Recently anointed Noble Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives is a sprawling narrative that tackles heavy themes like oppression, genocide, rebellion and savage reprisal brought about by German colonial rule in Africa early in the 20th century. Yet, it is so much more because its focus is primarily on the overwhelmingly ordinary lives of individuals who quietly and resolutely go about the business of living, forging precious bonds and eking out every bit of happiness and peace they can from an existence that is anything but peaceful. Gurnah’s tale has minimal bombast, which serves to maximise the impact.
Across the length and breadth of East Africa, known as Deutsch-Ostafrika, German military tactics leave the land ravaged and drenched in the blood of those who have been senselessly and callously slain. Even more chilling is the excesses of the dreaded Shutztruppe Askari, native soldiers trained by their colonial oppressors to kill and brutalise their fellow Africans on command. Gurnah shifts the focus from all that blood and gore to a small coastal town that remains unnamed which has somehow managed to steer itself clear from the worst of the never-ending conflicts that plague their continent thanks to the insatiable greed of colonisers.
This is the home of the protagonists—Khalifa, Ilyas and Hamas whose lives are inextricably linked. Khalifa may be given to grumbling and married to Asha, who goes through life with a perpetual grouse but it is his inability to be anything less than kind to those who are down on their luck that truly lights up this novel. He befriends Ilyas, who ran away from his wretched home only to be kidnapped by an Askari and is taken in by a noble German farmer who makes sure he receives an education and helps him secure a job.
Consequently, Ilyas is kindly disposed to the colonisers and often voices his support of their actions much to the mingled horror and amusement of those around him. At Khalifa’s instigation, he returns to his village, where he finds his orphaned sister, Afiya who is only 10 and has been abandoned to the mercies of neighbours who feel it is well within their rights to ill-treat her. Ilyas rescues her and for a brief period, they are happy and content, till his restlessness sees him enlist in the army to fight for the German empire he so reveres.
Hamza’s tale is a harrowing one. Sold as a bonded labourer by his father driven to do so by crippling debt, he runs away and volunteers to join the Askari only to realise he has traded a terrible existence for a worse one. It is through his eyes that Gurnah explores the complicated relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed.
Assigned to be the Oberleutenant’s personal assistant, the sensitive Hamza is forced to endure the ridicule of his fellow troops who gleefully inform him that the Germans ‘like playing with pretty young men’, and the officer who is determined to teach him to read Schiller while also insisting that the Germans have taken up the task of civilising such a ‘backward and savage people and the only way to rule them is to strike terror into them.’ Observing the war through Hamza’s eyes is an intensely painful experience and readers will find themselves flinching at the awfulness of it all. Having sustained a grievous injury, Hamza waits out the war at a Christian mission and returns to his roots, hoping to salvage what he can from the broken remains of his life.
Afiya, meanwhile, who was sent back to her tormentors is rescued by the unassuming yet heroic Khalifa but is unable to reconcile herself to the inexplicable silence of her brother and the crippling uncertainty regarding his fate. Hamza also becomes the benefactor of Khalifa’s compassion. This coupled with Afiya’s love and devotion helps bring a measure of much-needed restoration to his shell-shocked psyche.
By telling these stories of the oppressed and their small triumphs in the face of overwhelming adversity, Gurnah takes an important step to counter the erasure of those who have been brutalised and left voiceless. Afterlives is quietly brilliant and a stirring saga of hope.