IRA MATH­UR

Nov­el­ist and Cre­ative Writ­ing lec­tur­er at UWI, Dr Muli Amaye’s de­but nov­el, A House With No An­gels (Cro­cus Press 2019), was imag­ined years be­fore it was pub­lished.

Dr Amaye, who was born and grew up in Man­ches­ter, UK, be­gan to ex­plore her iden­ti­ty as a child of mixed her­itage (British and Niger­ian) “in the stark white­ness of a fam­i­ly, church, school, and com­mu­ni­ty at an ear­ly age.”

Amaya had al­ready be­gun writ­ing se­ri­ous­ly when the in­spi­ra­tion to write A House With No An­gels came out of the blue while she was at­tend­ing Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty.

One day, while on cam­pus, she stopped in front of a build­ing fac­ing a lo­cal park (All Saints) when a blue plaque, “high up and bare­ly no­tice­able,” caught her at­ten­tion. She looked clos­er to read that the plaque com­mem­o­rat­ed the Pan-African Con­gress held in Man­ches­ter in 1945.

Amaye, for whom “writ­ing is like breath­ing, bring­ing life to life,” and a re­lease from strong emo­tion, knew she want­ed to write about this meet­ing, which was a pre­cur­sor for the in­de­pen­dence of sev­er­al colo­nial coun­tries. Al­though her nov­el A House with No An­gels “end­ed up some­where com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent” from where it be­gan, Amaye knew even then she would be writ­ing a woman’s sto­ry “in three dif­fer­ent voic­es, from three dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions. My women are brash, loud, and un­apolo­getic—flawed, dar­ing, and per­fect.”

These ear­ly ru­mi­na­tions deep­ened, and Amaye’s short sto­ries on “be­long­ing, women’s voic­es, mi­gra­tion, mem­o­ry, fam­i­ly dy­nam­ics, se­crets women in the di­as­po­ra” were pub­lished in an­tholo­gies and lit­er­ary jour­nals, such as Mid­night & In­di­go Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zine, USA, and the re­cent spec­u­la­tive fic­tion an­thol­o­gy, Glimpse, UK, edit­ed by Leone Ross.

If writ­ing is breath­ing to Amaye, who gained a PhD in Cre­ative Writ­ing at Lan­cast­er Uni­ver­si­ty, UK (and has taught cre­ative writ­ing in the UK, Kur­dis­tan in North­ern Iraq, and T&T since 2006), teach­ing comes a close sec­ond.

She finds teach­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) “in­cred­i­ble”, mar­vel­ling at the di­ver­si­ty and unique styles of writ­ers who at­tend the Mas­ters of Fine Arts pro­gramme.

“I love to see how young writ­ers see the world, how they want to ex­press that and find the best way to help them bloom.”

Ex­cerpt from A House With No An­gels (Cro­cus Press 2019) by Muli Amaye, with all per­mis­sions grant­ed ex­clu­sive­ly to The Sun­day Guardian WE mag­a­zine.

Ade

So, my hus­band has gone. Be­fore I lift­ed the tele­phone to my ear and be­fore Fun­mi greet­ed me, I sensed that some­thing had hap­pened. I do not know how many hours I have been sit­ting in this chair, but my body is stiff. My room looks strange to me as though I have just en­tered some­where I do not know. James is dead. He is gone. If it had not been for that man, Sha! But what am I say­ing? Did he force me to come to this place?

The jour­ney-o! How I sur­vived it I do not know. When we ar­rived in La­gos port I thought I would pass out. The smell-o! Aiy-aiy-aiy! The ship was so large. I had nev­er seen any­thing so big in my life. But, of course, I was young and ex­cit­ed. I was more con­cerned with look­ing over my shoul­der to make sure that I had not been fol­lowed. I do not think I shed one tear at the thought of leav­ing my home.

It was not as dif­fi­cult as we thought it would be for me to slip in­to James’s car at the edge of the vil­lage. When Fun­mi and I reach the Iroko tree, the women’s tree, I look up. It is as though the moon is im­paled on its high­est branch. Ear­li­er the chil­dren were play­ing, as they do at full moon, plac­ing bro­ken chalk and chi­na around each oth­er to cre­ate moon-ba­bies that lit­ter the floor. I grip Fun­mi’s hand, sud­den­ly fright­ened.

‘What if he does not turn up-o? What will I do? I will die.’

‘Sis­tah, I beg-o, you do not need to do this. It will be well. Ma­ma will un­der­stand.’

‘But Fun­mi, I love him. Can you not be hap­py for me?’

‘But, sis­tah, he is so old?’

‘What do you mean? He is twen­ty-five. Just eight years more than me.’

‘Yes, a whole eight years. What will his job be in Eng­land? Do you think he can look af­ter you? Will he still dri­ve for his gov­ern­ment?’

I try to let go of her hand, but she grips me tight. The air is still, thick. The scent of evening rides on top of it. Sat­u­rat­ing my sens­es. Pep­per soup is mixed with char­coal and the vil­lage la­trines. The riv­er is glint­ing as the moon whis­pers its se­crets in a thou­sand voic­es to its ebb and flow.

Fun­mi be­gins to cry, qui­et­ly. We hear the thrum-thrum of the car’s en­gine as it loops around the vil­lage. My heart leaps and my in­sides tight­en, and I know I am do­ing the right thing. The head­lights cre­ate shad­ows of us that reach up in­to the branch­es. Stretch­ing for the moon. We hide be­hind the tree. Just in case. Just in case it is some­body else. Just in case it is my pa­pa re­turn­ing. James pulls up right be­side us, dri­ves over the thick, knob­bled roots.

‘Ade, hur­ry up. I saw you. Come on, quick.’

‘I’m com­ing. I’m com­ing.’

I turn to Fun­mi. I can­not see her, but I can feel her. Her fear is try­ing to hold on to me. To stop me from leav­ing.

‘Re­mem­ber, Fun­mi, you do not know any­thing. Promise me again that you will not tell. Promise me.’

In the back of my mind I know that I am sen­tenc­ing her. When Pa­pa re­turns he will beat her. If Ma­ma has not ban­ished her be­fore then. Her own ma­ma, my aun­ty, will take plea­sure in our down­fall. But there is noth­ing I can do. I must go.

I climb in­to the back­seat. The car smells of leather and to­bac­co. It smells of James. He switch­es off the head­lights and we dri­ve away with the moon rid­ing on the bon­net. I dare to look up one more time. I think I can make out Fun­mi. She is stand­ing, her hand over her mouth as though to stop her­self shout­ing out. Mud hous­es and the con­crete school shim­mer, like a mi­rage in the desert. I do not cry.

When we have trav­elled for some time James says, ‘Ade, sit up now and look like some­body.’

I sit as I have seen Pa­pa sit many times in the back of that big, black car. I would like to ride up front with James, but I do not know how to ask him. In­stead I breathe him in un­til I feel dizzy with the fumes.

‘Tell me again, James, where will we live?’

‘I’ve told you half a dozen times. I need to con­cen­trate. Do you want us to be am­bushed?’

Of course, I did not. But at that time, I could not imag­ine who would want to am­bush us. Es­pe­cial­ly if we were in a white man’s car. Be­long­ing to the For­eign Of­fice. I was too young to un­der­stand. But I did not wish to ir­ri­tate James. We were go­ing on an ad­ven­ture. We were start­ing our new life. We would mar­ry and have our ba­by and live in James’s Eng­land. I lay my head on my lug­gage and slept.

Eliz­a­beth

I feel like I’m in a movie and I should be swoon­ing over the frig­ging so­fa or some­thing. Maybe that’s what I should be do­ing. But then that doesn’t make sense be­cause my dad is, was, Ola’s dad so he would be in the same state. Ex­cept that he’s a man so he’d have to show his grief in a dif­fer­ent way. Shep­herd’s pie. That’s what I’m sup­posed to be mak­ing. And cau­li­flower cheese.

‘What are you say­ing, sis­tah? I can’t hear you. Are you count­ing?’

‘No. I’m think­ing a bit out loud. Why would I be count­ing?’

On and on. It’s ob­vi­ous I’m not talk­ing to him, I’m just try­ing to sort things out.

‘Have you spo­ken to Tosan again? Did you man­age to get her?’

‘No sis­tah, she has to trav­el from War­ri to Benin. I will try lat­er or she will call me.’

The pain in my head’s get­ting worse. My dad’s dead. Our dad’s dead. But he hadn’t been dy­ing, he’d been ill. Ill and dy­ing are not the same thing. What do you do next when your dad has died? I re­al­ly don’t have a clue. How should I be feel­ing? Swoon­ing doesn’t re­al­ly hap­pen any­more. I won­der what the mod­ern equiv­a­lent is. Punch­ing things? Run­ning amok? That’s a good word. But not re­al­ly a death word. Maybe I’m sup­posed to be sit­ting down in the lounge with the cur­tains drawn and neigh­bours bring­ing food? That’s how it used to be. I re­mem­ber. The old la­dy across the road died. I was about nine. I’d nev­er liked her. She had a strange face and would stand at her gate all the time. She tried to talk but her mouth dropped and drib­bled and we made up sto­ries about her. How she was a witch who cast spells on lit­tle kids she didn’t like. But when she died all the neigh­bours closed their cur­tains. I stood be­hind our hedge and watched them tak­ing pans and cake tins to her fam­i­ly. Even mum took a pan of stew. It went on for days. John Sin­clair, who lived two doors down, said if we didn’t close our cur­tains and take nice food she’d come and stare in our win­dows at night-time and give the evil eye to peo­ple who’d laughed at her and if they looked at her their face would drop. He al­so said his mum had gone and seen her in the cof­fin. She was on the din­ing room ta­ble. Her face was prop­er, he said. Smooth and straight. And she had no toes. I wet the bed that night. On the day of her fu­ner­al we had to dress up in our best clothes and stand out­side when the cof­fin came out. I stood be­hind my mum and closed my eyes.”

Ola’s putting the phone in my hand, I hadn’t heard it ring. It’s Dia and I say, ‘My dad’s dead’ and she puts the phone down.

–End of ex­cerpt

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the 2023 NGC Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days.

Web­site: www.iras­room.org

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