1960s UGANDA. Hasan is struggling to run his family business following the sudden death of his wife. Just as he begins to see a way forward, a new regime seizes power, and a wave of rising prejudice threatens to sweep away everything he has built.
Present-day LONDON. Sameer, a young, high-flying lawyer, senses an emptiness in what he thought was the life of his dreams. Called back to his family home by an unexpected tragedy, Sameer begins to find the missing pieces of himself, not in his future but in the past, he never knew. Moving between two continents and several generations over a troubled century, We Are All Birds of Uganda is a multi-layered, moving and immensely resonant novel about love, loss, and what it means to find a home.
The first time I heard about this book, I was intrigued by the title. I mean, who wouldn’t be? It was either about the birds of Uganda or something, but it was definitely to do with Uganda. The book introduces us to a story set in two time periods, the current times and the 70s during the rule of Idi Amin Dada.
Sameer is the son of Ugandan Asians expelled from Uganda in the 70s by Idi Amin. His future is on the up and up. He works hard and is a successful lawyer in London. However, his work-related pressure is added onto by the pressure from his family to join the family business in Leicester.
While we are following Sameer’s story in the present day, we are introduced to Hasan, Sameer’s grandfather. We learn about his life and how he is rebuilding himself after the death of his wife. We learn all this through the letters he is writing to his late first wife.
The conflict between the Ugandans and Asian Ugandans in the past is echoed by the racism Sameer experiences in present-day Britain. While Sameer wrestles with his demanding job and contemplates a move to Singapore that will devastate his Muslim parents, Hasan grieves his dead first wife and continues to struggle with loving his new wife and with his business even as Idi Amin seizes power. The future feels uncertain for both of them and Zayyan uses their narratives to explore the fragility of different forms of belonging, an aspect that is integral to humanity. Citizenship is an unstable experience for Hasan as he knows at any time it can be removed. And Sameer keeps thinking about how he can belong to a culture that anytime might reject him. When a colleague of his excludes him from a party because ‘you lot don’t drink,’ Sameer becomes painfully aware of differences.
While he works extremely hard, the book opens with him working into the wee hours of the morning, having slept in his office a couple of times, his colleagues assume that he is getting ahead because of the colour of his skin or his faith. As such, he suffers numerous slights at their hands.
The themes explored in this book are the search for identity, racism (subtle and outright racism), British colonialism, and immigration. The themes are embedded in every part of the narrative, making it seamless. From the microaggressions that Sameer experiences in the corporate world to his relationships with friends from school to the distrust with which Asian Ugandans and Ugandans view each other (in the past and present-day storylines).
The thing about this book is that none of the main characters was explicitly good or bad. The characters had shades of grey and the conflict was exclusively internal.
The use of letters to tell the historical timeline has been done multiple times before, but Zayyan put an original spin on it, and it’s merged well by the end of the novel.
Zayyan writes Sameer’s experience of Uganda as a travelogue, a romance, and a journey of self-discovery that veers close to sentimentality. The novel then captures how exiled Asians and black Africans are entangled in Uganda’s history, caught between the British colonisers of its past and the Chinese developers that are its future. Amid all this, the romance between Sameer and Maryam, the granddaughter of the servant who was gifted Hasan’s house when they were exiled, is almost a miracle, something good that could be salvaged from the trauma. But Zayyan doesn’t allow that easy relief, making her a sadist of the highest order. The anxieties that have been simmering throughout the book finally surface at its end. It’s a daring way to end the book, and undeniably powerful.
This book is an original take on an under-told story. And, it reveals a universal truth about the human drive to belong, to migrate, create communities, and obligation to family. This truly is a fantastic, insightful debut that shows the historical repercussion of British colonialism, the influence of family ties, and the pressures of modern society.
It is an epic novel in terms of historical, geographic, and cultural scope. The story covers so much ground without ever becoming confused or lost during its 360-pages. This is the first work of fiction by Hafsa Zayyan, co-winner of the inaugural #Merky Books New Writers’ Prize. She is an author to watch.
Responses