The novel begins with the reflections of Omar Saleh, a sixty- five year old man who enters Britain as a refugee pretending the ignorance English language and with a small casket . He is stopped and handed over to a worker Rachel in an organisation meant for the welfare of the refugees.
Awaiting Rachel's call the narrator reflects
In the darkness I lose a sense of
space, and in this nowhere I feel myself more solidly , and hear the play of voices more clearly , as if they
we rehappening for the first time. Sometimes I hear music in the distance,
played in the open and coming to me as a muted whisper. I long for night
each arid day, even though I dread the
darkness and its limitless chambers and shifting shadows. Sometimes I
think it is my fate to live in the wreckage and confusion of crumbling
houses. (9)
The narrator is reflecting on his past self in the present
time.
“What I mean is I don’t know
a great truth which I ache to impart, nor have I lived an exemplary
experience which will illuminate our
conditions and our times. Though I have lived, I have lived.” (2)
He says that his
vibrant life is before and behind him.
He visits furniture shops and thinks
“At the very least,
it weighs us down and keeps us on the ground, and prevents us from clambering
up trees and howling naked as the terror of our useless lives overcomes us. It keeps us from wandering aimlessly in
pathless wildernesses , plotting cannibalism in forest-clearings and dripping
caves.” (3)
He , a refugees
arrives at Gatwick airport and walking past rows.
‘‘ What we know constantly reels us into our ignorance,
makes us see the world as if we were
still squatting in that shallow tepid pool which we had known since childhood
terrors.” (5)
He shows his joke passport which is taken by Kevin for further interrogation about
his state and background. But the narrator pretends not knowing English0. Kevin
finds goods brought in by the old man Shaaban and tries to convince him that he
cannot survive in an alien land with a few belongings and without knowledge of English and he is an
old man. Shaaban prefers silence and listen to the
lecture how he does not fit in their being without European values unlike him
who has come from Romania .
Shaaban remembers a series of colonizers who came , traders, the Portuguese, Omanis ,
the British, the Germans and the
French.
Writing about the British colonialism
The stories we knew about
ourselves before they took charge of us seemed medieval and fanciful , sacred and
secret myths that were liturgical metaphors and rites of adherence , a
difference category of knowledge which,
despite our assertive observance , could not contest with theirs.(18)
The colonials’ good was ironical.
They told us about the nobitity of resisting tyranny in the
classroom and then applied a curfew after sunset, or sent pamphleteers for
independence to prison for sedition. Never mind, they drain the creeks, and
improve the sewage system and bring vaccines and the radio . Their
departure seemed so sudden tin the end,
precipitate and somehow petulant. (19)
Saleh Omar , the narrator
reflects the arbitrary businessman’s nature of the British. The alive customers
used to visit the furniture shop to admire the exhibits.
They did not have the same obsessive need of
them that my European customers had-to acquire the world’s beautify hinge so they could take them home
and possess them , as tokens of their cultivation and open-mindedness, as
trophies of their worldliness and their conquest of the multitudinous parched
savannahs.
When Kevins questions the narrator about the Mahogany
box , “it was something like that Kevin
Edelman had done with my casket of
ud-al-kamari .” (21)
The narrator also
recounts the story of Hussein, a merchant whose grandfather Jaffar Musa has
made the British envious of his success as a businessman and biding their time
to dethrone him rumoured to have been
immoral, lascivious, intriguing businessman . After his death, his son Reza has
dispensed with his European employees and his business gradually declined in Malya. Reza stated another business in Bahrain which was
also under the British. Hussein borrows some money from Omar and gives him a
document which shows debt of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud to Hussein . Hussein departs
for another palace and sends a map to Omar who has been fond of
hopes.
Colonial mapping to plunder is expressed neatly by Omar
Before maps the world was
limitless. It was maps that gave it shape and made it seem like territory, like
something that could be possessed not just laid waste and plundered .Maps made
places on the edges of the imagination seem graspable and placable. and later
when it became necessary, geography became biology in order to construct a hierarchy in which to
place the people who lived in their accessibility and primitiveness in other
places on the maps. (35)
Rachel takes Omar to a home run by Celia .There he sees many
refuges from various countries- Mick , the seventy year old who always
watches mute TV , Ibrahim for Kosovo running form Serbians, Georgy, A Roma from
Czech republic . Saleh Omar who has been pretending not to know English
at the behest of travel agent assumes the name of Rejab Shaaban. He has not fund the ambience there
congenial and later when Rachel comes to him and talks to him he causes her
annoyance by revealing how he could
speak English. Earlier she wanted to find an interpreter named Latif, an
academician working in London for him.
Now Latif enquires Rachel
about the welfare of Saleh Omar who has told her about his familiarity
With Latif. Now the narration is taken
forward by Latif. He tells that
his father the real Rajab Shaaban Mahmud , his wife Asha given to alienation
form he husband and flirting with others, sons Hasan and Latif.
Through Latif’s narration we come to know about colonial vilification of the blacks. In
street he is derided as ‘balckamoor’. He checks dictionary and finds words,
blackhearted, blacklist, blackguard, blackmail , black market, black sheep
which filled him with disheartenment.
Of course I knew about the construction of black as other, as wicked, as
beast, as some evil dark place in the innermost being of even the most skinless civilized European , but I
had not expected to see so much black black
black on a page like that. (72)
Into their house comes Hussein, a merchant whom Latif’s
father calls a good friend. Latif describes how his father , a clerk in Public
Works Department has felt shameful all
along but shows tenderness towards his children . Latif admires his brother who
is knowledgeable but he also doesn’t
tell Latif anything about the alienation between their parents.
Latif narrates how his house
has been lost to Saleh Omar due to
the machinations of Hussein who has stayed in their house as a guest of his father
Rajab Shaaban Mahmud in the name of business partnership and seduced
Latif’s brother Hasan and entered into an illicit affair with their mother Asha. Hasan who has burned with shame has disappeared. Their
house has been sold to Saleh Omar, the
furniture shop owner who has reappeared as a refugee as a refugee for whom Latif is supposed to
have been interpreter in London.
The novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah shows through Latif’s narration how
colonial legacy in library influenced
them and books left by European teachers
at school on their departure ‘’so the
departing conquerors could feel that
they were leaving this fruit of Europe’s intellect in the had of responsible
persons.”(105) Latif narrates the luxury
of Us information library , shifting of alliance of president of his country Zanzibar from America to Socialist countries
and his sojourn in East Germany for training as a dentist. The novelist shows the corruption by
ministers in the system in arranging scholarships as a return for
sexual favours from Latif’s mother Asha . Latif knows it but does not
demur. He describes how his father has become more pious after losing their
house. While he was leaving for east Germany, his father asked him to be pious
amidst the godless and mother to take
care of himself and his passport. He left in anxiety and failed to fill in the
impressions of surroundings for sterile years ahead. In East Germany , Latif stays in a hostel and his
roommate is one Ali, from Guinea who
makes fun of him.
The hostel was
modern rectangular block, concrete and glass and asbestos, with tiny unheated
rooms that were shared between two students. The corridors were narrow and
sharply angled, so that although the buildimg gave a monumental impression
outside , inside it was cramped and suffocating, until I got used to it , it
felt as if I had to struggle to breathed lying
in bed in a silent panic ,
heaving to take in the bad air with its taste of vegetable decay. The windows
were never opened because the whole block
was so poorly heated. If the window was opened in the remotest corner of the
building , a chill draught blasted through every crack and crevice , and led to
an immediate hunt and punishment for the criminal. (113)
The novelist wants to bring out
the derision which Germans entertained towards African students. One day while
they were crossing a street a group of German boys grinned and barely suppressing their mirth one of them said “ Africker-nische “ and the
rest laughed. “ It was shocking, that casual mockery , but there would be time
to get used to that and worse, time to
learn to recover form such smug disregard.”
(119)
Both Ali and Latif came there at
the behest of their respective mothers to save them from insecurity and trouble.
Ali grew up in France and their family went back to Guinea after independence .
his father got arrested and brother went missing , probably killed by the
authorities. While Ali had been more open about his family, Latif told his
story in a guarded manner since he felt
embarrassed to tell storied of our ridiculous domestic melodramas I exchange
for his terrible one of loss and oppression.” (121)
Latif ‘s ignorance of Dresden, a famous
city in twenty miles distance made him realise
the damage done by Colonized education. He didn’t know about its medieval
triumphs, wealth, ingenuity ,
industries, buildings, greatness of Electors of Saxony, huge port on the Elbe, devastation of May 1945, the horrors it faced
or inflicted on its enemies and victims. But he knew about the fishing banks
of Newfoundland, the
Fire of London an Cromwell , the siege of Mafeking and the abolition of Slave
Trade.
I Knew nothing about Dresden or a multitude of other Dresdens. They had been
there for all these centuries despite me, ignorant of me, oblivious of my
existence. It was a staggering thought , how little it had been possible to
know and remain contented. (123)
Latif goes to meet Elleke and to his surprise Jan comes and
apologise for his pretension as Elleke to become a pen friend causally and his mother too helped him in writing letter to give the
right one. Latif understand the reason and goes to Jan’s house. Jan’s mother
Elleke attends to injury to his feet due
to snow. Both tell him story about Euryclea, the nurse when Ulysses as a
child who recognised him by a scar on
his feet. Latif comes to know in the
course of conversation that they also were settlers who went form Austria to Kenya to Germany.
when enquired why Kenya, she replies,
“Yoe mean why did you choose to
go and take what belonged to other people, and call it your own and prosper on
duplicity and force. Eve fight and maim for what you had no right to. Isn’t that what you mean ? “ (131) she says
colonialism made them do so and they went to Ngong hills where became coffee
farmers.
Latif’s interaction with Elleke
and Jan is not liked by Ali. But it grows and Latif joins Jan in escaping from
Easy Germany and roams other capitals such as Prague, Budapest and other
central European cities and arrives t Plymouth , England. He claims that he is
a refugee from East Germany in the office of the Harbour Police. He is enquired about life in GDR and travels in Central
Europe and on the next
morning let off and given the address of
a refugee organisation.
Later on Latif who has become an
academician and a poet is asked by
Rachel to act as an interpreter to Saleh Omar whom he meets after six months .
In the next part of the novel we find a
shift in the narration and Saleh Omar continues the story . Latif goes to meet
Saleh Omar and the latter tells him his side of the story regarding how he and
why he has assumed the name of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud , the father of Latif.
Omar marries Salha and after a
few years she gives birth to baby girl . Omar in fact wanted to call her Raiiya
which means a citizen of the conquered
nations.
It was true that the conquerors in its use
were Muslims and the conquered were not, and to offer that vanquished rights
after having taken away their freedom to conduct their affairs as they wished
was hardly magnanimous., but the idea of citizens’ rights was a noble cause,
and we could use it for our own meaning. (150)
As his wife objects , Saleh Omar gives her the name Raqiya, after the
prophet’s daughter with his first wife Khadija.
He also teel him how the girl died before she reached two years.
Hussein, the wily merchant has taken money from Saleh Omar in exchange of
document of mortgage Hussein got
from Rajan Shaaban Mahmud for
partnering with him in business. After Hussein has left , Saleh Omar reveals
this to Rajab Shabaan who is distraught. Later Rajab’s second son Latif goes to Saleh Omar to
beg Mahogony table belonging to
his brother Hasan When their mother requests him to do so. Omar later narrates his life as a student ,
his friendship with Jamal and Sefu , their going to Jamal’s house during
vacation and getting rather shabby treatment and then his travels with Sefu
during which they have been received well in the houses of Sefu’s relatives and
finally his father’s message to come home. He comes to know about the second
marriage of his father after the death of his own mother.
Omar comes to know that his
father married Bi Maryam and both of them looked content. Bi Maryam’s first
husband was Nassor , the nahoda (
A man of the Sea) who was an orphan himself and was cheated of his rightful
share of his property by is relatives. Nassor’s mother revealed to him how she
had been tricked into remarriage and both she and her son were deprived of
their rightful share by their relatives.
The story turns many twists and turns and Omar tells that Bi Maryam
inherited a house after Nessor’s death and his own father who married Bi Maryam
. Bi Maryam was the aunt of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud who was given to bouts of
drinking. In the course of time, Saleh Omar’s father and step mother died. At
last Bi Maryam had bequeathed her house to Saleh Omar in stead of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud and the rumours had been that she had
been cheated of her property by Omar and his father.
In continuation of narration Saleh Omar reveals to Latif his saga of
suffering . he has been vilified by
others for having ruined Rajab Shaaban Mahmud by taking his house. His
justification is that has wanted to take
loan on the house but not own it. He
also narrates of Asha, Latif’s mother who has had maintained relations
with a minister to the shame of her husband who turned more and more
pious. Latif has continued to listen to the story rather reluctantly. Then
after nationalisation of banks, Saleah Omar has been asked to repay
the loan on the house overnight and he has failed to repay the amount . He has
been called to the office of the party headquarters , faced the trial, charged
with fraud , ordered to give document of house Bi Maryam bequeathed him and was
arrested.
Saleh Omar recounts Latif Ahamd
who was originally Isamail about his life on the penal island, detention camps
and his final release . Here we find a
beautiful description of the sea at night through the eyes of Omar imprisoned on the island. .
At night it
was as if there was no sky, just a dense mass of stars bearing down. The sea
frothed and turned endlessly , catching the light of the stars in filigreed
crests , sighing and snapping and rushing at the rocks on our lee. Low on the
horizon, the glow of the town was visible as an aurora on the far edge of the
sea.(229)
He comes back to his town and finds out bout
the deaths of his wife Bi Salha and
child Ruqia in his absence , the death
of Asha, the wife of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud , latter’ undiminished hatred towards
him and his death . He also tells about resumption of his business, return of
Hassan , the prodigal son of Rajab and
long lost brother of Latif , the prosperity of Hassan and his pressure on Saleh
Omar to return house documents, threats to
file a case .The subdued and mellowed Omar does not react, takes passport
in the name of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud
whose birth certificate he has found unexpectedly and leaves for London.
Latif Ahmad now is aware of the loose ends in the entire story of his life and the life of
Omar. Rachel and Latif treat the old man
Saleh Omar in a friendly manner.
The prose of the novel is well chiseled,
ironical , tender , evocative of memories in reader’s personal life , empathetic and offers psychological
insights into characters, brings out impact
of colonial rule on the lives of citizens, the nexus
between power and corruption and an intimate relation between the reader and
the lives of characters in the novel. The novel ends rather abruptly but
reminds of the words the life of no one is to be considered happy till the end.
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