By the Sea

The narrative shift to Latif Mahmud’s first-person perspective introduces a competing history that destabilizes Saleh Omar’s initial account. This transition is a primary mechanism for developing the theme of The Unreliability of Memory and Competing Narratives, recasting Saleh as the figure who dispossessed Latif’s family. The novel thus functions as a dialectic, forcing the reader to constantly recalibrate their understanding of truth—particularly because it is not clear that Latif’s narrative is wholly accurate either. Latif’s narrative begins with an act of interpretation—his academic deconstruction of a racial slur—characterizing him as someone who seeks control through intellectualization. However, his identification with the slur, though semi-ironic, illustrates the impossibility of maintaining objectivity; as he wryly observes, he is happy to find himself in the Western canon, even in caricatured form, because the alternative is the total erasure that relegates Africa’s precolonial history to “rooting and snorting in a jungle swamp” (92). That Latif cannot help but engage with these colonialist frameworks lays the groundwork for his extended flashback: Latif has sought to distance himself from his past, but the wounds of childhood trauma shape his account throughout. This structural choice negates the possibility of a single, authoritative truth, suggesting instead that history is a composite of personal, often contradictory, testimonies.

Latif’s recollections delve deeply into The Intergenerational Burdens of Betrayal and Inheritance, using the motif of furniture to give tangible form to concepts of loss, identity, and ownership. The detailed memory of his childhood home and its contents grounds the family’s dispossession in a material reality that reflects their history and familial identity. The ebony table, a gift from the duplicitous Hussein, becomes the focal point of this conflict, symbolizing both the intrusion that led to Hassan’s disappearance and the subsequent inheritance usurped by Saleh Omar. Latif’s memory of his failed attempt to reclaim the table is a pivotal scene of humiliation, where he perceives his family’s cherished objects in Saleh’s home “like plunder.” Given the novel’s emphasis on the personal histories embedded within one’s environment, the dispute over furniture also becomes a proxy for Saleh and Latif’s larger battle over narrative control.

The theme of identity formation in exile is explored through Latif’s process of self-reconstruction, which parallels Saleh’s, yet is distinguished by its self-consciousness. This process is crystallized in the recurring portrayal of borrowed names. Saleh adopts the name “Rajab Shaaban” out of pragmatic necessity. In contrast, Latif’s decision to adopt a new name is an affirmative act of self-creation. Upon reaching England, he sheds the patrilineal name that binds him to a poisoned family history and chooses to be called Latif, drawn to “its gentleness and the softness of its modulations” (170)—an explicit attempt to define himself through chosen qualities rather than inherited burdens. The subplot involving his GDR pen-pal, “Elleke,” presents another variation on this idea; Jan’s adoption of the name is impulsive, but through his mother, it becomes the vehicle for a narrative of colonialism and displacement; as the real Elleke explains, her family settled in Kenya to escape the wars in Europe, where constantly shifting national borders not only threatened their physical safety but also their cultural identity. In blurring the boundaries between colonizer and colonized, the story highlights the complex, bidirectional relationship between the two, underscoring that refugees like Latif and Saleh are not simply passive victims of empire. They have agency to define themselves and their lives, even if postcolonial realities circumscribe that agency in significant ways.

Latif’s journey through the German Democratic Republic broadens the critique of displacement beyond the family feud, situating the characters’ lives within the larger geopolitical forces of the Cold War and postcolonial nation-building. This section provides historical context, showing how Zanzibari independence and its pivot toward the socialist bloc shaped individual fates. Life in the GDR hostel, a “cramped and suffocating” (143) block of concrete, serves as a different kind of detention where passports are confiscated and freedom is curtailed. Latif’s friendship with Ali, whose family was destroyed by the post-independence regime in Guinea, demonstrates that the political violence producing refugees was a widespread phenomenon.

Latif’s journey also complicates the theme of The Dehumanizing Process of Seeking Asylum by showing its varied manifestations across different political systems. His escape from the Eastern Bloc and his relatively benign reception in England stand in contrast to Saleh’s hostile interrogation, illustrating a spectrum of experiences within the global reality of exile.