Love and longing in London

Rahul Singh

Okechukwu Nzelu’s ‘Here Again Now’ is a moving love story of two British-Nigerian men. It begins with Achike, a rising actor who comes home to Ekene, his friend from childhood.

Achike’s steady success in the entertainment industry gains him bigger roles and also a style of living he’s never had before. He has rented a top-floor flat at Peckham where he invites Ekene, who is recovering from a breakup back in Berlin. They are settling into happy domesticity when Ekene discovers Achike’s father, Chibuike, will also be staying with them. Ekene is uncomfortable with the arrangement knowing full well that the responsibility of looking after the drunkard father would be on him as Achike would be away at outdoor shooting locations, more often than not. But Achike is set on changing his life. First, by regaining his father’s love and preventing him from a downward spiral. Second, by getting Ekene to be with him permanently. Things, however, don’t exactly turn out that way. 

Achike and Ekene’s relationship from childhood to being adults in their late 30s is an absolute delight. Not only is it a much-needed story to understand the relationship between two men but the sensitivity with which the author has written it etches it permanently in the reader’s memory. The hesitation with which Achike insists Ekene be with him is reminiscent of David’s pursuit of Giovanni in James Baldwin’s 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room. Like Baldwin’s characters, Achike and Ekene have deep-set melancholy and histories of being queer and a black man in a white country.

While Achike ignores the memory of a childhood trauma left by a family figure, Ekene manages to look past the alienation he feels from both his family and his identity in general. However, it isn’t only the world making them feel incomplete. Ekene’s thankless job as a part-time drama teacher, and being dependent on Achike makes him feel like a lesser person. Achike is ready to give up his rising career because, ‘One day I’ll be filming in Siberia, or wherever and you’ll call me up and tell me you’ve met someone else.’ Throughout the story, Nzelu excels in his attempt to make his characters vulnerable to the changes afflicting them. It is this vulnerability that lends the story its strength.

One of the major elements that gets the plot moving is Achike’s migraines; ‘I think I’ve still got a bit of that migraine, too. You know how they linger.’ The sickness is not simply a plot device but is also a structural tact to stir the novel in dizzying periods of time and thematic discontents. Achike’s fond memory of time spent with Ekene in Berlin watching fireworks, his father’s childhood in Nigeria, and Ekene's uncertainty about the future — these themes drive the story in the direction of Bernadine Evaristo’s (2013) Mr Loverman where blackness in Britain becomes a lens to explore homophobia, fatherhood, citizenship, friendship and love. The migraine becomes more than an ailment upsetting Achike. It is the echo of migraines blacks, and queers have felt generationally.

Against the simmering relationship of the two men lurks the presence of Achike’s father, Chibuike. His mention gets the story started, showing the growing discomfort between the two men. Despite the long years of desolation, Achike is drawn to him and resorts to changing their relationship: ‘Because sometimes you have to make sacrifices. That’s what you do for people you love.’ He says it to Ekene who is paralysed by the thought of dealing with another homophobic father. Nzelu expertly captures the heart of the father-son relationship through its heartbreaks and failures. Notwithstanding the beauty of its lyrical flow, however, the pace does cause a roadblock. Nzelu’s self-indulgent prose sometimes leaves the reader wanting.

Nonetheless, what lies beneath all of these is a story Nzelu has brought to light — of two vulnerable men seeking hope from a lonesome world, much like the Academy Award-winning film Moonlight (2016). It comes as no surprise that the book was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2023 (a prize in the UK to honour writers of colour).