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I
Come from a Country by Tijan M. Sallah, Africa World Press, 2021
A Storehouse of Affection
Nibir K. Ghosh
If The Gambia as a nation
figures on the globe as “one of the world’s poorest and least-developed
countries,” according to a recent article in The Guardian, there may be much cause for
despair. As I leaf through the pages of Tijan M. Sallah’s latest poetry
collection I Come
from a Country, I can see a great deal of hope emanating from the
vigorous pen of The Gambia’s leading poet, writer, and critic. The very first
poem “I Come from a Country,” that gives the collection its title, shows how
Sallah negotiates the dark terrains of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, and
urban squalor through images and pictures of what he considers essentially
human. The opening lines of the poem, “I come from a country where the land is
small, / But our hearts are big,” immediately suggest that it is the people who
constitute a nation rather than geographical lines or boundaries. This is a
land where “every one knows your name / . . . Where poverty gnaws at our
heels, / But we have not given up hope / We continue to work.”
The collection’s recurring
image of the sun signifies hope eternal. Hope, for Sallah, is not a “thing with
feathers” as Emily Dickinson would have us imagine in her poem, “Hope is the
thing with Feathers,” but it is a reassurance that “rises daily with the sun.”
Life is difficult but with the resilience reminiscent of Hemingway’s Santiago,
the common folks of The Gambia believe that “a man can be destroyed but not
defeated”:
And if resilience were a person,
She will live in my country.
She will be a calloused-handed woman
In sun-drenched rice-fields,
With a child strapped on her back;
But with a love enormous as the sea.
. . . Where we still believe in such things as
Sweating with your hand,
And still remember God and family.
And still support the indigent,
And carry Hope like oysters,
Sun-peeping from their shells.
Though based in the USA,
Sallah’s intimate relationship with The Gambia remains deeply embedded in his
sensibility. It is not restricted to a mere poetic expression of “imaginary
homelands.” He seems to be carrying The Gambia within his heart and soul. If he
is eager to show his love and esteem for the people of his homeland, he is no
less vehement in offering his harsh indictment of tyrants like Yahya Jammeh who
brought untold misery to the subjects for whom he was elected to be their
custodian. Celebrating the overthrow that led to Jammeh’s exile, Sallah warns
his fellow Gambians in “Jammeh-Exit”:
The detractors of freedom prey
On the unfulfilled pledges to the poor . . .
We must not be fooled;
That history does not repeat itself.
But, damn well, it does, if
Those who guard the doors of liberty
Sleep like dunderheads at sunrise.
Sallah is equally unsparing
of leaders with dictatorial intent as is evident from the poem “Nasty Palaver
of Donald Duck,” where his target is Donald Trump. Infuriated by Trump’s
reference to natives of Africa as “people from the shit-hole continent,” Sallah
castigates the “insolence from a drake, holding the scepter” for creating
fissures in the most powerful democracy in the world with his hate-speeches
against immigrants and people of colour. Sallah desires to see the earth rid of
“such unbridled / Arrogance and greed” that cannot treat fellow human beings
with respect and dignity.
This slender collection of
thirty-two poems showcases amazing diversity and an encyclopaedic range of
topics that cover people and events, cultures and civilizations, society and
polity, calamities and pandemics. Poems like “Of India, I have hope for the
Sun” evoke the poet’s ability to travel in his mind to distant lands as a
cultural ambassador to share the message of freedom, peace, tolerance, and
prosperity that comes from recognizing the otherness of the other with empathy
and love. He imagines flying to India on the “chariot of his dreams” and,
“sitting by the Ganges and the Brahmaputra,” desires to “watch pilgrims sail
deep into their atman.”
Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals, he says:
That Mahatma, who taught the world
The enduring lesson of satyagraha.
Who knew that a spindle and a thread
Can defeat the depraved canons of Empire.
He visualizes Rabindranath Tagore sitting by “the date
palms of Santiniketan” and “proliferating the wisdom among gurus/ About the
enlightened path of Brahmo
Samaj.” The India of Sallah’s dreams corresponds with Tagore’s
vision of a “Heaven of Freedom”:
Of India, I have hope for the sun.
And of the rays of the sun,
Of the shadows of Dalits merging
with the Brahmins
In mutual empathy and regard;
Of the silhouettes of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians
Melding love into an unrecognizable whole.
Of the rich breaking bread with the poor
To form a circle of incestuous kindness.
Of men and women, breaking the miseries
Wrought by fate, to shape a virtuous destiny.
Sallah seems to value the
freedom of the individual as well as the collective. He derides the “Mending Wall”
syndrome and asks in his poem, “Walls”: “How can a country grow that erects
walls?” His rhetorical questions, in the same poem, “What would have happened
to Relativity, / If Einstein was
put in a cage? / What happens to caged children / When you set them free?”
demonstrate his innate concern for issues that we normally turn away from. He
castigates the gross materialism that has led humanity astray in the name of
modernity. He is disturbed by the yawning gulf between the roaring rich and the
utterly poor even in a land of plenty such as America. This is evident from his
poem “Washington,” in which he avers “You have seen the world’s perfections and
imperfections,” if you have seen the capital of the USA.
What makes this volume
noteworthy is the intrinsic humanity of the poet, allowing him to offer
exemplary tributes to the people he has loved, admired, adored, and revered.
The epigraph by Stephen Spender—“I think continually of those who were truly
great”—appended to the poem “Ballad for Mother” shows Sallah as a storehouse of
affection blended with gratitude. He concludes the poem with the lines:
Among the many greats I know,
My mother was truly great.
If your mind racks with doubt,
I wish you had met my mother.
No less effusive are his
remembrances of Dr. Lenrie Peters: “He loved the country like dolphins loved
its river”; Chinua Achebe: “We will remember you for your dreams to make Africa
fly”; and the Nobel Laureate for Literature Nadine Gordimer: “You loved truth
like your birth.”
In these grim times, when the
world continues to come to terms with the hazardous COVID-19 pandemic, Sallah
writes in “Season of Vengeance”:
It is the season when death visited
us
With a vengeance.
Corona crowned itself the king of the earth.
And we all prayed for the first time
For we were frightful.
We knew we had been careless
About things that really mattered.
The poem begins with the
description of the traumatic fear that King Corona created by emerging as the
great leveller that reduced to “a scandalous dungheap” all our “accumulated
knowledge” of dealing with pandemics. As “Hospitals roiled with the drama of
masks and ventilators” and “Mortuaries lay overwhelmed by / The rapid march of
death’s spell,” Sallah points out how a complacent world was sent into a spin
“by the scourge of the tiny” virus that wrought havoc on all fronts of human
territory: social, economic, and political. Citing the warning given by Greta
Thunberg, the young Swedish environmental activist, regarding the impending
existential crisis from climate change, the poem laments how the world, lost in
the funhouse of material greed and comfort, had to pay a heavy price:
We knew we had been careless
About things that really mattered.
Greta warned us, but, hey, did we listen
Earth is one; emissions must sink.
But the world blocked its ears,
And continued with business. Pests jumped,
And found free rein.
Arrogance, if not tempered, is poison for the world.
Sallah’s concern for the
environment that we notice in “Season of Vengeance” is not an isolated
instance. Many poems in the collection bring to the forefront his essential
sensitivity in approaching events and issues as a caring poet. In “Slaying A
Banjul Crocodile,” he shows his extreme displeasure when a group of children
launch a brutal attack on the helpless crocodile. The crocodile’s attempt to
defend itself makes the poet in Sallah remark: “one defenseless soul / Against
a mob is / Sinking David against Goliath. / It instilled not fear in the mob. /
It only spurred their excitement.” Likewise, a poem like “Moth” brings into
bold relief the satisfaction and happiness that come to him from saving the
life of the “blackish brown moth” trapped between the glass and wire gauze of a
window: “I thought of leaving it alone. / But I noticed that sometimes / Leaving
things alone may / End their fate.”
With a perfect rendering of
emotions in multiple forms—ballad, haiku, and free verse—I Come from a Country is
bound to command attention from both practitioners of poetry and lay readers.
The easy conversational tone used by Sallah in his poems should remind one of
Robert Frost who took pride in saying: “My poems talk.”
Dr. Nibir K. Ghosh, former Senior Fulbright Fellow 2003–4 at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, is UGC Emeritus Professor of English at Agra College, Agra, India. He is Chief Editor of Re-Markings (www.re-markings.com), an India-based international journal of English Letters in its twenty-first year of publication. He has authored or edited fifteen books that include Calculus of Power: Modern American Novel, Multicultural America: Conversations with Contemporary Authors, W. H. Auden: Therapeutic Fountain, Rabindranath Tagore: The Living Presence, Gandhi and His Soulforce Mission, and Beyond Boundaries: Reflections of Indian and U.S. Scholars, among others. His most recent work is Mirror from the Indus: Essays, Tributes and Memoirs.
Indeed a rich tribute to
the poet!
You've captured the theme
of hope and resilience and the likeness to Hemingway's eternally true "man
can be destroyed, not defeated" is commendable ... of anguish and desire for the home that was
... of political tyrants and their loudmouths ...
You have a very lucid
style of writing, Sir. It appears to be written so effortlessly ! I marvel at
your genius. So fortunate are the ones
who are your students.
More power to you, Sir. Please
keep sharing your analytical and perceptive writings more often. Let me learn
and grow under your wings --Dr. Ashoo Toor, Department of Agricultural
Journalism, Languages & Culture, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana.
***
It's really an illuminating experience for me to go through the review. you have done it with moving sympathy for the sufferers of racism. The lines you have quoted are powerful as they're born of struggles the working people wage in their every day life. --Dr. G.L. Gautam, HOD English, Lajpat Rai College, Sahibabad, Ghaziabad
***
I don't know much about
this writer Sallah but your Review has kindled a desire in me to read more
about him. I will certainly do so whenever I can. Excellent write up Sir.
Fabulous 👌👌--
Dr. Gunjan Chaturvedi, HOD English, BDK Girls College, Agra
***
Thank you Sir, for sharing such a
wonderful piece of your writing, & for introducing us to the beautiful
poems of Mr. Sallah that speak of his patriotism. His faith in love, hope &
humanity impresses us. His compassion for the poor helpless crocodile reminds us
of the great philosophy of "live, and let live." While he dares to
speak about the arrogant world leaders of their vain pride; his love &
gratitude towards India, Tagore & Mahatma Gandhi reveals his humbleness. I
really wonder what Mr. Sallah would be writing about the present times when the
whole world is at the verge of another world war. Thank you Sir for sharing
such a beautiful article full of wisdom. No doubt, I feel inspired &
motivated. Thank you Sir. 🙏—Dr.
Priti Verma is HOD English, P.C. Bagla College, Hathras
***
This article/review served as a window to Gambian literature to me. Tijan Sallah's poetry has been part of World Contemporary... too but this book is actually profound as it covers larger depth of issues faced by the country. I came to know about the "Shithole countries" remark for first time. Congratulations to you for another wonderful publication. -- Saurabh Agarwal, Entrepreneur and Literary enthusiast.
***
I read your review and I felt an urge of reading the whole work. The way you've portrayed everything is extremely insightful and at the same time tends to put forth the fact that it is merely our self created boundaries that set us apart... I, as a reader, felt strongly of how much atrocities is the world facing and how people are being fragmented at heart, forgetting that before anything else they are human beings... I haven't read the poetry but I can make out the voice of the people of Gambia and their suffering...
It is written in a quite understandable manner yet brings to light such complex issues and events with ease and serenity...Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read it. -- Ashna Taneja, BA I, DEI, Dayalbagh, Agra
