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312 pages, Hardcover
First published March 6, 2018
“There is a time one sees a new love, a person who might perhaps become a new love, when the possibility of love has been spoken for the first time, but the possibility of retreat still exists. … A false word or misstep and all might yet be undone. Beneath the possibility of joy lies the fear of shame.”
London. A fox makes its way across Waterloo Bridge. The distraction causes two pedestrians to collide—Jean, an American studying the habits of urban foxes, and Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist there to deliver a keynote speech.
‘Everything happens for a reason, that was Jean’s view, and part of her job was tracing those chains of cause and effect, mapping the interconnectedness of things.’
‘Let me do the same for you,’ said the doorman. ‘The doormen and security people, they are my friends. Most of those boys who work in security are Nigerian. We Ghanaians, we prefer the hospitality industry. Many of the doormen at these hotels you see around here are our countrymen. The street-sweepers, the traffic wardens are mainly boys from Sierra Leone, they came here after their war so for them the work is okay.’
“Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.”
“It’s not so much that I have new ideas,” he says, at pains to acknowledge his debt to other psychoanalytic thinkers, “but I do offer a new attitude. Resilience is about abandoning the imprint of the past.”
The most important thing to note about his work, he says, is that resilience is not a character trait: people are not born more, or less, resilient than others. As he writes: “Resilience is a mesh, not a substance. We are forced to knit ourselves, using the people and things we meet in our emotional and social environments.
Every living creature reminds him of her. The gecko that rolls an obsidian eye from its perch on the wall. The ant bearing a sugar crystal away from the saucer that holds his coffee glass, in which now only the grounds remain.
Once I spent my time dealing with work permits, now I spend my time attending to denunciations and deportations. These days landlords and employers must ask for all sorts of proof of the right to reside, the government wants to send as many people away as they can, because the whites don’t want us.’ The lawyer smiled as though this was a shared joke. ‘So now anybody can call the immigration services and tell them, Oh this person, that person is here without papers. The scheme is contracted out to private companies, maybe they’re on commission. The burden of proof is on you.’ He pointed at Attila. ‘You with the black skin.
Finally she laid her cheek against his chest and felt the beating of his heart, turned to bury her face in his fur. The rankness had not been unpleasant; heavy with musk and the scent of sun-scorched earth. The coyote had been Jean’s first. She had never forgotten.
Most of those boys who work in security are Nigerian. We Ghanaians, we prefer the hospitality industry. Many of the doormen at these hotels you see around here are our countrymen. The street-sweepers, the traffic wardens are mainly boys from Sierra Leone, they came here after their war so for them the work is okay. Some Nigerians do warden work when they first get here, before their friends in the security business find them something with greater job satisfaction and a seat inside’
You are an American. I am a West African. The barman is South American. And here we are in the middle of London. Not one of us was born here, but we each have a reason to be here. He’s learning the hotel business, I am on a junket. What’s your reason?’ His voice was deep, crumbly, the texture of rich earth. ‘Work,’ said Jean. She felt unnerved talking to a psychiatrist. She wondered if he would be able to tell if she lied. ‘And life,’ she added, in case he could.
‘So,’ said Attila reprising his thoughts of a few minutes earlier, ‘you say it’s a coincidence we have met three times. What if I tell you I don’t believe in coincidences? By which I mean the idea that coincidences are out of the ordinary, coincidences happen far too often to be considered extraordinary. People are always saying it. My, what a coincidence!’ … ‘A statistician will tell you that you are as likely to get a row of zeros on a winning lottery ticket as a row of different numbers. We should be less surprised when life takes an unexpected turn. Life is disorderly. In certain parts of the world, in the absence of plagues and floods it’s easy to mistake mundanity for normality and therefore to react to what seems extraordinary. But what we call coincidences are merely normal events of low probability..
[Jean]: Of course you’re right. I’m a scientist, I should never have used the word coincidence. There’s less synchronicity and more causality than we often think. Things happen. Sometimes in ways we couldn’t even start to imagine
We don’t blame victims any longer, instead we condemn them. We treat them like damaged goods and in so doing we compound the pain of whatever wound has been inflicted and we encourage everyone around them to do the same. The fact of the matter is that most people who have endured trauma do so without lasting negative effects, but we overlook the ones who cope because we never see them. It’s a simple logical fallacy. You already have the answer, so you construct the supporting argument. Trauma causes suffering, suffering causes damage. But what we don’t know is whether the absence of adverse life events creates the ideal conditions for human development. We just assume it does ... That the emotional vulnerability of trauma is oftentimes transformed into emotional strength. What if we were to have revealed to us that misfortune can lend life quality? Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger, yes. What if I told you that there are times when whatever does not kill me can make me more, not less, than the person I was before?
“The RSPB is not in favour of a cull of parakeets at this time, but believes it is important that the spread of the ring-necked parakeet is monitored and its potential for negative impacts on our native bird species assessed”