No longer at home

A novel of the African diaspora & the unheimlich.

A plane takes off, and there is no one on board. Yes, there are people sat in their seats. They speak; they chatter; they applaud when they touch down safely. And yet, for the unnamed narrator of Maya Binyam’s Hangman: A Novel (2023), who has returned to his native land, these fellow passengers elude comprehension. Familial as they might seem, he simply cannot make sense of them. He can hardly make sense of himself. The narrator has returned home, surrounded by strangers. He is, well and truly, alone.

Even with these barest of details, this plot should sound familiar: a hero’s journey home. The examples in literature are plenty. Homer’s Odysseus, swashbuckling his way across the Mediterranean and back to his beloved Ithaca, quickly comes to mind. Or the Monkey King, the most impish protagonist of the canonical Chinese novel Journey to the West, who agrees to turn around and journey home to, well, the East. The geographies range; the cultures differ. One thing, however, is certain: finding love might be the only story more universal than returning home. Returning home might be the only thing as difficult as finding love.

Of course, there are tangible constraints to going home. Manufactured borders persist; protracted conflicts rage; economic precarity lingers. For many people, these factors become insurmountable obstacles for reasons largely out of their control. But, for those fortunate enough to clear such hurdles, another pressing but less perceptible dilemma awaits. A sought-after homecoming can easily shade into an unforeseen reckoning: Why don’t I feel at home?

Sigmund Freud, unsurprisingly, diagnosed this feeling well. In « The Uncanny » (« Das Unheimliche », 1919), one of his most famous essays, Freud fleetingly swaps roles and subjects himself to analysis. He writes of his time strolling through a small Italian town. The summer’s sun sloops toward the horizon and absent of any company — except a silent parade of « painted women, » gazing from « the windows of the small houses » — Freud turns one way. He walks but walks carelessly. He stumbles upon the same street he has just left. The women watch on; they extend no help. He turns again and again he walks, « only to arrive by another détourubs at the same place yet a third time. » At this point, Freud declares, « a feeling overcame me which I can only describe as uncanny. »