MISSING OUT – Leila Aboulela

This is a story about love, culture and alienation. Majdy and Samra have different experiences when they leave Sudan for London. 

Majdy goes to London for studies in college. In his first term, he is distressed about being away from home. He calls his mum and his throat tightens when he hears her voice. He cries and tells her the work is difficult and he has failed his qualifying exam. His mother dismisses this as nonsense and asks him to resit the exam. 

Majdy is a brilliant young man and he passed his secondary school certificate exams with flying colours.

His life in London is tough at first since he experiences homesickness. Later, he loves life in London and talks of getting a work permit once his student visa expired since he does not plan to return to Sudan.

For Samra, his young wife, the opposite happens. After Majdy complained about his homesickness, his mother raised an alarm that he needed a wife. When he came home in June, he returned to London in the summer with his new bride Samra. Unlike him at first, Samra is enthusiastic like a tourist. She enjoys the easy life in London, puts on weight and writes happy letters home. 

However, this fervour and zest is short-lived. Soon the days become monotonous and she grows weary and jaded of the surrounding and the routine.

“She was like the holidaymaker who was getting a little bit tired of her exotic surrounding.”

Life in London is worlds apart from that in Sudan, quite literally. When Majdy had the highest marks in his secondary school certificate, his father slaughtered a sheep and they had a big celebration. They even performed rituals with burning incense ostensibly to ward off envy and malice.

Meanwhile, the government in Sudan is despotic. Despite the university students’ insurrection, the opposition party leader Mahmoud Muhammad Taha is executed after being accused of apostasy. This is just one of the many ills the government has committed against its people.

Women in Sudan dress conservatively in traditional attire such as tope. In London, some Sudanese women have embraced change and comfortably strut around in tight trousers, while smoking cigarettes. 

Although Samra is excited when she first arrives in London, she remains averse to change, choosing instead to hold on to traditional values, much to Majdy's dismay and disapproval. She quarrels him for missing prayers, lacking a prayer mat and being ignorant on the direction of the Ka'ba. She suggests that he should skip Friday classes to pray on Fridays. Majdy calls her stupid.

He makes up for his insolence by taking her to a mosque, buying her a prayer mat and a prayer booklet. She attempts to influence him to be more prayerful. She considers prayers crucial for protection, grace and guidance. 

On the other hand, Majdy deems it a distraction, an interruption and an inconvenience. Samra expresses her disapproval of Majdy's indifference towards prayers, while she herself remains “keen to preserve this practice even though she was away from home.”

Majdy considers life in London civilized. There is certainty that one can build their future unlike Sudan where progress and success in life are hindered by many speed bumps such as coups, new laws and lack of essentials such as petrol.

Samra's uncompromising predisposition and her preoccupying thoughts of home and attachment to Sudan obscure her from reality and she pictures a perfect future with Majdy in Sudan. In her fantasy, Majdy is a well paid lecturer and they live together in their own house. They discipline their children and lead a carefree life enjoying an occasional cup of tea and gossiping with neighbours, about political fiasco among other things.

The reality in Sudan according to Majdy is quite different from Samra’s fanciful thinking. Lecturers are underpaid; there is corruption, lack of basic commodities, unreliable electricity, idleness and unproductivity. People waste time arguing about politics.

“Every lecturer is defined by his political beliefs, every promotion depending on one’s political inclination and not the amount of research he’s done or the papers he’s published.”

Majdy has a contemptuous attitude towards Sudan and he considers it a large, crazy country wallowing in backwardness. Samra on the other hand approves of the people’s values such as kindness and respect. She cites the incident where Majdy's mother hiked a lift from one benevolent young man who obliges, takes a detour and refers to her respectfully as Aunt.

In London, life never stops and this continuity is alien to Samra. When it rains, people get out their umbrellas and go on their way. In Sudan, the July rain makes silver puddles. This means there would be no work and no school and cars would be stranded in flooded streets. Majdy reminds her about the poor drainage system, potholes, stinking stagnant water and prevalence of diseases caused by mosquitoes.

In Khartoum power outages are a part of everyday life and the citizens are accustomed to misery of life. In London, a power outage would be in the headlines and on TV as it is unheard of. Life is conveniently controlled by reliable supply of power, electricity, traffic, lights and trains.

Samra remains intransigent. She is not excited about the opportunities in London, the people’s efficiency and decency, reliable services of ambulances and fire engines, convenience in accessing cash, and decent treatment of animals and birds such as ducks and pigeons in the parks.

Majdy is bored by her illogical refusal to change her views. Her intransigence blocks her progress, blinds her to the benefits she could gain, choices and doors to limitless opportunities.

“She was stuck in the past, adoring Sudan and missing out on the present.”

Majdy is happy about life in London but Samra is aloof and she seats at home with a frozen heart. She is immobile, hungry and thirsty. He enrols her for a word-processing course thinking the homesickness was compounded by idleness. She, however, flanks out when her tutor suggests that she must be relieved living in London away from war and famine in Sudan.

Finally, Majdy compromises and allows her to return to Sudan much to her delight.

“She left, easily, so easily as if she had never truly arrived, never laid down roots that needed pulling out.”

Preoccupation with the past and refusal to change one’s views may lead to missing out on opportunities presented by the present. Such a person risks being stuck in the past. On the other hand, immigrants may also suffer cultural and psychological alienation in Western countries. An alien cultural and social environment fills them with nostalgia for their homeland. 

Leila Aboulela tries to paint a positive picture of her country and her religion, the main components of her values. She does this through Samra, an uncompromising young Muslim woman who finds power and refuge in prayer and religion rather than escaping it.

Samra is strong and self made and does not allow Majdy to alter her beliefs.

Aboulela seems to suggest that alienated Africans may also miss out on their own identity and cultural values.

SAMPLE KCSE ESSAY QUESTION ON MEMORIES WE LOST - MISSING OUT 

Referring to Leila Abouleila’s Missing Out, write an essay to show some of the problems facing developing African countries.

 

Difficulty in accessing services

• Majdy's mother makes several trips to the Central Post Office, sits for hours on the wooden benches and sits for hours in the stifling heat (Pg 108)
• Majdy has to beg Professor Singh, a lecturer of topology, for a reference letter, while on a frantic chase for a grant to do a postgraduate research (Pg 109)

 

Lack of petrol

• Majdy's mother waits for hours for a taxi/bus but none comes – petrol shortage. She is forced to hike a lift from a young man. (Pg 115)
• People in Sudan sit in petrol station queues all day (Pg 113).
• No petrol to get to the Souk of Umdurman. (Pg 114)

 

Poverty

• Barefooted children sell chewing gum, hairpins and matches. (Pg 108)
• Presence of beggars at the mosque in Khartoum (Pg 108)

 

Injustice/Poor governance

• Students demonstrate against proposed execution of opposition leader. (Pg 109)
• The students are stopped from reaching the market centre to avert an eruption of a riot protesting many grievances owing to older pains caused by poor leadership. (Pg 109)
• Sudan is bedeviled by coups and new laws (Pg 113).
• Job promotion depends on ones political inclination and not the amount of research done or papers published (Pg 114)

 

Poor wages/salary

• Doctors strike (Pg 113) an indication of poor pay
• University lecturers are paid poorly – cannot afford to pay for an apartment. This leads to corruption

Corruption 

• One has to steal or accept bribes in order to afford some necessities.  (corruption) (Pg 114).

Poor infrastructure (roads) (Pg 115)

• Roads have poor drainage systems and potholes
• When it rains there are silver puddles, vehicles are stranded islands in the flooded streets
• Days later, stagnant water still stinks
• The water is a breeding ground for mosquitoes that spread diseases.

Unreliable electricity

• No electricity for the fan
• Electricity cut at Samra’s uncle’s home (Pg 115)
• Electricity cut is an everyday event in Sudan – soggy food rots in defrosted fridges. Majdy resignedly concludes that it is part of the misery of life in Sudan (Pg 116).

 

War and Famine

• Samra's teacher talks about war and famine in Sudan (Pg 118).

 

Don't miss out. Join the conversation. 

Between Majdy and Samra, who is missing out?

NEXT: No Need to Lie-Rolf Schmid

See analyses of all stories in Memories we Lost here.

THE HANDSOMEST DROWNED MAN IN THE WORLD ANALYSIS 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez utilizes magical realism in this short story to highlight the transformative power of imagination. Great ideas that spark change in the world are as a result of imagination.

In perceiving things, we usually create our own reality. For example to the children, the drowned man was first an empty ship, a whale and even a play object. This is the children’s imagination which we shall compare with the women’s imagination of the drowned man.

The drowned man is described as being a larger-than-life sort of mythical figure. He weighed more than any dead men they had ever known and was taller than all the men.

He earns great admiration from the women of the village. When they finish cleaning him, they are left in awe.

“Not only was he the tallest, strongest, most virile and best built man they had ever seen though they were looking at him, there was no room for him in their imagination.”

They were strongly attracted by his size and beauty. They imagined that his house would have the widest doors, highest ceiling and strongest floor … and his wife would have been the happiest woman. In their pre occupation, they imagine the drowned man had the ability to work exceptionally hard that springs would burst among the rocks enabling him to plant flowers on the cliff. They compare him to their men who dismiss them as being powerless and impotent. They compare the drowned man to mythical characters such as Estevanico and Lautaro.  

As much as they admire his physical attributes, they sympathize with him about the sad life he must have lived. As they dragged his huge body on the floor they can’t help but imagine how bothersome it was to be that big. He had to walk through door sideways, cracking his head on crossbeams and declining to sit on furniture fearing he may break them.

Their imagination shifts from a powerful man to a defenseless being “so much like their men that the first furrow of tear opened in their eyes”. They now view poor Esteban as the most destitute, most peaceful and most obliging man on earth. They weep and sob in sympathy.

They are, however, jubilant when they learn that he is not from the neighboring village.

The men do not share the same admiration for Esteban as the women. They may even feel a tinge of jealousy and “mistrust in their liver”. There is change of heart later since they also come to admire his beauty and sincerity.

Just as the women worked collectively in sewing clothes for drowned man the village becomes united in a common vision when planning a magnificent funeral for the drowned stranger. They bring many flowers and even choose relatives for him.

“Through him all the inhabitants of the village became kinsmen.”

A great person has a transformational effect on his /her admirers. The villagers had grown indifferent as a result of habit and did not go out of their way to make their unexciting, aloof lives better. 

Through Esteban they become aware “of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards and the narrowness of their dreams”. The greatness, beauty and splendour of the drowned man arouse a desire for self improvement in the villagers.

“They also know that everything would be different from now then.”

Since the drowned man is dead, he does not influence them directly but rather the change emanates from within the villagers. They realize that only they are obligated to modify their bland, meaningless lives. A man that is truly great can inspire change and arouse the passion for self improvement in others. 

Most people who inspire the world are dead.

Just like the children’s perception of the drowned man changes from a ship to a whale to a play thing and the villagers’ perception of him changes, so do their minds change arousing a passion to transform their lives and their village.

The village is united and has a common goal of communal development. As much as the women admire Esteban with his mystical prowess; they realize that only they could bring change and not a mythical stranger. They aspire to achieve extraordinary feats in their own reality

This village is desolate and lifeless with no flowers, no garden, a base cliff, wind and sea.

The villagers are now united in a bid to put great efforts into digging for springs among the stones and planting flowers on the cliff. They also plan to build houses with wider doors, higher ceilings and stronger floors and paint their houses gay colors in memory of Esteban

There are many outstanding people with admirable traits or uncanny abilities that inspire the world but change must come from within us.

There is no point in living an average life.

SAMPLE MEMORIES WE LOST ESSAY: THE HANDSOMEST DROWNED MAN IN THE WORLD BY GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ 

Write an essay to demonstrate how Esteban helps to transforms the village, making reference to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.

 

NEXT: Stones Bounce on Water by Dilman Dila

See analyses of all stories in Memories we Lost here.