In her first moments with the reader, Oge is seated on a train, moving cautiously towards its destination, with passengers moving in and out of stale railway carriage seats, entering and exiting anonymously with each passing station.
Oge was born in the Nigerian city of Enugu, but the reader finds her as a young woman living far from home, in Belgium. The environment is new, unexpected, and lonely. “Everything here is different,” the narrator says in the opening pages of Chika Unigwe’s The Phoenix. “I had expected it but the magnitude of the difference still unsettles me.”
Emotionally, intimately and immediately, The Phoenix captures what it means to be a stranger—both to others and to ourselves. Oge came to Europe after marrying a Belgian man working in Nigeria. His voice, a voice she felt she could trust when the pair met in Nigeria, seduced her heart and soul.
Her parents, devout Catholics, were sad but proud to see her move to Belgian’s cathedral-dotted landscape. Oge met Belgium with excitement and fear. Her relationship with her husband Gunter is beautiful and simple at first. He appreciates her beauty, her laugh, and the novelty with which she greets everything in Europe.
But Oge soon realizes just how alone she is. She marvels that even other Africans do not greet one another; she struggles to find an employer who respects her well earned college degree. As she and Gunter grow distant—the kind of distance that puts miles between two people in one room—there is nowhere to turn.
Oge struggles to come to terms with the death of her son, a trial that frustrates her husband and pushes the couple close to mutual resentment. Bad news gets worse when, in the first chapter, the reader learns that Oge is diagnosed with cancer. Her only companion is a neighbor, Lisa, who bombards her with silly questions but refuses to ask the ones that Oge would like to answer. Her pain is overwhelming. It consumes her until, as the title implies, she rises from the flames—slowly peeling off her own self-deception.
Though Oge’s situation is particular, Chika Unigwe makes it one to which the reader can easily relate. Ms. Unigwe’s greatest strength is her sense of human emotion. She seamlessly follows her characters’ subconscious thoughts, weaving in and out of the first, second, and third person. The device creates a sense of proximity to her characters while still keeping them distant enough to enable the reader to see them clearly. In one-word interjections and long winding sentences, Ms. Unigwe writes the dialogue our minds have all spoken.
Her portrayal of Oge and Gunter’s marital life is particularly striking. Once so innocently in love, they soon become an inconvenience to one another. They avoid speaking. Oge goes shopping to avoid her husband’s presence at home. “You had given up asking each other about your whereabouts. It was like you no longer cared to participate in this particular ritual that couples took part in,” Ms. Unigwe writes.
Oge’s loneliness runs deep. Even while in Belgium, her mind lives in Enugu. The reader meets the sights and sounds of Oge’s home firsthand —the quick but pounding rain (not the tedious Belgian drizzle), the daily greetings (instead of the silent European pass), the cup of tea with Mother on a harmattan morning (not the black afternoon coffee sipped with her only friend.)
Ms. Unigwe’s writing gives Oge’s memories a rich taste of every sense. So it is not a surprise that her salvation comes from Nigeria, the very home that Oge longs for in Belgium. It is only when her mother comes to visit, and Oge herself returns home in spirit, that both she and Gunter find peace in Belgium.
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Ms. Unigwe does not shy from difficult topics in the book. Oge’s story is colored by the loss of her friend, Angel, a rambunctious girl who died of AIDS after being the fascination and pride of her clique at home. Her mother’s persona is built in protests against environmental damage in the Niger Delta, the country’s oil producing region. Oge’s mother hates the struggles that her community has endured, such that she has “anger that was raging like a story inside her.” And if the narrative has any weakness, it is only that the reader longs for more of each of the topics she skims over, bringing the reader within inches of touching Nigerian soil.
Ms. Unigwe, herself born in Enugu and now living in Belgium, has much to offer any reader in The Phoenix. It is in addressing such specific circumstances with such far-reaching perspective that her novel will become a treasure, even to someone worlds away.
The Phoenix; Chika Unigwe Farafina; Lagos, Nigeria. 2007
