We Are All Birds of Uganda by Hafsa Zayyan

1960s Uganda. Hasan is struggling to run his family business following the sudden death of his wife. Just as he begins to see the way forward, a new regime seizes power, and a wave of rising prejudice threatens to sweep away everything he has built.

Present-day London. Sameer, a young high-flying lawyer, senses an emptiness in what he thought was the life of his dreams. Called back to his family home by an unexpected tragedy, Sameer begins to find the missing pieces of himself not in his future plans, but in a past he never knew.

We Are All Birds of Uganda focuses on Sameer’s life in London, where he is working all hours and is intent on climbing the corporate ladder. His ambitions are familiar, as is the gradual realisation that it might not be all it is cracked up to be.

Sameer’s story is punctuated by a series of letters depicting the past. We wonder what the connection is between the writer of the letters and present-day Sameer.

Sameer’s family are Ugandan-Indians. I have to admit I knew very little about that community before I read this book. In short, there was a wave of migration from India to Uganda during the time when both countries were colonised by Britain. For various reasons (mainly resulting from decisions made by the colonial authorities), there was tension between the Indian-Ugandans and the indigenous Ugandans, leading to segregation. In 1972, the Ugandan government expelled the Indians and gave them 90 days to leave Uganda. Many of them had been born in Uganda and did not have another ‘home country’ to go to.

In the book, Sameer’s family was part of that expulsion and emigrated to England, but they maintain strong ties to their Ugandan-Indian culture. This is a source of embarrassment for Sameer as he feels his parents are overbearing; they want to make choices for him about his life, which all involve him having even closer ties to his family rather than continuing to strike out on his own in London.

Zayyan portrays a sense of rootlessness in Sameer. His family’s cultural hybrid makes Sameer feel as though he doesn’t quite belong anywhere. Although he is obviously successful at what he has chosen to do, he knows that his family would prefer him to do something else.

Sameer is working extremely long hours in London and essentially burns out. He takes a break from work and he decides to visit Uganda. To his surprise, he is met with a colourful, vibrant, alluring place – there is no wonder they call it the Pearl of Africa. He traces his family’s roots and it gradually becomes clear who the writer of the letters is and what their story is. He falls in love with his ancestral country.

This is a memorable book. The family history is at times idyllic and at times filled with hardships, resulting in Sameer’s parents having a much stronger sense of family values than Sameer does, which again makes him feel guilty and lost. The book expertly depicts the fallout from the colonial rule – the cultural divisions, the expulsion, the formation of a British-Indian-Ugandan community which suffers prejudices on multiple fronts. Most of all, Zayyan’s descriptions of Uganda are gorgeous – chaotic yet filled with colours and smells and movement. Uganda was already on my travel bucket list but this book certainly moved it up a few places.

“Oh, my son, it's the most beautiful country you will ever see. You know, like you've seen in the films? Jungle green. Smells and looks exquisite. Money grows on trees there. So rich, so prosperous. It's not a place you can forget easily ... It's a paradise, beta.”