In “The Seers,” Sex Is Liberation

For Sulaiman Addonia’s characters, sex is often a site of self discovery, of liberation, and homecoming. 

His books center the experiences of refugees, exploring their joy alongside their rage at colonial systems. His frank writing about sex creates space for the importance of intimacy and desire in his characters’ lives, even as they encounter hate and violence. 

 The Consequences of Love, his debut novel, is a Romeo and Juliet story set in Saudi Arabia. Naser, an immigrant from Eritrea, living with his uncle, trades illicit letters with a girl he knows only by her pink shoes. In his second book, Silence Is My Mother Tongue, the siblings Saba and Hagos fight against traditional expectations of gender and sexuality while living in a refugee camp in Sudan. 

His latest book, The Seers, follows Hannah, a refugee from Eritrea, as she wrestles with the endless bureaucracy of London’s immigration system. The novel unfolds in a single paragraph, moving from Hannah’s present through her past. As she waits in a foster home in Kilburn, unable to work or study until the Home Office approves her application, she turns to sex and reading her mother’s diary as necessary forms of self-expression and self discovery. 

I corresponded with Addonia, who is based in Brussels, via email and he recorded answers to these questions using voice notes. We discussed following characters through the writing process, sex as a form of liberation in The Seers, and how he lets the subconscious lead his writing practice. 

Courtney DuChene: The novel has an interesting container. It begins with a sexual encounter between Hannah and the character Bina-Balozi and then moves backward in time to tell Hannah’s story as an asylum seeker, while returning to the opening scene at times. How did you come to this nonlinear structure for the story?

Sulaiman Addonia: I can’t answer this question because I wrote this book from my subconscious. The power of subconscious writing lies in not fully understanding the motivations behind your characters’ actions as you are performing on automatism. Unlike some authors who can explain the reasons behind their characters, scenes and motivations, I cannot. So, I often reflect on this book not as its writer, but as a reader who has written it.

During the first lockdown in 2020, I was working on a book of essays. One afternoon, I went for a walk and found myself standing in front of the pond of Ixelles in Brussels, where I am currently based. Suddenly, the name “Hannah” came to me. I took out my iPhone and started writing the first sentence. Three weeks later, I had a complete first draft. Maybe the fact that I wrote it all on my phone while sitting or standing by the water gave it a sense of fluidity and great energy. I don’t know. 

For me, though, the art of writing lies in not knowing why things happen. I’m in pursuit of pure art. So in that sense, I did not consciously work on Hannah’s background, history, friendships, and the way she told her story. She came to me fully formed. I was just the vessel for her story, a conduit for her voice. The nonlinearity was something only I noticed after I had finished the book. By the way, although I was unaware of the story structure, I felt it in my body as Hannah zigzagged with me across the pages, moving from one aspect of her story to another, at times in circles, to the point that I felt ill and completely fragmented after finishing the first draft of the book.

CD: This temporality is really interesting and in some ways reflects the liminality Hannah faces as an asylum seeker. How did you approach that both from a narrative and a structural perspective?

SA: The interesting thing was that once the name Hannah came to me and I started writing, I simply followed her and went wherever she took me. The structure and narrative, along with everything else in the book, came with her. 

But I suppose, in most cases, the family we are born into is meant to provide us with a structure, something that roots us to a household, a city, a religion, a land, a nation. But when that foundation is constantly bombarded and destroyed, as is the case with Hannah, who is born into a war zone, a state of adaptability becomes the new norm. And so, that fluidity—something innate to her that she discovered quite instinctively—becomes a profound aid in navigating a world that continually challenges her and presents obstacles along her path, even more so after she migrates to the UK.

Everything in London is temporal and shapeshifts, yet Hannah’s adaptable inner structure becomes essential for her. Not because it provides her stability but because, in her new life as a refugee in London, she discovers that she needs to roll with it. When I reflect on the idea of deconstruction and reconstruction at the heart of Hannah’s existence, which is arduous by the way and leaves traces, I feel that her imagination, memories, and adaptability enable her to flow through life. That’s why I believe the book’s structure shapes itself around her story rather than the other way around. A book reflects memory, and when that memory is fractured, fragmentation becomes a form of structure.

CD: Throughout the novel, Hannah repeats the refrain “everything passes, love remains.” The repetition feels almost poetic. What kept you, and Hannah, returning to this phrase? How do you feel like it connects to the novel’s cyclicality? 

SA: Loss is what keeps Hannah returning to this. She first heard that refrain from her father, who said it to her while giving her the diary of her mother, who was killed in the war when Hannah was a child. Hannah learns that love lingers long after those she cherishes depart from her life. However, while in exile in London, her life is yet again marked by loss, this phrase continues to recur, undergoing both augmentation and diminution. As Hannah loves individuals differently, or as different parts of her fall in love with people with varied desires and sexualities, she discovers the various facets of love and the nuances of loss associated with each. The grief encapsulated in love allows her to bear the weight of loss. In other words, love resembles a web enveloping Hannah’s memory, which she clings to when recalling her story, moving this way and that, sometimes back and forth, and in circles.

CD: The novel is a single paragraph. How did you feel that form complimented Hannah’s story? 

SA: I often think about this single paragraph, this one burst of breath, an outburst of words, one long telling of a story on the same spot over three weeks. So, why did Hannah choose this form of narrating? Was she in a hurry to tell her story? And if so, why? I have no answers, and so, I don’t know if the single paragraph complements her story. Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. Maybe Hannah was playful with me. She wanted to challenge me by telling a dizzying tale. I value that interplay with her as I do with all my characters. I am at their mercy because I choose to surrender to them, hungry for them to tell me their stories in the way that feels right to them rather than any logical reasoning on my behalf.

CD: In The Seers, sex becomes a form of rebirth and liberation for a number of characters and writing frankly about sex stretches across your novels. What role do you think the erotic plays in Hannah’s story? 

SA: Instead of being quietly hidden, almost buried by exile, the war, and violence in Hannah’s life, sex serves as a driving force in her life. Sex is how Hannah and her fellow African immigrants in The Seers assert their existence in this world, a world that is full of violence and prejudice. It gives them agency and control even as their application for asylum in the UK and the decision on whether their cases are dependent on the Home Office staff. Sex becomes a profound method that brings tenderness, kindness, visibility, and power during their daily struggles as both immigrants and Black people in the UK. As Hannah says while trying to persuade her male lover, BB, also known as Bina-Balozi, to let her top him on the bench of Fitzroy Square: “BB, I said, we’re black. We earn visibility when we’re on the verge of breaking the law. This is our moment to shine.”

What I found interesting about the long wait for a publisher for The Seers—around three years—is that, as storytellers, when we write about Black people, we are often expected to portray these characters, who are Black and refugees, as diminished by the racism and struggles they face. I agree that it’s essential to tell such stories. Yet, these characters are not allowed to speak in an equally loud, assertive, and frank manner about the things that bring them joy and happiness. That’s why I appreciate Hannah’s candidness in boldly discussing the role of desire in her life even as she encounters racism and prejudice.

CD: What relationship do you see between sex and the idea of home, two prominent themes of the novel?

SA: This is an interesting question that I am often asked. I remember some readers of my second novel, set in a refugee camp, expressing disbelief that people in a camp could be so playful with themselves. But strangely enough, intimacy is at the heart of all three novels I have written so far. It has always made sense to me that for people who flee with few belongings and find themselves living a life of scarcity, the body becomes the central focus in their lives. 

For example, when Hannah is locked inside that room in Kilburn awaiting a decision on her asylum application, she is not allowed to work or study to improve her English, and is instead expected to live a quiet life, neglected, forgotten, and cast aside as if she were irrelevant. Yet in that room, Hannah’s desire takes over, becoming a torch that guides her body from head to toe, illuminating the tiniest aspects of her yearning. Hannah carves out dignity along with her ability to stand firm. She learns the language of her body before she perfects her English. She discovers the beauty of her Eros before she explores London. The erotic becomes a land into which Hannah strolls to breathe, to feel alive, to be whole, human, and vibrant with the sensuality and wilderness that echo within her. 

CD: Within the narrative, Hannah reads her mother’s diary, where she writes honestly about her sexuality. Where do you see the connections between the stories of the mother and the daughter’s sexual awakenings?

SA: An awakening of any kind is perhaps precipitated by factors that require us to delve deep inside ourselves, reflecting and pondering over situations that have occurred. So the question that comes to mind as I reread The Seers is: Is this sexual awakening for Hannah and her mother quite similar? Both find themselves in a war zone, and both are incredibly well-read and versed in their cultural identity and history, speaking several languages comfortably. But do both react to the circumstances similarly? I’m not sure they do. 

I would say the mother’s sexual awakening has taken place outside our gaze as readers, and she is incredibly comfortable with her sexuality, being a dominant, assertive woman who is confident in her powers. However, I would say the situation is quite different for Hannah, who, as she tells us, might have attributes of her father, who happily surrendered to her mother, as well as characteristics of her mother, which are the total opposite of her father. But perhaps the mother’s diary serves as a reminder for Hannah to embark on a journey and seek the kind of life she craves for herself, just as her parents did even during times of war.

CD: Sections of the novel move into third-person toward the end and observe Hannah’s movements. They all begin EYES, why did you want to show the readers these moments where it feels like she’s being observed? 

SA: It’s not what I wanted to show. Once again, let me reiterate that when you write a story from the subconscious, you are truly surrendering control to your character. So, I don’t know why the EYES section came about, but if I were to take a punt, I’d say it makes perfect sense from Hannah’s point of view. When you are a refugee in an unfamiliar place, people ultimately will not see you, perhaps the way you are, and you will feel alone and neglected. In that moment, you have to find someone or something to whom you become visible. Hannah, who reads extensively while living in Tavistock Park, connects with characters, writers, ideas, themes, and dead poets. In that sense, she might enjoy being probed, seen, provoked, and felt by the words, characters and ideas from books such as The Eyes by Samuel Beckett.

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