natives and the refugees and the psychological problems
faced by the refugees in coming to terms with their past , the differences in
upbringing of children at school left to the choice of the parents, the
silences which accumulate, struggle for survival and the strains imposed by
them due to the need for building bridges.
When Uncle Digby asks her about her origins , she relies that
she’s British. He wants to know what she had been before she became British.
Anna says her father came form East Africa and
she didn’t know the specific
country from which she where her father came from. Uncle Digby says , “ We see families falling apart because
children do not want to know about the world
their parents came from. To keep
communities together, host and stranger need to know each other , but we cannot
know each other if we don’t know ourselves. We who care for the welfare of
immigrants work as hard as we know how to get
that message across , to encourage people to know. Those words I am
British feel like a cold tragic blast to me.” (119)
Later anna remembers how she has spoken slightingly about her father to Nick to
assert her ‘British identity’ and recollects her father’s sense of strangeness despite many years of living in a
host country.
Jamal was initially reluctant to
go to the mosque abut attend at the behest of his friend Monzoor. The latter is surprised by Jamal’s stance to now more
before believing and praying. After 9/11 incidents, he realises sense of
insecurity felt and he also remembers the state of mind of people of Palestine,
Chechnya , the Congo and how people endured their situation. Gurnah also
shows through the eyes of Jamal the petering out of the movements began in
1968, riots in 1999 and anti-war
demonstrations against Iraq war which was planned and waged war
destroying large number of people and
many countries ignoring mass protests.
Some called it utopian and terror as real and Hanna and Jamal wondered at
the irony of horror continued while their father “was in his own deep fog and these new
horrors hardly penetrated through his confusing pain.”(126)
Abbas slowly recalls his college
days, interest in the girl on the opposite terrace, scandal , forced marriage
at the behest of his sister Fawzia , his sense of dishonour by the family of
the girl Sharifa, suspicion of trap by his in-laws and his desertion of wife
and child. When Maryam comes to know the
truth from his confession, she feels aghast
knowing that her husband was a bigamist and maintained silence for so long
and she invites Anna to visit
home once . On the other hand , Anna
leads a happy life but begins to nurture
doubts about Nick’s fidelity and Jamal is attracted and accosted by Lena who
spurns his possessive boy friend Ronnie. What we find in the novel are how
relationships get soured by silences,
guilt, infidelities and suspicion
of fidelity of partners.
When a neighbour of his falls on
the pavement while coming back shopping Jamal and Lena go to help him. Jamal disowns
him when the ambulance woman signs if he
could come along and later repents that
what would have happened if his father suffered the same fate on the
road and not even remembering his name.
Both Anna and Jamal visit their
home and listen to their Maryam about her early life how she was reared by
Ferooz and Vijay. Initial kindness, entrance of cousin Dinesh , discrimination
in treatment towards her by Ferooz and Vijay. She also tells how she was
molested by Dinesh. While Anna could not bear to listen and wanted to go ,
Jamal was more understanding and sympathetic. This also shows how alienation
grows in a migrant’s family and generational gap . For the fort generation, the
burden of the past is hard to shrug off whereas the second generation of
migrants struggle to assimilate themselves in new setting.
Anna’s uneasiness and
inconvenience are brought out by her passing and negative opinion of two black
women migrants at station and her recurring dream of rotting house and heavy suit case symbolising burden
of the past. She remains suspicious towards Nick despite lovemaking after her return and fantasizes about her
achievements. Her struggles to forge her own individuality away from over
protective father Abbas and her boy friend
Nick are to be noted. Anna also
senses dislike shown by Ralph and Jill towards her and Ralph’s reference to her
father’s bigamy annoyed her. She thought that whatever kindness shown “was
offered in shame to disguise their distaste.” (228)
Gurnah shows the defensive stance
of migrants, how they are forced to
forget, deny or distort their past, history and try to assume hide their
restlessness. One example is Harun’s attempt to hide his wife’s photo and
display photos of earlier tenants in his
house. Harun was saved by Jamal and Lena
earlier and this made them welcome visitors in Harun’s house. Harun came from Uganda in 1960’s to study journalism, made friends with a lecture
Allan and later fell in love with Allan’s wife
Pat who educated him out of his timorous
scruples . But Harun didn’t go to his
family in Uganda who didn’t take kindly to his marrying of Pat.
At the end the relationship
between Anna and nick ends when she finds that he has been cheating her after
reading Julia’ s text on his mobile. Nick says back that her family has been
gripped by” hopeless melodrama acting
like immigrants” and she failed to understand his parents Ralph and jill. Anna
recalls his desire for her even before his exit and his
colonial extinct to take what he wanted. She readies for her new life.
In the last part called rites we
come to know Abbas’s wandering life through his taped voice listened to by his daughter Anna. Abbas
waned to keep secrets of his early life as it was done traditionally from his family. He recounts how he went to
Singapore, Indian cities and Durban, South Africa. He felt pangs of guilt for
abandoning his wife and child back in
Zanzibar on suspicion. He did menial
work on the ship and as a scavenger and roamed on his own. He befriended one
Ibrahim and was about to fall in love with his sister but left the place after
being warned by Ismail. He didn’t want to talk about his fears , simmering
hatred, ill treatment of women as merchandise,
tyrannical ways with children in his native land and embracing silence
as a way of coping with unforgettable guilt and also Claire, the sister of Pascal
whom he befriended in Mauritius and felt
sad to leave the place and at last his destined meeting with Maryam. Anna recognised it “as a kind of unforgiving
honesty , which she did not usually expect to hear in someone’s voice , let
alone in her father’s (262) After her
father’s death and listening to his taped voice , Anna could see in her mind’s
eye her father’s loneliness, his feeling of bus ride to college and her own
similar experiences and him as a college student. This was the last gift from
Abbas, the ability to sympathise and empathize cutting across generational gap,
fears of migrants’ identity crisis and tryst with their past. At last Maryam becomes active in her life through acting in
and plays along with her children Hanna
and Jamal visits her foster parents. She
comes to know that she was born to a Polish mother and a British soldier a
darkie with light complexion. First they surmise that Maryam could be from Jewish
father but her name could have been Miryam if it were so. The missing vowel is
critical as it denotes changes of nationality and in the novel we also find how
the novelist refers to Hanna as Anna depending on her location , at home or
at outside the home.
Jamal writes Anna about his impending visit to
Zanzibar, the native place of Abbas. Anna in her reply refers to her dilemma , “ I feel myself suspended between
a real place , in which I live , and another imagined place, which is also real
but in a disturbing way.” (278) Jamal in his reply mentions her mother’s
recovery of zest for life and a story awaiting to be written by him.
The novelist uses the techniques of third person narration, memory, confession, depiction of
dreams and letters to tell this very
sensitive, pathetic , secretive and significant life of immigrants who struggle
to sustain in their new country and amidst conflicting cultures. The tale is narrated
in five parts titled ‘ One Day ‘, ‘Moving’,
‘Flight ‘, ‘The Return’ and ‘Rites’. Abdulrazak
Gurnah succeeds in weaving a story that would create a deep sympathy for the
migrants and their anguish to come to terms with the past and the present in the era
of globalization which brings different, hybrid cultures together to workout a new way of
living. The characters such as Abbas, Maryam , (H)anna, Jamal, Harun, Ferooz ,
Nick linger in memory for a long time .
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