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Journalism of Courage
Muslims in the western world, especially of eastern origin, are perhaps the most scrutinised constituency in the world right now. Their faith, their community, their habits, their lives evoke a gamut of emotions, from downright hostility to increased awareness, but always as the 8220;other8221;.
For a lesser author, the temptation to use the insider advantage to explain the immigrant could have proved irresistible. But M G Vassanji8212;born in Kenya to Indian parents, raised in Tanzania, educated in the US, settled in Canada, and indefatigable chronicler of the post-colonial experience8212;steers away from the insignia into an inner world of inchoate memories, conflicting beliefs, fragmented selves. Individually, the short stories in this collection are invaluable statements on the human condition; together, they are a thing of beauty.
In Last Rites, Shamshu plays the mediator when a friend8212;a Muslim8212;requests on his deathbed that he be cremated; in The Girl on the Bicycle, he tells the story of Anaar Dhalla, the rebel teenager of Dar es Salaam who, years later, spits on a corpse in a Canadian mosque.
A second, subterranean thread of attraction runs through the second story: 8220;She continues to draw me, to her apartment8230; or the coffee shop down below, to which I occasionally head like an automaton oblivious to anything but the moment before me.8221; The last story, Farida, a gentle, introspective piece on their life together, their migration, work, children, knowledge and acceptance of their son8217;s homosexuality, ends with a quixotic reference to this 8220;peccadillo8221;: 8220;A yearning for someone else that I can8217;t control though I have no desire even to consider letting this one go8230;8221;
This sums up, as well as any one line could, Vassanji8217;s preoccupations: The man, forever on the move, caught between past worlds and present realities, distilled memories and hallucinatory perceptions, seeking that moment of stillness that will give meaning and focus to his life.
The East Africa/Canada stories do it as well as any of his longer works, but it is one longish piece towards the end of this anthology that packs a sucker punch. In Dear Khatija, the master of migrant literature turns to the Partition, that accident of history that triggered the largest exodus known to mankind, and produces an epistolary tale comparable with the best of Manto.
Tender, passionate, despairing, content, there is not one wrong note that Vassanji strikes in this pithy tribute to the human spirit.
