I was born on the banks of the Rukarara, but I have no memory of it. My memories come from my mother.
The Rukarara flows in my imagination and my dreams. I was just a few months old when my family left its shores. My father’s job required our relocation to Magi, a village at the top of a tall, steep incline that overlooks another river, the Akanyaru. Beyond the Akanyaru is Burundi. For us to go down to the river was out of the question. Mama forbade her children to climb down the hill, even the intrepid boys, for fear of seeing us tumble to the bottom, where crocodiles and hippopotami crouched in the papyrus, waiting to devour us—not to mention, she added, the Burundian outlaws who lurked in the swamps along the banks, ready to spirit children away in their canoes and sell them to the Senegalese, who traded in human blood. For me, as for my brothers and sisters, the Akanyaru remained an inaccessible stream visible far below, like a long serpent amid the papyrus that barred our access to the unknown world stretching beyond the horizon—a world in which other rivers surely flowed, other rivers that I swore to myself I’d explore someday.
“It informed me that there had been others before as deranged by matters of the heart and loins as I was now.” This line from the story “Saint Catherine of the Fields” neatly describes the overarching theme of Kevin Barry’s short story collection, That Old Country Music. Admirers of Barry — and I count myself among them — will recognize the Irishman’s dark humor and lyrical tone in each of the eleven stories that make up this splendid collection.
In many ways, Ansari’s book is just one version of her family’s history. There are other versions, surely, in some of her relatives’ minds, and other written records, largely focused on the men in the family. In venturing through the past to honour her daadi’s memory, then, and connecting with so much of her family, perhaps this document is Ansari’s ancestral home. And maybe, sometimes, our stories can be inheritance enough.