Afterlives

Afiya gives birth at home attended by a midwife. The labor is lengthy and forms a contrast to Asha’s decline: “The backyard door also stood open and the dying woman’s groans mingled with Afiya’s intermittent gasps of pain” (260). They name the baby boy Ilyas in honor of Afiya’s brother, whose fate is still unknown. Asha dies a few days after Ilyas is born. Khalifa grieves over the loss of his wife: “‘It is so final, that is what is surprising, what I did not properly understand,’ he said, ‘that this person is gone forever’” (262).

Nassor, who is now the outright owner of the house where Khalifa lives, is fully involved in plans for a new workshop, which he asks Hamza to run. When Hamza asks for a raise, Nassor says he will double his salary so that he can move out of the house where he lives with Khalifa. Nassor implies that he will force Khalifa to leave the house. Hamza asks if he can rent the house from Nassor so everyone can continue living where they are in peace.

This is a time of contentment for Afiya and Hamza as they watch their child grow up healthy and strong. Like his father, he is a dreamer, and often spends long periods of time by himself. Hamza renovates the house so there is ample room for everyone. Afiya has two more miscarriages. When Ilyas is five years old, the Great Depression strikes. Once again there is poverty, a lack of business, and a lack of resources.

Khalifa adores Ilyas, whom he refers to as his grandchild. He plays games with him, teaches him to read, and tells him marvelous stories. The child becomes the center of his parents’ lives, although Hamza believes that his son’s name continues to remind his wife of her missing brother. They do their best to track down the elder Ilyas, with no success.

A troubling issue arises with Ilyas beginning when he is 11 years old. He stands staring into the distance and whispering. No one knows what he is saying. They realize he speaks in a woman’s voice and that the woman calls out the name “Ilyas.” Even though they caution him about speaking in ways that might make people think he has an emotional problem, Ilyas loses the ability to resist the voice that speaks through him.

An exorcist is called in. She performs a three-hour rite. She announces there is a woman visitor inside the boy. She describes this disembodied spirit in such a way that it is clear she is talking about Asha, saying that this visitor will not rest or leave the boy alone until she finds out what happened to the older Ilyas.

In an act of desperation, Hamza writes the wife of the pastor who has moved to Berlin. He reintroduces himself and asks if she can possibly help him track down what happened to the older Ilyas.

Months after writing the letter, while he is at work in the wood workshop, Hamza receives a visit from a British police officer who insists that he accompany him to the police station.

Hamza is taken into a room with two officers, who ask him who he knows in Germany. He is presented with a letter from the pastor’s wife. They insist that he translate it into English. He reads through it twice, then translates that it says Ilyas survived the war and moved to Germany afterward. The British tell Hamza not to correspond with anybody in Germany because there is so much tension between the two nations as they prepare to go to war again. Hamza returns home and shares this news with Khalifa, Afiya, and their son Ilyas.

War breaks out and no more letters or information comes from Germany. Khalifa dies in 1942, after which Ilyas joins the KAR—the King’s African Rifles, the British equivalent of the askari—in a non-military role. This makes him a veteran at the conclusion of the war. Ilyas receives additional training as a radio commentator.

Afiya and Hamza continue to wonder what happened to the elder Ilyas in Germany. The younger Ilyas receives a scholarship to go to Germany to study broadcasting in 1963. He decides to do a documentary about tracking down his uncle, who moved to Germany after the war. He soon discovers that the pastor and his wife died because of an Allied bombing.

Ilyas looks through archives related to the new colonization movement the Nazis engaged in as they sought to win back their colonies. Ilyas discovers a photograph of a man, who must obviously be his uncle, at a Nazi rally. When he tracks down the names of the people in the photograph, he finds that his uncle changed his name slightly to Elias Essen. He sends a copy of the photo to his mother, who confirms it is indeed her brother.

Though he is not able to find a great deal more information about him, Ilyas learns that, when he came to Germany, the older Ilyas ended up working on ships as a singer. He married a German woman in 1933 and had several children with her. He was arrested in 1938 for having a relationship with a different white woman, which the Nazis called “defiling an Aryan woman” (308). He and a son who chose to go with him died in the concentration camp in 1942.