Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor takes you on an elegiac journey,
introducing you to complex personal histories and tragedies. Set in
northern Kenyan's dust, darkness and daylight, this novel is a memoir of
lives transformed by tribal and political conflicts and colonial
processes and imperialistic excesses. The novel presents a tour de force
narrative about lost fathers, brothers, sons and women and descends
into the labyrinth-like individual stories to present a tale of a
family, country, humanity.
A sister Ajany returns to Kenya to
find her brother Odidi. She has seen his corpse, but she seeks a
closure, an understanding of Odidi's life before his tragic end. The
siblings grew up in a dusty Kenyan countryside, in a massive house,
where all the books are inscribed with a name of a foreigner or a
stranger, Hugo Bolton. Their mother Akai is a mysterious women, who has
her own complex narrative of love lost and found, that emerges in bits
and parts as we read the novel. Their father Nyipir is a person who in
one life acquires many incarnations, some as he is forced by his own
needs, greed and wants, and many to just survive Kenya's turbulent
times. Servant of a white man, gravedigger, sepoy, cattle thief,
husband, father, a friend to many smugglers and wanderers, a young man
who wanted to travel to Burma to retrieve his father and brother's
bodies to bury them in their own country. There is a fascinating singer
of water songs, Ali Hida Dada, a policemen whose own complex life
journey crisscrosses through the personal histories of Nyipir, Akai,
Ajany, Odidi and a fifth person, Galgalu who is attached to the
Nyipir-Akai household, like a foster son. Isiah Bolton, a son in search
of a father who disappeared in Kenya. There are a handful of other
characters that complete the list: Justina (Odidi's lady love), Selena
(Isiah's mom), a trader (a keeper of secrets) and Chaudhary (a sly
shopkeeper). Each character is developed with acute sensibility and
sympathy, allowing us to see nuances in their personalities, deceits and
shadows, exposing both bitter and sweet versions of their projected and
veiled selves.
Dust is beautifully written book. As the
narrative advances through present or past, Owour delivers many
remarkable, poetic short sentences. Short sentences and paragraphs that
puncture your thoughts. You gasp before you carry on reading. You gasp
first at the beauty of the wordplay, then you grasp the insight or ache
that each needle-shot sentence releases. The novel emerges in all its
intricate and articulate richness through lives transformed by a recent
colonial experience as well as political upheavals and corruption in an
emergent nation. Perhaps you can appreciate this novel more if you have a
native sympathy with the fate of people scarred by colonial pasts and a
present corrupted, manipulated by economic interests of multinational
companies & their local, vocal, powerful, corrupt collaborators.
Some very heartbreaking episodes fill this novel, some heartrending
scenes, some events that fill you with disgust and disenchantment, and
as a counterpoint, there a few passages that bring peace, understanding,
pleasure, closure.
Growing up in India I always knew this dust
that consumed and subsumed
everything, a dust full of broken promises as well as crushed dreams and
desires,
a dust laced with blood and sweat of the tormented and the tormentors, a
dust we miss when we are away from the nation, a dust that masks and
hides hurt, longing, feeling and thoughts. As a writer, I struggle to
show this dust, capture its prevalence and importance. As a reader, I
seek writing that recognizes it, and removes its veil to reveal
narratives that remain concealed in our plain sight. Owuor excels as she
accomplishes this. In Dust, Owuor delivers a phenomenal saga that
touches upon the human condition, deeply appreciative of sibling and
parental affection, deeply conscious of tacit and long-lasting
friendships, keenly aware of events that shape human destiny. The
opening chapter where Odidi runs and runs, the landscapes through which
various protagonists walk or night sounds they hear, Ajany's search for
her brother's past and especially the scene where she finds the spot on
tarmac still covered with his dried blood... are all crafted with the
skill of a seasoned writer.
The overall story, and the novel's
many exceptional passages, are so beautifully crafted and delivered that
I am convinced that the novel is destined for a long haul, to be read
as a classic by our future generations. After the death of Chinua
Achebe, I ached to find some other voice in the world literature who
could write with his clarity and sympathy about the non-Western world. I
always wondered if Toni Morrison's raw and lucid style can be emulated
in fiction written about men and women who live in erstwhile colonized
countries. To place Owuor's book on a similar pedestal is perhaps the
highest praise I can offer for this work.
Undoubtedly Owuor has
delivered a masterpiece, a work of art that inspires and awes you for it
touches many a raw nerve, and brings to light events, ideas, thoughts
that are too murky to be appreciated otherwise. Though the narrative
unfolds in realms and through descriptions unfamiliar to the imaginative
and everyday life of many readers (my explanation for harsher reviews),
I think Owuor's sparkling writing is capable of awakening many eyes,
hearts and minds to such life-stories. Appreciating the novel Dust does
require examination of our own biases, created by our readings and
upbringings. Perhaps we need more novels like Dust if we really wish to
comprehend the cultural and societal changes taking place in many
non-Western nations. Even if the novel treads through threads far from
your experience and comfort zone, read it for its music, descriptions
and haunting prose and marvel at the author for unraveling secrets of
human condition, secrets only a writer from a distant, dusty nation
knows.
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