In the early months of the pandemic, when anxiety had slowed my thinking to a crawl, I frequently found myself captivated by trite revelations like Uncertainty is torment and Love means living in fear. I hated my useless, corny aphorisms, but couldn’t repress them. I especially could not quit realizing, every time I refreshed Twitter or the news or the COVID-19 dashboard for my current home state of Ohio, that I was living through history. I’d glare at a bleak map or chart and tell myself: All of this will go in books someday.
Of course, I have never not been living through history. The record doesn’t stop and start. But before March 2020, I was very often too taken up with current events to consider how they would be remembered, or even how I myself would remember them. So I felt intensely grateful for the high level of granular political—now historical—detail in Nawaaz Ahmed’s debut, Radiant Fugitives, a sprawling, compelling novel set in San Francisco during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and first year in office.
Many of Ahmed’s characters are deeply invested in electoral and congressional politics; he devotes page after page to their discussions of Howard Dean’s performance in the Democratic primary or the Affordable Care Act’s odds in the Senate. This may sound sleep-inducing but, thanks to Ahmed’s vivid prose and his capacity to write heated dialogue, his dive into late-2000s politics is anything but dull. Radiant Fugitives becomes a document of the debates that influenced our present moment, filtered through character-driven fiction, not reportage; the novel is a reminder that, even when history is less than flagrantly obvious, each of us is mired in it, and shaped by it, from birth.
Ahmed underscores this point with his choice of narrator: Ishraaq, the newborn son of the novel’s protagonist, Seema. Ahmed frames Radiant Fugitives as Ishraaq’s internal monologue, beginning the moment he emerges from the womb. Functionally, though, Ishraaq is an omniscient narrator. Although he claims to have slept through Seema’s pregnancy, “interrupted only occasionally by lights and sounds from the outside,” he relates events that predate his birth—and, for that matter, his conception—in detail. He enters other characters’ heads, which is helpful, because the novel is full of interpersonal tangles. At its start, Seema, a Bay Area–based queer activist, is unexpectedly pregnant with the child of her ex-husband, Bill. Her devout sister and dying mother come to visit as her due date approaches, each with her own hopes for Seema and her child. Ishraaq comments on their behavior and ideas about religion, politics, family, and responsibility, seemingly weighing each woman’s role not only in his future but in history.
Radiant Fugitives is a systems novel, not a domestic one; Ahmed cares more about reflecting life in a society than life in a contained set of familial relationships. His quick point-of-view switches and brusque manner of delivering backstory swiftly make it clear that he is less invested in any one character than in the larger questions he examines through them. Chief among these questions is the validity of caring about politics. Seema and Bill, early Obama supporters, intertwine their identities so fully with his nascent candidacy that they “agreed they’d get married on the day [he] officially kicked off his presidential campaign.” Only months later, though, Seema finds herself discouraged watching Obama speak, worried that her candidate is “merely a cautious technocrat”; later, seated onstage at a rally, she reminds herself that, though Obama “claims hope, there is always a reality that won’t budge.”
Seema’s moment of doubt—her worry that she can’t believe in change—becomes the novel’s central issue. From the rally scene on, Ahmed takes it more or less as a given that progress is cyclical, not teleological. Given this truth, the book asks, why should anybody care about the little bits of progress they behold? Why invest time or money in politics? Why bother caring about public life?
Contemporary writers sometimes skirt this set of issues by engaging only blurrily with political life. In Christine Smallwood’s The Life of the Mind, the smart, disaffected protagonist fixates on doomy but vague images of climate crisis, which seem to fuel her ennui rather than spur her to action. There is, of course, realism in this portrait, but often the novel seems to substitute commentary on political life for investment in it—even the minor investment of providing details. Other novels block out specifics even further; I have been struck, in the past four years, by the number of writers who excise Donald Trump’s name from books that not only refer to his presidency but also wrestle with cultural issues it highlighted or exacerbated. Meg Wolitzer’s otherwise very good novel The Female Persuasion, which takes a critical look at 21st-century feminism, refers to Trump’s ascendance only as “the big terribleness,” either hoping or assuming that future readers will unanimously view it that way.
Novelists who avoid political detail may do so with an eye to the future, perhaps worrying that these developments—or their personal echoes—are too ephemeral to remain legible five or 10 years down the line. In Radiant Fugitives, Ahmed proves this concern groundless. He provides efficient context for each speech or congressional debate he draws on, then teases out the event’s effect on his characters’ lives. Bill, for example, tries to accept Seema’s insistence on raising their child alone, but when Obama delivers a speech decrying “MIA or AWOL” fathers who abandon their responsibilities, Bill finds himself compelled. On reflection, he sees that his response emerges from his personal history: His dad, a Black Panther, was in prison when Bill was born, and died there without meeting his son. Bill knows he wasn’t abandoned; still, the speech is a catalyst for him to acknowledge his desire to “fight to keep his family, the way his incarcerated father was unable to.” It matters little whether the reader remembers Obama’s family-values speeches; Ahmed uses them largely to demonstrate the capacity of less-than-nuanced political rhetoric to spark complex thought.
Often in Radiant Fugitives, public life shapes private selves by catalyzing intellectual or emotional development. Ahmed’s characters use the debates and developments of their moment to figure themselves out. Sometimes this tendency is conscious; sometimes current events provide accidental, alarming insights. In 2004, when same-sex marriage is briefly legalized in San Francisco—for just 29 days, until the state supreme court orders city officials to stop issuing marriage licenses—Seema is newly dating Bill, the first man she’s ever been involved with. She finds herself emotionally distant from the festive marital “hoopla roiling San Francisco,” and gradually recognizes that her sense of alienation comes from her changing understanding of her sexuality. Without San Francisco’s “Winter of Love,” Ahmed implies, that realization might have taken much longer to arrive.
Seema’s inability to celebrate her city’s marriage-equality breakthrough is a noticeable point of friction between her personal story and the novel’s broader historical arc. If Ahmed wished to twin them, he would, perhaps, have had Seema marry a woman at San Francisco City Hall. Instead, he intertwines them. He does the same throughout the book, placing his characters slightly outside major events. Seema, as the story unfurls, prefers to position herself in the role of witness, though she keeps volunteering for Democratic campaigns even while nine months pregnant. Her ongoing, ambivalent involvement underscores the value of civic participation even as it shows that the personal and the political, close as they may sometimes be, are never quite the same.
Radiant Fugitives suggests that public life is like the air we breathe: utterly necessary to survival, but different from—and larger than—any individual self. As we share air, so we share both a society and the great task of understanding it, which no one person can fully do. Ahmed’s characters do their best; even those who are less politically involved than Seema and Bill think deeply about the state of their country. Doing so helps them locate themselves in both society and history; participating in public life offers them not only a feeling of agency but also a means of self-analysis. Political fiction, Ahmed seems to realize, has no need to fear granularity or retreat into interiority. Writing down details, as any diary-keeper will tell you, is personal no matter what.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
