by Ishtiyaq Shukri (Jacana)
It was this author’s first book, The Silent Minaret– winner of the 2005 European Literary prize – that stopped me in my tracks because it was such a clever plot.
It told the story of a Muslim boy growing up in apartheid South Africa. When freedom comes, he travels to London to study and walks right into the storm of religious prejudice that took hold after the 9/11 horror.
It really brought home what it must be like to always live with prejudice shown towards you, hatred for what you are, not who you are.
He doesn’t let any of those themes go in his second novel, which has this quote on the cover: “What, then, is the ‘deep state’? You think your country has undergone a transition to democracy. You had roughly free and fair elections. You have new leaders in charge. Yet you begin to realise that, as the French say, the more things change the more they stay the same.”
It is Shukri’s way of telling a story that is so intriguing. He trusts that the reader will follow his train of thought, and one does, as his way of telling a story is as important as the story itself.
He leads you into the story with the above quotation as well as Sina Odugbeni’s point that authoritarian rulers will not lightly let go of what they had.
This he follows with a poem, Black Paint White Strokes by Abdul Milazi, written after the Marikana massacre. It makes you think as he takes your hand gently to pull you in the direction he wants to go.
Within his main story, which is about our country, he has sprinkled with great strength the harsh story of Palestinians, their daily lives and how they are expected to live. We all know that people kept in abject poverty have nothing to look forward to – and nothing to lose.
In today’s world, they are all fully aware of how the other half lives and how people are not willing to share the wealth of the world. There is more than enough to go around if those who have too much could look past their high walls.
Shukri is an extraordinary writer; he’s a writer with a conscience, so know that when you read one of his books he will challenge.
He challenges you to put yourself into the shoes of others and compromise.