First novel by Nigerian Chika Unigwe to be published in French, Fata Morgana recounts the trajectories rich in drama and dreams of four African prostitutes stranded on the sidewalks of Western Europe. Victims of the tragic circumstances of life, but also of the chaos that reigns in their countries, they try to regain control of their lives with the courage of despair. A poignant and powerful novel.
Immigration, marginalization of women, slow drift of newly independent countries are some of the serious social and political phenomena facing our postcolonial world. These questions are at the heart of Fata Morganasecond novel by Chika Unigwe. They are mainly embodied by the four female protagonists of this quasi-Balzacian social opus. Through the epic and choral story of their unusual trajectories that led from the suburbs of African capitals to European megacities, the novel recounts the passions and trials of our time.
The heroines of Chika Unigwe are named Sisi, Ama, Efe and Joyce. Four young African women who prostitute themselves in the red-light district of Antwerp, under the watchful gaze and without empathy of their “Madame”. Recently landed from Lagos, they all passed through the expert hands of fat Dele, a sex trafficker from Lagos who made his fortune supplying Western European brothels with “ african fresh flesh “.
” I send girls to Europe every month. Antwerp. Milano. Madrid. My gals dey there. Every month, four girls. Sometimes five or more “, brags Dele to convince one of the potential candidates for immigration to the European continent, overflowing with luxury and wealth. Price: 30,000 euros, to be reimbursed in monthly installments of 500 euros. But beware of shortcomings, warns the trafficker. ” No try cross me o. Don’t you dare try to pass me. Nobody doubles Senghor Dele. »
Neither the exorbitant offer nor the threat brandished by the “big man” succeeded in dissuading the four protagonists of Fata Morgana. The chaos that reigns on their continent leaves them with little alternative but to go and sell their bodies in distant Europe.
powerful women
Born in Enugu, Nigeria, in 1974, author Chika Unigwe now shares her life between her native country and the United States. She lived fifteen years in Belgium where she had followed her engineer husband, originally from this country. Belgium is also the place where the action of Fata Morgana.
Author of four novels and a collection of short stories, Chika Unigwe is part of a very select club of the most outstanding and promising African writers of her generation. ” I always wanted to write likes to repeat the Nigerian, who has drawn attention by placing her work in the wake of the great female novelists of her country, in particular Flora Nwapa. The author of Fata Morgana remembers being in primary school with the daughter of this pioneer novelist of Nigerian letters.
” In the 1970s-80s, everyone in Nigeria knew Flora Nwapa and I wanted to be like her too.confides the novelist. A career in writing seemed cooler to me than becoming a doctor, a lawyer, or a teacher. Later, she will devote a doctoral thesis to the work of Flora Nwapa and other women writers from her country. ” My doctoral thesis focused on “Ibo women’s writing as an act of reparation”, says the novelist. I tried to show that Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta and other novelists who emerged in their wake, present women very differently compared to male writers. In my corpus, there was Efuru, Flora Nwapa’s first novel, published in 1962, four years after the publication of Le Monde s’affonde by Chinua Achebe. For the first time, it is a woman of character who finds herself on the front of the stage in a work of Nigerian fiction. Efuru is central to the novel as she lends her name to the plot. Efuru is independent, Efuru is rich. As a novelist myself, I’m drawn to powerful women.. »
Like Efuru, the four protagonists of Fata Morgana are also powerful women. The author became interested in the problem of prostitution after discovering during her stay in Belgium that the African prostitutes working on the sidewalks of Western Europe were mainly of Nigerian origin. His novel is the result of a long-term investigation carried out for five years in the red-light districts of Europe. What she discovered while chatting with the young African prostitutes who display themselves in glass windows in the red light districts, parading in sexy and alluring underwear to attract the customer, changed forever the view she had long had on prostitution.
” Almost 100% of the Nigerian prostitutes I was able to investigate confirmed to me, does she remember, that they did this job in order to be able to provide for the needs of their loved ones. These women were the main breadwinners in their families, a role that had hitherto been assigned to men. However, in the documentaries that can be seen on prostitutes, they are essentially presented as being driven by the lure of easy gain. For me, the women I met were driven by a deep sense of family responsibility, which was a revelation to me. I also discovered that some of these women had graduated from college, but had failed to find suitable jobs. These discoveries shocked me because none of this corresponds to the stereotypes conveyed about prostitutes. »
“Beautiful Jike”
Fata Morgana tells a sorority story of four African women who share an apartment in the red-light district of Antwerp. Joyce, Ama, Efe and Sisi come from very different backgrounds, but their trajectories are similar. They are punctuated by jolts of life which explode in your face brutally when you live in countries where community and collective passions prevent civil peace from settling.
This is the case of Joyce, originally from Sudan. Raped as a teenager by the Janjawid militias, she saw her attackers kill her parents before her eyes, her brother being brutalized, her village burned down. Her unfortunate journey took her first to Lagos, then to Antwerp, with a stopover on the way at the Senghor Dele hut.
Ama, the second prostitute, is a rebel. Raped by her pastor stepfather from the age of 8, she grew up amid the luxury and voluptuousness of the Nigerian bourgeoisie, before running away from home in her desperate attempt to take charge of her life. .
Efe’s story is no less moving. Coming from a poor slum in Lagos, she believed for a long time in the promises of her fat and seductive lover, before finding herself a mother at the age of 16. She will take the road to Antwerp in order to be able to ensure a dignified life for her son as well as for her brothers and sisters whose survival depends on the money that arrives every month from distant Belgium. They pay homage to Belgium, which they call ” Beautiful Jik which they believe in their naivety to be “Very close to London. It’s the next door “.
A wind of fantasy
The novel opens with the disappearance of Sisi, found dead in a wild dump in Antwerp, her head shattered. She had wanted to leave the brothel too soon without having paid her due to her pimp. The story of Sisi, a graduate of the University of Lagos and victim of the corruption and nepotism that plague Nigeria, is emblematic of the drift of rising, newly independent countries. This trajectory is also emblematic of migrant women, victims of the mirages of Europe and brilliantly staged by Chika Unigwe in her novels.
The fact remains that the Sisi, Ama, Efe and other Joyces who populate the pages of Fata Morgana are frenzied fighters, stubbornly fighting to conquer their sexual, material and imaginative freedom. They are true feminists, as Chika Unigwe asserts: Yes, they are feminists. They know that it is because they are women that society has let them down. Prostitution was the only way open to them to get out of poverty. I don’t know if it’s in the book or not. One of my interlocutors explained to me that she knew that she was going to have to work for several years, to earn enough money in order to be sheltered, and that she would then get married. She will find the man she needs and she will pay him the dowry money that the groom pays to his future in-laws. In a patriarchal society like ours, can you be more feminist than this woman who plans to afford a husband? »
There’s something Balzacian about this realist novel about the dramas of migration, told with a decidedly modernist sensibility, as evidenced by Chika Unigwe’s polyphonic narration. The end of the story, imbued with a hint of magical realism, blows a wind of fantasy through these pages where hope and despair come together.
Fata Morgana, by Chika Unigwe. Translated from English by Marguerite Capelle. Globe Editions, 300 pages, 23 euros.