822 Naipaul, V. s.
seek to override not only colonial boundaries but
time-honored cultural traditions as well. For Salim,
as for Ferdinand and for others like them, hope for
the future will now always be tinged with the fear
of incipient chaos, anarchy, and the abuse of power.
As Ferdinand puts it, this brave new world “is bad
for everybody. . . . Nobody’s going anywhere. We’re
all going to hell, and every man knows this in his
bones. We’re being killed. Nothing has any mean-
ing. That is why everyone is so frantic. . . . They feel
they’re losing the place they can run back to.” Now
that the much-hoped-for change has set in, it must
inexorably be a one-way process, with no hope for
either maintaining the status quo or for retaining
the safety of familiar traditions and boundaries. As
Salim waits for the steamer that will take him away
from the town to some measure of liberty and secu-
rity, his former servant and betrayer Metty begs him
for help. All Salim can say to him is: “You have to
take your chance.”
Divya Saksena
natIonaLISm in A Bend in the River
This 1979 novel gives us an internal view of the
life of one man—an Indian who, as rootless in the
turmoil of Third World history, has set up busi-
ness in an isolated but river-commerce–dependent
town in a newly independent African nation. V. S.
Naipaul depicts a convincing yet disturbing vision
of a place caught between the dangerous allure of
the modern world and its own deeply ingrained
history and traditions. The theme of nationalism
that echoes through the novel derives from the
narrator Salim’s observation of events in his little
town, which becomes a microcosm of the nation
as a whole.
A condition frequently encountered in Naipaul’s
work is the fateful linkage of former colonies in the
West Indies and Africa, for example, to the ways
of their colonial masters, which they otherwise
denounce. Escaping from the confines of his fam-
ily compound on the coast, which he considers
not truly an African but an “Arab-Indian-Persian-
Portuguese place,” Salim purchases his dry-goods
store cheaply when the revolution causes real estate
values to decline. In the rise and fall of political
fortunes that he witnesses, he is drawn into several
casual but illuminating relationships, until another
regional conflict, more severe than previous ones,
forces him to leave.
Salim becomes involved in the Domain, a mod-
ern enclave where the president of the country
entertains useful foreigners and technical profes-
sionals, “who had a high idea of the new Africa.”
He is at first exhilarated by the sense of power and
connecting with the outside world: “On the Domain
they had their own way of talking about people and
events; they were in touch with the world. To be
with them was to have a sense of adventure.” Here
he meets an old friend, Indar, and engages with the
casual hypocrisies of an apparently sophisticated
world, as seen in the behavior of the Big Man’s
white men and the records of Joan Baez. However,
he is intensely conscious of being an outsider: “I was
aware, in the Domain, that I belonged to the other
world.” Hence, he is attracted but not fooled by the
nationalist rhetoric he hears: “It was make-believe. . . You couldn’t listen to sweet songs about injustice
unless you expected justice and received it much of
the time.”
Nevertheless, visiting the Domain also enhances
Salim’s understanding of young, European-educated
Africans becoming self-aware of their national iden-
tity in the 20th century. The town’s elite gather daily
at Bigburgers, where the franchise owner Mahesh
boasts, “They don’t just send you the sauce, you
know, Salim. They send you the whole shop.” To
Salim, who regards himself as a coastal African with
an Indian heritage, Bigburgers represents the town’s
very simple economy. Villagers from the bush sell
smoked monkey meat to steamer passengers and
use the money to buy pots, cloth, and razor blades
from shops like Salim’s in the town. The shop own-
ers can then eat Bigburgers and imagine themselves
rubbing shoulders with the best in global business.
The height of success and acceptability for them
is being invited to the Domain. While the “army
men or officials in the customs or policemen” at
Mahesh’s Bigburgers remain service-oriented “Afri-
cans,” Salim notes how they “wore gold as much as
possible.” He and others like him covet the wealth
but also adhere to their simple ideals: “Our ideas of
men were simple; Africa was a place where we had
to survive. But in the Domain it was different. . . .