Canterbury’s two most popular people represent two ways of feeding the soul. They are the archbishop – spiritual leader of the Church of England – and Abdulrazak Gurnah (Zanzibar, 1948), Nobel Prize for Literature 2021 and retired professor at the local university. “We have no relationship”, smiles the writer, in the attic-office of his single-family house, far from the center, where he receives this newspaper to discuss his work. The conversation continues first in his garden, which he takes care of himself every day, and then during a walk on the banks of the Great Stour. The man who arrived in England from Zanzibar as an “illegal immigrant” in the mid-1960s has given voice to the migratory experience and shown the diversity of an Africa far removed from clichés. Swahili is his mother tongue and he writes in the English he was trained in at university.
What was the first book you read?
Surely they were fragments of the Koran. The boys memorized and recited surahs in the afternoon Koranic school.
You fled your country, Tanzania, because people of Arab origin were persecuted. What do you remember about it?
In 1964, a month after independence, there was a revolution against the government that had won the elections. The losing party rioted and seized power. Politics was racialized and people were classified according to whether they belonged to the dominant ethnic group or not. Entire communities were expelled and a regime of terror was established, thousands of people were massacred and hundreds were imprisoned. At 18, after finishing high school, I ran away. People were denied food depending on their origin, fired from their jobs or prevented from continuing their studies. I had no possibility to continue my education and, at the age of 17 or 18, this was unbearable. I left to look for another way to fulfill myself. The only way was to run away, without permits or papers.
And what was that 18-year-old Gurnah like?
It is very difficult to forget all the stupidities and imprudences I committed. It is the same as today, these young people who cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe. No danger matters, you just follow your destiny. You don’t think about what you’re leaving behind, what you’re leaving behind. In my case, you know?, the worst thing was not the problems or the difficulties of the journey or arriving in this country as a foreigner and poor, but the sadness of having left all my previous life behind.
Do you remember when you became a writer?
Lots of people write, but they wouldn’t call themselves writers. Writing things down helps to unravel them, to clarify them, we all do it often, even if it’s making lists. In order not to get confused, we sit down and write, this is a way to clarify, to gain control over what you need to do. Young people write a lot because it’s a way to vent and understand what you’re going through. But this is not intended for anyone else to see, it is not literature. It becomes literature when you are aware that what you write will be subjected to the scrutiny of another person, who will probably be critical, you have to convince them. When you write for yourself, you can be as self-compassionate as you want. In literature, no, because you write for someone else.
His books show the enormous cultural diversity in Africa, a continent that is not simply divided between natives and Europeans…
My intention is to show a very broad cultural and social landscape that had not been written about in fiction. It’s not just my little island called Zanzibar, but I follow the coast south to Mozambique, and north to Somalia. There is a shared culture of the entire Indian Ocean, including Saudi Arabia, India and beyond. If you travel through this area, you will see that the stories, the food, the religion… are and have been common for centuries. I just came back from Kerala, at the end of India, and there many people talk about Zanzibar or Africa as close and familiar places. The reason is the trade winds, which make it very easy to travel from one side to another, and the currents.
In his books trade is very important and is reflected positively. What makes it different from capitalism?
Capitalism means you have a surplus, which then becomes a means of dominating others and organizing work. But I’m talking about small traders, who sell with the sole purpose of making a living.
You have narrated the German occupation of Africa, as in your last novel, La vida, peresor (La Grana / Salamandra).
There is no single colonialism. The British colonized many parts of the world across the oceans for 500 to 600 years. The Germans, on the other hand, were dedicated to dominating Europe during that time. When the Germans arrived in Africa, they were a militarized State instead of a commercial State, like the British or French. They arrived and said to the people: ‘Obey us, or we will punish you.’ It was an experience of great brutality. The frame of mind of German colonialism was conquest rather than trade or cosmopolitan desires. A bit like the Spanish in the Americas, where everything they saw was primitive and ugly, and their question was: ‘Where is the gold?’
In ParadÃs (1994) parents hand over their child to a merchant in payment of a debt.
Not in payment, but in pledge, that is to say, when they pay it will be returned to them, it is like when you pawn a jewel, a way to make sure that you will be paid.
Was this happening?
Not only in the past, it continues to happen, not so much in our part of the world, but in Africa and other places. Sometimes even between relatives: you give me your son, I make him my servant, but I send him to school. Only, when he comes back from school, the boy cooks for me, cleans the house and goes to the market. This is what happens to poor families, who send their children to the care of rich families, for whom it is a way to have a cheap servant. It’s not actually a slave, because there’s a time limit, it’s not property.
It reflects the reality of Africans enlisted in colonial armies.
My uncle was a British soldier; I remember, as a child, his photograph in uniform in a favorite place at home, with his rifle. German askaris were educated not only in military culture, but in ferocity. Why did these Africans choose to become soldiers of the colonial nations? There are many reasons, but one is the attraction of power. Who do you want to associate with, the victors or the vanquished? What do you want to be, winner or victim? The desire for adventure, the money, the status… all were reasons to enlist.
In La vida, then, we follow several young people in similar situations: a boy given to the German troops, a girl given to another family…
There is a context which is the First World War from Africa. But deep down, for me, this book was always about two people wounded for different reasons, Hamza because of the war and Afiya, because of the way she was raised and how she was abused, not sexually, but beating her and forcing her to do other things. I show how these two battered characters are able to help each other find some kind of rebirth, to recover something from their lives.
Cruelty is not exclusive to the colonial troops, in their works, but we see it in the family, in colleagues, in bosses…
This is how we people often behave. Even in family or love relationships, the line between care and domination or punishment is very thin. A father tells his child: ‘Don’t do this or I will punish you’, it is a form of coercion bordering on affection, love, concern… It is very easy to become cruel. Even in what we would normally expect to be loving situations, there is the potential to create grief, sadness or pressure.
Where does the character of the black Nazi come from?
There are many blacks who sympathized with the Nazis. One of the points on the Nazi agenda was the recovery of the colonies in Africa, which was attractive to emigrants to Europe, who felt nostalgic. I was inspired by the real case of a boy; his great sadness was that he was not allowed to join the Hitler Youth because he was black. I’m not making this up.
