Tere­sa White

Re­view of

Love The Dark Days

by Ira Math­ur:

I was the last per­son amongst the au­thor’s close cir­cle of friends to read her book. She had asked me to read some of it in draft form a few years ago. And I de­clined, sens­ing (cor­rect­ly as it has turned out) that it would im­pli­cate me in ten­sions that would make an­oth­er much-loved friend un­hap­py. So it came to pass that I didn’t read a sin­gle page un­til it was pub­lished. Truth is un­set­tling and of­ten not very pret­ty. And, though this book is pre­sent­ed as fic­tion, it is a true ren­di­tion of the au­thor’s rev­e­la­to­ry jour­ney and her vic­to­ry.

To fo­cus on the dra­ma that the book’s launch and pub­li­ca­tion pre­cip­i­tat­ed in oth­ers (most of whom had not read the book), how­ev­er, would mean that the au­thor’s bru­tal per­son­al reck­on­ing and self-ac­tu­al­i­sa­tion are lost. That would be a loss to all of us who have the right to claim a place un­der the Caribbean sun, whether it be by birth or by nat­u­ral­i­sa­tion, by cir­cum­stance or by choice.

Read­ers may re­mem­ber Ki­ran De­sai’s The In­her­i­tance of Loss, the 2006 Man Book­er Prize Win­ner. The sto­ry is based on two dis­placed In­di­an im­mi­grants in the Unit­ed States. The theme cen­tres on the post-colo­nial loss of iden­ti­ty that is passed-on through gen­er­a­tions, scar­ring each with a sense of loss, ir­re­spec­tive of whether a choice is made to as­sim­i­late or hold firm­ly to tra­di­tion. It’s a beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten, heart-rend­ing nov­el. But De­sai’s truth is ul­ti­mate­ly not Math­ur’s.

Ira’s jour­ney starts with a sump­tu­ous and har­row­ing in­her­i­tance. Born in the post-colo­nial era to a pale-skinned Mus­lim moth­er of roy­al an­tecedents and a bour­geois Hin­du fa­ther, an army man of high rank­ing, Ira is a child of re­li­gious, colour, class and geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict. She is then trans­posed in­to To­ba­go life and lat­er on she at­tends board­ing school in Eng­land be­fore set­tling in Trinidad as a grownup.

Her es­tate is one of in­ter-gen­er­a­tional vi­o­lence, mi­cro- and macro-po­lit­i­cal ag­gres­sions, and dev­as­tat­ing pow­er plays. She writes unashamed­ly of per­son­al ab­jec­tion and re­sis­tance. The spaces that she nav­i­gates are char­ac­terised by falling in be­tween the crevices of ne­glect and ul­ti­mate­ly by de­fec­tion. These are the dark days that she must learn to love. But they are her days; to not love them is to not love her­self.

Ira con­fronts and em­braces the dark­ness, mak­ing her choice of book ti­tle high­ly ap­po­site. She opens her­self to the tough ad­vice of one of our re­gion’s great­est sons, Derek Wal­cott. His po­em, Dark Au­gust, lends Ira the nam­ing and the dis­ci­pline of learn­ing slow­ly and con­sum­ing “the med­i­cine of bit­ter­ness”—in spite of the “steam­ing hills”, “the gos­sip­ing mos­qui­toes.” It is, in­deed, this spir­it­ed Caribbean basin where na­tions were erased, di­lut­ed, al­tered and com­bined, per­pe­trat­ing and sub­ject­ed to the great­est of cru­el­ties, that a new na­tion can be imag­ined:

Copies of Ira Mathur’s Love The Dark Days on display at the launch.

“‘Maybe when the peo­ple trans­plant­ed from the old worlds—the Chi­nese, Syr­i­an, In­di­an, Eu­ro­pean and African—are ful­ly in­te­grat­ed and cross-fer­tilise, our small is­lands will rep­re­sent a utopia to the world.’

‘Now you’re talk­ing’ he says.”

A new na­tion of peo­ple born out of the trans­gres­sions and glo­ries of what it means to be hu­man. Of what it means to be­long.

Struc­tural­ly and styl­is­ti­cal­ly the book it­self of­fers a new or­der.

There is much beau­ty in the lan­guage, cap­tur­ing the ephemera of op­u­lence and de­cay­ing el­e­gance: “An­gel is shout­ing, ‘Fairy dust, fairy dust!’ She is spin­ning in cir­cles in the cur­tains, watch­ing with shriek­ing de­light the bro­cade dis­in­te­grate in­to be­jew­elled smoke as it spreads in the room and floats out of the win­dows.”

Yet, Ira’s en­chant­ments bare­ly linger be­fore the pic­ture abrupt­ly turns to the pro­fane and scat­o­log­i­cal: “What a ter­ri­ble in­her­i­tance: all these un­hap­py women pass­ing along their sad­ness with their jew­ellery. Love can be s—t wrapped in sil­ver, but who’s to say some of the shine doesn’t rub off on the s—t and make us yearn for more?”

Bru­tal­i­ty is rife through­out the nar­ra­tive, close­ly fol­low­ing on from its sweet lyri­cism: “I see now why my par­ents live so light­ly. When bru­tal­i­ty has been nor­mal­ized, it is passed on, like a lega­cy, like DNA.”

But there is al­ways choice, whether the choice is the cock­tail par­ty cir­cuit or de­camp­ing. With the re­al­iza­tion that “‘...Spend­ing your en­tire life in a draw­ing-room wait­ing for peo­ple to en­vy you is a use­less life,’” the promise of jeans and a Lon­don ca­reer con­vert re­jec­tion and dis­avow­al in­to lib­er­a­tion. Ira cites Naipaul on the mys­tery of in­her­i­tance in terms of “blood and bone and brain.” In so do­ing, she leads us to the strongest of the three: brain. It is our cog­ni­tion that gives us agency: our in­formed choic­es made in the cir­cum­stances we hap­pen to find our­selves in. And it is that agency that makes us who we are and what we. It is both our re­demp­tion and what we, in turn, be­queath.

Ira al­so does some­thing quite un­usu­al and mas­ter­ful in how she presents her sto­ry. Her melod­ic pas­sages re­call old songs of folk­lore and the star­tling el­e­ments may raise ques­tions about her re­li­a­bil­i­ty; es­pe­cial­ly as there are many peo­ple liv­ing or in liv­ing mem­o­ry who would pre­fer her si­lenced. Yet, we must not for­get that she is first and fore­most a jour­nal­ist (in fact, she is the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T). And it is these skills that she em­ploys that unite the book and so­lid­i­fy its au­then­tic­i­ty.

The nar­ra­tive is in­ter­spersed by her mem­o­ry of vis­it­ing Derek Wal­cott in St Lu­cia: a short, but epiphanous ex­pe­ri­ence up­on which Ira’s life sto­ry is viewed, cap­tured and cat­e­gorised. The telling is straight-up jour­nal­is­tic, com­plete with all the harsh, but in­valu­able crit­i­cism she re­ceives from this great man. Wal­cott dis­miss­es the essence of her iden­ti­ty, her firm­ly-held as­pi­ra­tions and raw vic­tim­hood: “...Why go back to those aw­ful peo­ple, a grand­moth­er who col­lud­ed with the British. Why not write of the now, of the new world?”

And that is ex­act­ly what she has done.

In­deed, on­ly a woman who has ac­cept­ed her birthright and her life­long ac­qui­si­tions, has trust­ed her­self to record it for all to read, even deeply-felt per­son­al hu­mil­i­a­tions, and who has ex­ert­ed a sense of con­trol over her life by com­man­deer­ing her own sto­ry, know­ing that it will of­fend those who are shy of the truth, on­ly that per­son could cre­ate a book such as this. And I am priv­i­leged to have read it, how­ev­er late in the day, and to count that woman amongst my friends.