The Fortune Men
‘Defend me for what? You can’t get me to worrying,’ says Mahmood Mattan, when offered legal representation after his arrest in Tiger’s Bay, Cardiff, home to the young Somali, his estranged Welsh wife, and their three boys. A muscled sailor from Hargeisa, Mahmood has a prodigious memory, excels at games of skill, knows five languages, and is unemployed by dint of ‘Blackness’. A stoker by trade, he soon learns the heat from the fiery engines is nothing compared to people’s burning hatred. His reluctance to return to sea and miss his boys’ growing up morphs into tragic irony.
The Fortune Men is based on the murder of a Jewish shop owner on the night of March 6th, 1952 in the melting pot of Tiger’s Bay, an area decimated by the war, and resettled by Somali, West African, Caribbean, Indian, Arab and Maltese sailors. We see life through Mahmood’s eyes―his worldly travels, his gambling, petty theft, propensity for lying, his cockiness, the prejudice faced in marrying a Welsh girl, his deep love for his wife and boys. When arrested, he naively believes he will be released immediately, and forgoes counsel. As the days slip into weeks, he rereads the Qu’ran, still confident his innocence will free him. The trial is a travesty, but how does one fight a xenophobic system where evidence is manipulated, police pressure people to rethink their recall of what they saw (or didn’t), lying witnesses are applauded, and a large reward is on offer in a poverty-stricken city? Slowly coming to terms with a universal disinterest in the truth, Mahmood’s gradual transformation―cynicism to realisation and acceptance of death―is heart-breaking.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, this remarkable literary work puts the era unflinchingly on show in intricate detail, and the author’s ability to place the reader right there, privy to this shameful miscarriage of justice, is chilling. A remarkable achievement not to be missed.
