Desertion by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Desertion (2005), is a masterfully woven tale by the Tanzanian-born British winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose obvious intent is to get you better acquainted with his Zanzibari origins. First published in 2005, the novel is divided into three parts, each focusing on interconnected main characters, to explore the personal and political legacies of colonisation.
The first part begins in 1899 with Hassanali, a local shopkeeper and the one who calls people to prayer at the mosque, who one morning stumbles upon an unusual stranger who is obviously ill. Out of concern, Hassanali brings him back to his home, and unknowingly sets off a chain of events which will ripple far into the future. His unmarried sister, Rehana, tends to this stranger, an Englishman named Martin Pearce, and once he recovers and sets eyes on her, he cannot stop thinking about her. The two end up beginning a relationship that is largely frowned upon by many, and relocate to Mombasa where Martin will eventually abandon Rehana.
In this part of the book, the politics surrounding intermarriage at the time is highlighted. Ironically, many on this East African Coastal town very near Mombasa, are obvious products of intermarriages - including Rehana and Hassanali, whose father was an Indian married to a Mswahili, their mother. Reminiscing about her childhood, Rehana captures this disdain for interracial couplings:
“She remembered as a child how sometimes these Indians came past the shop and how they treated their father disdainfully. She knew that they did so because he complained about the way they made remarks about their mother. Rehana herself never heard any of these remarks, but she could imagine they were to do with her mother not being Indian, and she heard him ranting about the children being called chotara. She did not know what the word meant, but she knew it was something ugly. She could see that in the way the Indian men looked at her when she was a child, disdaining. Later she understood that the word meant bastard, an improper child of an Indian man with an African woman.”
Zanzibar is simultaneously grappling with the onset of European colonisation at the same time that trade is thriving, hence the frequent arrival of different racial groups and the inevitability of romantic relationships developing with some of the locals.
The second part of the book skips forward to the 1950s. Here, we are introduced to a family, with siblings Rashid, Amin, Farida and their parents, who are both teachers. Teaching is considered a noble profession and so the parents of these children are respected in their community. In turn, they expect the same level of excellence, and even higher, from their children. Independence is on the horizon and each child defies their parents’ expectations in one way or another.
Amin, the eldest, and most studious in the family, chooses to pursue a teaching career like his parents - but it’s not without a hitch. While in college, he falls in love with Jamila, a customer of his sister, Farida. The only problem is that Jamila has been unfairly tasked with carrying the burden of the “sin” committed decades ago by her maternal grandmother, Rehana. As a result, Jamila has European blood and is therefore considered a descendant of a forbidden and shameful coupling by society. She is also a divorcée, older by a couple of years than Amin and lives downstairs alone in her family home, all of which are frowned upon. Amin’s sister, out of genuine concern, tries to caution him against pursuing the relationship;
“It’s not like I don’t like her.” Farida said and could not suppress a brief smile which glinted with a soft glow in the gloom. “You have to remember that people like her live in a different world from ours. That’s what Ma would say if she knew. They are not our kind of people, that’s what she would say. They have a different idea about what is required of them and about what is . . . honourable. You have to be careful not to hurt yourself, and not to hurt them.” She gestured with her chin towards the house.
Indeed, Jamila and Amin know full well the implications of their actions and try their best to keep their trysts secret. But word eventually filters out and against his will, Amin has to promise his parents never to see Jamila again.
In the final part, Rashid the youngest sibling and the dreamer, gets a scholarship to study in England at the University of London. He arrives overseas in the early 1960s to a multicultural society - yet one where the color of his skin is more glaring than ever and leads him to be excluded.
“It was not easy to get near the English students, even ones in the same class. The feeling of resistance was there from the beginning, a feeling I sensed but was not sure of. I had not known what to expect, but I sensed it in in the slightness of the smiles I was given in return to my beaming ones. I saw it in the way the eyes slid away, and in the frowns when I followed the other students out of the class, trying to join in whatever they were doing next. I saw that I was not included in the rendezvous outside the library or in the coffee bar or wherever else. I saw this in the quick looks of mischief they exchanged, and in their suppressed smiles. Sometimes I saw embarrassment, especially in the women students, although I thought the men intimidated the women in some way. And one day soon I was allowed to overhear one of the students as I hovered on the edges of a group at the end of class. What is he doing here?”
As he tries to navigate life in this strange land, he maintains correspondence with his family back home in Zanzibar via letters. Completely sucked into the European life, Rashid spends many years abroad only getting glimpses of the actual situation back home. Eventually, and by sheer luck, he manages to trace Jamila’s English relatives and then, he must return home to complete the missing piece of the puzzle.
I found Desertion to be quite similar to Out of Darkness, Shining Light (2019) by Petina Gappah and Karafu: A Freed Slave (2019) by Nahida Esmail, both books I have read which focus to some extent on the history of European occupation in Africa and the East African Coast, Zanzibar, in the latter. The author does a beautiful job of showing how the issue of forbidden love transcends time while at the same time exploring the history of Zanzibar, the economic situation and the political landscape at the time. Religion and culture play key parts in the lives of the characters who strive not to offend nor be termed outcasts from their actions.
While Rashid managed to break free from this society by relocating to England, he then encounters the challenge of belonging in his adopted land, but surprisingly manages to handle it brilliantly. I also had a strong feeling that the character of Rashid is an embodiment of the actual experiences of the author who relocated to the UK as a young man. Desertion draws you into the lives of its characters in such a way that you find yourself attuned to their personal experiences – and this is what makes for fantastic historical realist fiction.
Lorna Likiza is a Kenyan Writer, Online Tutor of French, Founder of Heroe Book Fair and Children Book Author of Oi Gets Lost from The Oi Series for ages 8-12. Her Nonfiction works have been featured in Literary and Cultural Journals in Africa and Overseas such as Agbowo, the defunct Arts and Africa, Barren Magazine, Down River Road, Aniko Press, Culture Africa, Decolonial Passage and Debunk Media. She regularly contributes to the Frankfurt based newspaper, Frankfurter Rundschau and has previously contributed to the Berlin based newspapers, Junge Welt and Jungle World. Lorna was a speaker at the Polyglot Conference Global 2023 where she presented a talk titled; Africans Are Polyglots and the World Needs to Acknowledge This. She lives in Mombasa.