Humor -- and a dose of skepticism -- about isms

The West African nation of Ghana is not largely Islamic, but if you were growing up among the close-knit Muslim community on Zongo Street in the city of Kumasi, you might not have guessed that -- not at first, anyway.

The young narrator of the title piece in this engaging story collection first learns otherwise as an adolescent. The neighborhood’s eponymous “prophet,” a thoughtful, bookish postal clerk named Kumi who is steeped (or so he claims) in Socrates, Spinoza, Kant and Nietzsche, gives him a book by a 1930s Africanist to read:

“The book called for a universal black rebellion against ‘white dominance’ and was full of curses and diatribes on Europeans, Arabs, and all white-skinned people. It was shocking and scary. I was brought up not only to revere Arabs and their culture, but to see each of them as a paragon of beauty, virtue, and spirituality.... And there I was, reading that some ‘Arab Invaders’ had once waged wars against black people in West Africa, and in the process of that war, had enslaved my ancestors and forced them to convert to Islam. For the first time I realized that there actually was a period in history when the people of my tribe, Hausa, weren’t Muslims at all.”

For the young narrator, this is eye-opening, disturbing at first, but broadening in the long run. In Kumi’s case, however, all his reading finally sends him over the edge, and the young boy watches in tears as his formerly respectable mentor paces the street ranting, raving and prophesying on behalf of the ancestral god Ti-gari, who, he preaches, is actually “the supreme ruler of the universe.”

Kumi’s message, although roundly disregarded by the Zongo Street locals apart from its entertainment value, is not without validity: “The Christian and Islamic intrusionists ... asked our ancestors to look up into the sky, to look up to heaven, while they filled their ships with our gold, young men and women, timber, diamonds, cocoa.... “

The indigenous African religion, Kumi tells them, is clearly superior: “Unlike the abstract and partial gods brought to us by these invaders, Ti-gari and the gods of our ancestors are merciful, generous, and sympathetic to the needs of people of all races -- ours especially.” Unlike poor Kumi, driven half-mad by too much reading, access to a wider perspective has enabled our young narrator to take things with a grain of salt.

This wise and sensible attitude clearly reflects the outlook of his creator, Mohammed Naseehu Ali, a Ghanaian-born writer and musician now living in Brooklyn. The 10 stories in his debut collection display a shrewd yet gentle sense of humor along with a healthy dose of skepticism about the claims of religions, ideologies, mythologies and isms of all kinds.

Six set in Ghana, four in New York, these colorful tales run the gamut of the seriocomic, managing somehow to be simultaneously funny, frightening, sad, shocking and, most of all, deeply humane. They abound with memorable characters and situations. Out on Long Island, we meet Shatu, in “Live-in,” who, although treated with great kindness by most Americans (apart from the suspicious old harridan she tends to), longs for the communal life she left behind.

Back in Ghana, Mr. Rafique, a mild-mannered clerk married to a sexy, spoiled nouveau riche girl, finds himself unaccountably unable to perform, perhaps because his wife is too keen on helping him out. To obtain a proper Muslim divorce, the frustrated young lady unhappily agrees to have her husband undergo “the Manhood Test,” involving some up-close and personal observation of their sex life.

Ali has a keen ear for the smaller, but no less delusory shibboleths of village life, whether it’s the nostrums of Zongo Street or the mantras of the artsy bohemian types in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, the setting of “Rachmaninov.”

What begins as a lighthearted portrait of Felix, a bright, self-confident young Ghanaian musician with ambitious plans to write brilliant socio-cultural tomes after first winning fame in the record business, becomes another kind of story altogether when Felix and Greta, a friendly white girl from Sarah Lawrence, ingest too many harmful substances.

Greta seems literally poisoned and begs him to dial 911. Felix instead calls a heavy-metal rocker buddy to ask his advice: “Dude, DO NOT call nine-one-one, no matter how freaked out she gets.” One might as well be back on Zongo Street, fearing the clinic in the story “Ward G-4.”

Although many in these stories are misled by philosophies, faiths and ideas that promise to provide all the answers, Ali shows time after time how ordinary human kindness is the one quality capable of redeeming it all. In “The True Aryan,” an Armenian New York City cabby, stung by his people’s sufferings, bores and alarms the Ghanaian narrator with his talk of “how history would one day vindicate his people” -- the “true Aryans” -- “and restore them to their rightful place: the throne of the universe.” Victims must become tigers, the cabby explains. Yet the truth about this true Aryan is his kindness, as he gives the young musician a free cab ride and exchanges warm respects on dropping him and his drums off in Brooklyn.

Merle Rubin is a contributing writer to Book Review.