Murder mystery

(In Crest, yesterday)

HIGH LOW IN-BETWEEN, by Imraan Coovadia

“Nafisa knew that Arif had murdered himself, and murdered her along with him…Nafisa was struck, at that moment, by the thought that her life had just begun.” According to Coovadia, this book came out of a previously written short story, one about the last day of a dying Pakistani aristocrat in Boston. He is said to have used the woman as a model for Nafisa, and taken incidents from here, there and everywhere, perhaps high, low and in-between, borrowing, inventing, reflecting and characterising. The challenge, according to him, was to make “the inner life of his characters real”.

That, perhaps, has been successful, as the people that wander in and out of the various happenings in Coovadia’s latest novel are almost frighteningly true-to-life, with all the vagueness, abstraction and self-absorption that anyone may have. It reads slowly, heavily, almost soporifically, but in that leisure there is so much going on, inside and outside each character, especially the main protagonist, Nafisa, that a reader has to stop, take a deep breath and then decide whether to continue reading or take a break and watch a comedy show on television just to ease the sensory assault of evocative words forming pictures on each page.

The story is set in Durban and focuses on the life of middle-class Indian Botswana-born Nafisa, a doctor, wife of Arif, a professor, mother of Shakeer, a photographer who wanders around the world on assignments. As the house is being cleaned for Arif’s retirement party not too long after the professor’s kidney transplant, his wife finds him dead, an apparent suicide. But it proves to be murder, and as the local authorities try and find the killer, Nafisa’s life begins slowly to unravel…or perhaps sort itself out. This is where the reality of the South Africa of the time becomes almost another strong character – there is HIV/AIDS that is making a loud noise not just from the point of view of an epidemic disease, but also as a political tool by Mbeki and others who rule. There is the matter of illegal organ transplants – and the reader knows that Arif’s death is somehow connected to that, long before it is written – even more illegal money transfer, race issues, class distinctions and problems of local security.

And there is Nafisa herself, seemingly bewildered as she goes about her duties at the hospital, trying to deal with sudden death, family matters and a troubled mind, all made increasingly complicated by Estella, the sexually very active maid who will not be tested for HIV, Nawaz, a brother who deals in secondhand clothing and is deeply religious, Jadwat, well-meaning and supportive but a would-be suitor and Govin Mackey, who operated on Arif. So when real disaster strikes, she does not pay it much heed – a needle that contained bodily fluids from a dying AIDS victim pierces Nafisa’s hand during a difficult procedure.
In all this personal tribulation, the nation too is troubled. South Africa transforming from a divided society to one that is less white-dominated forms the backdrop of the novel. And raises that one all-important question: Are Nafisa and her ilk relevant any longer in that environment? The novel contains history, social commentary, relationships, angst, humour – albeit of the rather dark kind – good guys and bad guys and much more than can be absorbed in one reading. And, of course, there is the murder to be solved…