Dinaw Mangestu "An Honest Exit", from The New Yorker
This story is an sensational tale of a a school teacher's father and his journey from war-ridden Sudan to Europe. It is told from the main character's son's point of view. He is telling his students his father's tale as it is shortly after his death.
The tale starts with a young man journeying from a persecuting government from Ethiopia to Sudan. In Sudan, the father makes friends with a gentleman by the name of Abrahim who helps him with a job and board. The young man trys to repay Abrahim for all the good he has done for him. Abrahim keeps promising him he will get his payback.
It is eventually found out that he wants the young man to travel in cargo, on a ship to Europe for a better life, and once he arrives he will seek asylum for him and his wife. His wife is Abrahim's daughter a young girl the young man has never met. After enduring complete hell, although he prepared for it, including drinking his own urine for fluid retention, he arrives in Italy. From there he goes to England but has not made it there himself. A part of him is left back in Sudan. He is not the same man he once was. Abrahim never got his daughter to Europe but the young man did repay for the good he endured while in Sudan by leaving his happiness there.
I really enjoyed this short story. I was full of great detail that made the reader imagine themself in the main character's shoes. It was like watching it on a screen with the vivid descriptions of where he was and where he was going. Some of the metaphors were powerful too. Like "a jail that will seem like heaven" and phrases like "everything here is shit, even the sand." They conveyed a point in an unconventional and interesting way.
Another thing that struck me was the reverse of the traditional "better life" story. The young man did not endure a hardship and get repaid with the bounty and wealth of the new world - instead he lost his dignity and pride and hated the world he ended up in. And yet, some good came out of the whole scenario of which you don't realize until much later. He had a son, who waas a school teacher and who seemed to have made it in the new world.
I particularly enjoyed how the horrors were not glassed over, nor were they exploited as to take away from the story. I like the fact that the storyteller, the son, mentions that he did have to make up parts to "fill in the gaps." It makes you wonder how much is true, and how much is an interpretation from the son.
In all, I would have one critique for the story which is that it has a lot of setting up that could be cut in order to make it a more compact package. What I mean by this is that at the beginning the storyteller is explaining the students and the school and then gets into the story. The introduction moves quite slowly as if he trying to ease the reader into that world of Sudan.
But all in all, a great read. I learned some things and I think I took away a lot from this different interpretation of the typical immigrant story. I would definitely reccommend this to anyone interested in a well told, journey-type of story.
Click on the link to read it now:
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction
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