Political awareness and self-knowledge are the two main themes of the Indocile, a novel in Swahili which has just been translated into French. Its author Adam Shafi Adam, originally from Zanzibar in Tanzania, is one of the great voices of Swahili letters.
“ As soon as she had her first period, Yasmin was given in marriage. Like her, her husband belonged to the Ithnasiria community and lived in her neighborhood, in Mtendeni. It was a husband who looked nothing like her, neither in age nor in temperament. Where Yasmin was only a fifteen-year-old girl, Bwana Raza, her husband, was already a little old man of fifty-two. Where Bwana Raza, her husband, was already worn down by the years, Yasmin was still just a young girl still in the making, who knew nothing about life. »
So begins The Indocilians, the new novel translated into French by Swahili-speaking Tanzanian writer Adam Shafi Adam. The latter is not completely unknown to the French-speaking public who had been able to read a first novel from his pen in the 1980s, with the title The Clove Trees of Zanzibar. Considered one of the founding texts of modern Swahili literature, this novel recounted the revolution of January 1964 which marked the definitive end of feudal rule in Zanzibar.
The Indocilians are part of the same political and historical vein, so characteristic of Adam Shafi Adam’s fiction, if we believe his translator. Aurélie Journo: “ Adam Shafi Adam is recognized for his writing which is very interested in political issues and historical events also which are linked to the Zanzibar revolution for example in ‘The cloves of Zanzibar’, the dockers’ strike in ‘Kuli’, one of his other novels. I see him as someone who is always interested in capturing a political atmosphere, a political or historical situation through the prism of characters who could be described as ‘ordinary’, who must continue to live in situations, circumstances histories in constant upheaval. »
National language
Born in 1940 in Zanzibar, an archipelago now part of Tanzania, Adam Shafi Adam is one of the major voices in contemporary Swahili letters. Coming from the crossbreeding of Arabic and the Bantu languages spoken on the coasts of the Indian Ocean, Swahili has an ancient literary tradition and has seen the emergence, since the 19th century, of a modern literature, shared between poetry, fiction, theater and autobiographical stories. In the 20th century, Tanzania, with the proclamation of Swahili as the national language, was the crucible of literary production as abundant as it was diverse.
Great novel of love, escape and learning, The Indocilians evokes the years 1950-60, when Tanzania waged a fierce struggle against the British colonizer, aspiring to quickly regain its independence. The hero of the novel, Denge, a young intellectual trained in communist Russia, is committed body and soul to this anti-colonial struggle.
However, the “indocility” that Adam Shafi Adam depicts in his novel is not only political, it is also and perhaps above all social. The story is told here from the point of view of Yasmin, a young Indian woman living outside her community, and her friend Mwajuma, a Swahili woman with a big heart. She did not hesitate to welcome her Indian neighbor into her tiny hovel located in the heart of the working-class district of N’Gambo, when Yasmin ran away from her trader husband, twice her age. The two women are now inseparable, with Mwajuma introducing her friend to the pleasures of Swahili life, particularly taarab, these participatory shows, at the crossroads of theater and music, which dominate cultural life in Zanzibar.
It is also at Mwajuma’s house that Yasmin meets Denge, with whom she falls madly in love, but their love proves impossible, because Denge’s life is governed by the imperatives of the political cause. His commitment will earn him imprisonment, torture and exile, distancing him forever from his lover. The novel tells how, left to their own devices, the two women must find their way to happiness and self-realization. They reveal themselves to be two powerful women who break away from the rules of their respective communities in order to fully experience their freedom of initiative and action.
“ Here we have all the ingredients of a great feminist novel. », explains translator Aurélie Journo. And to continue: “ It is one of the rare novels where the main protagonist is a woman, an Indian woman at that, at a time when racial and social segregation was very strong. There is still something very strong that will develop between Yasmin and Mwajuma, who is Swahili. I think Adam Shafi’s goal is to highlight the status of women of his time and to pay tribute to women. Perhaps feminist is not the right term, but in any case, the author’s ambition is clearly to make a place in literature for female characters. »
Militant and enjoyable
“‘The Indocilians‘ supports the translator, is one of Adam Shafi’s most successful novels, by its scope, by its writing, by its polyphony “. We are far here from the naive story with the air of a fairy tale as in The Clove Trees of Zanzibar. It is a Zola-style social novel, a story that is both militant and enjoyable.
However, the true originality of this story, set at the crossroads of the social and the political, is perhaps to be found in its narration where the ideal of collective liberation and the quest for personal emancipation embodied in the novel are inextricably mixed. by the female protagonists, Yasmin and Mwajuma.
“ That’s quite right », agrees Aurélie Journo. And to continue: “ In this novel, the collective freedom of a people seeking to free themselves from the colonial yoke goes hand in hand with Yasmin’s quest for personal emancipation. Yasmin is a character who evolves greatly throughout the novel; From a young girl who dreams of love she becomes a comrade of Denge in his fight for independence. There really is this journey towards emancipation which is both personal and political and collective. It is no coincidence that the two echo and feed off each other in this novel. »
This narrative intelligence, to which the translator refers, is for many connoisseurs of Swahili letters, the main trademark of the work of Adam Safi Adam, the master storyteller from Zanzibar.
The Indocilians, by Adam Shafi Adam. Translated from Swahili by Aurélie Journo. Editions Project’îles, 376 pages, 17 euros.