Martin Pearce is an English adventurer in Africa. Polyglot, Orientalist, impeccably dressed, it is not very clear what he does for a living, although he writes, drinks whiskey and recites the great poets from memory. He could be the protagonist of one of so many exotic adventure novels or, with a tortured undertone, of one by Joseph Conrad, but he has been lucky enough to appear in the new narrative by Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah (Zanzibar, 1948), The deserter (Salamandra) – originally published in English in 2005 – and star in an exciting story initially set in East Africa at the end of the 19th century, but which reaches London in the 1960s, with the descendants of a forbidden love story between an African and a European.
Like Gurnah’s other works, El desertor shows the customs and customs (love, legal, commercial…) of the time through the intimate stories of each character. “An interracial relationship in 1899, like that of Pearce and Rehana, was something illegal – he explains, in the hotel in Madrid where he receives us – in fact, when you research the colonial archives, it is as if those relationships had never existed, because no one wrote anything about it. They have hidden them from us, but they existed, and I try to show what they were like. Neither he nor she, for different reasons, could talk about the relationship they had, it was a taboo on both sides of the cultural spectrum.” This part – let’s call it romantic – is another hallmark of an author who exclaims: “How to write a novel without a powerful love story?!”
Gurnah turns the archetypes of African adventure novels upside down, with all intent. “The white man doesn’t exactly arrive here as a conqueror, but undone, in ruins, dying, covered in bruises and wounds… And the culture of hospitality of those who live there makes them divert their attention to take care of him. This often happened at colonial meetings, the first men to arrive were complimented with great welcomes, or treated with care and compassion if they were unwell, but when they recovered and grew stronger, they became monsters, colonizers. One would think that the Europeans, with everything they have lived through in their history and the exodus and repressions they have suffered in the 20th century, should behave like this today with refugees arriving in their countries, but we live in an era of amnesia It is the duty of every human being to help those who arrive with problems, injured or hungry”.
The novel also addresses the consequences of this illegal couple on their descendants, in London and other Western cities sixty years later. “The granddaughter suffers from a curse because of what her grandparents did, and at the same time she is looked down upon for it, as if she were the result of something wrong. One is always a prisoner of one’s past and one’s family and I am interested in how the prejudices of an era are transferred and survive, in other forms, in the next generation”.
The racist conversations of the white characters attract attention, no matter how cultured they are. “That’s how it happened. They were interested in literature, but then they were capable of committing real atrocities. Being cultured does not free you from cruelty. The most classic case is the chamber music orchestra that was in Auschwitz, they played while the crematorium was operating, and its Nazi promoter did not do it out of cynicism, but out of love for classical music. He chose some newcomers and, instead of burning them, he sent them to play.”
Pearce “is an Orientalist, with an antiquated patina. Edward Said showed us that Orientalism was a vehicle of imperialism. But these people were divided: they often had the knowledge that what they were doing was wrong and knowing it tortured them.”
Rehana, the girl, keeps rejecting marriages arranged by her family. “It’s not a modern vision, it’s something that was already happening at that time. Muslim societies are portrayed as systems that forced women into marriage, but the reality is that they used to have the final say on the proposal, depending on circumstances, family, class, need… In the West , the parents also decided on these things at that time, I suppose it also happened in Spain and that the daughter could also say no, at least some times”.
Rehana, for example, is interested in whether the suitors already have another wife because she does not want to be the second. “There are many women who completely reject the idea of ??polygamy, even if it is legal. And many fathers also reject their daughters entering into a polygamous marriage. This polygamy is a masculine ideal, based on man’s desire. Tolerance of the idea is found in couples where the wife is no longer interested in sex and the father still is, and opts for another, younger wife. This, its defenders say, keeps the man at home, he doesn’t go out on the streets looking for fun, and the young woman can do the tiring household chores while the old woman rests. But… In reality, all the cases that I know directly of polygamy end badly, a second wife greatly disturbs the calm of the family, its functioning, and causes unhappiness. Today it is tolerated only in very traditional societies. What usually happens is that they divorce before marrying someone else, even if polygamy is allowed.”
The female characters have a lot of weight, like Farida, who suffers the trauma of being excluded from the education system. “This was a very common thing, I have four sisters, all alive, and only the youngest was able to study, because things were starting to change. But it wasn’t because of the parents, but because of the system”, he clarifies.
The deserter takes us to the streets where everything happens, with the smells, colors and, of course, “my dear merchants, gardeners, carpenters… Elderly people with craft experience”, another brand of the Gurnah house, which this time he also uses different narrators and points of view, with the system of found notebooks, stories within stories, in his case not a Cervantine tradition – “I’ve only read the book by that guy from La Mancha”, he jokes – , but from Conrad’s Lord Jim, “where someone receives a manuscript that completes a story”.
Stevenson, Conrad, Johnson, Melville, Senghor and many others… They appear at various times. “I’ve read them all, I don’t care if they were racist, some were to the point of being unbearable, but reading them is wonderful. In Melville’s remarkable Benito Cereno, the American captain carefully observes how the body and structure of blacks makes them especially fit to serve, to contribute to the welfare of others, he says.
As she says goodbye, Gurnah proudly shows us photos of her granddaughter. “I was the only writer in the family, but she, at the age of seven, is writing her memoirs, what does she think? In order not to discourage her, I don’t tell her that I wrote my first book when I was just over twenty years old, but I didn’t manage to publish it until I was almost 40, ha, ha”.
