A Life Elsewhere by Segun Afolabi

Segun Afolabi’s A Life Elsewhere is a collection of seventeen short stories that investigate the themes of exile, migration, identity, and the search for belonging. The author, born in Nigeria and raised in various countries including Canada and Indonesia, draws on a global perspective to depict characters living in transit or navigating lives in foreign lands. The collection includes the story “Monday Morning,” which was awarded the 2005 Caine Prize for African Writing.

Monday Morning

The collection opens with “Monday Morning,” which follows a refugee family navigating their new life in London. The story begins with a young boy expressing a need to “piss” while walking with his parents through Regent’s Park on a Sunday. The father, seeking relief for his son, takes him to the edge of a lake, unaware that the locals are watching them with sour, narrowed eyes. The boy marvels at the steam rising from his own urine, finding it a new wonder in a place full of unfamiliar things. The family is currently residing at the Hotel Excelsior, which is actually a threadbare hostel filled with the noise and sorrow of many displaced people. The mother, who lost her hand in the violent conflict they fled, instinctively petted her husband with her “club” or “smooth paw” when he shuddered in his sleep from nightmares of rebels and rape.

The father has begun working illegally at a construction site in south London to support his extended family, including his mother and sister back home. Though he is a professional chef by trade, he spends his days moving building materials and learning tasks through observation because he does not understand the English instructions. One day, inspectors arrive at the site, and the father is forced to make a dangerous escape down a metal pole to avoid being caught without papers. He returns to the hostel wounded and bleeding, which triggers an outburst of rage and frustration from his wife, who fears he is risking their chance to stay. Their youngest son, Alfredo, obsessed with a “glass hotel” he saw earlier, runs away from the hostel and sneaks into the luxury building. He finds his way to the top floor and is shown into a room by a cleaning woman who speaks his language. As he falls asleep in the wide, comfortable bed, he sees a vision of the city that feels untouched and beautiful, a stark contrast to the violence and uncertainty of his past.

People You Don’t Know

In “People You Don’t Know,” a young man named Leon living in Tampa, Florida, struggles with displacement and a tendency toward petty crime. Leon lives in a one-bedroom apartment with his half-brother, Bryant, a large man who works at a nursing home and maintains a cool, indifferent relationship with Leon. Leon works a morning shift cleaning the apartment complex pool, where he meets Mrs. Drexel, an enormous woman who swims laps daily. Leon reveals to Mrs. Drexel that his father sent him away from England after he got into trouble involving credit card fraud and shoplifting. To pass the time and escape his boredom, Leon frequently breaks into cars, including a mud-red Chrysler and a white Toyota, using them to drive across the state to places like Miami or Cocoa Beach.

The story reaches a turning point when Leon takes an interview for a cleaning job at Bryant’s nursing home, managed by Mr. Ferreira. After the interview, Leon impulsively steals another car, even abandoning a small dog that was in the back seat, and drives east toward the coast, feeling that the road ahead is suddenly open. He eventually returns to the pool, where he has a final conversation with Mrs. Drexel before she suffers a sudden medical crisis on her sun lounger. Leon realizes she has died when he sees an ambulance arrive twenty minutes later. The story concludes with Leon leaving Tampa to return to London and his girlfriend, Stella, carrying the memory of his conversations with Mrs. Drexel as a rare source of happiness.

The Wine Guitar

“The Wine Guitar” tells the story of Kayode, an old man who plays a palm-wine guitar in London. Kayode’s voice has grown thin and cracked with age, so he focuses on his instrument, often practicing alone in his room. He is a frequent visitor to a brothel, where he chooses a young woman named Agnes because she reminds him of someone from his past. Agnes is often distracted; during one visit, she is shown crying over a letter, and Kayode simply watches her, enjoying her contemplative face and the fact that she does not seem bored by him.

Kayode spends his days eating traditional Nigerian food like akara, eba, and egusi at a restaurant called Mama Yinka’s, finding that the sophisticated foods he once loved no longer give him pleasure. In the evenings, he goes to a music club in Covent Garden with his friend Salbatore to watch the youth dance to highlife and Congolese music. One night, he sees Agnes at the club dancing with a younger man named Graham. The sight of her “wild” and “childish” behavior in the club shatters the placid image he had of her from the brothel. When the club manager offers him a chance to play on stage, Kayode refuses, claiming his arthritis is troubling him, though his hands are actually supple. He realizes he has been in “another man’s country” too long and has forgotten himself. The story ends with Kayode returning home to eat a microwave meal of iyan and egusi while resolving to write a letter to his children, from whom he is estranged.

Arithmetic

“Arithmetic” is a meditation on loss and memory narrated by a man sitting in a subway carriage with his wife, Alicia. The couple has just suffered their third miscarriage, an event Alicia describes to her mother as malparto. The narrator uses “arithmetic” and calculations to make sense of the “subtraction” of life that he feels is unfair. He reflects on his early sexual insecurity with Alicia and how she was his first intimate partner at age twenty-seven.

This reflection triggers a childhood memory of a house girl named Jumoke who worked for his wealthy father in Nigeria. His father was a ruthless businessman who ignored Jumoke, treating her as if she were invisible. Jumoke, in turn, hated the father and extended that hatred to the narrator. The narrator recalls an incident where Jumoke led him to her room and had a brief, traumatic sexual encounter with him when he was only seven years old. He eventually realized that Jumoke loathed him just as much as she loathed his father. Back in the present, the narrator squeezes Alicia’s hand, realizing that despite the “multiplication” and “complication” of life, they are “one,” and he resolves never to leave her.

The Visitor

In “The Visitor,” a couple named Sonny and Lorna host a dinner party that reveals deep-seated grief and marital tension. Lorna’s mother, Irene, is also present, having been invited because she is lonely. The guests are Sonny’s old colleague Gerry and his much younger, boisterous Polish girlfriend, Agnieszka. Gerry is a flamboyant man who claims to have traveled the world and been “banged up” in a Thai prison, while Agnieszka is overtly sexual, eventually removing her sweater during dinner because she is “too hot”.

The dinner is a failure; the lamb is tough and the potatoes are uncooked. The tension peaks when Gerry and Agnieszka disappear into the bathroom to have sex, a fact they bluntly announce upon their return. The crude behavior of the guests forces a painful revelation from Lorna: she and Sonny cannot have children. Irene explains that they were involved in a car accident in which a child died. Lorna, sobbing, admits she feels responsible because they were “pickled” (drunk) at the time of the accident. The story ends with Sonny walking Irene to the bus stop in the cold, while Irene expresses her confusion and worry for Lorna.

Two Sisters

“Two Sisters” is narrated by a seven-year-old boy who accompanies his mother and two older sisters, Bunmi and Folake, on a diplomatic boat trip to an island. The father, a tall and slender man, refuses to go, choosing to stay home in their apartment. During the trip, the mother is constantly accompanied by Mr. Ooststroom, a young, ghostly-looking man from the Dutch consulate. The sisters are deeply suspicious of Mr. Ooststroom, with Folake even confronting him and asking why he isn’t married.

Mr. Ooststroom reveals that he is married, which momentarily silences Folake. Despite the awkwardness and the heat of the day, the mother continues to be unusually “girlish” around him, loading his plate with chicken and rice. Years later, the narrator realizes that Mr. Ooststroom was likely just a lonely man and that the trip was an attempt to make a “strange place feel more like home”.

The Husband of Your Wife’s Best Friend

The narrator of “The Husband of Your Wife’s Best Friend” is an air traffic controller who finds his mundane life interrupted by a violent assault. He works with Geoff, a seventeen-stone man obsessed with get-rich-quick schemes, while fantasizing about a woman named “Fantasma” who appears to him in daydreams. The narrator views himself as a “sky whore,” guiding planes from all over the world with a calm, reassuring voice.

One evening, after buying butterscotch ice cream and red wine, the narrator is brutally mugged and left injured on the pavement. The trauma leaves him with a smashed knee and a face that resembles a “rotten pumpkin”. During his recovery, he becomes hypersensitive to his family’s dynamics and his wife’s resentment. He recalls a dinner party where he publicly insulted his wife’s ability to tally a shopping bill, leading her to reveal that she had been “absent” and perhaps unfaithful during various trips they took together. The story ends with the narrator back at work, his hands shaking as he realizes how fragile his life and relationships have become.

Moses

“Moses” follows Lanre Akande, a man mourning the death of his son, Moses. The story begins with Lanre tending to his son’s grave, meticulously cleaning the headstone and arranging roses. Lanre works in a small, hot photo developing shop in London, where he spends his days looking at the “lies” of other people’s happiness through their photographs.

Lanre is particularly struck by a roll of film showing a bare-chested man and a woman on a holiday in what appears to be North Africa. After work, he goes to a club to dance the merengue with a woman named Consuelo, trying to lose himself in the rhythm. He eventually returns to the flat of his current lover, a woman from “across the border,” where they drink heavily and have a physical encounter that is ultimately unsatisfying. The story ends with the man having a drunken accident in bed, mirroring the “ancient confusion” and lack of control he feels in his life since his son’s death.

Now that I’m Back

Louis, the protagonist of “Now that I’m Back,” is a twenty-three-year-old man who uses a wheelchair. He lives with his mother, a devoutly religious woman who treats him with a mixture of intense care and overbearing independence. They attend a charismatic church where the mother is a “joy” but can be a “nuisance” to neighbors due to her loud singing. Louis harbors a secret crush on Rosa, a part-time supermarket assistant, and Angus, his physiotherapist at the hospital.

Louis reflects on his father, who left the family years ago, and how his mother eventually found solace in becoming a “Bride of Christ”. During a physiotherapy session, Louis enjoys being enveloped in Angus’s scented embrace, which he describes as a “scented garden”. The story concludes with Louis and his mother in the supermarket, with Louis realizing that his life is defined by observation and the “parched road” of his own faith compared to his mother’s.

The Long Way Home

“The Long Way Home” details a man’s double life as he manages a marriage to “V” and an affair with his son’s maths tutor, Eliza. The man takes his son, J, to “Extra Maths” every Saturday, using that time to drive aimlessly around London or visit Eliza. He and Eliza have a history of reckless sexual encounters in her kitchen while J was in the next room.

The narrator met his wife, V, on a sedate holiday in the Bahamas where he was reading East of Eden. He reflects on the “muddled and irksome” nature of his affair with Eliza, especially when she reveals that J is unhappy at his boarding school and wants to return to London. The story explores the narrator’s inability to extricate himself from his complications and his resignation to the idea that everyone is “all right” even if life isn’t perfect.

Something in the Water

In “Something in the Water,” Femi returns to Nigeria for the first time in twenty years, accompanied by his American wife, Marcia. The trip is immediately difficult, characterized by power failures, a petrol crisis, and the intense, draining heat of Lagos. Femi feels a sense of “rushing away” from things, unable to explain to Marcia his “inability to breathe” in his home country.

They travel to Jos to visit his uncle’s house, only to find that other people live there and the expansive grounds of his memory have shrunk to a tiny yard. During a bush taxi ride to Kano, the car runs out of petrol in the middle of a desolate landscape. Femi experiences a panic attack, remembering that his mother died of cholera “something in the water” and his father died a year later from “ungovernable grief”. He breaks down and weeps in the dirt, only to be comforted by Marcia, who tells him, “You are not alone”.

Mrs Minter

“Mrs Minter” is narrated by Jide, an elderly man whose wife, Shree, is suffering from depression following a hip-replacement surgery and the death of their son, Nicholas. Nicholas died after a fight with “rough types” in London, and his death left Shree “exposed and vulnerable”. Twice a week, Jide takes Shree to the center for therapy sessions with Mrs. Minter.

Jide reflects on their life together, including their decision to remain in London rather than return to their respective home countries of Nigeria and St. Lucia. He admits that he too once felt “adrift in the world” and hungry for something else before settling down with Shree. The story ends with a peaceful moment as the couple watches foxes and their cubs in their garden at night, finding a sense of quiet and connection despite their losses.

Another Woman

Taiwo, the protagonist of “Another Woman,” is an elderly woman who decides to visit a pub in the West End alone to prove a point to her husband, Raymond. Raymond believes it is a “daft” thing for an older black woman to do, and indeed, Taiwo finds that people look at her as if she were a “granny” who doesn’t belong. On the bus home, she is shocked to see a conductor who is the “spitting image” of her dead brother, Idowu.

The next day, Taiwo and Raymond visit her twin sister, Kehinde, and her husband, Thomas, for a barbecue. During the meal, Taiwo tells them about “another woman” she saw in the pub a young, well-dressed woman who seemed to be desperately looking for a man named Didier. Taiwo realized the woman was lost and adrift, a realization that made her feel that everyone in the pub was “all alone”. The story concludes with Taiwo reaching for Raymond’s hand, finding comfort in their shared presence.

Mrs Mahmood

“Mrs Mahmood” follows a sports shop manager in London who struggles with a suppressed rage after catching a thirteen-year-old boy trying to steal a pair of Nike trainers. The manager, who was once a record-breaking student athlete himself, is “exhausted to watch success slip so quickly away” and feels “cheated” by the boy’s cold, contemptuous expression.

He returns home to his wife, Isobel, who is an orthoptist at a children’s hospital. Isobel dismisses his anger, noting that theft is “nothing new,” which only confuses the manager further. He reflects on their relationship, noting that he “fought for Isobel” even though she did not want him in the beginning. The story ends with the manager visiting a park and running on a rubber track, hearing only his own “laboured breath” and realizing that Isobel is the “one certainty” in his life.

Gifted

Set in Japan, “Gifted” tells the story of a Nigerian woman, Mrs. Odesola, who is a victim of domestic abuse. She hides her injuries from her two young sons, Dayo and his older brother, while they live in a high-rise apartment during a heavy snowfall. Her husband is “strange in this country” and prone to sudden acts of violence, such as hitting the children for standing on a chair.

Mrs. Odesola finds a rare friend in her elderly Japanese neighbor, Mr. Mihashi, who shares biscuits with them and describes his own late wife as “gifted”. Driven to a breaking point, Mrs. Odesola has a moment where she considers drowning her sons in the bathtub just to find “no more noise”. Instead, she impulsively decides to flee, packing a suitcase and taking the boys to a hotel. The story ends with her sitting on the edge of a hotel bed, realizing the “chaos” of the life she has left behind but knowing she cannot go back.

In the Garden

In “In the Garden,” a paramedic visits his father, who has dementia and is living in a care home. The father sits in a plastic chair by a sliding door, barely recognizing his “crippled son,” who has one leg shorter than the other. The son reflects on the “drama and variety” of his work, including a recent call to a scene where a beautiful woman was “pinned against a fence,” dead after being hit by a car.

The narrator also visits a “house of correction” to participate in BDSM rituals where he is “squeezed in the lunette” and beaten. He finds these experiences comparable to the “correction” he received from his father as a child. During a final visit to his father, the old man speaks his dead wife’s name, “Aina,” a rare moment of memory that leaves the son feeling that his father is “leaving you and there is nothing for it”.

Jumbo and Jacinta

The final story, “Jumbo and Jacinta,” follows an elderly couple on holiday at Niagara Falls. Jacinta is a small woman who is constantly worried about her husband Jumbo’s health, as he is significantly overweight. She has a “secret drink of a fantasy” that she could have been a doctor, often using complex medical terms to diagnose her friends’ ailments.

The couple takes a boat tour of the falls, which initially terrifies Jacinta. However, as the boat enters the “chaos of water,” she finds she is no longer afraid. She smiles and stretches her arm across Jumbo’s back, feeling that they are like children entering the sea. The story, and the collection, concludes with this image of a “broken and lonely” people finding a momentary sense of peace and connection.