F Scott Fitzgerald: Askia

Futile Attempts Dept: Although thousands of North Africans risk their lives aboard rickety vessels in often futile attempts to reach Europe, Askia arrives by less dramatic means. He knew hardship, nonetheless. Many years before, as a child, he took to the road with his parents to flee poverty and famine in their village in a country that sounds very much like the author's native Togo. Along the hard, dusty route, the family experiences the disdain of local residents who bestow on them the epithet that serves as the title of the book: dirty feet les pieds sales, in Awumey's original French . Reading these passages, one inevitably thinks of the recent mass flight of starving Somalis to Kenya it's not epithets they fear, however, but attack and rape , according to Montreal Gazette. One would not blame Askia for leaving his country to escape either poverty or militia violence, but the author raises the level of narrative by turning Askia's journey into a spiritual quest. Askia's father emigrated alone soon after the family's trek to the city, and many years later, the son sets off to find him. His only clues to his father's whereabouts are his mother's recollections of some letters and photos that his father might or might not have sent from France years earlier. The father casts a shadow throughout the book, his outlines at times coming tantalizingly sharper into view and to PARAPHRASE F. Scott Fitzgerald, immigrants are not like you and me - they have more woes. This short novel by the Africanborn, Quebec-based writer Edem Awumey is about an African taxi driver in Paris who believes that his future is wrapped up in his family's past. Arriving at last in a coastal city, Askia's family for the first time feels the brunt of life as poor outsiders. The episodes of Askia's African life are described cursorily, in snatches just long enough to fill in some tantalizing blanks raised during the course of the main narrative in Paris. Most intriguing because it is largely left to the imagination is Askia's involvement as a young man in a militia whose murderous activity is all the more scary because of its apparent wantonness. Slipping into Askia's taxi, passengers would never suspect the secrets that their driver harbours. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.