Hybrid Interview: Salma Ibrahim
Essay by Paul Chuks •
As far as immigration stories go, Salutation Road is about as political as can be in the way that it anchors readers into the realities of immigrants in Britain and applicably the Western world. Salma Ibrahim is unforgiving in her approach to the anti-immigration drivel clogging Britain. Her weapons for posterity are her story—the truth, her singing prose, and the gift that is Salutation Road. Given the state of the West, where immigration is a manufactured problem via nationalist extravaganza, this approach is justified.
In the first third of the book, Ibrahim establishes the inflammability of the state of migration in Britain; how dangerous it can get for migrants in the new world, at home, on returning—and the political heftiness of the word. As demonstrated recently on the streets of London, a group of Britons marched against the rise of immigration into the United Kingdom. This immediately enlivens the subject-matter explored in Salutation Road. In 2016, the people of the United Kingdom were promised low immigration entry into the UK if they yielded their vote for the referendum that facilitated their exit from the European Union. The promise did not come to fruition; they left the European Union and more migrants poured in. The Britons, unforgiving and unrelenting in their need for low migration rate, congest their streets with placards and characters that makes the book a classic.
A strain of nihilism always accompanies books plotted around immigration because if the characters saw the hatred their existence fostered, they would be terrified. To avoid this, Ibrahim adopts the theory of parallel universes in navigating her story. The parallel universe is a theoretical world that exists alongside our own universe, implying that there are infinite realities, some that mirror the opposite of our universe. In Salutation Road, Sirad lives with her immigrant parents in London, while Ubah lives in Mogadishu. They are both coined from the same personage and have the same parents, only with different outcomes. Sirad’s universe films what has been or what is; Ubah’s universe films what could have been.
One day, after Sirad is done with her daily chores, she drops onto the sofa and begins sifting through abandoned letters that she presumed were bills and urgent notices. An envelope with blue embellishment catches her attention: it is a letter from an unnamed school of technology in London where they were fascinated by the link between technology and immigration and how to assuage the problem Brexit created. She is suspicious and wonders who can come up with such a trick: Her mother who is soused in worries? Her brother Ahmed who is too playful and capable but never at home? The next day, Sirad boards a train to work but as the driver passes her usual stop, she continues journeying in a trancelike state, only partially aware of her surroundings. She alights in Mogadishu to some soldiers’ mounting positions, others directing traffic, eventually meeting a woman who claims to be her aunty. While Sirad waits in a restaurant, people ogle at her ruefully, speculating that she lives in London, that her parents were cowards who could not brave the Somalian war. The novel broaches the question of destiny: is it cowardice to migrate because of war? If not, why do migrants suffer survivor’s guilt? Nobody ever chooses death when there is a means of avoiding it and anti-migrant critics mostly do not have the means to leave, one might think.
Sirad meets her mother’s double who treats her just like her mother would. Aaobo, her father’s double, later walks into the sitting room with slower gait and grayer hair. They talk about Sirad, her parents, London and her double, Ubah. Ubah is a more radical version of her. She wants to leave her marriage and has been in a defunct relationship with her parents. She can brave the horrors of illegal immigration. But Sirad barely talks back to her mother when she breathes down her neck. On meeting Ubah, they talk about life, her marriage and one day coming to London. Sirad gets conscious of time wondering how mad her mother would be about her absence, so she writes her phone number down and leaves in the way she came for Greenwich, London. The street is silent as though people do not live there and her mother is sullen from assuming the worst about her absence. Knowing she wouldn’t understand what had just happened, Sirad lies about work hazard as an excuse for her lateness and promises never to do it again. Salma did not fail to highlight the ugly side of migration where her high school best friend, a white girl who is moving to Rwanda is called an “expat.” Black people leaving home are called immigrants and are usually scorned but a white person moving abroad is an expat who is mostly treated like royalty. There is no history of anti-expat movement in most countries of the world, yet there are numerous expats living far away from home. It subtly alludes to the racial ladder of the world that places the white race on top and the black race need not be mentioned.
Salutation Road is a proud installation in Cartesian dualism, in its portrayal of the duality of its character’s mind and body. While there is the theme of love in Aaobo—Sirad’s father’s double—and his wife’s relationship, there is the theme of strife between Sirad’s parents and also in her relationship with Ubah. Sirad’s father is violent to his family, abandoning them and returning to Somalia, while Ubah’s parents have love enough to give. Aaobo is present, makes jokes that only his wife understands and they eat together. In loving Ubah, Sirad pressed her on absconding the mysterious environment she and other illegal immigrants were cocooned in. This came after Ubah complained of an illness which she could only be treated for if she were a citizen or resident. Ubah shut down Sirad’s suggestions as they came because she felt too pampered and did not want to be a bone in her throat. Ubah stops picking her calls and replying to her texts. Their communications and the love fades after Sirad betrays Ubah by giving her information to a secret university research group known as UNCLASSIFIED after much convincing and monetary persuasion. Salutation Road shows the elasticity of morality and argues that humans, when push comes to shove, will cross the line.
Paul Chuks: I loved Sirad. She seemed melancholic and very aware of her environment, of the people around her and the world. Was she a biographical character of someone close to home, perhaps you?
Salma Ibrahim: In some ways, Sirad came from a biographical place. In the first chapter, Sirad takes a walk by the Thames riverbank in Greenwich, feeling quite melancholic and frustrated—you know, typical early twenties emotions. I take that same walk regularly, and at the time when I was thinking about writing a novel, it inspired thoughts about Sirad. It feels very authentic for me to write from a biographical place. It’s often the catalyst for my characters, but of course, it’s not the whole story. Sirad’s desire to make something of herself, to take care of others, and to self-sabotage were things I related to, but they’re also very universal. I also came from a two-parent family and have never been to a parallel world!
PC: Has there been any improvement in the migrant situation since Brexit?
SI: In short, no. Brexit triggered complex, layered feelings about what it means to be British in some spaces, and an ‘other’ in other spaces. It was also a beautiful time when I began to deepen my understanding of who I was as a Somali, Muslim woman. Third spaces were evolving in London where I felt truly at home, especially literary and artistic spaces run by people of colour. It was a significant turning point in my identity.
But things have gotten worse, it seems, from the alleged pressure on the NHS to the increase in hate crimes. It feels like Brexit was the perfect opportunity to find a scapegoat for governmental mismanagement and let the working class turn on each other. Right now, it feels like we’re in the calm before the storm, and I’m anxiously wondering where this pent-up pressure will lead us. At the same time, there is this fierce energy amongst migrant communities to be more visible and create a sense of permanence through our art, communities, businesses, families, etc. We feel unsafe, so we are looking after ourselves. There is a sense of solidarity forming because of shared feelings, and it’s not separate from our feelings about what is happening in the world right now in Gaza or Sudan or elsewhere. It’s all connected.
PC: Take a stab at white supremacy and those anti-immigrant theorists who think immigrants are coming to take their job and contaminate their population.
SI: Sirad engages with the hegemony around immigration, race and belonging throughout the book. At first, when Rosie tells her about moving to Rwanda, she can’t help but think of how her migration and her family’s migration would be received so differently. And it’s because of white supremacy at its very core. It’s not accidental, it’s not a mere semantic oversight, and it’s not a matter of an earnest protectiveness over laws and borders. It’s the plain, poisonous belief that white people are the gatekeepers of the world and only they can move freely without question. When I came up with the idea of the UNCLASSIFIED project—a secret university research group—I was making fun of the ivory towers that once regulated who gets to belong where and how, and now, in some funny turn of events, also want to be the ones who will facilitate understanding and healing in a post-colonial world. The idea that there is some stuffy portacabin office somewhere where someone is trying to help people reconcile migration, war trauma and survivor’s guilt through a carefully constructed parallel world is ludicrous and simultaneously not too far from the truth. When Ubah and many like her find their way in the opposite direction to work and seek their personal interests, they are defying it. They are doing what all humans are designed to do: seek environments where they can thrive.
PC: Survivor’s guilt is an unkind feeling that plagues immigrants of war-torn countries who successfully migrated elsewhere. I saw it in Sirad when she arrived in Mogadishu. How do you navigate it?
SI: Whenever I think I’ve made peace with survivor’s guilt, it rears its head. I used to think that as long as I do my best to become educated, fulfill my talents and be grateful, then it will be enough. But there are wars and genocides raging where we can do nothing to protect people and greater powers inhibit us. I wouldn’t be human if I felt satisfied with my relative ease while these things are happening.
PC: Were the rueful stares, harshness and general anger directed at Sirad, by people who thought her parents were cowards for migrating, justified?
SI: I don’t think feelings always require justification. They just are, so I wanted to explore them and understand the various nuances. The goal of literature is to allow for empathy, even where it feels impossible. I can empathise with the people who felt like Sirad’s parents (in the main timeline) had abandoned them, even though that might feel like a harsh thought. But Sirad’s parents in the parallel world didn’t feel abandoned, so I wanted to ensure I don’t portray the people of Somalia in a two-dimensional, monolithic way.
PC: Do you secretly nurse a belief in the other worlds, given the near factual postulations of sciences? If yes, which one of them?
SI: Imagining a world beyond ours was a way of me creating the conditions that allow for perspective. To remind us that whatever we are going through in the current moment is just a tiny speck in a vast and beautiful cosmos, but at the same time has meaning beyond what we can immediately understand. Much of our life is mundane and pre-programmed through rigid routines, ideas and vices. When we think of other worlds, suddenly we can lift the veil that stops us from thinking differently. It can help us conjure new solutions.
PC: This could have been another literary fiction story about migration; what tilted you towards the speculative?
SI: Imagination is medicine for our times. It’s very normal for a child to imagine things like talking pets or being able to climb the stars at night and gaze down on their house. We do these bizarre things in our dreams, so it’s a part of us. But to most of us adults, we have lost those instincts. I wrote a speculative book to break free from the curse of everyday thinking and prove that imaginative worlds are possible in a book if you can hold the reader’s attention and develop the necessary trust.
PC: The relationship between Sirad and her mother was peaceful when compared to that of Ubah and her mother. Were you mirroring something? Or was it just an omnipotent character you divided into worlds to sweeten the plot?
SI: Not necessarily. Mother-daughter relationships can be complicated. Sometimes, it’s because of one’s environment, or conflicting goals. Ubah wanted to leave Somalia and her mother felt very protective of her, so it’s understandable that there was some tension there.
PC: Who do you connect with more between Sirad and Ubah?
SI: I wish I could say neither, because in reality, they go through difficult things, and they are often prone to self-sabotage and bouts of selfishness and impulsivity. Truthfully, I might be writing from a psychoanalytical place when I imagined these characters. Like Sirad, my twenties were full of bad decisions, creative stagnation, constant second-guessing and fear. At the same time, like both Ubah and Sirad, I was full of tenacity and ambition. I hated sitting still. Now in my thirties, I am so much more measured, and I want nothing more than a gentler, calmer life and to do things with care. I think I am getting there.
PC: You also seem to have mirrored both Sirad and Ubah’s relationship with their fathers. Are any of them real? Talk about the importance of fatherhood in a child’s life.
SI: Sirad and Ubah grew up differently in their respective timelines because Sirad’s father became estranged when she was ten, and Ubah’s father was in her life throughout. The older I get, the more I understand that parents are a child’s first experience of what it means to belong, what it means to feel accepted. For women, it matters a lot if we feel like our fathers are constant, stable figures in our lives, whether we realise this or not. And the type of man the present father is matters greatly. To be able to trust one’s father from birth and throughout one’s life sets up the expectation that a future partner can be trusted too. It’s something I wanted to explore in my first novel because it’s such an elephant in the room in Somali society. Some people will say you can have an amazing life and a complete sense of self, even if your parents weren’t perfect or there for you. Maybe. But I wanted to write about the layers of unease that exist within Somali families, where things do not turn out so well, not a utopia.
PC: What is your personal opinion about Sirad and Ubah’s brief friendship? The text Ubah sent Sirad about ending the friendship in saving both of them, do you think it was sincere?
SI: It started off tense, but grew into something complex and tender. They were both sincere in their actions, but sincerity alone wasn’t enough. Sirad could have been said to have been escaping herself by helping UNCLASSIFIED get rid of Ubah. She’s almost her shadow self that she wasn’t able to confront.
PC: Was Ubah trafficked to London? Were you trying to expose something?
SI: Yes, Ubah was trafficked to London, but I wasn’t trying to expose anything. I was showing what happens when people open up channels for movement that are inherently unfair and self-serving. Those channels will be used by all, for better or for worse.
PC: Many argue that Somalia is not in Africa or that Somalians should not be classified as Africans. What is your opinion?
SI: I’m not sure how this is a real argument that exists. We are in Africa, so we are Africans. There is no question about that. I have heard people who are not Somali, but from other African countries, deny that Somalis are African. I have also heard Somalis deny it themselves. It’s more to do with what being African connotes. Many Somalis have felt like their way of life, identity, and modes of self-expression are at odds with the dominating African worldviews. Personally, I always gravitate towards the Africans in the room. My school friends were often Nigerians because I could relate to their values: hard work, creativity, spirituality and a refreshing kind of self-grandeur. Where Somalia sits on the world map makes it a port of many cultures, languages and civilisations. We have always been neither here nor there, but flowing and transforming. Maybe that’s the crux of it all. Some want an identity to reflect this beyond the word ‘African.’
PC: Some go on to posit that we should not write speculative stories because it is a clear influence and copycat of the West and it also does not reflect our political situation. What do you think?
SI: Speculative fiction has never just been a Western thing. African cultures, from time immemorial, have had the tradition of speculative storytelling interwoven in its culture. We have rivers named after goddesses, towns popular for their folklores around apparitions and theophanies. Africans believe heavily in mythologies that when explored create their own separate world. To now separate politics from such a rich and layered speculative culture, and see it as this siloed subject, is to completely misunderstand Somali culture and African ways of seeing the world more generally.
PC: There’s a growing debate among African critics on whether Africans who migrated (at a young age or not) are still African writers and are eligible for African awards. What do you think?
SI: I see myself as an African writer of the diaspora, so there’s a slight nuance there that is important. When you’re an African raised in the diaspora, writing about people in the diaspora, it is as a distinct arm of African literature. I think this is important to say because as diaspora-raised people, we have a different lense on ‘Africaness.’ We navigate a completely different set of experiences and write from those experiences.
PC: Who are the writers and poets of the Somalian literary canon that you recommend for readers?
SI: Nuruddin Farah, Nadifa Mohamed, Warsan Shire, Momtaza Mehri, Ahmed Farah Ali, Abdi Sheik Abdi, and so on.
PC: Is Salutation Road a real place or just nicknamed after a place in London? Does it hold more memories for you that are shared in the book?
SI: It’s a real road in Greenwich, but there are no significant landmarks near it. Just some old rusty warehouses. I always found it quite eerie growing up but full of mystery. I turned it into a literary blank space to cast my imagination against. There’s a lot to be said about why I chose such an seemingly insignificant, unglamourous road in the area I call home to be the title for my novel.
PAUL CHUKS is a freelancer, poet, and storyteller. He is of Igbo descent and resides in Nigeria. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in The Africa Report, The London Magazine, Strange Horizons, Hobart Pulp, and elsewhere. He is a Senior Editor at Mud Season Review. Find him on Instagram @retiredwallflower.
SALMA IBRAHIM published her debut novel Salutation Road in February 2025. She lives in London and is writing her second novel while working in humanitarian emergencies. Find her on Instagram @Salma.s.ibrahim.
