Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Yusuf’s childhood is disrupted one day by his “uncle”. Only after a two-day train journey does Yusuf begin to understand that he quietly had become the repayment for a family debt and that his “uncle” was not his uncle. In Paradise, Nobel prize-winning novelist, Abdulrazak Gurnah, follows the boy’s growing maturity, revealing the practices of both local and European aggression in newly colonized Tanzania.
“Uncle Aziz” is quite taken with Yusuf, a naturally curious and gentle boy. Minor privileges come to him as he learns to be a shopkeeper’s assistant. When he is quite adept at these tasks, he is included in a trading journey from the coast into the interior, where manufactured goods will be exchanged for goods that can be sold. The coastal peoples both fear and denigrate the interior peoples, who live on a high plain in strange villages.
The chiefs in these villages are sophisticated both in the ways of trade and of conquest. The coastal caravans are viewed suspiciously and yet welcomed as the source of otherwise unavailable materials.
Rumours and stories filter through about German and English conquerors who violently take land for themselves without any recognition of the rights of current occupants. If anything, Europeans take it for granted that any existing inhabitants will be quickly subdued into use for colonial purposes.
Meanwhile, Yusuf is becoming a young man. In his spare time, he works in Uncle Aziz’s walled garden, finding a fascination with the cultivation of plants. To his dismay, women in the closed household are fascinated by him. With great care and to the horror of his closest friend, he acquiesces to the Madam’s insistent invitations to have conversation inside the house. Uncle Aziz is away trading.
With maturity, Yusuf begins to understand the nature of enslavement and forced service. He questions his own story and the stories of others around him. Who is privileged and who is constrained?
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