South
Babak Lakghomi
Rare Machines, August 2023

W

hile going through the House of Terror in Budapest, I learned that at any one time more than half of the entire Hungarian population was under suspicion during Soviet rule. Along with wondering how such a massive amount of people could be watched (answer: encourage the citizenry to turn in their friends, family, and neighbors), I also wondered how one could ward off suspicion. Since “be lucky” is unsatisfying and “keep a low profile” doesn’t entirely work, I’m afraid the answer is to stay as informed as possible in this permanently fluid situation and hope your knowledge helps.

What you definitely don’t want to be is ignorant of your general surroundings.

And yet, at one point in Babak Lakghomi’s South, the Interrogator asks B, the protagonist, “Why did you choose to write this book? Who were you trying to harm other than yourself? Are you naïve or do you think we’re naïve?” (Naivety, there it is.) “You want me to believe all of this is an accident?” Now, the book being referenced is B’s biography of his father who disappeared when B was quite young. The tone of the questions reveals to us we’re dealing with a totalitarian government that doesn’t take kindly to those who write about suspicious figures from the past, ones who have been Stalinized from history, even if those books don’t immediately appear to be political in nature. But the unpardonable crime is being naïve, being ignorant.

Thinking about South in this way, it immediately sounds like an entry into the 1984-inspired wing of dystopian fiction. But the book doesn’t start out that way. Instead, we learn that B is a married writer living north of the coast (or maybe a coast) in his country. As a husband, B’s perhaps not the best, thanks to his drinking and subsequent infidelity. As a writer, things haven’t been going so well (which is always a good excuse for drinking and infidelity). Recently, for instance, he worked on a piece about the extinction of painted storks that required B to do a great deal of research, including interviews with a number of ornithologists. No one was interested. In response, he quit drinking and finally started writing something purely for himself: the book about his father.

B’s father is a mysterious case. Depending on who you ask, he might’ve disappeared because he was “queer” (the homophobic explanation from the state), or because he was connected to unions that were not friendly with the government, or because he was forced to emigrate, or for reasons unknown (and subsequently manufactured by various concerned parties). When the Interrogator says, “You wrote a book about him, but you don’t seem to know much about your father,” this is not a revelation. B’s original hope was that writing the book would bring the two of them closer together, at least metaphorically.

Having worked on the biography for some time, B submits it to the Publisher where the Editor takes an interest. With names like the Interrogator, the Publisher, the Editor, B, and later the Assistant Cook, one of the sly and marvelous aspects of South is that it operates as if it were published under an oppressive regime, excising names and descriptions either to protect the innocent, or to protect oneself from agents looking on. Furthermore, this ambiguity skews the work more into Kafkaesque territory (The Trial and “In the Penal Colony” come to mind), rather than the blunter Orwellian zone. Anyway, since B does need an income, the Editor charges him with writing a piece about life on the oil rigs. Just go down and talk to the people there and put together a story is the extent of the assignment. Unlike with the storks, there’s actually a publication credit waiting for B afterwards.

But things don’t work so well for B on the platform. For one, even though the Editor sets everything up for him, meaning everyone knows B’s coming, when he arrives, no one wants to talk to him. Kind of difficult to write that feature story when most of the crew’s giving you the silent treatment. For two, contrary to the way I assume oil rigs actually operate, all of life here is on such a rigid schedule, if you’re late for anything at all, like say a meal, well too bad for you, pal. You’re going hungry. Add on top of that the lack of wifi and cell service, meaning you have to write out any transmission you want sent back home and hand it off to the Secretary, who will read it along with any incoming messages, leading to a good deal of self-censorship, and pretty soon B is so intensely isolated he wonders why he was sent in the first place. The logical thing would be to just go back where you came from. Only logic isn’t exactly the coin of the realm on the oil rig. And as B’s alienation and, yes, hunger (he misses a lot of meals) grow, things begin happening he’s not sure are real, people begin disappearing and, in the fine tradition of horrific regimes, everyone acts as if they never existed in the first place. The question then becomes, “What do They, whoever They might be, want from B?”

As the surreality amps up, we’re forced to wonder how any of this could happen. But that’s just the point. At the beginning of South, Lakghomi makes his world seem fairly mundane. Sure, B encounters some strange local customs as he drives through the country (a cult of the winds, okay). And we learn a little about the government (not exactly aiming for a high score as human rights go). What’s really important to B, however, are all the intricacies of his own life, especially his book. Everything else will take care of itself. He doesn’t even think of himself as political. Thus, the naivety, the ignorance I mentioned at the beginning. It’s as if B believes he doesn’t live in an oppressive state, even though he does. When the walls start closing in on him (thanks to the state’s interest in his literary endeavors), when nothing makes any sense, we are as confused and flabbergasted as he is.

South, then, shows us what it’s like to realize the country you live in has been taken over by (or was always run by) a totalitarian regime. This can’t happen here? Oh, but it already has or is. Lakghomi’s master stroke, though, is combining Orwell’s realistic horrors (the state’s exercise of power) and Kafka’s surreal confusion (how could this be going on?). Thinking back to the House of Terror, I have to assume there were Hungarians under Soviet rule like B, who thought they could live their lives, who thought if they just stayed out of politics everything would be fine. One trait of oppressive regimes is that they have no problem interpreting anything and everything as political, when it suits them. “What is considered innocent today may not be so tomorrow,” says the Interrogator. Even writing a biography about your own father who disappeared when you were young in the hopes that book will somehow bring you closer to him.

Space limits me, but there’s so much more here. B’s relationships (with Tara, his wife; with the Assistant Cook; with the mysterious tattooed woman; with the Publisher and the Editor), that bizarre wind cult that disappears and reappears throughout (and which I admit I haven’t completely wrapped my mind around yet), the protests that seem to be forever raging in the background until they finally enter the foreground, the various dreamlike notebook entries, etc. In a novel that’s rather short and often written in a straightforward style, Lakghomi has included so many layers in South, the effect is hallucinatory, a sublime trip, one full of terror (as always with the sublime) and wonder, one I intend to take again and again.