As a newcomer from a foreign country where English is not well spoken, I encounter hundreds of unfamiliar words in university. The word “reconciliation” used to be one of them. “Reconciliation with Indigenous people” was a common way to hear it, combined with another unfamiliar word “Indigenous”. I had the vague understanding of this phrase as “respecting the aboriginal people and making the relationship better”, until I finally looked up the meaning of the word “reconciliation”. When I first saw the definition saying “the restoration of friendly relations” or “the action of making one view or belief compatible with another” and the Japanese translation saying “仲直り, 和解” (both by Google), I remember I somehow felt uncomfortable hearing that. Even though I have poor understanding for conflict between Indigenous people and settlers, it feels really strange for non-Indigenous people who colonized the land and extracted all the resources and culture, saying getting along with Indigenous people, using the English word, “reconciliation”.

“Truth and Reconciliation Commission”, which was held in South Africa, was the first time I heard the word “reconciliation” other than the context of talking about Indigenous people in Canada. In our ASTU class, we were assigned J. M. Coetzee’s novel “Disgrace”, which indirectly portrays the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” through David Lurie’s encounter with women, his daughter’s life in Salem, and his own trial for sexual harassment towards his student, Melanie.

One of the things that stood out to me during the class was David’s theory of communication. As a professor in the “communication” development, David questions the capacity of communication as a means of translating one’s feelings. This suggests that language is not necessarily the best way to communicate. Personally speaking, I often find it hard to express myself through English, not just because I am not good at it, but because I am not sure which word to choose to express my thoughts accurately and properly. Sometimes, there is a perfect word in Japanese which I would love to use, while no dictionary provides an alternative word in English, and vise versa. The same thing could be said for “truth”, which is another important term in the novel “Disgrace”, besides “reconciliation”. We have been talking in class throughout the year about “master narratives and counter narratives”, “agency of storytelling” and “streams of thoughts”, and we now know the ambiguity and unreliability of stories about our memory – there is no such a single “true” story for anything.

The novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hamid, which we read in the first term, also leaves the ambiguity towards truth and reconciliation. While 9.11 is conveyed as a tragic story of terrorism by the evil foreigners in the master narrative, this book challenges this by depicting the story of a Pakistani Changez, and questions our epistemology about the relation between Americans and Muslims. At the end of the novel, the author remains the climax unclear and stimulates readers to imagine rather Changez and the unknown American man had reconciled or killed each other. In this context, it might be questioning the possibility of storytelling by showing the ambiguity of stories and language for the reconciliation between America and Pakistan.

The use of metaphor is another way to keep the ambiguity. In “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, the relation between Changez and America is depicted through his girlfriend Erica and his workplace Underwood Samson. In “Disgrace”, the animals in Salem, which Lucy and Bev Shaw (who works in an animal disposal center) cared and loved, seems to play an important role in David’s life, and seemingly depicts the process of “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”. In “Country of My Skull”, Antjie Krog refers to the “Female Storyteller”, explaining that “these stories undermine boundaries; men turn into women and vice versa, animals become people, women fall in love with animals, people eat each other, dreams and hallucinations are played out” (52). This resonates with Lucy’s attachment towards animals and nature, and the way she viewed “reconciliation”. Lucy mentions about Petrus, who is the father of the boy who raped her, as “offering an alliance” (Coetzee, 203), which she painfully but sincerely accepts by marrying him. This might represent the Afrikaans who accepted change in racial positionality and their mistake. The quote of “undermin(ing) boundaries” might be the binary boundaries in our society, such as “men and women”, “truth and lie”, “personal and public”, “enemies and allies” and “black and white”. This novel seems to break down these boundaries, which itself is the process of reconciliation, and what Lucy is trying to do.

In my personal view, dogs seem to represent some source of security, as dogs are used as watchdogs often. One of the sources of security for White people like Lucy and David during the apartheid era must have been the privileges of being White. Thus, the dogs in this book can be understood as the representation of people’s privileges during apartheid. By Lucy getting raped by the Black people, she loses her dogs and experience physical (being raped) and mental (both being raped and losing her dogs) pain. The end of apartheid in South Africa must have been painful for White people in terms of losing their power, and at the same time, in terms of officially being the target of hatred both publicly and privately. However, Lucy recognized her privileges and the need of abandoning and reconciling with the people in her village. Thus, she took care of animals by collaborating with Black people in the region.

This theory fails to explain the changing relationship between David and dogs. Especially, how he avoided the animals won’t resonate with the idea of dogs being the privileges of White people, since David would be supposed to be attached with dogs (privileges) from the first place. Maybe, loving and taking care the dogs might be the metaphor of recognizing and accepting the privileges that they have. While David didn’t specifically mention about apartheid in the book, he seems to avoid recognizing his privileges at first. However, he gradually recognizes his positionality through Lucy’s lifestyle and his “reconciliation” with Melanie, but abandons them by disposing the dogs which he loves. At last, he says he wants to keep a dog for another week, but eventually gives up.

Indeed, both truth and reconciliation are vague and the reliability is questionable. However, I believe storytelling can include the possibility and ambiguity of our memory at the same time, which will hopefully lead to understanding our privileges, inequity, and others’ positionality. The theme “memory” in this class seemed to be too personal at the beginning of the year. However, our memory is what creates the society, and we can’t just draw lines between public and private facts. Our memory might not be reliable, but it doesn’t make it untrue. It rather suggests us what we actually know about ourselves.