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OSO. Tijdschrift voor Surinaamse Taalkunde, Letterkunde en Geschiedenis. Jaargang 3 (1984)

OSO. Tijdschrift voor Surinaamse Taalkunde, Letterkunde en Geschiedenis. Jaargang 3

(1984)– [tijdschrift] OSO–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Boesi sa tek' mi baka-let the bush receive me once again. Edgar Cairo-Surinamese writer
Vernie A. February

Jan Voorhoeve was a man of many parts. Although generally renowned as a linguist, he was one of the first scholars to introduce Surinamese poets and writers to the Dutch academic world. Voorhoeve was a pioneer in this respect and, in many cases, he maintained a close and personal friendship with practically all of these writers in Surinam. It was Voorhoeve who first recognized the importance of the Creole writer Edgar Cairo. This full-length discussion of Edgar Cairo's literary oeuvre is in part due to the fact that a man like Jan Voorhoeve recognized his artistic abilities at a very early stage.

Edgar Cairo is one of the most prolific writers in the Netherlands. An excellent performer and reader of his own poetry, a story teller of considerable finesse, he has succeeded, in only a few years, in becoming an almost household name in the Netherlands. Born in Surinam, the former Dutch Guyana in 1948, he showed promise even while at home. Cairo comes from the Para District, which is an important fact in so far as he grew up in close proximity of the old creole (slave) culture. He is therefore fully conversant with the banya and the laku (song/dance and drama), as well as the anansi tori (spider tales brought over from Africa and adapted to the new invironment in Latin America). The srafuten tori (tales from slavery), winti (Afro - Caribbean slave religion), the concept of KRA (soul) as it still functions in lower creole culture in and around Paramaribo. In a sense, then, Cairo combines within himself, all the characteristics of the African oral artist (indeed his heritage), and reminds during performances, very strongly of the imbongi (the praise poet). Invariably also, he is accompanied on the drums by a fellow creole who, like him, is as steeped in creole culture. He has hitherto written 25 books. The following selection of his publications will give an indication of the man's productivity:

1969 Temekoe (Kopzorg/Headache) a novel in Sranan tongo (creole)
1970 KRA (soul/spirit) ‘poewesie’ (i.e. poetry in the Surinamese Creole language, Sranan Tongo).
1975 OBJA SA TAN A BREWA! (There will never be an end to the brewing of magic) - poetry with an analysis.
1976 Brokositon (rubble: an historical play of song and dance).
1976 Famir'man - sani oftewel kollektieve schuld (novel) (Collective Guilt).
1977 Adoebe-Lobi- Alles tegen alles (i.e. All against All).
1978 Djari/Erven (novel) (Lit. Life in the backyards).
1979 KOEWATRA DJODJO/ In de geest van mijn kultuur (Lit. in the spirit of my Culture) - novel.
1980 Mi Boto Doro/ Droomboot Havenloos (Lit. Dreamboat rudderless).

1980 Temekoe (now in the author's translation in Dutch and therefore accessible for the first time to the non-creole speaker in a European languague)
1980 Ik ga dood om jullie hoofd (Lit. I'd die for you).
a collection of articles in Surinamese-Dutch as columnist of the well-known Dutch Daily, De Volkskrant.
1981 JEJE DISI
1982 Dat vuur der Grote Drama's.

In addition, Cairo is also responsible for one or two plays in which, for example, he exploits the anansi motif within the Latin American-Creole context: Ba Anansi Woi! Woi! Woi! (1977). Add to this, ELZARO! ELZARO! (1978) the Doodsboodschapsvogel (according to tradition the jorkafowroe - a night swallow, harbinger of death), Foe Jowe Disi/om het oer (1978) and his work for the Dutch Radio in which he answers questions about Surinamese culture, language and literature, his own role as a creative artist, then one would have an inkling of the life this very creative Surinamese creole artist leads. Cairo's views on language are very illuminating. He himself studied language and literature at the University of Amsterdam, of which he is a graduate.

His weekly column in De Volkskrant was written in Surinamese-Dutch, that is, an almost phonetic transcription in his view, of the Dutch spoken by his countrymen. In this respect, he is an iconoclast, a young Surinamese who treads in the footsteps of that creole nationalist, Papa Koenders. The latter, in a series of articles in his magazine, Foetoe Boi (messenger) exhorted his countrymen in the forties to be proud of their creole background, respect themselves and also pointed out the important role of language in the struggle for self-respect. His favourite proverb in Sranan Tongo was: Yu kan kribi granmama, ma yu no kan tapu kosokoso, that is: You can hide your grandmother, but you cannot prevent her from coughing. Papa Koenders1 was to find a worthy successor in that marvellously sensitive creole poet, Trefossa2 (pseudonym of Hennie De Ziel), who conclusively proved that creole (Sranan Tongo - the Surinamese tongue), was capable of expressing as beautiful and deep sentiments, as for example, Dutch. He rescued creole in Surinam from negroization and elevated it to the language of poetry and prose.

In a sense then, Cairo seems to have arrogated unto himself this role. During 1971 and 1973, the author of this article had occasion to work with the creologist J. Voorhoeve and the linguist U. Lichtveld on the first ever full-length Creole anthology in English (published in 1975 by Yale university). While in Surinam to introduce African and Caribbean literature, I was asked to look up Cairo when back in Holland. In the early seventies, he even did a special course in Afro-Caribbean literature with the author of this article. Cairo of course has the distinction of being the only novelist to date, who has ever written a full-length novel in a creole language. Creole Drum has an extract of this novel Temekoe in English translation.

The novel Temekoe is remarkable, full of pain, pathos and lyrically sad at times, an almost cri de coeur to understand his father. It is autobiographical. This in itself is an achievement, for autobiographies are few and far apart in Creole-Surinamese culture and literature. Creoles simply don't prefer washing their dirty linen in public via autobiographies. The Anglo-Saxon scholar may be familiar with the poetry of the Jamaican Joan Bennet, or have heard of the Sierra Leonean Thomas Dekker. In the Dutch Antilles, some of the major novelists preferred to write in Dutch. Even the Antillean Frank Martinus Arion, despite his black nationalism and feelings for Africa, has still written his three major novels in standard Dutch. Cairo's

Temekoe has a psychological theme. The reader is confronted with the relationship which exists (or does not exist), between the young impressionable Edgar Cairo and his father. Cairo himself is confronted with ‘negro traumas’3, to use his own words. In a article in a Dutch magazine (De Tijd, 1979), he formulates his problem in the following manner3.

You must be aware of your own culture when you land up in a strange world. It is like meeting a tiger in the forest: then you must back-pedal without falling into something.

Hugo Pos, one of the few people in Holland intimately involved with Surimese literature and culture maintains4:

I do not know whether we fully realise how creative an artist, poet and dramatist Edgar Cairo really is. His lyrical verse-drama's based as they are on the oral-Creole culture, are completely unique of form, melody and theme.

Cairo is not loth to air his opinion on Surinamese Culture and language in Dutch magazines, newspapers and periodicals. He swipes at the bakra (White man) and the blakaman (blackman, mostly Surinamese) with condescension and a conciliatory smile. Yet, at the same time he ostensibly demeans himself, thereby playing out his Anansi role - the animal which survives the ravages of slavery because of his cunning, the lowly, the despised who outwits his superior. In an interview in the weekly Pipel (Paramaribo 7 september, 1979), he himself stated in no uncertain terms: ‘I have set it as my goal to undo various colonial traumas5’.

For the author, language is not only ‘a means of communication but an instrument of regulating the emotions’. He makes no secret about his love for, and devotion to, his mother tongue, Sranan Tongo. In the interview in Pipel, he says, (Pipel, 7 september, 1979)6:

Sranan Tongo has been reviled and ridiculed to such an extent that no one wants to identify him/her self with it psychologically. One is confronted with the reality that everyone rejects Sranan Tongo. Then I started writing in Dutch but in a completely different manner. But as a child I was busy with Sranan Tongo. I still have a scar on my forehead from one of the teachers who ‘hari mi wan baks’ because I had spoken Sranan Tongo at school. That scar has remained and I think that the entire language question is tied up with colonialism and its consequences.

Cairo is especially concerned about the fact that the Surinamese themselves have forgotten their language. They must now struggle with a foreign language Dutch, which they speak and write badly - or differently. Not unnaturally, Edgar Cairo refers to himself as a ‘word workman’ (a literal translation of the Dutch term used by him, ‘woord werkman’ (vide: Het Parool, 26 october, 19797).

He realizes that many of his countrymen are products of ‘self-deception-in-self-definition’. They are blakabakras - outwardly black, but inwardly white. Conscious of the fact that these are colonial traumas, he therefore constantly hammers at his own countrymen and Dutchmen. The Surinamese, in his eyes, ‘have grown up with a bakra-mouth - that is, a Dutch mouth - and, in reality, with a bakra-head also’ (vide: Het Parool, 26 october, 1979). If this led to forms of schizophrenia in many of his countrymen, then Edgar Cairo seems to have escaped the ravages of colonialism. In the same interview in Het Parool (1979) he stated8:

My family was indeed very negroid. They never told me not to be a nigger. From inside, I have had no opposition. On the contrary, I have always identified myself with my blackness. Not to get bogged down in it; but to choose clearly for my background.

And this statement characterizes Cairo and his seemingly lonely fight as a Surinamese Creole in Holland against total assimilation, and, eventually, total annihilation. A Dutch reporter once remarked in a newspaper that in his fight for Sranan Tongo, Cairo could very well have culled his motto from the writings of the celebrated Dutch (Flemish) poet, Guido Gezelle, who once wrote: ‘Where there is no language, there is no nation. Where there is no nation there is no land’ (vide: Trouw, April, 1980)9.

Edgar Cairo realizes that language has often been used by the conqueror to colonize and enslave. English was the language of the colonizer in India and Africa, Dutch in Indonesia, Potuguese in Africa and Latin America. The examples are numerous and the effects equally traumatic. One could paraphrase Frantz Fanon and state that the Surinamese blackman was civilised in proportion to his mastery of the Dutch language. Yet, the blacks in Surinam either spoke Dutch incorrectly or differently - or else whites and others were amazed that they spoke it so well at all. Cairo recalls a light-skinned woman - the narcissim of small differences is very much alive in Surinam - who said to him: ‘My God, you speak Dutch well - for a negro’ (vide: De Tijd, 6 juli, 1979, 5e jaargang, nr. 251, p. 21)10. The writer's virtuosity lies herein that he knows his mother-tongue, Sranan Tongo, well - even writes ‘deep Sranan’ - understands the sentence structure, word order, melody and thought processes of the Surinamese Dutch so well that he single-handed created a new Surinamese-Dutch orthography and style. At the same time, he can express his thoughts beautifully in standard Dutch.

For him, Edgar Cairo, ‘One of the faults of the Dutch and the Surinamese is that they think of a writer as good only when he writes about his own country. But for me, a writer is only good when he can enlarge and extend the small framework of his youth to embrace the universal’. Echoes of Frantz Fanon, Henny de Ziel (Trefossa) and Papa Koenders, as well as those of other black writers, are found in most of the statements of this very prolific Surinamese writer.

Cairo studied the Dutch language at university level, wrote in Sranan Tongo, and campaigned relentlessly for the recognition of Sranan as the national language. In fact, he is very much pre-occupied with this question of language. He too, was brought up with the standard prejudices against his mother-tongue. He realized that the Creole's prime concern was to erase his ‘negroness’ in the land of the Bakra (whiteman) in Holland. Dobru (pseudonym of the late Robin Ravales, which in Sranan Tongo means double R), poet, nationalist and at one time, deputy Min. of culture (1980), in his autobiography, Wan Monki Fri recalls how his mother once hit him in the mouth for daring to speak Sranan Tongo.

Cairo naturally realizes that writing in Sranan Tongo imposes certain limitations upon him as a creative artist. Moreover, it means sacrificing international recognition. The Surinamese themselves have hitherto refrained from introducing Sranan Tongo as the main language of instruction. Cairo once referred to language as a ‘means of separation and to shit on others’. Apart from Temekoe and some of his poetry, his novels are therefore written in Surinamese-Dutch. Now, this choice in turn also posed problems. His brand of Surinamese-Dutch has been labelled by himself, in comic-ironic vein, Cairoaans, and in a sense, it is not so far off the mark. His humorous articles in the Dutch Daily De Volkskrant, now published in book form

under the title Ik Ga Dood om jullie hoofd (I'd die for you), caused many a Surinamese and Dutchman to write to the newspaper. Many felt that he was ridiculing the Surinamese. In a sense, the attitude expressed by ‘coloureds’ in South Africa towards the language used by the South African poet Small, is similar to that of some Surinamese towards Cairo's literary products (vide: V. February, Mind Your Colour, London, 1981, p. 95).

The charge that he ridiculed his own people must have hurt Cairo, who does so much for Surinamese culture and literature. Anycase, he was at least sensitive to this charge.

The author himself justifies his prolonged stay in Holland in the following, rather unconvincing manner11:

It is my artistic nature which keeps me here. I am afraid that I won't be able to do this if I return to Surinam. Then I'll be destroyed as an artist, not because of Surinam, but because conditions over there are so miserable. Writing is my profession ..... my life. I'd rather die than down my pen.

Cairo's weapon is the pen. In Holland he lambastes the Dutch for having turned the Surinamese into pseudo-Dutchmen. On the stage, he amuses his half-literate, semi-proletariat countrymen in Holland, who sublimate nostalgically when they hear him perform. For the man is an excellent performer, someone who understands the creole culture of the lower classes intimately. It is no accident that Edgar Cairo exploits the laku and the banya the way he does. Nor is it surprising that he constantly refers to winti (Afro-Caribbean slave religion) and the Kra (soul). Charles Wooding, another creole with an intimate knowledge of lower class creole culture, has written clearly on the subject of winti in his thesis. Creole Drum (1975) stresses the importance of these phenomena in chapter two. Cairo realizes that these phenomena constitute the sinews of creole life.

In Creole society songs can be tender or humorous, but they can also be used as deadly weapons... Surinam is possibly one of the few places in the world where concerts have been repeatedly forbidden by law12.

Cairo understands the essence of the ‘dramatized banya and the laku’ and reaches his creole audience in a very direct manner. To the outsider, his plays may then be cumbersome at times, too full of digression and nonfunctional parts, as with his play Ba Anansi Woi! Woi! Woi!. The creole audiences react differently and enjoy every minute of it. Recognition of aspects of their own culture elicits guffaws from the creole.

Temekoe, the first novella ever written in a creole language by the Surinamese novelist, poet and dramatist Edgar Cairo was in his own words written when he was only eighteen years of age. He himself says of the book: I wrote Temekoe when I was eighteen. It is a terribly honest book, completely autobiographical... The relationship with my father is completely honest. With me as the ‘belly-closer’ (literal translation of the word ‘buiksluiter’ used by the author himself)13.

In Temekoe, the main character is not the son but the father. The reader is confronted with an ordinary labourer, ensnared in ordinary hum-drum activities and his attempts to survive his poverty-stricken conditions. Cairo's novella does not concentrate solely on illuminating his creole existence, neither is it purely a product of social protest, in the vein of many a black writer. It is not a book about the process of growing up, initiation into adulthood, such as one finds with the Caribbean writers (vide: George Lamming: In the Castle of my Skin (1953), Michael Anthony: The Year in San

Fernando (1976), Geoffrey Drayton: Christopher (1959), Samuel Selvon: A Brighter Sun (1952). While it does not have the biting satire of a Naipaul, it is never truly devoid of laughter and humour. In this respect, the comi-tragic operatic portrayals of the lower class Creoles, the verbal diarrhoea characterizing the fights of the women on the back-lots of Paramaribo, come to mind. The novella has been called a ‘psychological jewel’ by a critic of Surinamese life.

Temekoe is not merely an attempt at social realism by a black writer, but a frenetic search by a son to understand his father - a withdrawn and complex human being. The father is the product of the Para world of spirits (winti, wisiman (bewitcher), Kra (soul) and Tori's (tales/stories)). This psychological dimension saves the book from being merely ‘an everyman of poverty work of art’, so commonly found in the fiction of black writers.

The language of his poetry and prose is sometimes reminiscent of one big, convoluted lyrical effusion of word and image. Cairo is capable of a social realism which recalls the best descriptive parts of the South African novelist Alex La Guma (vide: A Walk in the Night (1962)). Some of the graphic descriptive parts in Temekoe recall the rot and decay of the Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968). But, Cairo stops short of the faeces world of, for example, Ayi Kwei Armah and others.

Yet, as a powerful undercurrent in Temekoe, there are always indications and signs of the phantasmagorical, supra-natural world of the blacks in Surinam, created by, and existing in, and, because of, the slave experience. The world of the obeah (obja), the wisiman (bewitcher), the super-natural explanations for certain occurrences, surface strongly in, what to the western reader, may seem digressional. But, these tori's (tales) are decidedly functional in their socio-historical context. Cairo is the Tori-man (Story-teller) par excellence - true descendant that he is of the traditional oral artist, transported via the middle passage to Surinam.

Cairo's poetry and prose has an ideophonic quality, in which the sounds and the gestures, the movements and the tabloid way of life of the non-urban black, ensconced as he/she is between obja, winti, wisiman and bonoeman, as also the semi-proletarian existence on the back-lots of Paramaribo, unbare the pulsating heart of Surinam blacks with excitement and candour.

The novelist invokes everything, exploits devices such as pathetic fallacy when it so suits him, enthralls and bewitches. The Dutch critic of Surinamese literature and culture, Hugo Pos, in his inability to account for Cairo's rich and ebullient Sranan Tongo, even sees parallels with Flemish writers who are similarly praised for their rich brand of Dutch14:

Perhaps Cairo was a Fleming in a former life. That would possibly account for his juicy, rich, sometimes ebullient and extravagant, violent Cairoian language usage.

Pos concludes his review: ‘It was as if I had listened to a long-playing record. Cairo has bewitched me, used black magic on me14’. Throughout the novel, one is forcibly reminded of that other Surinamese world existing beyond the ravages of colonialism.

Jan Voorhoeve, noted scholar of Surinamese Creole culture, observes of Temekoe15:

In the hands of this writer the enigma of the proud father and the lonely worker's son slowly becomes crystal clear, more seering than any unpalatable indictment. The book ends with an insane declaration of love for his father.

The extract of the ending was culled from the translation in Creole Drum (1975).

There were so many places to work in town, but there is only one where a man had worked for thirty years. Not three days. That is something to rejoice about, to praise God that He had granted you this for such a long time. That man was my father. But just dare to speak about it. ‘People have nothing to do with it. I did not go and work to get publicity’, Nelis answered them. He disliked being cock of the walk. ‘Father, you're going to hold a big feast, aren't you’? When he heard someone saying that, he called out, ‘Oh, don't shout like that’ - he himself was shouting - ‘Why don't you broadcast it or spread it among the gossips? There won't be any feast here. What for? You're successful today, you're succesful tomorrow, the day after tomorrow you're on the street’. With this he put an end to it. Yes, yes, truly father, how I came to know you.
He was such type that if you had a tap in your bathroom, even then he would still only use a bowl. And don't dare to scrub his bowl at New Year, for example. Then he became so angry that you wondered whether there was still gratitude left in this world. He was capable of crushing the bowl. In the house he had a teapot all to himself, a plate all to himself, and many other things.
See how strong he is, how weak he is, how human he is. The man who could stand for three-quarters of an hour in front of the radio with an alarm clock in his hand only to find out the right time before he goes out; the man who arrived at his work so early, allowed himself no time for pausing because when the siren goes off and the gates open up to suck in the workers, then he would have run, run, run through all the doors, all the rooms, conceal his head, his back, his body, run up all the stairs, take all the elevators, take an ambulance, a police car, put on the siren, yell, yell, pour out his heart to the whole world.

It was a happy coincidence for Edgar Cairo that the Dutch Organization Novib (an organization for aid and development to Latin American and African countries) decided to start a special series of third world authors in Dutch. The author had had many rejection slips in his box from Dutch publishers who simply did not have the courage and the foresight to publish his rather extraordinary novels. Novib had on its board critics who were well-disposed towards Cairo. Famir 'Man-Sani oftewel Kollektieve Schuld (Collective Guilt) was his first novel to be published by a Dutch publisher. The novel had a fair reception in the Dutch press. Cairo himself stimulated interest in his novel by performing passages to Dutch and especially Surinamese audiences. His countrymen simply loved it and hastened to buy the novel. Not all critics were enamoured of this novel. Voorhoeve in particular found fault with certain aspects of it. He concedes that apart from Cairo, there is no one writing in Surinam who approaches the language of the Surinam proletariat so closely. Cairo is particularly strong in his graphic descriptions, his dialogue.

Cairo confronts us with a Surinamese Creole ‘famiri’. For the purposes of the reader he even produces a family chart. We are introduced to them one by one. Cairo is no Galsworthy and operates firmly within the framework of his Creole background. The Dutch reader is inundated with Winti, that Surinamese Afro-American religion, in typical Cairoian style.

The other Surinamese Creole who is as possessed as Cairo with Creole society, is Charles Wooding. He has written a thesis on Winti (vide: Wooding,

C.J., Winti: Een Afro-amerikaanse godsdienst, Meppel, 1972). In his introduction, Wooding writes16:

During the period of slavery various members of tribes were brought from West Africa to Surinam for the benefit of the white masters. By far the majority consisted of Fante-Akan, Ewe-Fon and West Bantu; a relatively small section of these slaves consisted of Mandingo, Ibo and Yoruba. The majority thus came from kingdoms which in terms of religion showed great similarities.
The descendants of these slaves were assimilated into the population group now known as Creoles in Surinam, and from these original religions, a new one arose, namely ‘Winti’, which reveals a pattern of worship and great similarities with the original.

Richard Price, the American scholar, says of Wooding's thesis17:

The heart of the book is the extremely rich system of belief and ritual itself. It quickly becomes clear that Winti in its internal complexity and in the role it plays in people's daily lives, is as fully elaborated as any that is known in Afro-America. And one sees that in a strange way it has ‘Institutionalized’ its own developmental history, that it holds up a mirror for its adherents of their own tortuous past (R. Price in: American Anthropologist, 75, 1973, p. 1885).

Price continues18:

Winti's uniqueness and much of its more general significance then, would lie in the degree to which it has remained isolated from the gradual westernization that has prevailed elswhere. (R. Price, op. cit., 1973, p. 1886).

In Famir'man-sani, Cairo gives literary form to Wooding's excellent theoretical exposé of Winti - a phenomenon so essential for an understanding of Surinamese Creoledom. The novel is, however, tedious at times, perhaps even difficult for those who have not been initiated into the Cairo oeuvre or the Creole world. Again, one would do well to read Wooding's chapter 8 on the Winti-pré (1972, p. 293).

The theme of Famir'man-sani is the debt of an ordinary Surinamese family to the Gods and the ancestors. The slaves were freed in Surinam in 1863. The novelist is also referring to the collective freedom of the slaves. The first part of the novel is concerned with the collection of money for a collective ceremonial feast, the so-called wintipré (lit. game of the gods). This task is entrusted to Auntie Lien who now has to pay visits to all the family and to collect the money. Cairo uses this to present the reader with a kaleidoscopic picture of lower Surinamese life. Marjana, the mother of the clan is almost blind. Some of the grand-children are half-castes from the city of Amsterdam. Marjana has a sister Dana, whose son's behaviour is far from impeccable. The younger generation debate topics of a political nature, in particular the issue of independence. All these people have different reactions to this request for money. The bigotted sister-in-law is married to a white collar worker who refuses to get involved in such matters. They are a motley collection.

Cairo crowds his novel with information, reveals to us his Surinamese creole society in all its bigotry, prejudices, its sadness and laughter. Through his presentation of the KRA (soul) and Bonoeman (Witchdoctor) and the Winti-Pré, Cairo destroys the colonial picture of the Surinamese Creole as a prod-

uct, sadly, and only, of plantation slavery and Dutch colonialism. Rudy's return to Surinam with his Bakra (white/Dutch) wife and his moksi-moksi (half-caste) daughter is used by the author to reveal the schizophrenia prevalent among Surinamese Creoles as a result of Dutch colonialism. The book has its moments of laughter. But the essential and prime movement is centred round the ceremony. Voorhoeve comments on the ceremony: that the writer is obviously very familiar with the ceremony, the songs, the stories, the characteristics. Then he continues to challenge Cairo in the following manner19:

There are gross mistakes in the ceremonies described, the gods, the words are in the wrong order, invoked sometimes through wrong people, the prayers are literary litanies, actions are wrongly interpreted. I do not plead for ethnological accuracy. I accept completely historical untruth, when it is functional in the story.

But his most vehement attack he reserves for the eventual denouement of the novel. He fulminates in particular against Marjan and her trance as well as the punishments meted out eventually:

This all is absolute nonsense in a state where witchcraft laws have not been applied since 1920, and have recently been abolished, worse still, a writer must not introduce his reader to a family only to dispose of them in a fake trial... Is it a bad novel? Certainly. But what a fascinating failure. I have seldom come across such a realistic portrayal of a Surinamese family.

Cairo was not the person to take this lying down. In a letter circulated to some close associates, among others the author of this article, he launched a vehement attack on Voorhoeve. Scathingly, he referred to him in sarcastic terms as Masra Jan, evoking therefore images of the relationship between the master and the slave. While expressing complete understanding for the role of the critic, he railed at Voorhoeve for arrogating unto himself the role of linguist, literary critic, sociologist, psychologist, psychiatrist, anthropologist and ethnologist. This is one of Cairo's weaknesses - his extreme sensitivity to criticism. His inability to incorporate constructive criticism is reflected in the weaknesses in his works of art. Voorhoeve had dared to suggest that Spanjoro, the rather soft in the head character, was possibly the author himself. The author strongly refuted the charge that he fobbed off his reader with punishment as a result of witchcraft. He states emphatically: ‘Death through the fault of Annalien, Johanna, Marianne.’ ‘The woman died through the fault of the family and consequently we have a trial and punishment.’ He spells out his criticism in bold letters20:

I see that THE ESSENCE OF THE BOOK AND IN PARTICULAR THE DENOUEMENT has escaped him completely. The fact that the old, blind woman dies is not fake! She MUST DIE AS A SYMBOL OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. Her physical blindness runs parallel with her historical blindness. It is certainly no accident that almost the entire book is directed towards Freedom-Giving (Liberating) Contact with the Past. The roots of the fathers run via this woman, whose life (look at the birthdate, ca. end of slavery) and her death (shortly before independence) embraces a whole historical period. The book deals with guilt at various levels: money guilt (debt), religious guilt, social guilt, political guilt, individual and collective guilt... psychological guilt and last but not least, judicial guilt. There is also (and in great measure) the question of historical guilt...
The book ends with a philosophical problem. We are confronted with our colonial past. Is it our fault when we do not know how to really
come to grips with it? Are we not partly responsible for that past? Can we cast off that past unscathed (unpunished)? ...

The novel was the forerunner to several others introducing the Dutch public to various aspects of Surinamese lower class creole life.

Cairo is at his magnificent best when he bewitches and drags his reader into the world of secret language (Kromanti), dance and ritual. The language and the idiom fall short of the trance. He hypnotizes when he performs, is an ‘anaconda’ on the Dutch literary scene. The winti-pré reaches a climax when old Ma Marjana herself is possessed and starts dancing. Listen to the pre-colonized, Creole world of Edgar Cairo and Ma Marjana, who dances herself orgiastically to death.

Hunter who finds anew the true eagle, take me on your hunt through the ancestral world. Show me the prey which is mine. To whom shall I give it? My hands are so open, my face so loose... wild parrots screeching ... or are these the voices in the kankantri. Wings trembling, this I feel, a kolibri opening up dimensions for me. Before the wind, an own breath-like rhythm.
I know it not. I know not what shall become of them. Take from me, old woman, the old chains. Mourn not because I am old, but because you are forsaken.
My veins are chilled. My bones creek under my hands. Wait, before you wash me in farewell, embrace me, passionately, passionately, now that I no longer travel to there where sleep is, but travel far away, to far off places.
Weep for me! Children, weep for my insane arrogance, which propels me from on high, far, far away, into flight of death...21.

The book ends with the rather uncalled for explication attacked earlier by the late Jan Voorhoeve in his review. It is not the ethnological or historical correctness which is a bane to Cairo. Rather, it is Cairo's annoying tendency to sacrifice functionality in his prose for digression and superfluousness. Famir'man-sani should have ended with the words of old Ma Marjana ‘... far, far away, into flight of death’. The rest should have been silence. This tendency to overdo or miscomprehend the art of the overkill, is one of Cairo's problems as a novelist. The main character in the novel, Adoebe-Lobi, which according to a reviewer in The Eindhovens Dagblad (9 March 1978, p. 12), means, ‘epileptic love’22, is Roy Carrolls, a high school student sitting for his final examinations. Roy, one gathers has just been on the verge of a nervous break-down. He is fraught with inner conflicts and uncertain about his future in a country just on the eve of independence. Wherever he turns, the future seems bleak to him and his friends, in particular, John and Marlon. The only way out seems to be Holland, Blanda, the land of the colonizer. John verbalises the fears and inner conflicts when he says: ‘This land is far too small.’ Roy is idealistic and full of dreams. He visits the bureau for language research where he himself delves into Surinamese languages. Here he meets Mrs. Marjette Wedde, who with her husband would later on become some sort of benefactress to him during his difficult times. They give him a room where he can study in peace, far away from the constricting home environment. There is just a touch of the autobiographical in this relationship for the cognoscenti, although Cairo has tried to cover it up very carefully.

Roy feels himself ‘a stranger in his own country’, a factor spelt out very crudely for him by his own brother who accuses him of having ‘white manners’. His background is typical of the Cairo genre-congested, raucous, non-private and claustrophobic. The language used by Cairo is one of decay and threatening disorder - ‘a brooding, stinking warmth’ enveloping everything.

Roy is totally alienated from his brothers and sisters. His father resents him and fails to understand that such a big boy is still studying. After all, he would have been much more useful if he contributed to the household money-wise. Roy's burning desire is to find himself in a physical and spiritual ‘frimangron’ - free man's land. Edgar Cairo introduces the reader to a variety of personalities and facets of Surinamese life. Mr. Geitepoot (literally, Goat's foot) is a typical Dutchman and a language maniac pouring himself onto Surinamese languages. The Yankees are guilty of cultural and literary piracy. Roy is a ship who is rudderless, anxiously, almost sickeningly looking for a way out. Cairo gives us vignettes of the Creole - Hindustani hostilities. As a golden thread through the novel there is the magic word (land), BLANDA (HOLLAND). One is ironically reminded of the South African writer and critic of apartheid Ronald Segal, who so beautifully parodied those (in)famous lines: ten little nigger boys. One is tempted to substitute Holland for England and say:

 
Ten little nigger boys
 
saw nothing could be done
 
so they took the boat to Holland
 
and now there are none.

That is, after having read Edgar Cairo.

Like his friend John, Roy is seeking for clarity and a way out of his miserable environment. His friend John, in posturing his ideas comes closest to a class-approach rather than an ethnic approach in spelling out his Surinamese world view. Edgar Cairo's depiction of Surinam and Paramaribo in particular, is reminiscent of one big ‘konfrijari’ (Fancy Fair).

This problem of alienation is not new. George Lamming, the Barbadian, has given excellent expression to it in his autobiographical novel In the Castle of my Skin (1952). Samuel Selvon from Trinidad immortalised the exile in all his/her folly, sadness and serendipitous existence in London in his marvellously comic-ironic book The Lonely Londoners (1956). The Surinamese writers can learn from their illustrious West Indian counterparts.

In an unpublished (tabled) paper at the Medu Conference on South African Art and Liberation held in Botswana in 1981, the South African novelist Nadine Gordimer commented very astutely on this concept of alienation in the following manner23:

I am not using the concept of alienation in the purely Marxistic sense, as the consequence of man's relation to the means of production, although that is highly relevant in consideration of the industrialisation of millions of blacks under apartheid conditions - a subject in itself. There are many ways in which a man becomes divided from others, distanced from himself. Alienation as such is a condition of rejecting and of being rejected. The black writer lives in a society that has rejected his culture for hundreds of years. He has now turned his alienation in the face of those who rejected him, and made his false consciousness the inevitable point of departure towards his true self-hood, to be found or re-discovered by no eyes but his own.

Gordimer could have written this last sentence alone, for the Surinamese writer Edgar Cairo.

Cairo is a champion par excellence of the lumpen proletariat, subsisting pitifully on the back-lots of Paramaribo. The bus trip by Roy and John to Marlon's place evokes parallells with the Ghanaian ‘mammy-wagons’ and the Sierra Leone Poda-poda's. Cairo's novels are scenes within scenes against the overall back-drop of the search for an identity in pre-independent Surinam. The novel was completed in 1974, just prior to independence.

Occasionally, Cairo finds it difficult to control his pen and dips it in venom which he in turn directs at people clearly recognizable within the Surinamese context. It is not so difficult for someone familiar with Surinamese society to recognize in the Director of Education, Mr. Peersel, with Cairo's horrible attempt at punning, Probeersel (literally meaning ‘a try with the implication of failure’), an amiable, knowledgeable and respected Creole academic. Cairo will have to learn that mud-slinging at times, is no substitute for irony, let alone the comic-ironic.

The Paramaribo of Edgar Cairo is a village existing by, and because of, the various ethnic groups imported (heavy-handedly or by trickery) from Asia and Africa. One wonders whether Edgar Cairo's gossip-mongering, claustrophobic world of Paramaribo, is not one of nihilism only. Cairo is perceptive in a long-winded manner, which leads to a certain tedium at times.

Roy Carrolls receives his certificate and departs for Holland - pathetically seen off by no one. ‘Who waves good-bye for me? Who from amongst the crowds raises a hand for me? Friend? Girl friend? Acquaintance? An exit which is no last exit! For I shall return, I shall perhaps, perhaps, return.’24 And the doubt is forever in the Surinamese mind - a cynicism born out of reality perhaps? Can one blame the Surinamese in the throes of re-construction for interpreting this as defeatist literature?

Edgar Cairo's invocation of Asia - the earth mother - in an attempt to explain the departure of the Surinamese, seems to confirm his roots, and, at the same time justify his own exile.25

Aisa lon wan pikini de na go
Mama no mandi mi ba, gi mi w'an 'o!

That is:

Thy Eye shall not shed a tear
for the child who departs
Mother be not in discord with me
be my support!

Cairo himself writes: ‘The Hindustani is caught concentrically within his own cultural pattern, the Creole in his utmost confusion.’ Mama Aisa (Maisa) will be much in demand among the Surinamese in Blanda.

Koewatra Djodjo / In de geest van mijn cultuur (1979) is Edgar Cairo's fourth novel. The middle passage in reverse. This trek to Holland, the mother country, started in earnest on the eve of independence (1975). The pundits had predicted a race war in Surinam - Demerara repeated - the Hindustani against the Creoles. Apart from a few buildings which went up in smoke, the pundits were forced to swallow their prophecies. Surinam emerged an independent country, very much like a pupa from its chrysalis, ready for its new historic task.

Like in other parts of the ex-colonial world, it soon became apparent that the new masters (Blakaman) were no better than the old, colonial overlords (Bakra). In fact, the mistakes made by other independent countries in Africa and Latin America, were even re-duplicated. The poor remained poor and the new rich black became richer. It was still largely a country of the cultured few.

In the motherland (the Netherlands), critics continued their critical tirades, thus helping to create a climate conducive for dissent and rebellion. At the same time, they created a mirage image of their own country. The conditions for the mass exodus of the Surinamese to the Netherlands were these: unequal distribution of the means of production, a weak infra-structure, an overdependence on aid and development from the Netherlands, an over-emphasis

on a mono-culture (bauxite), and a tenuous political alliance between the various (ethnic) groups.

Koewatra Djodjo is set in the Netherlands and deals with those Creoles who made the ‘middle passage’ in reverse. The main characters are Max (apparently an assimilado), his wife Airis, and the new-comer Buddy, one of those f.o.p.'s (fresh of the plane) come to Holland to find happiness. Unfortunately, the book is built round the rather stock stereotyped situations. One has a sneaking suspicion that Cairo's extreme attitude of ‘socialized ambivalence’, to use the term of Herskovitz, precluded him from artistically portraying his Surinamese characters as people of flesh and blood. One is reminded of the charge by the South African critic and writer Lewis Nkosi, when he indicts another South African novelist, Richard Rive, of not producing characters of flesh and blood but cardboard characters. And cardboard characters, he continues, don't spill blood.

Generally, novels by Edgar Cairo are well received in the Dutch press. Koewatra Djodjo apparently irritated some Dutch critics who thought that it was not an easy book to read, and who felt that there were too many footnotes in it. The critic of the Leeuwarder Courant (9-2-1980), Ab Visser in particular, failed to control himself when he railed:26 ‘Cairo, who is tremendously ambitious (based on nationalistic feelings of inferiority?) defends himself in arrogant style against what he in turn calls the arrogant manner of his countrymen, who feel he must live in Surinam if he wants to do anything for the country.’ He continues: ‘For what is left of his books when stripped of indigenous language usage and translated? Second rate novels, thirteen to a dozen.’ Visser of course, only revealed his own ignorance of Surinamese literature in general and of Cairo the writer, in particular. His colleague Barber van de Pol laments the fact that ‘In Koewatra Djodjo one does not come across one really nice Dutchman.’27 These reviews tell us more about certain Dutch critics and their inability to understand Surinamese culture - after three hundred years of involvement - than about the novelist Edgar Cairo.

Cairo's novel falls far short of the writing of the Trinidadian Samuel Selvon, who in comic-ironic vein gives form and content to the world of discrimination surrounding the West Indian exile in England, their world of poverty, alienation and the irrepressible zest for life of the Islanders. Nowhere does Koewatra Djodjo approach the richness in character, the humour - that one quality which makes for sanity under oppressive circumstances - of Samuel Selvon's The Lonely Londoners. Max will pass into oblivion while Selvon's Moses of The Lonely Londoners will continue to amuse and inform - a monument cast in words for the Islanders, those exiles who in the 1950's left their ‘Little England’ for ‘Big England’. Perhaps Cairo was so intent on writing a novel about the Surinamese exile for a Dutch public that he forgot to understate and worked firmly within the framework of the statement. For an essential difference between the Dutch and English is that the former state and the latter understate. In this too, Cairo and Selvon are true products of their respective colonial traumas. As opposed to Cairo's: ‘Something has been done to me. I can't yell it out’, there is Selvon's unforgettable ending in The Lonely Londoners:28

It was a summer night: laughter fell softly: it was the sort of night that if you wasn't making love to a woman you feel you was the only person in the world like that.

Cairo's novel Djari (Erven), which means back-plots literally, re-introduces the reader to (lumpen) proletariat conditions of the poor in Paramaribo. These back-plots are tucked away behind the main house - evoking images of the slave plantation situation in the South of the United States, and

the servants' quarters in apartheid South Africa. According to cognoscenti, there are about 14,000 people subsisting in such miserable conditions in Paramaribo. Cairo is at his best when he describes lower class life in Paramaribo. His main character is called Bo, who lives on such a back-plot with his wife and four children. He had bought the plot from his father-in-law, but was thinking of selling it in order to buy a piece of land which he could call his own. Bo still had a loan to pay off at the bank and owed his father-in-law some money.

The author makes it quite clear that a plot is not simply a plot, that there are certain emotional and spiritual ties between the owner and his piece of land. On the other hand, Bo's ambitions are directly responsible for his ensuing misfortunes. His leg troubles him and gets worse, which in turn is interpreted as a punishment. His neighbours on both sides pester him, thereby not shying away from using magical practices. Bo's leg deteriorates to such an extent that he is confined to his house.

He has literally no leg to stand on. At the same time Bo is adamant and refuses to give in. This collage of lower class Creole life is filled with characters and scenes which remind of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. We see them in their fights, their follies, their sadness and their laughter - a potpourri of races and classes.

His one character Schoorsteen is, according to one Dutch critic, representative of Edgar Cairo's viewpoint. Thus Vogelaar writes in De Groene Amsterdammer (28 maart 1979): ‘And at the end even Bo who has now come to his senses, seems to resemble Schoorsteen ...’29 Djari was generally well-received in the Dutch press. Cairo is so prolific as a writer that the critic and follower of his work hardly has the time to digest one work when another appears on the bookshelves. Such is the versatility of the man that he can produce poetry, complete novels of 560 pages, write plays and perform on stage in a period of time which would take other mortals a life time. His play Dagrati deals with a slave revolt in Guyana in 1763; Djop details the relationship between Surinamese factory workers and their white foreman, as also the ensuing tensions. Ba Anansi Woi! Woi! Woi! exploits the spider theme in a Surinam context, in which Anansi lives by guile, satirizes and amuses. In 1981, Cairo warned readers and followers of his work in a circular of his forthcoming magnum opus, Jeje Disi/Karakter's Krachten.

Cairo's Jeje Disi, a monumental work of 560 pages, was hailed by himself and his publisher, as his Magnum opus. Some months later, Masra Cairo gave his readers another surprise, by announcing that he had just completed another masterpiece, this time called Dat Vuur der Grote Drama's, consisting of 474 pages.

Jeje Disi requires, as I have already indicated, a lesson in patience and endurance. At the same time, it also gives an insight in Cairo's occupational hebi's, that is, areas of concern he, as a black author, is set on decoding. For Cairo is obsessed with blackness, Negroness, and leaves no stone unturned, no opportunity unused, to castigate his Dutch public, to ridicule them and to confront them with their colonial past and Surinamese countrymen.

Janki Verwoeven (and his wife) is a Dutchman working on his thesis. In Verwoeven, one immediately recognizes the late Prof. Jan Voorhoeve, Creole expert and linguist, who is severely subjected to Cairo's satirical pen. Janki, one learns is sympathetic to Creole culture and this gives Cairo an opportunity to attack certain Dutchmen - liberal Culture-Vultures in his eyes. The author allows Janki to fall in love with a black woman whom he seduces (rapes?), as a result of which she becomes pregnant. At an occult dance festivity Evi's mother performs an abortion on her. The symbolism is crystal clear. Instead of procreation, there can only be abortion. Janki, the misguided liberal, is rejected by Creole culture and all his attempts at concili-

ation are abortive.

Gerben Mann, Janki's supervisor, is possibly the Dutch linguist Hellinga. Ronalds De Moor van Venetië (an incredibly bad and cheap pun on his (Cairo's) victim's name), is easily recognizable as the mathematics teacher and one time Minister of Education, Ronald Venetiaan. Eddy Brumals is obviously Eddy Bruma, lawyer, prominent politician and one of the prime figures in the nationalistic - cultural movement Wie Eegie Sani in Amsterdam in the fifties.

Cairo's interpretation of the activities of Wie Eegie Sani is questionable, to say the least. He refers cursorily to négritude, scathingly dismisses the efforts of the first Surinamese nationalist writers, who after all paved the way for other users of Sranan Tongo (including Edgar Cairo). It has become almost standard practice with Cairo to refer to that doyen of Surinamese poets, Trefossa, and to ridicule him for using the sonnet form, for excluding winti from his poems. And, all too often, this unwarranted criticism of Trefossa goes unchallenged, because the audience is in awe of Cairo, or ignorant about their own culture. Cairo's satirical swipes sometimes border on pettiness, which is not commensurate with his enormous talent. He is much more natural in his portrayal of the Creole boy Mandwe, born out of Nette, who gives solace to many, but who finds herself in a helpless, penniless situation. Therefore, Mandwe is left in the care of his grandparents, of whom the grandfather is a catholic and the grandmother an adept of the slave religion winti.

The late Jan Voorhoeve, one of the recipients of Cairo's venom in Jeje Disi, reviewed this voluminous novel in a leading Dutch socialist weekly, Vrij Nederland (1981)30. An earlier critic had hailed Jeje Disi a key novel. Voorhoeve agreed that it was a key novel only in so far as certain dramatic personalities were clearly recognizable, even down to their names. ‘... All these figures are true to type but not true to fact’, Voorhoeve commented succinctly in that review. He continues: ‘If I ignore for a while the irritating verbal diarrhoea of the writer, then I must admit that I have seldom read such a convincing and honest description of the Surinamese people - at least of the Creole proletariat.’

In his last novel (for the time being at least), entitled Dat Vuur der Grote Drama's (1982), the theme is part-historical, part-sociological, with recognizable areas of concern. The problem of ‘socialized ambivalence’ as spelt out by Herskovitz is clearly evident in the novel. The main character, Atti Tuurhart (Arthur in reverse), is such a product of socialized ambivalence - too long in Holland, too alienated, an uncle Tom basically. People like him are not inboorlingen (natives) but aanboorlingen (i.e. literally those who are grafted onto - an appendage) in Cairo's terminology. They are held responsible for the malaise at economic level - the ‘minorities’ - the ‘allochtonen’ as opposed to the ‘autochtonen’, who with the collapse of the European ‘wirtschaftswunder’ have become an embarrassing problem.

The reader is confronted with racism, winti, Kromanti, a father who rejects his negroness and everything connected with it. The white girl Anna finds herself in an Othello-Desdemona relationship with Atti. One is confronted with Berbice, the Maroons in Brazil, Haiti and Toussaint L'Ouverture and Boni. There are parallel histories - the white lover who dies in the slave uprising of Berbice - and the relationship of Anna and Atti in Holland.

Cairo is at his best when he does not behave as if everything he commits to paper is in reaction to colonialism or white culture. In the words of grandma Titi, ‘You see how negrothings follow negro's tail’ - like a tapeworm whose body can be removed but whose head will soon grow another. This is the inevitable cycle within which the Surinamese black finds himself in the Netherlands. This is the extent of his alienation.

Cairo is also very prolific as a poet. He is one of those black writers who ignores accepted ‘Western aesthetics’ and creates his own. It is very difficult to draw a definite line between what, for him, constitutes poetry and what is prose. In this too, he is a true descendant of his African oral past. Cairo's poetry is less known than his prose, although no less important in his entire oeuvre.

One of his early and interesting anthologies is called OBJA SA TAN A BREWA - Er zal geen einde zijn aan de brouwsels van magie... Cairo leaves nothing to chance. In a note on obja, he writes: ‘obja: magic object, derived from obeyer? To obey. The reality poses increasingly new problems for mankind. How shall he solve them? Shall he tackle the almost insoluble problems by invoking magical powers? This reality and the things flowing from them are his obja. He himself is, and remains, a medicine man, who magically transforms life into a completely modern style, reshapes reality...’ Quite obviously, Cairo sees himself as a cultural, historico-literary obja man, magically transforming ‘creole life’ into a completely modern style, reshaping their reality.

Cairo cannot help posing as the didactic, the teacher who is the conscience of his people. He has a foreword appended to his poems, an introductory piece in which he expounds his ideas on Surinamese literature in no uncertain terms. And to crown it all, he has added some very thought-provoking theses. However, despite all these efforts, one can only fully appreciate his poetry by listening to the man reciting, performing and singing. His is ‘performance poetry’ par excellence, which means that his poetry is difficult to commit to memory. Cairo is no Surinamese Shrinivasi, whose poetry is characterized by a beauty and simplicity of language which lingers on long after the poet has ceased his recital. The following simple, yet penetrating lines of Shrinivasi come to mind:31

 
I am not there
 
to disturb the equilibrium
 
but to take that
 
which is most beautiful
 
in you
 
and bring it to perfection

The poetry of that raconteur, nationalist and imbongi, Dobru, leaves behind a similar impression. Of Dobru's celebrated poem, WAN BON (One Tree), Edward Kamu Braithwaite wrote: ‘Yet one of his finest poems accepted with tumultuous applause during the festival was ‘Wan Bon’ (One Tree) written in Surinamese. Other beautiful examples can be culled from the works of the following Surinamese poets, Trefossa, Michael Slory, and Johanna Schouten Elsenhout.

Cairo's poetry instead is in need of annotation, translation - even for the Surinamese - and an understanding of his Surinamese world. It is therefore not surprising that his anthology Obja Sa Tan A Brewa is in need of a section called analysis 1. close reading 2. conclusion and interpretation. All this does not help to make his poetry easily accessible to the ordinary (semiliterate) Surinamese public (let alone the Dutch reader!!!).

The author scathingly attacks literary critics who dare to aver that they find it difficult to analyse his poems. For, he departs from the simple maxim - if they're understandable to Cairo, then they are understandable to all and sundry.

Obja... is a complicated lesson in Surinamese culture for the uninitiated, obscure for the literate, and alive only when performed by the poet himself. Perhaps, the following simple attempt at translation of a Cairo poem, will

do more justice to this anthology and to the poet than any detailed analysis of the poems contained in Obja Sa Tan A Brewa.

Let this be known unto men (originally: Kondre sa jere)
 
You called me so insistently
 
voice which did not linger
 
Land hidden in my breath
 
and from afar you sighed
 
bringing my conscience to rebellion.
 
 
 
Word upon word
 
whirl-winded into a tropical storm
 
in me
 
 
 
How heavily you sighed
 
How your whisper flew
 
past the place
 
to which I dragged myself
 
- a moment's rest at least.
 
 
 
My heart flies away
 
but my blood
 
is still battling.
 
Indict me not
 
Be not embittered
 
Mother of mine.32

and ‘mother’ in this context is ‘earth mother’-Aisa-Maisa for the Surinamese in exile.

‘Kra’, meaning Soul, Spirit (in mundane terms, that which makes the Surinamese tick), a slim volume of poetry was published in Surinam in 1970. Cairo's poem in which he spells out (or tries to) his search for identity under alienated circumstances is important for an understanding the man as a whole.

 
What am I
 
Who am I
 
What is happening to me
 
Soon
 
I shall be a god
 
I shall be a devil
 
even.
 
Oh!
 
Life passed me by
 
death passed me by
 
help me
 
Oh! help me!
 
I begin
 
I end
 
I become word33

The end of this poem is very important. Cairo himself has invented the word ‘word workman’. The written word is important for him. Symbolically, one is reminded of St. John's ‘the word becomes flesh’; ‘In the beginning

was the word and the word (for the Surinamese Creole at least), ‘was of Edgar Cairo’. This is his weapon, his obja in his struggle to restructure the history of his people, the Creoles. In his Powema Di Rutu (1982), his songs of Origin and Future, Cairo states: ‘My poetry is a poem which finds its roots in a black loin, from within which, I re-write the movements between people’.34

In Powema Di Rutu we are confronted with a commentary on black culture, on colonialism, on revolution and on slavery. This is poetry with a message, interspersed with song and dance, myth and a humour which evokes both tears and laughter. It is a biting satire on historical events. Cairo dressed up in tails on stage, acting out his role as a masra on a plantation, recalls Antonio Machado's depiction of Spain as ‘dressed up in carnival mummery’. For, ‘the operative image of Cairo's Surinamese - Dutch world in Powema Di Rutu is ‘carnival mummery’. It is poetry in drama form performed on stage. Slavery, colonialism, Jopie Pengel, populist leader, srefidensi.35

Cairo is one of the most talented and prolific Surinamese authors in the Netherlands. His descriptive abilities are sometimes unparallelled. He exploits the novel as a form as if Black writing made the transition from the oral story to the written form with ease. He writes plays, pours out his heart in poetry, performs his literary products on stage together with other Creoles, as if finally succumbing to some winti ritual on a slave plantation. In a sense he is an Anansi incarnate - now castigating whites, then pouring scorn on his fellow blacks, educating, correcting, cajoling, playing the obsequious negro - but always with one aim in mind - to wipe out the ‘negro traumas’.

He overplays his hand in the process, seems consumed by negro-white hebi's. He produces novels which could do with a good editor, who would prune it to manageable, readable proportions. In this respect his publisher serves him badly.

In 1983, he made a trip to Africa, Nigeria in particular, which he then immortalized in an article in a Dutch weekly, De Tijd as ‘A negro in negroland’. It was an all but flattering account for Nigerians. Cairo seemed to have fallen into the same trap the illustrious Afro-American author Richard Wright fell into decades earlier. The latter was forced to conclude after a trip to Ghana - they were black and I was black but we did not understand one another. Hopefully, Cairo's orphic descent won't cause him to lose his Eurydice on the border land of light and darkness. I can find no more fitting epitaph for Edgar Cairo's writing than the following verse in Sranan Tongo, which he himself once invoked in a newspaper article after the upheavals in Surinam.

 
Boesi Sa Tek' mi Baka
 
Boesi Sa Tek' mi Baka
 
Boesi Sa Tek' mi Baka
 
Boesi Sa Tek' mi Baka, ef'
 
a kondre dis' no poer'
 
en lelekoe! Boesi Sa Tek'
 
mi Baka36

Bibliography

n = novel; p = poetry; d = drama; s-t = sranan tongo; s-d = Surinamese-Dutch

 

Anthony, Michael, 1976: The Year in San Fernando. Heinemann, London; first published by Deutsch, 1965.
Armah, Ayi, Kwei, 1969: The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Heinemann, London.
Cairo, Edgar, 1969: Temekoe, in s-t. Buro Volkslectuur, Paramaribo.
Cairo, Edgar, 1979: Kopzorg (Dutch translation of Temekoe). In de Knipscheer, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1970: Kra (Geest), p. s-t. Buro Volkslectuur, Paramaribo.
Cairo, Edgar, 1975: Obja Sa Tan A Brewa/er zal geen einde zijn aan brouwsels van magie (p. s-t with Dutch translation). Copyright E. Cairo, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1975: Famir' man-sani oftewel Kollektieve schuld (n. s-d.). Wereldvenster, Baarn / Novib, Den Haag.
Cairo, Edgar, 1976: Brokositon/puin istorsi pré / historical song and danceplay. Copyright E. Cairo, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1977: Adoebe-Lobi/Alles tegen alles (n s-d). In de Knipscheer, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1978: Ba Anansi woi! woi! woi! / de dood van de spin. (d.s.) Rotterdamse Kunststichting, Rotterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1978: Foe Jowe Disi / om het oer (p. s-t.). Copyright E. Cairo, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1978: Neti Nanga Joe! / Nacht met jou! (d. s-t.). Copyright E. Cairo, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1978: Djari / Erven (n. s-d.). In de Knipscheer, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1978: Elzaro! Elzaro / Doodsboodschapsvogel (d.). Copyright E. Cairo, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1978: Masra, (a play for radio). Copyright E. Cairo, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1978: Masra Kodokoe / Meneer kodoquis p. stories. Copyright E. Cairo, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1979: Koewatra Djodjo / In de geest van mijn cultuur (n. s-d.). In de Knipscheer, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1979: Djop (d.). Copyright E. Cairo, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1980: A Nowto Foe Mi Ai / In nood van het aangezicht (p.). In de Knipscheer, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1980: Dagrati, dagrati / Verovering van dageraad (d.). Copyright E. Cairo, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1980: Jeje Disi / Karakter's krachten (n. s-d.). In de Knipscheer, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1980: Ik ga dood om jullie hoofd (columns from the Dutch daily De Volkskrant). In de Knipscheer, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1982: Dat vuur der grote drama's (n.). In de Knipscheer, Amsterdam.
Cairo, Edgar, 1984: Lelu! Lelu!. In de Knipscheer, Amsterdam.
Drayton, Geoffrey, 1959: Christopher. Collins, London.
Dobru (ps. of Robin Ravales) 1969: Wan Monki Fri. Eldorado, Paramaribo.
Dobru (ps. of Robin Ravales) 1973: Flowers Must Not Grow Today. Arts Promotion Buro ‘Afi-Kofi’, Paramaribo.
La Guma, Alex, 1967: A Walk in the Night. Heinemann, London. (first published 1962).
Lamming, George, 1953: In the Castle of my Skin. Michael Joseph, London.
Naipaul, Vidia, 1961: A House for Mr. Biswas. André Deutsch, London.
Selvon, Samuel, 1952: A Brighter Sun. Alan Wingate, London. (later Longman,
Carribean, 1971)
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