Secret Son by Laila Lalami

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Viking; Export Edition edition (4 Feb 2010)

I will be the first to admit that Laila Lalami's "Secret Son" had me yawning when I first opened it.  At chapter two I was wondering if I had made a mistake buying the book.  No, it wasn't slow-paced, quite the contrary infact, but coming to it after a novel like "Possessed" (my previous post) , the writing seemed so pedestrian and lifeless with tired metaphors (perhaps this is because French speaking Lalami writes in English?). Thankfully, by the time I was at chapter four things had started looking up and I found myself being drawn into the story.  I'm really glad I persisted because the book, although not a great literary triumph or anything, does bring its own rewards.

The title gives the plot away.  The story follows Youssef El Mekki,  a boy born out of wedlock to a servant girl and an already-married, very wealthy man (Nabil Amrani).  Being married Nabil was unable to give the woman and their son a home.  So Youssef grows up as the son of a single mother,  in Hay An Najat, a slum in Casablanca, often described as "melting pot of misery and poverty", while his "other" family, only a few miles away, live lives of the rich and famous. Had Youssef grown up in the US he may not has cursed his fate so much, but to be the bastard child of a single mother in Morocco carries with it a strong social stigma, something that is very hard to shrug off.

As a premise, the notion of there being a "secret son" is always exciting, but I think this particular novel failed to really capitalize on that - for a truly exciting and endearing story on a secret son try Tim Brannigan's "Where are you  Really From?".  However, as I continued to read I realized that the plot is little more than a hook from which to suspend a  relevant social and political commentary of  the Morocco of the new millennium and despite my reservations on the plot, narrative etc, I found myself drawn to the country, its people and their lives.

Morocco has a rigid hierarchy based on class, wealth, power and jobs, but especially class.  This division of society is very apparent in the cliques at Youssef's university.   There are the rich kids (the “Mercedes-and-Marlboro group”) as they are called; the religious kind (“headscarf -and-beard faction”); the egalitarians or ( “Marx-and-Lenin group”), and the "Berber Student Alliance and the Saharawis", students from distinct ethnic minorities within the country.

The novel also explores how Islamic fundamentalism has come to visit Morocco and how marginalized youth in the poorer areas of  the country are sitting ducks for fundamentalist recruiters.  A boy like Youssef who is not only poor but has major identity issues as well, would be just the kind of person these fundamentalists are fond of targeting.

All in all  "Secret Son" is a pitch-perfect rendering of  contemporary Moroccan life in all its chaos, energy, humor and terror.   As you read you will start to put the touristy, picture postcard images of Casablanca aside and come to the sad realization that it has problems with corruption, a mistrust of government/police, poverty, overcrowding, unequal distribution of wealth and fundamentalism, just to name a few.

Although I didn't like "Secret Son" as much as I enjoyed her previous novel "Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits", I will say that this novel has a great sense of place and just for that I will give it three stars out of five.

 

Black Mamba Boy Nadifa Mohamed

Harper Collins Canada

Downtown Mogadishu today is beat-up and bone-white from the sun and a coating of dust. It is overlaid with a deceptive grid of empty streets. Most buildings are ransacked shells frozen in time or have simply vanished. Today, when we think of Somalia we think civil war, Somali pirates, Islamic fundamentalism, so how very refreshing to chance upon "Black Mamba Boy" which takes us back to a thriving Somalia of yesteryear, and not just Somalia, but Djibouti, Sudan, Eritrea, Egypt...a veritable tour of North-East Africa in the mid-30's.

Let me explain: "Black Mamba Boy"by Somali-British author Nadifa Mohamed is based on the true story of the author’s father’s life. Opening in 1930's Aden we are introduced to Jama, a ten year-old Somali boy, a street kid, whose mother dies unexpectedly thus leaving him alone in this world.

" Jama is forced home to his native Somalia, the land of his nomadic ancestors. War is on the horizon and the fascist Italian forces who control parts of east Africa are preparing for battle. Yet Jama cannot rest until he discovers whether his father, who has been absent from his life since he was a baby, is alive somewhere. And so begins an epic journey which will take Jama north through Djibouti, war-torn Eritrea and Sudan, to Egypt. And from there, aboard a ship transporting Jewish refugees just released from German concentration camp, across the seas to Britain and freedom."

OK, my challenge here as a "reviewer" is how to give you my impressions without gushing or using a great many superlatives, so I'll just say this: if you choose to read the book, you're in for an amazing ride through the dusty, noisy but bustling streets of the some of the most important cities of North East Africa in the '30's. From the vast sandy deserts of Sudan to narrow busy alleys in Somalia, from the tree-lined manicured boulevards of Djibouti to the emerald-green landscape with juicy mango trees of Abyssinia, you will see it all!

Mohamed's prose zings with the vibrancy of North African life, an unfamiliar landscape of strange tribes and tongues, bizarre rituals, superstitions and tribal kinship. The sensitive way in which she handles Jama's relationships with his family and kinsmen, tugs at one's heartstrings. In a historical context I cannot vouch for Mohamed's accuracy because I know so little about that area and in that time period, but it is told so well, you get completely swept up by the events and happenings.

But central to the story is suffering...the suffering of the African people at the hands of their colonizers. Mohamed's acute and unsparing descriptive powers render vivid everything from Aden street chaos to traditional Palestinian wedding in Khan Younis, but her clipped depiction of the death by torture of a young Somalian man at the hands of two drunk Italians made me gasp out loud and pushed me way out of my comfort zone into a place I wasn't sure I wanted to be. And that's not a bad thing because when I read I want to be astonished, I want to be moved, I want to be shaken to the core and Mohamed succeeds in doing this.

Having said all this though, for me, the most moving part of the account is when Jama finds employment as a deck hand on board the "Runnymede Park" at Haifa, Palestine. "Runnymede Park" was a British prison ship carrying thousands of Jewish refugees originally from Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Treblinka who were denied permission to disembark in Palestine (their Promised Land) but instead taken back to Europe to be made an example out of (thereby deterring other would-be Jewish immigrants from making the trip to Palestine). Her descriptions of the agony (physical and mental) that the poor refugees suffered are so vivid, I could literally hear the crash of broken dreams and feel the dejection in my own chest.

If you enjoy Africa, history, travel (the story weaves its way through a labyrinth of countries), stories of exile and survival...this one is definitely for you!

The Fattening of Gabon from "Say You Are One of Them" by Uwem Akpan

"Fattening for Gabon" is Uwem Akpan's second story (nouvella length at 130 pages) in the collection, "Say You're One of Them".

It starts off innocently enough with a young (10-year old) boy narrating how his maternal uncle offers to take him and his 5-year old sister to live with him on the border of Benin and Gabon because the boy's parents are dying of AIDS and too poor and sick to look after the children, but the story very gradually starts to take on a sinister tone which gets completely brutal towards the end.

“Selling your child or nephew could be more difficult than selling other kids”: that is the blunt line with which “Fattening for Gabon” begins. I wish so much Akpan hadn't used that opening line because it really does give it all away. The story is so beautifully written that had Akpan waited to reveal this, say about halfway through the story, I think the reader would have been shaken to the core (and which reader doesn't mind being shaken?) Anyway, what's done is done and this other child-narrated story succeeds in provoking the whole gamut of emotions, from incredulity to disgust and from confusion to absolute fear in the reader. For me, the biggest issue here was child manipulation, I could have screamed at all of the adults in this story and cheerfully lined up against a wall to be shot. I know, I know some of you might think I am over reacting but you know, when Uwem Akpan was interviewed he stated that all these stories were drawn from real people he met and counselled in his years as a Jesuit Priest. Just to know that there are adults like this makes my blood boil.

Again, as in the previous story, one of Akpan's strengths is in how he slips into the skins of his characters no matter what gender or age they might be. He also has such a gift for description and narration. There are several scenes that stand out for me in this story, the main one being the Thanksgiving service at church that Fofo Kpee(the uncle) organizes in order to give thanks for his (ill-begotten) gain. Akpan describes the procession, the dancing, the characters, their clothes, the gifts, the priest's invocations, the offertory to god and the elation the family feels to be given so much importance on that day, so vividly it is literally like watching the service unfold on a cinematic screen. What a writer this man is!

Something I liked very much (and that's probably because I listened to this on audio as well as read it in print) is Akpan's frequent use of the local dialect in the dialogue. Four colloquial languages were used in this particular story...English, French Idaatcha and Egun sometimes in the same paragraph. I have spoken to people who found that distracting...not me!!! I guess knowing a little French does help speed the read along.

Last, but not least...the title is very conversation-worthy...but that, I'm afraid, will be a whole different post!

If you would like to read an excerpt from "Fattening of Gabon"..please go here

Or you might want to watch the Oprah Book Club interview and book discussion with the author here