Of displacement and belonging

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Shelley Walia

The tension between exile and belonging, sorrow and hope, constitutes the heart of the migrant dilemma. You spend your life in a country far from home, pining to return some day, continuously struggling, in the words of Franz Fannon, to become adept at ‘adopting and adapting’ to new cultures and alien lands. This is the story of Allende’s new novel, A Long Petal of the Sea.

It is the yearning of returning home that compels Roser, a pregnant widow, and Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased husband, to unite in a marriage they had never desired but agree to for the expediency of obtaining the requisite visa to travel as husband and wife.

Fiction and reality, history and memory interweave to give rise to a historical experience of which many of us are not aware. The Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s ended in the victory of the fascist regime of General Franco, forcing thousands to flee to the French border.

The life of migrants in a country ruled by the despot Augusto Pinochet becomes an eye-opener for many who have not imagined the desolation of the refugee who lives and survives a life of brutal adversity. Not many have heard of the Winnipeg, the “ship of hope” by which Pablo Neruda through his diplomatic position handled the rescue of many who took the gruesome journey across the Pyrenees, only to find themselves in the German concentration camps or in a state of hunger, pain and wretchedness. Like Oskar Schindler, Neruda represents the humane quality in civilisation by going through enormous pains to liberate and give a new life to one’s fellowmen.

The novel focuses on the struggle of Roser and Victor to survive the horrifying experience of deportation. They, along with 2,000 other refugees, are transported to Chile which itself turns out to be a hopeless land of turmoil and political unease. History and romance come together in a world torn by ethnic violence and an extreme form of militant nationalism. The novel is deeply uplifting, though poignant, a celebration of courage in adverse circumstance of a nightmarish history that can be fundamentally understood through the evocative simplicity and deep historical consciousness that Allende so profusely displays in her art.

It is in Chile that they unite in love, waiting for their exile to end some day after the war-ravaged Europe with its untold history of repression turns a new leaf of freedom. The sustaining force of their togetherness springs from the hope that someday the misery of their existence, buoyed by the powerful impetus to endure in the face of a bleak destiny, would ultimately end. Though comfortably settled in Chile, their terrorising experience of the rough treatment after the military coup of the Pinochet regime in the 1970s results in yet another agonising escape to Venezuela.

The plight of the refugee is undeniably an appalling experience of displacement mostly overlooked by the heartless and ambitious leadership that often supports a xenophobic nationalism, putting many into an abysmal emotional state. Nevertheless, such occurrences inspire resilience to fight for freedom as is apparent in the lives of the two protagonists, a reminder of the robust struggle of millions across the world who are presently suffering at the hands of authoritarian regimes ready to sacrifice the democratic needs of a plural and diverse culture.

Allende’s story becomes a representation and a voice for all exiles and transcends history to speak for the tormented refugees of the world. India or Europe and the US especially are in terrible need of such literature in the wake of communalism or racial violence worldwide. One can imagine how difficult it is to survive in such terrifying circumstances, especially after the loss of dear ones and one’s home, and still carry on hoping for a secure future. Literature is certainly a celebration of such fortitude, of stamina and nerve in the face of cold-blooded calamities. The novel humanises history and gives a vivid insight into the awful impact of civil wars.

Engagingly written with minute attention to the history of immigrant experience in the wake of fascist occupation of Europe, it underscores Allende’s experience of being an exile herself that enabled her to grasp and depict the impact of the upheaval on both sides of the Atlantic. It takes its form from her personal journey of exile and adversity, of the dark history of her country and her proximity to the political leadership as a niece of Salvador Allende, President of Chile from 1970 to 1973. She had to flee to Venezuela after her uncle was overthrown and lived in exile for 13 years.

Her autobiographical response to the question of immigration and the complex emotion of distress and hope that it creates becomes the source of our humanity and its endeavour to adjust to the inevitability of historical circumstances.