“Everything will be alright for you, Charlie,” I said.
But Charlie was not listening—already he was giggling and kicking and struggling to be put down. He stared over my shoulder at the local children, still playing in the shore break around the rocky point.
“Let me go! Let me go!”
I shook my head. “No Charlie. It is a very hot day. You cannot run around in your costume like that or you will boil, I am telling you, and then you will be no good to us at all to fight the baddies. Take off your Batman costume, right now, and then you will just be yourself and you can go to cool off in the sea.”
“No!”
“Please Charlie, you must. It is for your health.”
Charlie shook his head. I stood him in the sand and I knelt down beside him and I whispered in his ear.
“Charlie,” I said, “do you remember when I promised you, if you took off your costume, that I would tell you my real name?”
Charlie nodded.
“So do you still want to know my real name?”
Charlie tilted his head to one side so that both of the ears of his mask flopped over. Then he tilted it to the other side. Then finally he looked straight at me.
“What is yours real name?” he whispered.
I smiled. “My name is Udo.”
“Ooh-doh?”
“That is it. Udo means, peace. Do you know what peace is, Charlie?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Peace is a time when people can tell each other their real names.”
Charlie grinned. I looked over his shoulder. The soldiers were walking across the sand toward us now. They were walking slowly, with their rifles in their hands pointing down at the sand, and while the soldiers walked, the waves rolled in to the beach and crashed upon the sand one by one at this final end of their journey. The waves rolled and rolled and there was no end to the power of them, cold enough to wake a young girl from dreams, loud enough to tell and retell the future. I bent my head and I kissed Charlie on the forehead. He stared at me.
“Udo?” he said.
“Yes Charlie?”
“I is going to take off mine Batman costume now.”
The soldiers were almost on us now.
“Hurry then, Charlie,” I whispered.
Charlie pulled off the mask first, and the local children gasped when they saw his blond hair. Their curiosity was greater than their fear of the soldiers and they ran with their skinny legs straining toward the place where we were, and then when Charlie took off the rest of his costume and they saw his skinny white body they said, Weh! because such a child had never before been seen in that place. And then Charlie laughed, and he slipped out from my arms and I stood up and stayed very still. Behind me I felt the soft shocks of the soldiers’ boots in the sand and in front of me all of the local children ran with Charlie down to the crashing water by the rocky point. I felt the hard hand of a soldier on my arm but I did not turn around. I smiled and I watched Charlie running away with the children, with his head down and his happy arms spinning like propellers, and I cried with joy when the children all began to play together in the sparkling foam of the waves that broke between worlds at the point. It was beautiful, and that is a word I would not need to explain to the girls from back home, and I do not need to explain to you, because now we are all speaking the same language. The waves still smashed against the beach, furious and irresistible. But me, I watched all of those children smiling and dancing and splashing one another in salt water and bright sunlight, and I laughed and laughed and laughed until the sound of the sea was drowned.
If your face is swollen from the severe
beatings of life, smile and pretend
to be a fat man.
—Nigerian proverb
notes
THANK YOU FOR READING this story. The characters in it are imagined, although the action takes place in a reality which is intended to call to mind our own.
The “Black Hill Immigration Removal Centre” in the text does not exist in the real world, although some of its particulars would seem familiar to the thousands of asylum seekers detained in the ten real immigration removal centers1 which are operational in the United Kingdom at the time of writing, since they are based on the testimony of former interns of these places.
Similarly, the beach on which Sarah and Little Bee first meet in the novel is not intended to correspond to any specific location in Nigeria, although the interethnic and oil-related conflicts from which Little Bee is fleeing are real and ongoing in the Delta region of that country, which at the time of writing is the world’s eighth-biggest petroleum-exporting nation.2 In the period leading up to the writing of this novel, Nigeria was the second-biggest African exporter of asylum applicants to the United Kingdom.3
Jamaica is an order of magnitude less significant as a point of origin of asylum seekers, although during the same period between one hundred and one thousand Jamaicans each year sought asylum in the United Kingdom.4
Occasionally in the novel, real-world elements have been introduced into the text which I hereby acknowledge. (If I have unintentionally missed some, I hope I will be forgiven.) The novel begins with a quotation, complete with the original typo, from the UK Home Office publication Life in the United Kingdom (2005), fifth printing. “However long the moon disappears, someday it must shine again” is taken from www.motherlandnigeria.com. The Ave Maria in the Ibo language is taken from the Christus Rex et Redemptor Mundi website at http://www.christusrex.org. The rather brilliant line “We do not see how anybody can abuse an excess of sanitary towels” is taken verbatim from the transcript of the Bedfordshire County Council special report of July 18, 2002, into the fire at the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Detention Centre on February 14, 2002, where it is attributed to Loraine Bayley of the Campaign to Stop Arbitrary Detention at Yarl’s Wood.
I have tried, with whatever success the reader will judge, to make the characters’ speech patterns plausible. For the most part my work is based on close listening, although some Nigerian English idioms are from A Dictionary of Nigerian English [draft] by Roger Blench and A Dictionary of Nigerian English Usage by Herbert Igboanusi, Enicrownfit Publishers, Jan. 1, 2001; some Jamaican English idioms are from A Dictionary of Jamaican English by F. G. Cassidy and R. B. Le Page, University of the West Indies Press, Jan. 31, 2002; and some four-year-old English idioms are from my son, Batman.
Details of the UK immigration detention system were provided by Christine Bacon, who was very patient with me. Her direction of Asylum Monologues with the Actors for Refugees groups in the UK and Australia was an inspiration for this project. Christine also kindly read my manuscript and disabused me of some of my misconceptions. For those interested I recommend her eye-opening working paper for the University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre, The Evolution of Immigration Detention in the UK: The Involvement of Private Prison Companies, at www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/publications/working-papers-folder_contents/RSCworkingpaper27.pdf.
(If this or other links stop working, the documents will be available from my website at www.chriscleave.com.)
Background on the medical and social aspects of immigration and asylum was provided by Dr. Mina Fazel, Bob Hughes, and Teresa Hayter—original interviews with them can be found on my website.
The novel’s hits are down to the kind people who helped me; the misses are all mine.
1. Home Office UK Border Agency; see http://www.bia.homeoffice.gov.uk/managingborders/immigrationremovalcentres/.
2. US Energy Information Administration, “Top World Oil Net Exporters 2006.”
3. UK Office for National Statistics, “Applications received for asylum in the United Kingdom, excluding dependants, by nationality, 1994 to 2002.”
4. Ibid.
acknowledgments
THANKS TO ANDY PATERSON and Olivia Paterson for excellent notes on my early draft. Thanks to Sharon Maguire and Anand Tucker for their warmth and support.
Thanks also to Bob Hughes, Teresa Hayter,
and Christine Bacon for their hospitality, their encouragement, and for reading my manuscript and offering suggestions.
I owe a great deal to Suzie Dooré, Jennifer Joel, Maya Mavjee, Marysue Rucci, and Peter Straus, whose several patient readings and insightful editorial notes on my drafts have been invaluable. Thank you.
about the author
CHRIS CLEAVE IS A novelist and a columnist for The Guardian newspaper in London.
His bestselling novel, Incendiary, was published in twenty countries, won the 2006 Somerset Maugham Award, was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, won the United States Book-of-the-Month Club’s First Fiction Award, and won the Prix Spécial du Jury at the French Prix des Lecteurs 2007.
Inspired by his early childhood in West Africa and by an accidental visit to a British concentration camp, Little Bee is his second novel.
He lives in London with his French wife and three mischievous Anglo-French children.
He keeps his website at www.chriscleave.com.
Little Bee
Little Bee, a young Nigerian refugee, has just been released from the British immigration detention center where she has been held under horrific conditions for the past two years, after narrowly escaping a traumatic fate in her homeland of Nigeria. Alone in a foreign country, without a family member, friend, or pound to call her own, she seeks out the only English person she knows. Sarah is a posh young mother and magazine editor with whom Little Bee shares a dark and tumultuous past.
They first met on a beach in Nigeria, where Sarah was vacationing with her husband, Andrew, in an effort to save their marriage after an affair, and their brief encounter has haunted each woman for two years. Now together, they face a disturbing past and an uncertain future with the help of Sarah’s four-year-old son, Charlie, who refuses to take off his Batman costume. A sense of humor and an unflinching moral compass allow each woman, and the reader, to believe that even in the face of unspeakable odds, humanity can prevail.
Discussion Questions
1. “Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive” (page 9). For Little Bee and other asylum seekers, the story of their life thus far is often all they have. What happens to the characters that carry their stories with them, both physically and mentally? What happens when we try to forget our past? How much control over their own stories do the characters in the book seem to have?
2. Little Bee tells the reader, “We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived” (page 9). Which characters in the story are left with physical scars? Emotional scars? Do they embrace them as beautiful? Do you have any scars you’ve come to embrace? Did you feel more connected to Little Bee as a narrator after this pact?
3. Little Bee strives to learn the Queen’s English in order to survive in the detention center. How does her grasp of the language compare with Charlie’s? How does the way each of these two characters handle the English language help to characterize them?
4. How did it affect your reading experience to have two narrators? Did you trust one woman more than the other? Did you prefer the voice of one over the other?
5. Little Bee credits a small bottle of nail polish for “saving her life” while she was in the detention center (page 7). Is there any object or act that helps you feel alive and beautiful, even when everything else seems to be falling apart?
6. Of the English language Little Bee says, “Every word can defend itself. Just when you go to grab it, it can split into two separate meanings so the understanding closes on empty air” (page 12). What do you think she means by this? Can you think of any examples of English words that defend themselves? Why is language so important to Little Bee?
7. Little Bee says of horror films, “Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it” (page 45). Do you agree? Was reading this novel in any way a dose of horror for you? How did it help you reflect on the presence or lack of horror in your own life?
8. Little Bee figures out the best way to kill herself in any given situation, just in case “the men come suddenly.” How do these plans help Little Bee reclaim some power? Were you disturbed by this, or were you able to find the humor in some of the scenarios she imagines?
9. What does Udo changing her name to Little Bee symbolize for you? How does her new name offer her protection? Do you think the name suits her?
10. “To have an affair, I began to realize, was a relatively minor transgression. But to really escape from Andrew, to really become myself, I had to go the whole way and fall in love” (pages 161–162). Do you agree with Sarah that an affair is a minor transgression? How did falling in love with someone else help Sarah become herself? What role did Andrew play in perpetuating Sarah’s extramarital affair?
11. When Little Bee finds that Andrew has hanged himself she thinks, “Of course I must save him, whatever it costs me, because he is a human being.” And then she thinks, “Of course I must save myself, because I am a human being too” (page 194). How do the characters in the story decide when to put themselves first and when to offer charity? Is one human life ever more valuable than another? What if one of the lives in question is your own?
Enhancing Your Book Club
1. Visit Chris Cleave’s website at www.chriscleave.com. You’ll find videos, reviews, behind-the-book extras and interviews.
2. Little Bee says, “I have noticed, in your country, I can say anything so long as I say that is the proverb in my country. Then people will nod their heads and look very serious” (page 180). Take this opportunity to make up some proverbs to share with your book club. Are there any sayings from your culture that might be a good start?
3. Little Bee and her sister chose new names for themselves. Have your book club members rename one another. Choose names based on characteristics, like Little Bee’s sister Kindness, or on things in nature, like Little Bee.
4. To find out more about asylum seekers here in the United States, visit http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/asylum/asylum.htm.
Author Q&A
Why did you choose to open the novel with the quote from Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship ? What does the typo in this quote mean for you?
The quote is “Britain is proud of its tradition of providing a safe haven for people fleeting [sic] persecution and conflict.” I took it from Life in the United Kingdom, which is the textbook given to immigrants preparing for their citizenship test in the UK. It covers British history, government and etiquette. It offers the excellent advice: “If you spill a stranger’s drink by accident, it is good manners (and prudent) to offer to buy another.” Less gloriously, though, its summary of British history is rather selective, and the work as a whole is riddled with inaccuracies and typographical errors. My belief is that if a refugee is prepared to walk away from a regime that has imprisoned and tortured her, flee to the UK, apply for asylum and commit to memory the contents of the textbook we make compulsory for her, then for our part we should at least be prepared to have that textbook professionally copyedited. The typo in that opening quotation is a nice example of a bureaucracy that is pretending to care, but not pretending very hard.
What challenges did you encounter using two narrators? How did using two voices allow you to tell the story more thoroughly? What were some difficulties you faced writing from a female perspective? Sarah and Little Bee are each strong, extraordinary women; how did you show their strength through their very different styles of narration?
I knew this was a compelling story but after agonizing over which character would be the best one to narrate it, I realized that the strongest perspective would actually be a dual one. This is a story of two worlds: the developed and the developing, and of the mutual incomprehension that sometimes dooms them to antagonism. So by taking one woman from each side of the divide, and investing each with a compulsion to understand the othe
r, I was able to let the story unpack itself in the mind of the reader. This was a huge breakthrough for me. One shouldn’t underestimate the role of the reader in this novel. I wanted to write a story that was never made fully explicit; which relied on the reader’s interpretation of the characters’ dialogue. Once you trust the reader with the story, the writing is really fun to do.
It’s not without its technical challenges, of course. As a man it requires concentration to write from a female perspective, but I see that as an advantage. If I’m consciously writing as someone so different from myself, then I’m protected from the trap of lazily using my own voice to animate the character. It forces me to listen, to think, and to write more precisely. Using two narrators is difficult, though. To differentiate their vocabulary, grammar and idioms is quite straightforward if you make an effort to understand and inhabit the characters, but the hard thing is how you handle the overlaps and the gaps in the characters’ knowledge. When both narrators have witnessed an event, which one will you choose to recount it? Or will you let both of them tell it, and play with their different perspectives on what they’ve seen? When you use your narrators in series, you need to work to make it not feel like a TV show with bad links between segments. But when you use them in parallel, you need to take pains to avoid the text feeling repetitive.