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Chapter 14
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Bend in the River, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power, Freedom, and Identity
Racism and Diasporic Identity
Postcolonialism and Perpetual Unrest
The City vs. the Bush
Layers of the Past
Summary
Analysis
Travelling by airplane makes Salim recall what Indar had said about air travel allowing him to adjust to his homelessness. Both Europe and Africa felt simultaneously real and unreal, disconnected but parallel. The Europe Salim encounters is not the great colonial superpower he had always known of and imagined, but rather something “shrunken and mean and forbidding.” Walking the streets of London, Salim is struck by all the people who look like him, confined to tiny stalls and kiosks, reduced to performing a caricature of the great places and cultures they had once hailed from. Their struggle seems so “pointless” to Salim, and where once Salim had seen his people’s capacity for toil as “heroic” and “creative,” he instead embraces Indar’s idea of trampling the past.
As much as Salim might’ve wanted to believe he had left the pride of his heritage behind, it remains in the way he carries himself and believes himself above certain people. In London he faces the same disillusionment as Indar, seeing how the diaspora extends across the world, and that his people are placeless everywhere they find themselves. The image of them toiling away, “carrying on” toward nothing, is too painful, and soon Salim also turns to Indar’s tactics of depersonalization.
Themes
Towards the end of his time in London, Salim becomes engaged to Nazruddin’s daughter Kareisha. Kareisha is worldly and practical and is a pharmacist. This comes as a result of Nazruddin’s influence, who lost faith in the ability of wealth and property to protect himself and his family, and needed to make sure his children would have practical skills that could serve them wherever they went. Salim enjoys playing the role of a traditional, masculine husband in concert with Kareisha performing her duties to him. Salim also spends a lot of time alone wandering Gloucester Road where Nazruddin lives, and where there is a large Arab population. On one of these walks, Salim spots an Arab lady with her slave, both proudly performing their roles in connection to one another.
Nazruddin, who in Salim’s eyes was always the paragon of industriousness and self-determination, has clearly struggled as well, and his fall from prominence is even more difficult for Salim to digest. Still, he finds comfort in falling into domestic performance with Kareisha, and begins to imagine a life humbler than the one he had hoped for, but still comfortable and modern. Seeing the woman and her slave no doubt reminds Salim of himself and Metty, and causes him to question if there is any way for people like him to exist in the modern world outside of the antiquated expectations that have been dictated over so many generations.
Themes
At dinner one night, Salim tells Nazruddin about spotting the lady and her slave, and he expresses reproach and suspicion towards the Arabs, particularly for their funneling of the oil in their home countries into the European economy. To this end, Nazruddin explains what happened to him while he was in Canada. Nazruddin had been convinced to buy a stake in a small oil company alongside some other small foreign investors. But the man who found the stake and acted as director embezzled all of their money through a merging of company accounts, taking out a loan against the strength of their oil claim and then leaving with the money to the Black Islands, saddling Nazruddin and all of the investors with the massive debt. Nazruddin pivoted to owning an ethnic theatre, spotting what looked like a deal on some property downtown. Again he got scammed, with the man who sold him the place making off with all the valuable equipment and removing the heating system.
Nazruddin’s story is in many ways tragic and sobering to Salim, who sees how Nazruddin is exploited at every turn due to his identity. Every attempt Nazruddin makes to carve out a place in the world for himself ends in failure, which confirms Salim’s own anxiety that there might truly be nowhere for people like him. Each time Nazruddin tries to cut his losses, in essence “trampling on [his] past,” he only finds his fortunes repeat themselves wherever he goes.
Themes
Nazruddin finally felt his luck had run out and moved to England. His first instinct was to go into light engineering, but ultimately, he bought property on Gloucester Road, thinking that the demand for housing would make it a lucrative investment. But since he bought at the height of the boom, values quickly dropped, forcing Nazruddin to charge ridiculous rates that his tenants—primarily Arabs—couldn’t pay. Nazruddin continues to lose money and is unable to evict many of his tenants, who change the locks and evade him in the courts. One tenant draws massive complaints for leaving her rubbish in the hallway, and one day he is able to slip into her flat, only to find it full of poor Arabs that he had been giving shelter to. Nazruddin wonders what places are left in the world for “people like that.” Another tenant who was an actress ran out with 700 pounds of Nazruddin’s money. Nazruddin feels he lost his touch with money, and that his luck had finally run out. Even if his misfortune could be explained with timing, he has resolved that “it’s the wrong time everywhere else too.”
Nazruddin gives direct voice to Salim’s concerns in his stories as a landlord, where he directly addresses how there are no places left for the diasporic Muslim. This is especially tragic as the Arabs are forced to exploit one another, as Nazruddin must raise rents and his tenants are in turn unable to pay him. Nazruddin’s note about timing suggests that the modern world has moved on without them, just as Salim feared.
Themes
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Despite it all, Nazruddin manages to remain in high spirits. Kareisha explains that he has essentially retired on Gloucester Road, and is mostly happy. Even though he had failed at every turn, he had always managed to fall upwards. Salim feels acutely that he has never been able to catch up to Nazruddin, especially not now that he is fleeing from his lot back in Africa, despite having tried to follow his example. Sometimes at night, Salim recalls his “illumination” after his fight with Yvette about the illusion of pain and the need only to live. This causes him to envision an entire planet of “pointlessly busy men,” and in this “state of indifference and irresponsibility” he becomes officially engaged to Kareisha.
Nazruddin’s story leaves some hope for the people of the diaspora, but it also points to a strict limit on their capacity for success. Nazruddin has come away content, but has lost considerable wealth and prominence in the process. And if this is as far as Nazruddin was able to get, it leaves little hope for Salim, who is almost completely alienated and far less successful. He sees how toiling against the system as he has is as pointless as everyone else “carrying on,” and decides to cut his losses. Salim making his engagement to Kareisha official shows him committing to the few connections remaining to him, understanding they are all he has left in the world.
Themes
Before Salim leaves London, Kareisha tells Salim what has become of Indar. Kareisha explains that Indar’s lecture outfit had folded a couple of years prior, and that his ego, having been raised under the self-importance of familial wealth, had not been able to handle it. He travelled to America and stayed in expensive hotels, trying to keep up pretenses, and meeting with his contacts in the city. He had numerous dinners with his main contact that never progressed to any real opportunities, and Indar’s money quickly dwindled. Indar had always considered the man his equal, but upon going to his apartment one night for dinner, he realizes the man is extraordinarily rich, and the discomfort of their inequality caused Indar to feel cheated. Indar fled to London, and now scrapes by, refusing help out of pride and wallowing in self-pity and assurances that he could do better.
Indar, on the other hand, remains blinded by pride and delusion. In his pursuit of power and freedom, Indar has completely eroded his sense of self and becomes consumed by bitterness and resentment. Indar winding up mired in his own pride and lack of opportunity shows the impossibility of severing oneself from one’s identity and past in the modern world. As much as Indar claimed to be independent and self-determined, he always felt the world owed him something, which Salim now sees led Indar to failure and was dangerously close to leading Salim to the same fate.
Themes
The news about Indar makes Salim realize that the old way of life he and Indar had been clinging to no longer existed. That idea of “home” and whatever it represented to them was nothing more than an illusion. More than ever, Salim realizes he must trample the past and live exclusively in the present without feeling he is entitled to things. Salim plans to return to Africa, make what he can with what he has there, and then make a fresh start elsewhere. Salim’s plane from London stops in Brussels, where he goes to a brothel. The experience is reassuring, causing him to shed his doubt about Kareisha, and what he had with Yvette.
Trampling on the past, Salim realizes, is more of a necessary project of putting one’s ego to death than a process of modern empowerment for the disenfranchised. Salim realizes he needs to lose his pride, cut his losses, and accept what small place in the world still remains for him. In essence, Salim’s attempt to create a better future for himself has failed, but at least this way, he might live to tell the tale.
Themes
