The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber
“For Mombasa. I thought you were trying to kill me. It has been a privilege.”
I mean, what an opener.
This is what Khadija Abdalla Baber does in her award-winning work, The House of Rust. From the dedication to the final page, Khadija’s pen is impeccable. It sweeps you away with the same calm authority of a deep current.
We begin with Aisha, oh Aisha, wonder-filled, tragic, headstrong Aisha, a protagonist you care for deeply. Our young protagonist starts the story with a memory, learning how to clean fresh fish with her father. From the first glimpses into Aisha’s relationships with her family, her community, her town, and the sea, when the quest to find her father begins and even as the fantastical world expands, Khadijah’s deft hand as a writer keeps the story intimate. You feel Aisha. You feel for Aisha. You feel with Aisha.
Each character is richly written, complex and complete, making the fantastical world and story matter
And it is a fantastical story. As I do my best to keep this review spoiler free, I can say what you are invited into is a delight, imaginative turns that always is surprising yet inevitable, with creatures and beings that truly are beyond the range of normal or physical human experience. The prose is tight, poetic, occasionally whimsical with a gaze that reveals the human condition with such precision. Themes of love, loss and longing haunt the text, bolstered by gut-breakingly precise understanding of our humanity.
Khadija elevates the beloved hero’s journey but do not get me wrong. I love a trope. I love a clumsy girl in a rom-com, a quirky detective in crime-fiction, a naïve adventurer in fantasy. I love when the story makes a promise and keeps it. Yet, it is immeasurably better when the writer is skilled enough to create something new. Whether it is taking from the personal and bringing it into a genre: Octavia Butler transformed sci-fi by entering what concerned her, and those like her; Or Mary Shelly creating “Frankenstein” in what is, arguably, the western world’s first true horror fiction, because she was stuck in a house with pompous, if talented, men. The House of Rust feels…new.
Much like how Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi explicitly writes for Ugandans, Khadija’s work is transformative because of her gaze. Khadijah writes with her people and city, Hadhrami and Mombasa respectively, close to heart. As a Nairobian, I am filled with envy. A generous writer, you will enjoy every metaphor, description, tale, delight yet you know there are things that you can never understand, and that is the real magic.
For any book to accomplish all this, to join the likes of Octavia Butler, Mary Shelley, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, in being both new and familiar, original and timeless, and exquisitely written, is not just rare, but transcendent: “beyond or above the range of normal or physical human experience” or “surpassing the ordinary; exceptional.”
House of Rust is transcendent.
If I was to claw for a criticism, it’s that it ends too soon. The story isn’t over. I want more. I want the sequel. The trilogy. The anthology! I want the entire universe because it is a gift to be at sea in a story so transcendent as this.
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