Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (London, Hamish
Hamilton, 1994).
This novel is set in Tanzania during the period of German colonial rule. Germany annexed this part of North East Africa in 1886 and ruled until the area was ceded to the British after World War 1. Since trains, trucks and a Sikh mechanic feature in the narrative, it can presumably be dated towards the end of German domination. Also, there are remours of war between the English and Germans (p 242). On the other hand, German presence in certain areas appears to be a new development. For example, their arrival in Chatu’s village, ‘The big man is here now’, the men taunted Chatu (the village chief), ‘He’ll make you eat shit’. Chatu ‘asked Nyundo if he had ever seen Europeans before ….He had heard they could eat metal. Was that true? (pp 169 – 70). They could also revive the dead (p 72), begging the question whether they were ‘snakes in disguise?’ (p 73). In the few areas where German rule did not yet prevail, people ‘still lived as they wished’ (p120).
This novel is about liminality. It is set on the edge of several worlds: Arabic speaking Africans meet Swahili speakers; Muslims meet followers of Africa’s Traditional Religions; Africans meets Germans. In many respects, the novel is about uncertainty in a changing world in which old, trusted, familiar ways are challenged by new ways, some better, some worse. The Europeans, we read, will ‘dispossess everyone’ (p 94). Fighting ‘over the prosperity of the earth’, they would ‘crush all of us’ (p 86). ‘We’ll lose everything, including the way we live … they’ll make us spit on what we know, and will make [our children] recite their laws and their story of the world as if it were the holy word. When they come to write about us, what will they say? That we made slaves’ (p 87). Thus, the African’s own story of how the world was would be lost. The Germans’ claim, of course, is they that ‘had brought order to the land’ (p 171), establishing polarity between the German and the African stories.
The novel revolves around a young man called Yusuf, whose physical attractiveness makes him the centre of attention and at times gives him an almost magical quality.
Her voice was rich with feeling … Yusuf could not be sure what she wanted him to do, but he could not mistake the look of passion and longing on her face (p 236).
Yusuf’s childhood is abruptly terminated when he is ‘pawned to Uncle Aziz to secure his father’s debts’ (p 47). Aziz is not really his uncle at all but ‘the Seyyid’, a successful merchant who, we read, ‘buys anything … except slaves, even before the government said it must stop. Trading in slaves is dangerous, and not honourable’ (p 34). Nonetheless, the parallel between slavery and rehani is clear (see Hussein’s remarks on p 89). The Seyyid, though, treats his bonded-servants well. ‘He’s a good man … He does not beat you or anything like that. If you show him respect he’ll look after you’, Khalil, Yusuf’s senior bondservant, advises him (p 25). However, the Swahili speaking boy ought to learn Arabic, so that the Seyyid would ‘like him more’. Yusuf is also advised to learn about the Europeans, ust as the Indians had done, ‘Learn who they are … Do you know their language, their stories? So then how can you learn to cope with them? ’ (p 87; see also p 88). Indians in the novel are mainly moneylenders and are regarded as little better than Europeans;
Never trust the Indian! … He will sell his own mother if there’s profit in it. His desire for money knows no limits … he will go anywhere and do anything for money (p 133).
On the other hand, an Indian knows ‘how to deal with the European’, so Africans/Arabs have ‘no choice but to work with him’ (ibid).
Much of the narrative revolves around a trading ourney into the interior. The Seyyid and his mnyapara (foreman), Mohammed Abdallah, have made many such journeys but this time everything is different, with the Germans never far from the scene. Everywhere they went now they found that the Europeans had ‘got there before them, and had installed soldiers and officials telling the people that they had come to save them from their enemies who only sought to make slaves of them’ (pp 71 – 72). Later, we read that ‘Everywhere they went they heard stories of the Germans, who had forbidden the people to ask for tribute, and had even hanged some people for reasons no one understood’ (p 176). After the journey, the mnyapara declares (in very colourful language) that there would be no more expeditions now that the Germans had come (p 186).
During the journey, Yusuf’s ‘youthfulness’ seems to protect the travellers from danger, although the journey was neither trouble free or in the end very profitable. Chatu, the tribal chief who imprisons the party and confiscates their goods, is obviously fascinated by Yusuf:
He says when he looks on young people like him, he hopes that we cannot all be evil; kidnappers and hunters of flesh … and makes him feel mercy…. The young man has brought us luck at last’, says Nyundo the interpreter (p 162).
When the Germans arrive, they make Chatu return what remains of the traveller’ merchandise, minus their guns, ‘The guns were only to bring war and capture people’ (p 171.
As the merchants travel into the interior, Islam meets ‘paganism’. On the one hand, their faith gives them courage and sustains them; ‘knowing the Koran will always help you … even if you are lost in the deepest cave or the darkest forest’ (p 195) and ‘the Koran is our religion, and has in it all the wisdom we need to live a good and moral life’ (p 95). The fast during Ramadhan, we read, distinguishes them from pagans, who deny themselves nothing (p 95). Here there is a reference to Muhamamd’s Night Journey from Makkah to Jerusalem, ‘and from there to the presence of the Almighty, who decreed the laws of Islam’. When asked by a tribal chief what sort of God forbade the drinking of alcohol, the Seyyid replies, ‘a demanding but just God’ (p 140). The men, though, buy ‘beer from the townspeople and drink it secretly’ (p 172).
‘Trust in God’, advises the Seyyid (p123) when a local Sultan turns hostile after some of his villagers get eaten by a crocodile, ‘Many people have passed here … but only you have brought this evil upon us’. ‘May God protect us from this evil’, says the Seyyid. The Sultan wanted to ‘make a sacrifice to his filthy spirits’. On the other hand, during a storm while crossing a lake, these Muslims raise no objection when their guide pulls ashore to sacrifice to Pembe, the spirit of the lake, offering gifts as asked, ‘It could have been worse. They might have wanted us to eat something disgusting or copulate with beasts’ (p 148). Once again, Yusuf’s presence was taken as an omen, ‘And bring the young man. The spirit … likes youth’ (p 147). When they returned ‘to the boats, the wind had dropped’ (p 148). On another occasion, Mohammed Abdallah makes fun of a shrine, ‘That’s where God lives’, he jeered, ‘Savages believe anything if its crazy enough … you can’t argue with them. They only tell you stories about their superstitions’ (p 136). A ‘civilized man’, we read, ‘can always defeat a savage even if the savage eats a thousand lion penises’ (p 60; see also descriptions of tribal Africans on pp 59, 61, 126).
Yusuf himself learns to read the Qur’an while based in a village, where he also develops a friendship with Kalasinga, the Sikh mechanic (who teaches him ‘useful skills’) and engages in several discussions on religious topics, especially on the nature of paradise. Yusuf becomes rather pious during this episode, neglecting his duties ‘to go to school and to the mosque’ (p 101). Another friend, Hussein, takes part in some of these conversations. Hussein is always quoting from the Qur’an (P 95). He is also referred to as ‘the hermit from Zanzibar’ (p 190). Kalasinga is told that, as a non-Muslim, he will go to hell. In reply, he says that he intended to translate the Qur’an so that ‘you stupid natives [could] hear the ranting God you worship’ (p 84).
Can you understand what it says there in Arabic? A little perhaps, but most of your stupid native brothers don’t (p 84).
He might not ‘know what God is, or remember all his thousand names and his million promises, but [he knew] that he can’t be the big bully you worship’ (p 85). Listening to descriptions of Paradise as a Garden, the Sikh comments that it sounds to him as if Paradise might be in India, where he had ‘seen many gardens with waterfalls … Is this Paradise? Is this where the Aga Khan lives?’ (p 80). God could probably find nowhere better ‘to put Paradise’, said Kalasinga. India ‘is a very spiritual place’ (p 82). It is from these discussions that the book’s title is derived. However, the title also appears to allude to the beautiful garden, with ‘a pool in the centre and water channels running off it in four directions’ (p 43) within the Seyyid’s compound, where Yusuf loved to help the aged, and very pious, gardener, Hamdani, who goes ‘silently about his work, humming verses and qasidas’ (p 36). The old man rarely spoke:
And became irritated if he was forced to stop singing the verses in praise of God, some of which he composed himself (p 48).
The four channels of the Seyyid’s garden obviously represent the ‘four rivers of Paradise’ (p 80). Another passage refers to a garden in Heart, ‘so beautiful that all who visit it heard music which ravished reason’ (p 205). Another passage cites a tradition (hadith)that ‘most of the occupants of Heaven are the poor and most of the occupants of Hell are women’ (p 229; also see p 122). Khalil tells Yusuf, too, that whether God ‘makes us poor or rich, or weak or strong, all we can say is alhamdulillah’ (p 182).
We also learn something of Kalasinga’s beliefs; see especially page 81;
He was brought up in a devout Sikh household in which the writings of the great Gurus had pride of place in the family shrine. But his father was a tolerant man who allowed a bronze statue of Ganesh, a small painting of Jesus Christ the Redeemer and a miniature copy of the Koran a place at the back of the shrine as well …
One passage describes an Indian wedding (pp 50 – 51) that so impressed Yusuf with its extravagance (yet the songs sang into the night were sad ones) that he never forgot this experience (see p 195 – 6 and p 232). Yusuf also hears about a Lutheran pastor who taught the people of an African village, ‘the use of the iron plough … and how to construct a wheel’ who also told them that ‘work was God’s divine edict, to allow humans to atone for their evil’ (pp 61 – 2). Now the
cattle herders had another reason to despise the farming people whom they had preyed on for generations. Not only did they grub the earth like animals or women, but they also sang the mournful choruses of the vanquished, which filled and defiled the mountain air.
Yusuf learns, towards the end of the novel, of his father’s death (p 241). After the incident involving the Mistress, the Seyyid’s attitude towards Yusuf seems to change, although he still speaks to him ‘pleasantly’, saying that he’ll see what work Yusuf can best do for him. Yusuf, however, decides to flee and joins the Germans’ troop of askaris as they pass through town on a recruiting drive, ‘He glanced round quickly and then ran after the column with smarting eyes’ (p 247). There is much in this novel of interest to students of Islam, of post-colonial literature and of encounter between cultures.
© Clinton Bennett 2001