Reconstruction 10.4 (2010)
Return to Contents»
Defining “In between definition”: Jamal Mahjoub and Modern African Literature / Chimdi Maduagwu, Department of English University of Lagos
Keywords: Jamal Mahjoub, African Literature, Place and Space
Abstract: By exploring the recent novels of Afro-European writer Jamal Mahjoub, the author considers questions of exile, audience, and postcolonialism. Mahjoub, he argues, is an important writer because he addresses questions of identity through traditional literary forms such as the travel narrative and a lens of existentialist humanism which is more radical in postcolonial contexts than in first world countries who are heirs of the "humanist tradition."
<1> By virtue of the fact that he is of African descent and grew up in Sudan, Jamal Mahjoub may be considered an African writer. Furthermore, Mahjoub is greatly influenced by “The African Experience.” In other words, his early consciousness was formed along the fault lines of events and activities in Africa. Consequently, his first three novels, Navigation of a Rainmaker (1989), Wings of Dust (1994), and In the Hour of Signs (1998), were published by Heinemann, under the famous African Writers Series label. His later novels, The Carrier (1998) and Travelling with Djinns (2003), by contrast, were published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson and Chatto and Windus London respectively. The African experience, in Mahjoub’s creative consciousness, embraces the totality of historical, sociopolitical, cultural and economic developments, including difficulties many Africans face as they battle with survival in a rather hostile environment. While growing up in Sudan, Mahjoub was exposed to the developmental trends in the former colony, and took keen interest in the daily lives of the people, crystallizing the past and the present in order to construct a possible paradigm for future endeavours.
<2> Mahjoub’s writings are literally and symbolically about movement. They are usually about physical journeys from one geographical location to another or movement either at the psychological or emotional level, across times and periods. His first three novels bear this out as he considers both past and present in a meticulous pursuit of movements across time from the 19th century to the early days of Sudanese independence to contemporary Sudan. In this pursuit, Mahjoub is sociological as well as historical in approach. In addition, Mahjoub also treats issues of personal identities, especially those bedeviled with crises of definition, wrapped with dual and multiple traits. The first three novels all deal with Sudan in these respects.
<3> Navigation of a Rainmaker deals with many aspects of the Sudanese environment, including her history and peoples. It is a familiar tale of natural and man-made disasters that continue to plague Africa. A drought dominates the already drab and sandy Sudanese landscape. Then readers are reminded of the incessant ethnic and tribal clashes, which have not only left wounds which continue to fester, but continually create new ones. The shape of Sudan on a map (the face of a man gazing down, a man in mourning) symbolizes the trauma of contemporary Sudan as well as those generations that lived before this time.
<4> The gloom painted in the novel draws upon ethnic and religious conflicts, class discriminations, nepotism, social and political irresponsibility, and robbery. Mahjoub, through his central character, Tanner, voices disdain for the foreign fortune seekers that seem to be a major factor in the general gloom in the nation of Sudan and much of Africa. The rich deposits of minerals and other natural resources in Africa attract Western capital, whose agents scramble rather lawlessly for wealth. For a first novel, Navigation of A Rainmaker is a considerable success. Mahjoub handles a lot of issues of both personal and general concern.
<5> Particularly, the novel draws attention to Sudan, which is in ‘a state of siege.’ Tanner originally lived outside Africa, but craves to return to his roots. However, considering all the uncertainties Africa is experiencing, his father warns him not to go back to Sudan. Ultimately, Tanner cannot heed the advice. Born and bred in Britain, Tanner decides, nevertheless, to trace his African origin and make his way back to Sudan. This move also sets the stage for what becomes another essential aspect of Mahjoub’s writing: the theme of quest.
<6> The quest for identity forms the basis of development and treatment of issues in most of Mahjoub’s writings. Mahjoub himself is the product of different cultures and thus understands the very real possibility that transcultural identities, for all the wealth of perspective they may provide, also threaten to become embodiments of various conflicts and clashes.
<7> The traumas and travails of this quest are articulated in Mahjoub’s Travelling With Djinns. Yasin Zahir, the main character in the novel, embodies the characteristic features of Mahjoub and people like him. Like Tanner from Navigation of a Rainmaker and the Mahjoub, Yasin Zahir is an African of mixed blood. Because of this, Zahir feels as if he must find fulfillment and success in life through developing an identity for himself. If Zahir fails to do so, he may be appropriated either by his matrilineal tree or his paternal lineage in absolute terms, or worse still, be rejected by both.
<8> Zahir lives in England at the time the story begins, is married to an English woman and has a son with her. However, an impending divorce will not only set Zahir apart from his wife, but also portends an complicated relationship with his son. Divorce and separation ignite in him the fires of the profound questions of his life: who am I…and what is my destiny?
<9> As Zahir pursues answers to these questions, he embarks on a physical journey that is tormented by unseen spiritual forces—the Djinns. Zahir is unable to feel he is an Englishman, yet he equally knows he is not really Sudanese. For instance, it is embarrassing that a Muslim Sudanese can hardly speak clean and acceptable Arabic. On one occasion, he enters the mosque in Paris and is taken for a tourist and asked to leave. Zahir is made to realize that he is incomplete in virtually all things and never at home anywhere. He is a typical example of what Mahjoub refers to as living “outside definitions or in-between definitions,” a state that naturally produces a burning urge in him to formulate a definition.
<10> Responding to this compelling drive for self-discovery, Zahir continues his quest. It touches on all aspects of his life, material and spiritual, physical and psychological. Zahir is determined to squarely confront feelings of homelessness, piece together his battered identity and construct a new and authentic history of himself, but uncontrollable forces represented by his Djinns impede the great effort. One of his greatest struggles involves the recurrence of history, making the past gain ascendancy over the present, and thus hindering clarifications for the future. Indeed, the strange forces of history and memory can only be understood in terms of haunting and bewitchment, with the Djinns seemingly in control even of Zahir’s relationship with his son.
<11> Within the larger milieu of Mahjoub’s writings lie fascinating questions of influence. First, as a writer, Mahjoub is not too sure who he is and who he writes for. He is influenced by African writers such as Achebe, Tayeb Salih, Tutuola, Mahfouz, and Taha Hussein, but is more than an African writer. His mother is European; he reads more in the European languages of English, Danish, Spanish and French; and last, he lives in Spain. For over ten years, he has largely lived in Europe and survived by writing fiction and occasional translations, but before that, he had worked in the University system, as a librarian in the department of Social Anthropology at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. He has read many notable African and European writers and admits to having been influenced by authors such as Camus, Flaubert, Robbe-Grillet, and Latin Americans such as Octavio Paz, Borges, and Garcia Marquez who are important “because their world seems familiar, not in a physical sense, but in the way they describe it” (Interviews, 2005). As a traveler, Mahjoub, has moved to and through many places, having lived in London, Sudan, France, Denmark, and Spain. The metaphysical uncertainty that clouds Mahjoub’s itinerant nature and enters into his novels as well. While it is right to acknowledge Mahjoub’s dual European and African consciousness, it is more accurate to move him into the post-colonial group or more broadly into the global arena. He is both postcolonial and global.
<12> Naturally, Mahjoub wants to write for his fellow Africans, or Arabs, or those caught between clearly defined identities, but he is aware that his audience is predominantly non-African. Mahjoub responds:
I am outside the context of any national literature. Coming from the Sudan but writing in English I do not have a seat in that context. In Britain I am considered a foreign writer, and the same applies to Spain, where I live now. So, trying to cultivate an audience is a huge task. I am motivated, as I always have been, to simply write the best I can. (Interviews, 2005)
As accurate as it may be, the modest tone of this statement disguises a subtle yet abiding will to impact all readers with a sense of the reality of people like him.
Works Cited
Farley, Paul. “Back to the Blue Nile.” The Guardian. Feb 18, 2006.
Maduagwu, Chimdi, Interviews with Jamal Mahjoub. Unpl. 2005.
Mahjoub, Jamal. Traveling With Djinns. London: Chatto and Windus, 2003.
__. The Carrier. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1998.
__. In The Hour of Signs. Oxford: Heinemann, AWS, 1994.
__. “Hands of Lead, Feet of Clay.” New Internationalist Nov. 1994. <http://www.newint.org/issue261/hands.htm/>.
__. “A History of Amnesia.” New Internationalist July 1995. <http://www.newint.org/issue269/269_amnesia.html/>.
__. Navigation of A Rainmaker. Oxford: Heinemann, AWS, 1989.
__. “The Writer and Globalism.” Multicultural Library. <http://www.lib.hel.fi/mcl/articles/mahjoub.htm/>.
Tervonern, Tiana. “Exploring the Present Through the Past”. Djembe. No. 40. April 2002. <http://www.djembe.dk/no/40/jamal/>.
Return to Top»