“Godwin, party of one, a man without a nation, without a tribe.”
In the preface to his memoir, Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss, and Occasional Wars, journalist and writer Peter Godwin states that his is not a “conventional memoir” – its aim is to “reflect [on] the enduring power of memory”. Therefore, it was not unusual for Godwin to begin reflecting on his life through the memories of his mother, Helen. Or Her Grace as her children addressed her. She is 90, quite unwell, but still of indomitable cheer and character. The children are surprised when she suddenly seems to have changed her accent. Happy is now “heppy”, home is “heome”.
A doctor by profession, Her Grace arrived in Rhodesia from England in her twenties and never returned. Even when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and was bitterly embroiled in political and military tension. A white child in an African nation, Peter is fully aware of what this means, the violence that others of his race have inflicted on the natives. Still, his mother’s commitment as a doctor and Peter’s childhood in Zimbabwe made him as “native” to the land as anyone else there. In Mukiwa, his coming-of-age memoir, Peter writes about being sent to war as an 18-year-old by the Rhodesian government. The event “sucked the youth clear” out of him and altered him in ways he doesn’t “fully understand” – the effects of it so serious and deep, that in his adulthood memoir, Peter wonders what kind of a man he would have become had he not gone to war. Perhaps growing up in colonial Africa had something to do with it or perhaps because of his own participation in violence, Peter admits he no longer has a “coherent character.”
A furious sheep
Thus begins a story of lifelong loss and displacement, spread across three continents and long years of untreated emotional wounds. Taught early in life to be “tough” and “bear the mantle of responsibility”, Peter grows up to avoid any show of sentimentality. And yet, as one reads about his life in Zimbabwe and later, it is quite clear his mother, younger sister Georgina, elder sister Jain (who was killed in war), and later his wife Joanna are the emotional anchors in his otherwise tumulous personal and professional life.
A former foreign correspondent from some of the most volatile countries in the world, Peter frankly admits how scenes of destruction and violence have wreaked havoc on his emotional landscape. From wars and famines to uprisings and usurpings, Peter has witnessed it all. The wounds, unattended and festering, open wider when his marriage dissolves. Besides 25 years of togetherness and two sons, the couple has barely anything else holding them together. The separation becomes irreversible when they decide to give up their family retreat, Indian Orchard. This displacement from home, his sanctuary is probably the cruellest blow. He is un mouton enragé – a furious sheep.
Helen starts to believe again in the superstitions she had absorbed in Zimbabwe as she lies in her hospital bed in London. Meanwhile, an announcement on the London underground in the Zimbabwean accent sounds like “home” to Peter. As warned, Godwin disregards the rules of the memoir as he brings in history, linguistics, anthropology, animal behaviour to understand his own place in this mishmash world he has come to inhabit. The “tribes without flags” on his music playlist “echo the prosody of the human voice”. When he tries to understand why he is drawn to it, he wonders if it has anything to do with his “unfinished business of belonging.”
Unbelonging
The conversations with his mother are a strange mix of memories, confessions, and new information. Peter learns that Helen is more formidable than he could have ever imagined her to be. As she goes down her own memory lane, Peter will learn why his mother has been suddenly speaking in an unfamiliar accent – the memsahib’s bark. The distant past, as it turns out, is closer than it seems.
Some of Peter’s happiest memories – and also the memoir’s most lighthearted bits – are with his sons Hugo and Thomas. He fondly recalls going on hikes with them, how unconvinced they were by the myth of Narcissus, and watching them grow into their own. In addition to his sons, Peter’s deep affection for his sister keeps him tethered to life when things become dire.
And yet, one cannot ignore the constant current of displacement and unbelonging that buoys Peter. In his own words, he suffers from an “ineffable sense of loss”, “exudes an era of melancholy”, “sickness of the spirit” – a lifelong, incurable affliction. “Like an emotional aquifer”, Peter writes, “it can spring to the surface at the slightest signal.”
Flying against the wind, swimming against the current is second nature to Peter. As he gets on in age, retires from journalism, and writes his memoirs, it becomes startlingly clear to him that his home is Rhodesia – “a country that no longer exists” as poet Jim Moore had once said.
Godwin’s piercing prose deftly balances the tragic and the comic. Its lyrical quality – the author clearly loves good alliteration! – is complemented by its emotional heavy lifting. The decision to merge his mother’s story with his own turns out to be the memoir’s trump card – the apple indeed does not fall from the tree. Her history does not simply foretell the story of her son, but also of the long project of colonialism and displacement, and those who live with lifelong wounds for resisting these evils.
Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss and Occasional Wars, Peter Godwin, Canongate.
