"I thought the atmosphere was magnificent."

“So, you’re the writer,” she says in a tone of casual wonder, but perhaps as an indication that the information she has had to go by may be dodgy. “When Robin mentioned the black resident, I thought of another person, although I haven’t spoken to that person, either.”

The next thing she says, correcting my information about her country, throws me for a loop. Not Colombia but Italy and Australia, but then I need not apologize, she quickly adds; the mistake is not mine, and it is not important either. It is the case that some people are always looking for countries to belong to and who knows but that she would end up in Colombia.

That statement—some people always in search places to satiate their longing for home—hits me like a bolt, making more intense the shock I’ve been feeling for close to an hour. It seems as if this is the right encounter, and I no longer care about the water…

“Valeria,” she says and stretches out a hand. It’s another handshake, but I have not registered her failure to respond to my self-introduction in like manner.

I confess; I do not have an answer to that. In fact, it is not my intention to defend what the author did. I restate that it is the atmosphere, not so much the act, which had interested me. “But the atmosphere was imaginary, right? An act of sexual exploitation did take place. A rape. They were not supposed to lie down together, this the woman knew intuitively.” She pauses, avoiding my eyes, perhaps wondering about my motives for singling out that episode. “Anyway,” she says, “we haven’t met for an hour and here we are, talking about this, of all things!”

Excerpted from South Side, a new novel by Akin Adesokan, published by Parrésia, in May 2025. BookArtvile.com has an interview with the author that it will soon publish

Source: Bookartville