Desertion (novel)
Encyclopedia
Desertion is a 2005
novel
by Abdulrazak Gurnah
.
in the late in 1950s
, during a time of heady transition from colonialism to independence.
Rashid spins two tales: one is in part his own, and largely contingent on the other, set some fifty years thence on the outskirts of a small town in colonial Kenya
, along the east Africa
n coast north of Mombasa
, when early one morning in 1899 an Englishman
stumbles out of the desert
and collapses before a local shopkeeper outside his mosque
. The latter, Hassanali, takes him back home and, amidst the considerable kerfuffle, and with some help from family and local professionals, begins nursing the man back to health.
Hassanali is a nervous
, superstitious, cowardly man. On first being approached by the almost lifeless Pearce, he mistakes him for a ghoulish genie
come to spirit his soul away.
Before long, an English district officer, one Frederick Turner, arrives on the scene. He accuses Hassanali of having stolen whatever goods the Englishman brought with him, and promptly conveys him back to the residency. The traveller's name, as it turns out, is Martin Pearce, a man of liberal thought and broad linguistic knowledge, and something of an "Orientalist
". During his convalescence with Turner, he begins quickly to feel guilty about the harsh treatment and false accusations levelled at his original saviours, for he genuinely arrived with almost nothing but the clothes on his back: the only item he seems to have lost is his notebook. On visiting the shopkeeper to apologise, he sees Rehana, Hassanali's sister, and falls for her immediately.
Rehana's father was an Indian trader who settled in Mombasa and married a local woman, but the family is now part of the "Arabised minority" in a town still fresh with the memory of its years of slavery
under the sultan
.
The subsequent relationship between Rehana and Pearce is, of course, a scandal. Rashid in his narrative
admits that it is difficult to say how it came about, if less so to figure out how it was discovered. The upshot is that Rehana is forced to vacate the town and take up lodgings elsewhere with Pearce.
Half a century later, Amin, Rashid and Farida are growing up and receiving a typical colonial education in pre-independent Zanzibar. Amin, like his parents, is to train to become a schoolteacher; Rashid is studying for Oxbridge
; and Farida, an academic failure, becomes the family housekeep and small-business dress-maker to the young women of the town. One of her clients is a beautiful woman named Jamila, granddaughter of Rehana and Pearce. Despite her lowly repute "as a divorce
d woman whose grandmother slept with mzungus [sic]", Amin falls in love with her, and she with him. His parents are outraged on discovering the secret and refuse to brook it:
Amin is made to promise never to see her again, and he never really does. He fears for the rest of his life that she thinks he has deserted her.
In the case of Rashid, meanwhile, it is his passionate book-learning that results in his desertion first of his home and eventually "of the entire culture": "The place was stifling him, he said: the social obsequiousness, the medieval religiosity, the historical mendacities."
After independence and the subsequent revolution, life for all the characters is altered completely. Rashid misses the socio-political turmoil back home in his isolation as a university student in England; in fact, he never sees his ailing, tragic family again. Although he keeps up a steady stream of correspondence, this becomes increasingly strained with the preterition of time and the need for caution engendered of a brutal and dictatorial government. His only knowledge of the situation is gleaned from the letters and a few allusive snippets of news.
Both Ma and Amin loose their sight, and the former's death is celebrated as having put her out of her mounting misery. Years later, Rashid is able to piece the story together using Amin's notebooks, his own memory and a chance encounter with another of Pearce's descendants.
, reviewing it for The Guardian
, wrote,
Phillips was unhappy only with the novel's account of Rashid's desertion of his roots, describing it as
and abandonment
," according to Phillips, "are the themes that run through this novel, and which link its stories of tragic love
with the history
and politics
of the east Africa
n coast
." Where many have seen Desertion as primarily a political, postcolonial commentary on the imperial relationship with Britain
, Phillips discarded this as
There is also throughout the novel a faintly Gothic
strain, beginning with Hassanali's mistaken early citing of Pearce. On Pearce's apologetic return to the shop, an elderly villager remarks,
Doomed love features time and again. All the relationships in the novel (except for the established one of Ma and Ba, and Farida's with her Mombasa lover Abbas, which is nevertheless "long delayed and littered with obstacles") "are doomed, victims of their time and place."
, Rashid from the University of London
), and both going on to careers as university lecturers (Gurnah remaining at Kent, Rashid repairing to one in country surrounds).
s, visions, sudden journey
s, disappearances, and the domineering rhythm
s of the surrounding ocean
."
2005 in literature
The year 2005 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*February 25 - Canada Reads selects Rockbound by Frank Parker Day as the novel to be read across the nation....
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Abdulrazak Gurnah
Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian novelist based in the United Kingdom.- Career :From 1980 to 1982, Gurnah lectured at the Bayero University Kano in Nigeria. He then moved to the University of Kent, where he earned his PhD in 1982...
.
Plot
The novel is narrated by Rashid in all but one of the ten chapters, which exception is drawn from the notebooks of his brother Amin. Rashid is the youngest child of teaching parents: he is two years younger than Amin, who is in turn two years younger than Farida, their sister. The children are brought up in ZanzibarZanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
in the late in 1950s
1950s
The 1950s or The Fifties was the decade that began on January 1, 1950 and ended on December 31, 1959. The decade was the sixth decade of the 20th century...
, during a time of heady transition from colonialism to independence.
Rashid spins two tales: one is in part his own, and largely contingent on the other, set some fifty years thence on the outskirts of a small town in colonial Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
, along the east Africa
East Africa
East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
n coast north of Mombasa
Mombasa
Mombasa is the second-largest city in Kenya. Lying next to the Indian Ocean, it has a major port and an international airport. The city also serves as the centre of the coastal tourism industry....
, when early one morning in 1899 an Englishman
Englishman
Englishman may refer to:*English people*Grey Partridge*Jason Englishman, Canadian rock music singer and guitarist*Jenny-Bea Englishman, real name of the Canadien singer Esthero*Erald Briscoe, reggae musician who records under the name Englishman...
stumbles out of the desert
Desert
A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Most deserts have an average annual precipitation of less than...
and collapses before a local shopkeeper outside his mosque
Mosque
A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...
. The latter, Hassanali, takes him back home and, amidst the considerable kerfuffle, and with some help from family and local professionals, begins nursing the man back to health.
Hassanali is a nervous
Anxiety
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...
, superstitious, cowardly man. On first being approached by the almost lifeless Pearce, he mistakes him for a ghoulish genie
Genie
Jinn or genies are supernatural creatures in Arab folklore and Islamic teachings that occupy a parallel world to that of mankind. Together, jinn, humans and angels make up the three sentient creations of Allah. Religious sources say barely anything about them; however, the Qur'an mentions that...
come to spirit his soul away.
Before long, an English district officer, one Frederick Turner, arrives on the scene. He accuses Hassanali of having stolen whatever goods the Englishman brought with him, and promptly conveys him back to the residency. The traveller's name, as it turns out, is Martin Pearce, a man of liberal thought and broad linguistic knowledge, and something of an "Orientalist
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...
". During his convalescence with Turner, he begins quickly to feel guilty about the harsh treatment and false accusations levelled at his original saviours, for he genuinely arrived with almost nothing but the clothes on his back: the only item he seems to have lost is his notebook. On visiting the shopkeeper to apologise, he sees Rehana, Hassanali's sister, and falls for her immediately.
Rehana's father was an Indian trader who settled in Mombasa and married a local woman, but the family is now part of the "Arabised minority" in a town still fresh with the memory of its years of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
under the sultan
Sultan
Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...
.
The subsequent relationship between Rehana and Pearce is, of course, a scandal. Rashid in his narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
admits that it is difficult to say how it came about, if less so to figure out how it was discovered. The upshot is that Rehana is forced to vacate the town and take up lodgings elsewhere with Pearce.
Half a century later, Amin, Rashid and Farida are growing up and receiving a typical colonial education in pre-independent Zanzibar. Amin, like his parents, is to train to become a schoolteacher; Rashid is studying for Oxbridge
Oxbridge
Oxbridge is a portmanteau of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in England, and the term is now used to refer to them collectively, often with implications of perceived superior social status...
; and Farida, an academic failure, becomes the family housekeep and small-business dress-maker to the young women of the town. One of her clients is a beautiful woman named Jamila, granddaughter of Rehana and Pearce. Despite her lowly repute "as a divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
d woman whose grandmother slept with mzungus [sic]", Amin falls in love with her, and she with him. His parents are outraged on discovering the secret and refuse to brook it:
Do you know who she is? Do you know what kind of people they are? Her grandmother was a chotara, a child of sin by an Indian man, a bastardLegitimacy (law)At common law, legitimacy is the status of a child who is born to parents who are legally married to one another; and of a child who is born shortly after the parents' divorce. In canon and in civil law, the offspring of putative marriages have been considered legitimate children...
. When she grew into a woman, she was the mistressMistress (lover)A mistress is a long-term female lover and companion who is not married to her partner; the term is used especially when her partner is married. The relationship generally is stable and at least semi-permanent; however, the couple does not live together openly. Also the relationship is usually,...
of an Englishman for many years, and before that another mzungu gave her a child of sin too, her own bastard. That was her life, living dirty with European men [.... T]hey are a rich family so they don't care what anybody thinks. They've always done as they wished. This woman that you say you love, she is like her grandmother, living a life of secrets and sin. She has been married and divorced already. No one knows where she comes and where she goes, or who she goes to see. They are not our kind of people.
Amin is made to promise never to see her again, and he never really does. He fears for the rest of his life that she thinks he has deserted her.
In the case of Rashid, meanwhile, it is his passionate book-learning that results in his desertion first of his home and eventually "of the entire culture": "The place was stifling him, he said: the social obsequiousness, the medieval religiosity, the historical mendacities."
After independence and the subsequent revolution, life for all the characters is altered completely. Rashid misses the socio-political turmoil back home in his isolation as a university student in England; in fact, he never sees his ailing, tragic family again. Although he keeps up a steady stream of correspondence, this becomes increasingly strained with the preterition of time and the need for caution engendered of a brutal and dictatorial government. His only knowledge of the situation is gleaned from the letters and a few allusive snippets of news.
Both Ma and Amin loose their sight, and the former's death is celebrated as having put her out of her mounting misery. Years later, Rashid is able to piece the story together using Amin's notebooks, his own memory and a chance encounter with another of Pearce's descendants.
Critical reception
Desertion is one of Gurnah's most acclaimed novels. Mike PhillipsMike Phillips (writer)
Mike Phillips is a British writer of Guyanese descent. He was born in Georgetown, Guyana and came to Britain in 1956 as a child. He graduated from the University of Essex....
, reviewing it for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, wrote,
Most of Desertion is as beautifully written and pleasurable as anything I've read recently, a sweetly nostalgic recall of a colonial childhoodChildhoodChildhood is the age span ranging from birth to adolescence. In developmental psychology, childhood is divided up into the developmental stages of toddlerhood , early childhood , middle childhood , and adolescence .- Age ranges of childhood :The term childhood is non-specific and can imply a...
and a vanished MuslimMuslimA Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
cultureCultureCulture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
, defined by its thoughtful and customary manners, layered by its calendarCalendarA calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
of festivalFestivalA festival or gala is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on and celebrates some unique aspect of that community and the Festival....
s and religious observances. At the same time each of its virtues are parallelled [sic] and offset by the petty cruelties of a small, incestIncestIncest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
uous community. Gurnah's portrait of the society's complexities is the work of a maestro.
Phillips was unhappy only with the novel's account of Rashid's desertion of his roots, describing it as
the least satisfactory, least insightful element of the book [... W]e are told little which illuminates the relationship between the culture of the minority to which he belongs and the chaos which replaces it.
Themes
"DesertionDesertion
In military terminology, desertion is the abandonment of a "duty" or post without permission and is done with the intention of not returning...
and abandonment
Abandonment
The term abandonment has a multitude of uses, legal and extra-legal. This "signpost article" provides a guide to the various legal and quasi-legal uses of the word and includes links to articles that deal with each of the distinct concepts at greater length...
," according to Phillips, "are the themes that run through this novel, and which link its stories of tragic love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
with the history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
and politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
of the east Africa
East Africa
East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
n coast
Coast
A coastline or seashore is the area where land meets the sea or ocean. A precise line that can be called a coastline cannot be determined due to the dynamic nature of tides. The term "coastal zone" can be used instead, which is a spatial zone where interaction of the sea and land processes occurs...
." Where many have seen Desertion as primarily a political, postcolonial commentary on the imperial relationship with Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Phillips discarded this as
more or less tangential in the progress of the narrative. Instead, it is the KiswahiliSwahili cultureSwahili culture is the culture of the Swahili people living on the east coast of Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique as well as on the islands in the area, from Zanzibar to Comoros, who speak Swahili as their native language....
and Muslim culture, along with its Arabic roots, which forms the backdrop of the novel and dominates the lives of the characters.
There is also throughout the novel a faintly Gothic
Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...
strain, beginning with Hassanali's mistaken early citing of Pearce. On Pearce's apologetic return to the shop, an elderly villager remarks,
[... Y]ou have amazed us, o sheikh mzungu [....] If you had spoken when we found you a few days ago, looking like a corpse, and had spoken to us in ArabicArabic languageArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, and had spoken thus in that dangerous hour, I think we would have taken you for a servant of the infernal one.
Doomed love features time and again. All the relationships in the novel (except for the established one of Ma and Ba, and Farida's with her Mombasa lover Abbas, which is nevertheless "long delayed and littered with obstacles") "are doomed, victims of their time and place."
Autobiographical
Among the most tempting readings of Desertion is of an echo of the life of Gurnah himself, although no critic appears yet to have noticed this. Rashid, certainly, has a great deal in common with his literary progenitor: both born at about the same time in pre-independent Zanzibar, both uprooted from those roots for their adult lives in England, both passionate scholars of literature, both winning PhDs (Gurnah from the University of KentUniversity of Kent
The University of Kent, previously the University of Kent at Canterbury, is a public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom...
, Rashid from the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
), and both going on to careers as university lecturers (Gurnah remaining at Kent, Rashid repairing to one in country surrounds).
Narrative style
Rashid, according to Phillips, frequently challenges his own reluctance to repeat the "cliché of the miraculous", spinning his yarns in prose intentionally reminiscent of the Arabian Nights, "echoing with djinnGenie
Jinn or genies are supernatural creatures in Arab folklore and Islamic teachings that occupy a parallel world to that of mankind. Together, jinn, humans and angels make up the three sentient creations of Allah. Religious sources say barely anything about them; however, the Qur'an mentions that...
s, visions, sudden journey
Travel
Travel is the movement of people or objects between relatively distant geographical locations. 'Travel' can also include relatively short stays between successive movements.-Etymology:...
s, disappearances, and the domineering rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
s of the surrounding ocean
Ocean
An ocean is a major body of saline water, and a principal component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, a continuous body of water that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas.More than half of this area is over 3,000...
."