Jane Rosenthal explores the complexity of the everyday in Imraan Coovadia’s third novel High low in-between by Imraan Coovadia (Umuzi)
Imraan Coovadia is turning into a national, or international, treasure as a novelist.
Not only is he thoughtful and interesting, full of ideas, deeply pondered, but he also has a firm grip on his narrative style in this his complex but engaging third novel.
The first two were The Wedding and Green-Eyed Thieves. It is possible to read High Low In-between straight through as a story.
Who the devil was it who killed Arif while his wife, Nafisa, was out at the caterer’s fetching the feast for his farewell party? Surely it wasn’t suicide? He had reasons to be unhappy, but was not, not at all, the kind of man who would do himself in. This inner core of narrative is gently suspended in a web of connected concerns which Coovadia weaves, continuously and easily.
It certainly is easy to read although the questions he deals with are serious and at the heart of our lives. The novel’s inscrciption is from Dante: ‘you, a shadow, see a shadow …” and this is perhaps the most persistent thread in this story of Nafisa and Arif: our perception of the world around us, how we make decisions or come to them, how tenuous our understanding.
Arif’s death is the pivotal event — there is certainly an element of the murder mystery here — and in unravelling it we come to know Arif, a man of steady integrity, a research scientist and academic whose work has been focused on identifying an African strain of the Aids virus.
For his dedication he gets little thanks or government support in a new era in which denialism begins to dominate. Although he has been a leader in the liberation struggle, outspoken, brave, principled, he finds himself ousted and even prosecuted for simply continuing to serve the people. It is an extraordinary turn of events.
We do not hear Arif’s own voice on these matters, but see him through the eyes of his wife, his son, Shakeer, his protégé, Govin Mackay.
Nafisa is a Mumbai – trained dermatologist, with a practice in West Street, Durban, and a post at the King Edward Hospital. It is the inner working of her consciousness that is brought close-up for the reader, plainly narrated in the third person, with frequent recourse to free indirect style in which we slip into Nafisa’s thoughts.
Coovadia creates an urban existence in which her main concerns are material and personal.
There are few references to natural phenomena, but many to handbags, perfume, shoes and significantly more to Nafisa’s relationships with three women. These are her maid and housekeeper, Estella, whom she both loves and resents, a patient, Millicent Dhlomo, and a nurse, Rose.
Through these three women Nafisa, like Arif, wrestles with the Aids virus. She tries to persuade Estella to be tested, Millicent develops full-blown Aids and Rose, the nurse, is both indifferent and shockingly malicious.
All the rich complexity of life in Nafisa’s corner in Durban plays out here. It is after a probably deadly experience with the nurse that Nafisa suddenly makes a decision. ‘Soon she would resign her post with the province. Soon she would rid herself of Estella and Estella’s troubles. She would unload all her burdens. She would sell the house and leave the country behind. She would find out who had murdered her husband. She was fed up with this in-between condition.”
Coovadia examines various ethical issues; in the realm of the medical he looks at sourcing organs for transplants and also at the larger question of the ethics of a government which refuses to fund research and treatment for a deadly pandemic.
Then there is the matter of ooplung, undeclared or hidden money, known by other names in other communities.
Nafisa, born into a poor family in Gaborone, begins at some stage to take this monetary precaution against an uncertain future.
Though her marriage has been a long and happy one, which Nafisa thinks ‘— for all its faults, was a conversation which included all the topics of existence”, she does not even discuss the ooplung with Arif, so is astounded when she finds he has authorised its use.
In the shadow of both parents is Shakeer, sometimes called Sharky, whose return from foreign photographic shoots to the little backwater of Musgrave provides a counterbalance to the Arif-Nafisa motif.
He is notably less successful in his personal relationships, only just beginning to find his own self. Far less outrageously funny than Green-Eyed Thieves, this novel has its moments.
At one of the gatherings of visitors after Arif’s death, there is a portrait sketch of Arif’s old friend, Jadwat: ‘There was just the suggestion of a smile remaining on his mouth — like one of the sleepers piled on each other in the crocodile farm — It indicated, Shakeer knew, not so much consciousness, or even its absence, but a readiness to strike.”
The talk is about racism and standards at the university, damage done to Indian lecturers’ cars. ‘Amongst Indians in Durban, who reserved the admiration for physicians once allotted to holy men, the controversy was considered to be the beginning of the end. For them the end was always beginning.”
Coovadia may poke fun but there is a serious heart to these questions as they affect both Arif and Nafisa. And all of us. This novel, comfortably situated in the plain and everyday, but also deliciously wry and sharp, will make its own place in the mind of the reader.