Title: Lost Memories and other things that I thought I forgot
Author: Nesta Hatendi,
Publisher: Immortali
Year of publication: 2022
Reviewed by Memory Chirere
The first time that I read these short stories, I found out that perhaps Nesta Hatendi is working with the technique of the short story sequence. This is something that major Zimbabwean short story writers tend to work with; from Mungoshi’s Coming of the Dry Season to Emanuel Sigauke’s Mukoma and other Stories. Reading a short story sequence can be intriguing and exciting for it is novelisque with the useful breaks that come at the start of a new short story.
The term short story sequence is used interchangeably with the term short story cycle or novel-in-stories or short story composite. It is a collection of meaningful successively connected short stories compiled together. Basically this is a grouping of individual but interrelated short stories written in prose, sharing geographical settings, frequent characters or character types, consistent devices, or correlated concerns.
A short story sequence becomes a compilation of short story narratives arranged and connected to each other that the reader’s understanding of each is modified and enhanced by their appreciation of the others when reading.
Hatendi’s fifteen short stories delicately choose the family as their forte. If we were in the science class, the first short story, Till Death Do Us Part, is the control experiment. All the other events and relations between characters in this short story collection may be measured against those in this first short story. It is the ideal. Grandfather and grandmother are celebrating their 60th year anniversary in marriage in a collection of short stories where relations are in constant turmoil. The two elders are happy to be together. They think that they are lucky to have met. All the people around them are convinced that these two are setting high standards of what marries people should be. And before any character troubles any other character- boom- the story end!
But immediately after, you start to compare it with each of the stories that come after it; a girl who goes away for 24 full years to study abroad, only coming back when nothing (and even herself) is still recognisable! She is determined to go her own way. To return or not to return, is one of the more compelling themes of these short stories. The “return of the native” is generally a fascinating theme in Literature. Ngugi employs it in his short-stories about the end of the Kenyan Mau-Mau war of resistance. Often the returnee has no home to return to. His wife is already married to some other man. Often, as in Chekhov, he asks after people who are long dead and lie buried in the local cemetery.
In the next story; a cunning daughter tries to help her widowed dad get a lover online. She wants him to move on and stop complaining. I almost fainted because it is unheard of in many African traditions for a daughter or son to help a parent find a date. As the story closes, the father reveals that indeed he has a new date; again it is the kind of person very least expected in African society. I nearly fainted for the second time! The sharp contrast with the first story continues and the instability in relations continues…
In A Wicked Sense of Humour there is a disgusting young man who nearly kills his ageing mother by taking her to the kind of place that disgusts her to a point of death. In trying to please his mother, the fool nearly kills her. In yet another story a son in law is a conman but his wife and his mother in law cannot see it. Only his father in law can see who the young man is made of, right from the beginning.
In yet another very painful story, an old man in an old people’s home tries again and again to reconnect with his family out there but the story ends when he is just about to see his son. Time suddenly ceases for him:
The rest of the morning was a haze as Botoro waited in anticipation, especially since no specific arrival time had been mentioned. The sun soared across the sky, blistering by mid-day, and then waning as the day ended. Dusk approached, and still, Botoro waited in the shade, stubbornly refusing food and drink. Weakened by hunger and thirst, he became surly. Wireless tried once or twice to get him to drink some water.
“Family is worth waiting for. Suppose my daughter was coming; I would hang in there, my friend…”
The least expected always happen in these short stories, making you realise that life is sweetest when you are far away from reality. For how can you explain a situation where one learns that the lady who one calls sister is actually one’s mom? Or when you expect a son to fly back home, he writes an email:
Hi Mai and Baba
How’s life? Have the rains come? I didn’t mention one thing during our
call last night since you both sounded so excited about my return. I’ve
changed my mind and am not coming home right away, maybe later. I’ve
also decided not to join the family business, even though Baba has plans for
his imminent retirement
This book confirms the view that in a short story the main character does not come to develop. He enters while already steeped into what he is; a thief, a lorry driver, a president etc. He comes to play the epiphany i.e. to be involved in a moment that reveals something about people and humanity in general.
