The two most popular people in Canterbury represent two ways to feed the soul. They are the archbishop – spiritual leader of the Church of England – and Abdulrazak Gurnah (Zanzibar, 1948), 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature and retired professor from 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 talk about his work. The talk continues first in his garden, which he tends to himself daily, and then during a walk along the Grand Stour river. The man who arrived from Zanzibar to England as an "illegal immigrant" in the mid-1960s has given voice to the migratory experience and shown the diversity of an Africa far 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?
They must have been fragments of the Koran. We kids memorized and recited suras in the Koranic school in the afternoon.
You fled your country, Tanzania, because people of Arab origin were persecuted. What do you remember about that?
In 1964, a month after independence, there was a revolution against the government that had won the elections, not against any dictatorship, I always make it clear. The losing party mutinied and seized power. Politics became racialized and ideas were not debated but 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. Many did the same; some were captured and disappeared, most of us made it out safely. People were denied livelihoods based on their origin, were fired from work or prevented from further study. I had no chance to continue with my training and, at 17 or 18, that was unbearable. I left to find another way to fulfill myself. The only way was to flee, without permits or papers.
And what was the 18 year old Gurnah like?
It is very difficult to forget all the stupidities and recklessness that I committed. It is the same as, today, those 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 abandoning, what you're leaving behind. In my case, the worst thing was not the problems and 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, for a variety of reasons, but they wouldn't call themselves writers. Writing things 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, that's a way of clarifying, of getting control over what you need to do. Young people write a lot because it's a way to let off steam and understand what you're going through. But that is not intended for anyone else to see, it is not literature. It becomes literature when you are aware that what you write is going to be subjected to the scrutiny of another person, who is probably going to be critical and will need to be persuaded. When you write to yourself, you can be as self-pitying as you want. In literature, better than not, because you write for someone else.
What are your national sentiments?
I see myself as one of those millions of people who, due to circumstances, have left one place to live in another. If he asks me where my home is, of course I'll tell him England, but if he tells me where my home is, I'd say Zanzibar, and both are true. This kind of shared identity is a very common thing.
His books show the enormous cultural diversity in Africa, a continent that is not simply divided between natives and Europeans...
My intention was to show a fairly 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 as far south as Mozambique, and as far north as Somalia. There is a shared culture across the Indian Ocean, spanning Saudi Arabia, India and even beyond. If you travel through that area, you will see that the stories, the food, the religion... are and have been common for centuries. I have just returned from Kerala, on the edge of India, and many people there speak of Zanzibar or Africa as close and familiar places. The reason for this is the trade winds that make it very easy to travel from one place to another, and also the currents. This historical connection goes back a long way, but it does not figure in the image people have of Africa.
In his books trade is very important and is reflected positively. But it's not the same as capitalism, is it?
Capitalism means that you have a surplus, which then becomes a means of dominating others and organizing work. But I'm talking about small subsistence merchants who sell for the sole purpose of making a living.
You have narrated the German occupation of Africa, as in your latest novel, La vida, después (Salamandra/La Magrana).
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, dedicated themselves to dominating Europe for most of that time, without crossing the seas. When the Germans come to Africa, they are a militarized state rather than a commercial state, like the British and French. So they came and said to the people: 'Obey us, and if you don't, we will punish you.' It was an experience of great brutality. The mindset 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 key question was: 'Where is the gold?'
On the shore (2001) explains how starting a new life is not just something for young people.
When the Russians still controlled Afghanistan, a commando hijacked a passenger plane flying from Herat to Kabul, it was an internal Afghan flight and they took it to London! Upon landing, people got off the plane. They were dressed as if they were in their country, mothers, children, old people, young people... I saw among them an old man with a big beard. All the passengers on the plane asked for asylum, which was not their initial intention, they were only traveling to see family, but it changed their lives. I began to think of that old gentleman, and related him to Bartleby the Clerk, the Melville story, the man who says 'I'd rather not'. I imagined that they were asking him questions in English, the airport authorities, and that he didn't answer them, even though he knew how to do so. We don't know why he chooses to remain silent, to the frustration even of the people who want to help him. That's the way to keep his dignity, not to talk about whatever got him into this situation. He just doesn't say anything.
In Paraíso (1994) some parents give their child to a merchant in payment of a debt.
Not in payment, but in pledge, that is, when they pay they will return it, it is like when you pawn a jewel, a way of making sure that they will pay you.
That happened?
Not just in the past, it's still happening 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 I come home from school, the boy cooks for me, cleans the house and goes to the market. This is what happens in poor families, who send their children to the care of rich families, for whom it is a way of having a cheap servant. Actually, he is not a slave even though he feels like one, because there is a time limit, it is not property.
You reflect the reality of the Africans who enlisted in the colonial armies...
It happened with the British, the Germans, the Belgians, the French, the Portuguese... My uncle was a British soldier; I remember, as a child, the photograph of him in uniform in a preferred place at home, with his rifle. These native soldiers, the German 'askaris', were educated not only in military culture, but in the ferocity, deliberately encouraged, made them cruel people. Why did these Africans choose to become soldiers for the colonial nations? There are many reasons but one of them is the attraction of power. Who do you want to associate with, the winners or the losers? What do you want to be, winner or victim? Very often they were recruited in places far away from where they fought, for example there were many Sudanese who came for money. The desire for adventure, to achieve status or even the shine of the uniform... all were reasons to enlist.
In La vida, después, 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 that serves to understand the first world war from Africa. But deep down, for me, this book was always the idea of two people who are somehow hurt by different causes, Hamza by the war and Afiya, by the way she was raised and how she was abused, not sexually, but by hitting 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 get something back in their lives.
Cruelty is not something exclusive to the colonial troops, in their works, but we see it in the family, in the companions, in the bosses...
This is how we people often behave. Even in domestic or love relationships, the border between care and domination or punishment is very tenuous. A father tells his son: 'Don't do that or I'll punish you', it's a form of coercion bordering on affection, love, concern... It's very easy to become cruel. Even in what we would normally expect to be loving situations, there is the potential for 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 that Germany had had in Africa, which was attractive to some émigrés in Europe, who felt nostalgic. I have been inspired by a real case of a boy whose biggest sadness was that he was not allowed to join the Hitler Youth because he was black. I have not invented anything.
