A CRITICAL READING OF AMEENA GAFOOR’S PROLOGUE TO A NOVEL IN PROGRESS

Oct 31, 2010 Features / Columnists, The Arts Forum

Michael Gilkes

By Professor Michael Gilkes

A number of readers have expressed interest in the PROLOGUE TO A NOVEL IN PROGRESS featured in this column during the last three weeks.

Ms. Claudette Earle (former sub-editor of the CHRONICLE) said (by telephone) that it is the first portrayal of the experiences of Indians in the post-indentureship period in the Guyanese and Caribbean novel that she is aware of and an impressive picture in all its minute details of life at the time.
Dr. Abu Bakr (in Europe) had this to say (by e-mail): “The richness of detail and characterization makes this a classic I have not seen in any “Indian” novel to date. Besides, you owe it to the younger ones who may not have known some of the older folkways. Several things, such as the way the women relate to their husbands or the thing about the dream really becomes instantly real and puts authenticity to this. Several lodes of richness to mine in this one so don’t keep the novel held up . . . “
HERE IS PROFESSOR GILKES’S CRITICAL READING:
I was struck most by the way Ameena Gafoor weaves the dream and Kadir’s remembrances of things past into the unfolding story of [post] indentureship and the re-settling after the trauma of the Kala Pani.
The two couples, Kadir /Zainab and Gopaul /Sugh, are used to illustrate two very different approaches to the concept of social and financial good fortune in a poor village. The irony in the name “Success” (also a perfectly credible one, as in the names of other plantations such as ‘Good Hope’ or ‘La Bonne Intention’) is used for underscoring these two approaches.
The irony is particularly striking when Gopaul finally affirms his ‘freedom’ from the village and thereby loses his chance of success as he and Sugh drift towards a family tragedy. Their cultural journey as indentured ‘coolies’ rehearses the original severance from their roots. On the other hand, Kadir and Zainab by accepting the need for acculturation and by adapting to ‘Success’, succeed.
But then Kadir’s and Zainab’s religious and cultural roots are more securely anchored.
He is both a Mussafir and a Moulvi, so has a real advantage over Gopaul who is more subject to the demands of cruder social and financial success. The two stories are really one, since they are the two sides of the same coin of indentureship.
This interlinking of the two couples and their differences also keeps the narrative anchored while the remembrances and dreams of Kadir fill in the spiritual dimensions of their lives.
Kadir’s dream – a nightmare from which he awakes screaming – is a compelling opening to the extract.
As the story progresses, the significance of the dream becomes gradually clearer as the action unfolds. Gopaul’s tragic loss of his sons, buried by an avalanche of rice from an overloaded truck, is then seen to be both prophetic and deeply ironic.
The inevitability of the tragedy is well judged and very well conveyed in the writing. I did find, however, that the remembrances sometimes seemed slightly intrusive. Kadir, in a very real sense, is ‘rampant with memories’, (163) which, though fascinating, can appear too engineered: ‘a primeval faucet he could not turn off’ (163).
But the historical and cultural fabric of the story needs these memories (the boat journey to Demerara, the memory of Maha Dawal etc are all beautifully done). Their placement in the narrative might, I think, be more effective earlier, when his memories of his past life begin to be linked as if with that fragile, symbolic, anchoring rope which he remembers in his dream:
The two brothers are flailing and screaming through gaping spaces where their mouths should be and he, too, screams with all his might, calling “Jainaaab! Jainaaaaab! brrringam ROPE . . . ROPE”, but his voice has no sound, no one else is in this vast ocean, least of all Zainab, only the grinning hyenas with their bone-chilling laughter.
There are some really arresting descriptions: Zainab’s teeth ‘like chipped sugar cake’, is (at least to Guyanese eyes) absolutely graphic.
Indentured life becomes a superficial, yet menacing routine ‘like the motion of Kadir’s paddle when it cuts the trench water that instantly closes up leaving no evidence of a wound’. Surely, that should be the “wound”. The image of the paddle as a cutlass (conveying both the routine and menace in their lives) is a particularly resonant example of the writer’s eye for significant detail.
This extract is a pleasure to read and certainly whets the reader’s appetite for more.