Journey into otherness requires taking risks
Novel set in Mozambique involved travelling dangerous territory, including responsibility of portraying those unlike himself
When Toronto author Anthony De Sa was in Mozambique researching his new novel, Children of the Moon, he signed up for a trek up Mount Gorongosa, a spectacular granite massif that overlooks the national park. Upon arrival, De Sa discovered that all mountain excursions had been cancelled because of political unrest in the area.
Somewhat foolishly in retrospect, De Sa travelled to a neighbouring village, offering a substantial amount of money in exchange for guiding services. But no one would take him.
“I know that YouTube and the internet are incredible places to explore, but for me to give my readers a feeling that they are there, that they have truly entered this world that I’ve created, I needed to enter it myself,” De Sa says about his perseverance. De Sa had more luck finding a journalist willing to escort him through the infamous Grande Hotel in the coastal city of Beira. From 1955 until it was closed 20 years later, the massive Art Deco–style building operated as a luxury resort.
Following the end of Mozambique’s decade-long war of independence against Portugal in 1974, it served as a military headquarters and prison. Today, it’s estimated that the building, still lacking electricity and running water, is home to more than 2,500 squatters, including some families who go back three generations.
“Very few outsiders are allowed to go in because it’s so dangerous. These are people who are marginalized, who live in this place with its own order, with its own kind of hierarchy,” says De Sa, who believes his fluent Portuguese helped him navigate through the former colony.
“To be given and granted that opportunity to walk through those hallways and to visit with some of these families was really astounding.”
All of his background research and the political tension that he experienced while overseas provided the foundation for Children of the Moon, in which troubled Brazilian journalist Serafim interviews an elderly woman with albinism named Pó, who is living out her days in the Grande Hotel. Her narrative is intertwined with that of her husband, Ezequiel, a former child soldier suffering from dementia and living in Toronto.
Although the novel is ultimately a love story, both lives are marked with tragedy and violence. Ezequiel is haunted by the brutal memories of the secret police commander from whose control he escaped. He can never completely relieve the fear that he will be abducted again.
Pó is perpetually in danger because of a long-held superstition that the bodies of people with albinism are magical; their various appendages are worth a great sum on underground markets.
According to the charity Under the Same Sun, which advocates for people with albinism, there have been more than 520 attacks in 28 countries since 2006, the majority of which were in Tanzania. De Sa first learned about these horrific crimes from a National Geographic feature he was reading while on the road for his 2013 novel, Kicking the Sky. “I know it sounds really naive,” he says, “but I couldn’t believe that this is going on in today’s world.”
He began reading everything he could on the subject, and then contacted Under the Sun, which agreed to help facilitate interviews for him in Tanzania. De Sa says that his conversations with people with albinism were some of the most profound he has experienced. In writing Pó’s storyline, De Sa recognized his “terrific responsibility trespassing into otherness.” He says, “But that’s also the foundation of a writer’s work. I knew that if I needed to do this, I needed to also tread with humility.”
Both Kicking the Sky and Barnacle Love, a linked story collection that was nominated for the 2008 Giller Prize, investigate life within Toronto’s Portuguese diaspora. Although his third book travels much further, the story actually began with questions about his own uncle, who participated in the colonial wars like Ezequiel, but refused to speak to anyone about his experiences.
In many ways, Serafim — seeking redemption through Pó after inadvertently exploiting a previously undiscovered Amazon tribe in one of his previous articles — is a stand-in for De Sa and his role as witness.
“I’m not going to shy away from it. My hope was that I was respectful by becoming involved and researching as much as I could and actually going to those places,” De Sa says.
“It was a challenge to grow as a writer, to stretch myself and to really look into what is this thing that we call humanity? How does it work? I think I was left with a lot more questions at the end, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.”