BOOK REVIEW
A Stateless Ugandan Refugee’s Odyssey of Resilience and Reinvention
Rolling Stone Gathers Much Moss – An unusual title for a Memoir by Nizar Motani a globe trotter by circumstances or necessity?
Though I thought I knew Dr. Nizar Motani for well over three decades, reading his recent book, a memoir, caught me by surprise.
The author lived in Uganda under the British colonial racist three-tier system with the Europeans (Wazungu) at the top, the Wahindis (as the Asians were referred to by the locals) in the middle and the African indigenous at the bottom of the pyramid. He attributes the 1972 Asian expulsion by Idi Amin as part of the understandable dismantling of this inherited Tripartheid system.
The Moss collecting journey began with his posting to Bowdoin College, a private liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine as a visiting Professor but not on a tenure track. He believes his best tenure was when he met his wife of five decades in London. His wife, ‘Yasmin’, he says ‘was his most Moss he has collected!’ An equivalent to winning the Lotto! Nizar continued rolling to Kalamazoo, as an assistant Professor at Western Michigan University and then as a Publications Officer at the recently established Institute of Ismaili studies in London. Next came a transcontinental mega Airplane Roll across the Atlantic to be a ‘hands-on’ hotelier in Albany, Georgia!
Then next rolling over to Atlanta where he was conned into owning and operating a laundromat and ending up at his career high becoming the Mortgagewala, the ultimate moss Mountain!
Nizar, I suppose held on to the juicy details of his flirty teenage years – the peccadilloes of youth – only to pen them on his memoir! Not one incident but to my surprise a quite few!
The book takes us through his journey and birth place, his interesting and challenging childhood due to health issues and intermittent political unrest. Nizar overcomes this with time as he rose through his career and extensive travel. Sudden expulsion from East Africa, as I can relate to, creates permanent trauma which can be transmitted intergenerationally, but in his case, he flips this pain overcoming it through hard work and a don’t give up attitude and keeps rolling. The narrative is revealing of unflinching resilience, dogged survival, success and failures all recorded with unimpeachable honesty. The book, however, describes the pain of separation from multiple family members, nostalgia in recalling the past and the melancholy engendered as a result. Some wry humour as he navigates marriage which changes his trajectory for the better! I love the way he laughs off his health challenges making light of it. His list of illnesses is more comical than lethal as if they were privileges and not misfortunes!
I particularly enjoyed seeing familiar names of individuals from Atlanta and charities that incidentally happen to be our mutual favourites. I read with deep respect and admiration about The Motanis, a legacy family from the Ismaili Muslim community who no matter what part of the Globe they ended up in making their home, never lost the ethic of service which always followed them.
I recommend this enjoyable and readable memoir to anybody from East Africa, or transplants from anywhere in the world, suffering from the ravages of war or religious persecution, and anybody who enjoys memoirs and humour. Nizar’s erudition comes through in his writing. Several mentions of “Nizarism” humor that only Dr Motani, a PhD from University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), can get away with. A combination of a deep understanding of the pathology of conflict, its colonial roots, coupled with grappling with the dashing of post-colonial hope, makes this book a must read for all those who wish to capture history from the bottom rather than narratives canned and packaged. Definitely one to read on a rainy day to remind one of the African Monsoon and how its aftermath gave rise to a new rainbow.
REVIEWED by:
Dr Gulshan Harjee, a Tanzanian educated in Pakistan and Iran and a double graduate of the Morehouse School of Medicine and Emory Medical School is currently dedicated to a Charity Clinic she founded called The Mosaic Health Center in Clarkston, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia USA.
