A Bend In The River

Metty spent the first part of his life as Ali, a slave who worked for Salim’s family in their coastal African home. He comes to Salim after witnessing a violent attack in their home town. Metty has charisma and the locals are quickly taken with him, renaming him Metty, the French word metis, or mixed-race. He learns to speak their patois and becomes close friends with Ferdinand. Metty works for Salim in the shop and also functions as a sort of houseboy, bringing Salim his morning coffee, for example. Because of the close relationship Metty has had with Salim’s family, he looks to Salim as a quasi-brother or father figure. Metty also has his own life separate from Salim, however. For example, he has a woman and baby in the town that Salim never meets. When Salim’s shop is given to another owner, Metty realizes he has no safe future in the town. When Salim does nothing to help him, Metty tells the police the location of smuggled ivory Salim has buried outside the flat. Salim promises to send Metty money after he gets out, but the reader and Metty are both skeptical of this statement. Metty is left behind in the town with only his African family, Salim’s flat, and Salim’s old car.

Ferdinand is the son of Zabeth, a village woman who purchases items from Salim’s shop to resell in her village. His father was from another region, in the south of the country. When he was small, he lived with his father’s tribe. Now he has come to rejoin Zabeth, who enrolls him in the school in town. She asks Salim to keep an eye on Ferdinand, which Salim resents. Salim goes back and forth between anger and resentment toward Ferdinand, and wants to teach him about the wider world. Ferdinand and Metty become close friends; they speak the patois of the town and go drinking together. Ferdinand panics when the school closes during an uprising and turns to Salim and Metty for comfort. Eventually, Ferdinand becomes a local commissioner and, in that role, he’s able to let Salim leave the town at the end of the book.

Zabeth, who is Ferdinand’s mother, is a village woman who shops regularly in Salim’s shop and resells the items in her village. She is one of the first people Salim comes to know in town. Zabeth travels 60 miles to reach the town. Because she can’t read or write, she memorizes her shopping list. Zabeth is associated with magic and power. Salim is told that she anoints herself with ointments for protection and that is why she has an unusual odor.

Father Huismans is the head teacher at the school in town. He is a priest from Europe, with “an ‘unfinished’ face” (60) and a preference for layman’s clothing. He has a deep appreciation for African culture, has African food served at the school, and travels for days at a time into the bush to collect African artifacts and art objects. He is beheaded on one of his trips, his body sent back downriver in a dugout canoe.

Mahesh is from the eastern part of Africa, like Salim. He owns a shop across the street from the hotel in the town. Mahesh is handsome and fastidious in his appearance. He allows his wife, Shoba, to be the center of attention and is proud of her, almost as though she is a possession. Mahesh is involved in several shady business transactions, during which he calls on Salim for help. Mahesh appears somewhat impervious to the violence and uprisings that become part of daily life in the town. His philosophy is to simply “carry on” (68). Mahesh achieves a measure of success by opening the town’s Bigburger franchise. Unlike Salim, he is also savvy enough to predict what will happen under the new president and, as a result, avoids having his business given away at the behest of the state.

Shoba is Mahesh’s wife. She comes from a wealthy family and married Mahesh against her family’s wishes. Salim describes her as “vain and neurotic” (28). Shoba travels back to see her family upon the death of her father but cuts the trip short after a beauty treatment burns her face and leaves a subtle scar. After her return to the town, Shoba goes into hiding and remains there for the remainder of the novel.

Nazruddin is an old family friend Salim knows from growing up in coastal Africa. In fact, it was agreed many years ago that Salim would marry Nazruddin’s daughter. Nazruddin is also the original owner of Salim’s shop. It was Nazruddin’s descriptions of the sophisticate, wine-soaked life in the town that encouraged Salim’s interest in buying the shop from him. After selling the shop to Salim, Nazruddin moves with his family to Uganda, where he feels the economy is booming. After Uganda, the family moves to Canada, and when that disappoints, to London. In London, Nazruddin invests in property and becomes a landlord. In some ways, Nazruddin acts as a substitute father for Salim, urging him forward and encouraging his enterprise.

Yvette is a woman in her late twenties; she’s Belgian and lives in the Domain with her husband, Raymond, who was once an important advisor to the president. Salim meets Yvette when he is invited by Indar to a party at her home. After this meeting, she and Salim begin an affair. Yvette is primarily defined in terms of her relationships with men, Raymond and Salim in particular. Her exile from the capital may have been influenced by her cultural faux pas: speaking when the president had made a symbolic call for silence. Yvette is Salim’s first experience of a woman who isn’t a prostitute or a villager. She is a link for Salim to the culture and glamour of non-African European culture.

A scholar and writer in his late fifties, Raymond is a former close adviser of the president, the “the Big Man’s white man” (125). He and his wife, Yvette, live in the Domain, waiting to find out if they will be recalled to the capital. When Salim reads some of Raymond’s magazine articles about Africa, he discovers that despite being called an expert, Raymond’s writing has relied on colonial sources of information. Raymond is outdated and of no further use to anyone. When Salim returns from London, he learns that Raymond and Yvette have left the Domain and no one knows where they have gone.

Indar is an old friend of Salim’s and from the coastal area where Salim himself grew up. Indar was raised in a wealthy family with an entitled view of life. He goes to England for college and then struggles to find his way. When he has trouble getting a job of the caliber his former university classmates achieve, he decides to return to Africa. When Salim next sees him, he is working for an organization supported by the government to educate and spread new ideas. While staying in the Domain, Indar introduces Salim to a more glamorous lifestyle, including the party at Yvette and Raymond’s house. Indar ends up back in London, where his firm folds, which leaves him disconnected and depressed.