Ours Are the Streets Sunjeev Sahota

More from Transitions one

Out of Tune’ A V Dolven

Exile

In the Descent myths Demeter is separated from Eurydice, Isis from Osiris and Orpheus from Eurydice. The story of Cupid and Psyche is also a tale of separation and sometimes of unity. It warns of the analytical frame of mind that destroys synthesis - analysis kills and synthesis brings to life - that Psyche uses when she looks at her lover through the outward rather than inward eye. Analysis breeding paralysis we might say. This understanding of the myth illustrates Cartesian dualism of eighteenth century’s so called Enlightenment that separated mind from body, subject from object, consciousness from unconscious, humanity from the divine, heart from head - splitting human beings down the middle.                        

  Yet this  psychological characteristic of twenty first century mind is not as immediately apparent as the plight of an immigrant cut off from much he loves and knows.  Where Nikolaj Larsen’s film shows the hope of migrants for the Promised Land, Sanjeev Sahota in novel Ours Are the Streets shows disillusion and despair of a second generation immigrant’s uncertainty with identity and belonging. Yet he takes us under his protagonist’s skin teasing us with an empathy we feel for this outsider - split down the middle, caught in a kind of limbo-land between much he loves and despises - whose action we can’t condone.

    In Ours Are the Streets the feeling of longing and loss, though never self-pitying, is painfully acute. It speaks of an exile more enormous than that from countries or being sandwiched between cultures. The compulsive beauty of Sahota’s flowing prose where the ordinary is bold and highlighted by something extra, but ultimately disappoints, because of the protagonist’s own cultural isolation, is raw reminder that it doesn’t matter how far we’ve travelled. The amount of loneliness or un-belonging we can unburden doesn’t equal the miles.

This is brought home in the film Welcome about a Kurdish boy who has travelled four thousand miles and now wants to swim the Channel, like Leander, to reach his girlfriend who is betrothed to another. And yet, remarks his trainer, he himself cannot even cross the road to reach his estranged wife.

What follows are extracts from Sanjeev Sahota’s haunting novel Ours Are the Streets published this year by Picador.

                                                             

Extracts from

Ours Are the Streets

     Sunjeev Sahota

            Picador,  2011.

Second generation immigrant in two worlds.

We were meant to become part of these streets. They were meant to be ours as much as anyone’s. That’s what you said you worked for, came for. Were it worth it, Abba? Because I sure as hell don’t know. I used to just slam the door and stand with my back to it, wondering, What end? Whose end? When is this fucking end? Because what’s the point, man? What’s the point in dragging your life across entire continents if by the time it’s worth it you’re already at the end? Ameen. (p 70)

‘Honestly, Tauji. We don’t really know what we’re about, I guess. Who we are, what we’re here for’. But that weren’t nothing like what I wanted to say. Even to me it just sounded like the usual crap I’d been hearing for years. I wanted to talk about why I felt fine rooting for Liverpool, in a quiet way, but not England. I wanted to talk about why I found myself defending Muslims against white and whites against Muslims. About why I loved Abba but had still wished him dead. But I couldn’t think of how to say anything I wanted. ‘I mean, we’re the ones stuck in the middle of everything. Like we’re not sure whose side we’re meant to be on, you know?’

(p137)

Acceptance.

A boy in long blue robes were looking at me. He were crouched down at the side of the road, cleaning his teeth with a stick and spitting into the sand. I were expecting him to come begging, but he didn’t. He just spat again into the small frothy puddle of dirt he’d made, then got up and walked off. I think that were the first time I’d been on a busy street and no one had hassled me for money. Maybe it were my own robes and loose turban, my beard and way of standing, but whatever it were no one sempt to take me for a valetiya. I’d changed. (p192)

Isolation and connection.

The nights would feel so cold over there, like the cold wanted to settle in my bones and make me its home. It’s funny, it might’ve been the most isolated place I’ve ever been, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt more connected to the world. Not in the packed streets of Sheff or at uni, not in England really, where I always felt that even though there were all the rush and noise you could want, I weren’t actually ever bumping up against life, instead just constantly moving out of its way. (p202)

People don’t even think about that, do they? That there are different types of soldiers. That Faisal were different to Aaqil. But Faisal understood. He knew about love for his people and he knew that were the best thing in the world to feel because then their pain becomes as real to you as yours, and for the first time you realise you’re not on your own. (p236)

Heartbreak.

‘I need to wash, don’t I? The sun’s gonna be up soon.’

‘Right. Well, in that case,’ she went on, putting on a happy voice, ‘shall we pray together? I don’t think I’ve done the early prayer once since Noor was born.’

‘We can’t. Men and women can’t pray together. You just go back to sleep.’

‘That hasn’t stopped us before.’

‘This isn’t before. Didn’t you hear me? Just go back to bed.’ (p286)