nineteen

“‘Time is the trouble,’ I said. I no longer experienced my days as linear or purposeful. I was trapped in cyclical domestic time, I tried to explain, where there was no past and no future because the washing-up, cooking, eating, talking, sex, my period, were always on repeat. He made a little speech about how it takes some young women a while to get used to a new baby and the responsibilities of managing a household. I told him I loved the baby; I understood babies and their wildness; it was not the baby that was the trouble. There were adjustments to be made, said the doctor. On he went. I drowned out his voice by picturing the paper knife on his desk plunged into his heart. It was only because killing him was illegal and I did not want to go to prison again that I sat on my hands and allowed him to live. He went on talking and so I did not tell him about wanting to die when the afternoons took forever to get to the night.

See? That was where Isaiah had faltered. To survive in this place, you had to want to die. That was the way of the world as remade by toubab, and Samuel’s list of grievances was long: They pushed people into the mud and then called them filthy. They forbade people from accessing any knowledge of the world and then called them simple. They worked people until their empty hands were twisted, bleeding, and could do no more, then called them lazy. They forced people to eat innards from troughs and then called them uncivilized. They kidnapped babies and shattered families and then called them incapable of love. They raped and lynched and cut up people into parts, and then called the pieces savage. They stepped on people’s throats with all their might and asked why the people couldn’t breathe. And then, when people made an attempt to break the foot, or cut it off one, they screamed “CHAOS!” and claimed that mass murder was the only way to restore order.

Her husband gives her a hug, he’s pretty sure that’s the required gesture at this point. Astrid looks pale and weak, so he decides that a cup of tea with sugar might be the correct next step, and shuffles off to the kitchen in his long johns to make it, failing to see that his wife finds herself in the middle of a storm.

Yes, at this moment, Astrid is being carried by a high, horrible wind, all force with no form, which has plucked her loose from solid objects. How she clutches and cries out as she flies! Till she finds herself blown against a door, at the end of a passage, and knocks on it as hard as she can, though she has no power.

The writing continues to dazzle while the structure falls apart. And rightly so. Because, after all, what difference does it really make—the second and third times around—which comes first? We are in the presence of a man in a trance of self-analysis: a man who will never act on what he knows and therefore is compelled to go on “knowing.

PART TWO: Chapter 10: The Wilderness Years: Exile

“Nevertheless, the feeling that my parents had a greater mission that took priority over me became the dominant narrative in my mind, pushing out the many ways in which my mum and dad tried to be present and available. I edited out so many of the ways in which they showed up for me and loved me, my own bias shaping the story I told myself for years.

Writing this book has required me to both collect and re-examine all of the evidence at my disposal, not just that which is most easily accessible in my head. The realisation that I had erased so much of their efforts is hard to sit with.