Afterlives, narrator, Abdul Razakgurnah, author; Damian Lynch, narrator
We all have a before and an after in our lives. This is expressed perfectly in this novel, as it uses the lives of three young men, in an India under the influence of Germany, and the sister that is the bridge that connects them all to define life there. In the simple lives of the characters, born into extreme deprivation caused by, among other things, poverty, superstition and illiteracy, on or about the turn of the 20th century, it was common, though cruel, practice for parents to sell their children into marriage, bondage or servitude to save themselves or other family members from starvation.
Each of the men featured, Khalifa, Ilyas and Hamza, are connected through Ilyas' sister, Afiya. Khalifa and his wife rescued Afiya from the abusive family she was left with when his friend Ilyas went away to join the German military, even though they had invaded India and friends and family were against the decision. Hamza also joined the German Army to escape from his life. After years of war, he returned, met and married Ilya' sister Afiya. Ilyas' whereabouts were unknown, at that time and remained so for years. Hamza and Afiya had one child whom they named after her brother, Ilyas. The young Ilyas was seemingly possessed by a spirit connected to Ilyas, and he discovers his uncle’s past, after many unsuccessful search efforts.
All of these characters have a before life that improves and then declines, and in some cases, improves again, but all are touched by personal pressure and tragedy, corruption and tyranny, as they struggle to survive in a world without many creature comforts or industrial advances. The author has captured the atmosphere and the history from the German occupation of India, all the way up to, and beyond the Holocaust, with authenticity, as he describes the atmosphere in India and what drove the people of India and and developed their social culture. The people in this novel are largely Muslims, and their devotion, or lack thereof, to the religion, as well as to the lack of real respect for women as other than commodities, is loud and clear.
Khalifa’s parents were an interracial couple. His friend Ilyas fought for Germany, prior to and during the Holocaust, and was practically a personal slave as a military aide, at one time, yet ironically, it was Germany that promoted hateful race laws for which he personally paid a price! From one war to the next, from the beginning to the middle of the century, the before and after of their lives…from poverty and bondage, from war to peace, from abuse to freedom, the reader's eyes are opened. The book is not an easy read with its stories that travel back-and-forth in time and from character to character, but it is so powerfully written, you can’t put it down. All of the characters' lives are thrown into chaos because of decisions made that are based on the limited information available to them, and their circumstances at the time. Survival, superstition, cruelty, ignorance, and opinion governed their lives. Everything clears up, in the end, as the threads knit together and one sees hope for the future.