Ada’s Realm
By Sharon Dodua Otoo
Totope, March 1459
During the longest night of the year, blood clung to my forehead and my baby died. Finally. He had whimpered in his final moments, and Naa Lamiley had caressed his cheek. How lovely, I had thought, that this would be his final memory. She lay just beside him, the child between us, and her head resting next to mine. Naa Lamiley’s eyes shimmered as she assured me it would not be much longer now, “God willing”. She whispered because all of our mothers were sleeping on the other side of the room, but Naa Lamiley’s voice would have given out at any moment anyway. Together, we had cried and prayed at my baby’s side the last three nights. I could barely hear her, and I understood her even less. While she caressed him, she had stared at me, as if surprised by my confusion – though the words How would you know? never left my lips. In an already unbearable situation, this moment was particularly absurd. Naa Lamiley always knew. But in that moment – it was quite literally a matter of my own flesh and blood – I did not want to seem clueless to her. To distract myself, I scratched my forehead. I scratched and forgot I had blood under my nails.
The few candles Naa Lamiley had gathered and placed before the doorway flickered.
“It was this way with Kofi, too,” she breathed softly, as if she did not wish to disturb my son while he was dying. Shame on me. This was not so long ago. The ensuing silence resulting from my shame and her sympathy accompanied us through the final, tortured breaths. The candles wept.
Outside, Naa Lamiley had prepared a tiny pad of palm leaves to lay him out in the moonlit courtyard. She spread a white cloth over it. There would be no grave. The boy did not even have a name; he was only five days old. And yet he had still tarried longer than my first child. Also, a boy. He had opened his eyes immediately after birth, looked around, and evidently, not liked what he had seen. That little one had left us before I could even take him in my arms.
Naa Lamiley squeezed my hand once, briefly, then shifted to her knees and stood. I wanted to, as well, but with great effort I only managed to make it halfway – a squat. It was about time to carry out his body – I remained on the floor. She bent over one of the flames – I remained on the floor. She blew one candle out, then the next, and then another. Finally, she lifted the baby’s body and carried him from our room. I remained on the floor. The darkness comforted me.
Through the open doorway, I watched how Naa Lamiley weighed my baby in her arms, how she lay his body gently down onto the palm leaves, how she adjusted his head lovingly, pressing his lips together. How she blinked her tears away. I leaned back against the wall, closed my own eyes, and dozed off.
By sunrise – his body was still warm – the older women, toothless and spitting, had assured one another that I had best forget about it all as quickly as possible. They sat together on the bench directly in front of our hut, watching the morning unfold. The one whose eyesight was poorest nodded emphatically in Naa Lamiley’s direction as she pronounced that I was still young and could, God willing, bear at least three more healthy children one after another.
“Or,” Mami Ashitey cackled, shaking her broom, “perhaps all three at once!” And as if this were the best joke of all time, they began to laugh in unison. Their ribcages shook, and their eyes wept tears of laughter. I bit my lip. Did they not know the prophesy had foretold that I – the woman they all called Ada – would accompany only one child into adulthood?
Naa Odarkor, who was frying up the masses of shrimp which would later be brought to market, threw her fan to the ground and leaped over the coal stove. She had to prop up the toothless one whose hearing was poorest, as she began to laugh so mightily, she almost fell from her bench.
Forget it all as soon as possible? I fought to hold on to every memory I had of him! I clung with all my strength to the sour scent of my son. His murmuring still resounded in my ears, as though he had only just stopped nursing. And I longed for this again. My swollen breast all but robbed me of my breath. As chapped and tender as my nipples were, I wished for nothing more than to exchange the agony in my engorged breasts for the torture of nursing. Naa Lamiley shook her head and chewed at her cracked thumbnail, while the toothless ones began to laugh at me once more. But it was really true that I could still feel how he had gazed at me as I had held him in my arms. Like a promise he would stay with me for ever. Or perhaps, a promise that I had never really lived without him.
Excerpt from “Ada’s Realm” copyright © 2023 by Sharon Dodua Otoo. Translated from German by Jon Cho-Polizzi.
Published by Quercus Books (UK)
About the book: WHERE IS ADA? In 1459, in a small village in what will one day become Ghana, Ada gives birth again, and again the baby does not live. As she grieves the loss of her child, Portuguese traders become the first white men to arrive in the village, an event that will bear terrible repercussions for Ada and her kin.
WHEN IS ADA? In 1848, Ada will become the mathematical genius Ada Lovelace; in 1945 Ada is a prisoner forced into prostitution in a Nazi concentration camp; in 2019, Ada is a young, pregnant Ghanaian woman with a new British passport who arrives in Berlin for a fresh start.
WHO IS ADA? Ada is not one woman, but many, and she is all women – she revolves in orbits, looping from one century and from one place to the next. And so, she experiences the hardship but also the joy of womanhood: she is a victim, she offers resistance, and she fights for her independence.
This long-awaited debut from Sharon Dodua Otoo paints an astonishing picture of femininity, resilience and struggle with deep empathy and humour, with vivid language and infinite imagination.
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Born in London in 1972 to Ghanaian parents, Sharon Dodua Otoo is an political activist and novelist living in Berlin. After having published several newspaper articles and two novellas in English, she wrote a short story in German which was later awarded the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize (2016), one of Germany’s most renowned literary awards. She is politically active with several civil rights organisations, including the Initiative Black People in Germany (ISD), a Black queer feminist organisation called ADEFRA, and Phoenix. Ada’s Realm is her first novel.
You can read our interview with Sharon Dodua Otoo here
