PERIODICAL: Granta: The Magazine of New Writing, Issue 112: Pakistan, Autumn 2010, Granta, 288pp. £12.99
MENTION PAKISTAN to anyone who has never been and the images evoked are invariably negative. Spittle-flecked fundamentalists and nuclear bombs. Military coups and venal politicians. The Most Dangerous Place in the World, as some headlines would have you believe.
Many Pakistanis bristle about how often their nation of 170 million people, with all its complexity, is flattened into little more than the beards-and-guns stereotype. The sluggish international response to the devastating floods that swept the country in August prompted a fresh round of uncomfortable questions – and no little hand-wringing at home – about how the world views Pakistan.
How timely, then, for Granta, whose 1997 India issue introduced future Booker-winner Arundhati Roy, to return to the subcontinent, this time to focus on the other, arguably more unloved, offspring of partition. Echoing throughout this volume, and indeed lingering long after reading, is a question posed by the novelist Hari Kunzru: "Whether Pakistani artists like it or not, the question of their identity now has geopolitical significance. Who are the inhabitants of this young country? What do they believe?"
Anyone seeking more than fleeting glimpses of a Pakistan other than that scarred by violence or religious fundamentalism should look elsewhere. The exuberant cover – a bright collage inspired by the country’s distinctive truck art – contrasts with the darkness within. Just a handful of pieces from the collection of short stories, reportage, poetry and memoir deal with narratives beyond the bleakly familiar. As one Pakistani reviewer remarked: “Reading the issue can feel like sitting through a particularly well-produced but violent BBC special on the history and politics of Pakistan.”
Several contributors wrestle with the long shadow cast by General Zia ul-Haq’s dictatorship in the 1980s, when many of Pakistan’s woes took root. A poignant piece by the eminent Urdu writer Intizar Hussain recalls the “echoes of prayer and the roar of public hangings” of the time, when, “along with religion, an unthinking nationalism had become the other god of Pakistan”.
The issue opens with Nadeem Aslam, the author of Maps for Lost Lovers, reworking the Arab legend of the star-crossed lovers Leila and Qais, using it as the backdrop for a disturbing tale of female infanticide. Similar themes of unsparing tradition and honour run through a short story by the hitherto unpublished septuagenarian Jamil Ahmad. Mohammed Hanif, the author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes, offers a dark account of unrequited love shot through with violence.
Of all the fiction pieces, Mohsin Hamid’s first-person imagining of a beheading, reminiscent of Bernard Henri-Levy’s telling of the death of Daniel Pearl, fails to deliver. Fans of Daniyal Mueenuddin may be disappointed that, instead of one of his masterful short stories, he presents a wistful poem centred on a Pakistani farmer’s sojourn in Europe.
Indeed, in a collection that often feels uneven, some of the most satisfying works are non-fiction. Chief among them is a beautifully crafted piece of reportage by the former Irish Timescorrespondent Declan Walsh, now of the Guardian, in which he writes of the Pashtun culture of Pakistan's frontier, with its "roasting hospitality, smouldering pride, cold and clinical revenge". The novelist Kamila Shamsie's contribution, which uses the changing fortunes of Pakistani pop music as something of a metaphor for the country, is another gem. Shamsie recounts listening to the bands that made up Pakistan's nascent pop scene while growing up in 1980s Karachi, before charting how many of the musicians later drifted into religious conservatism.
Other non-fiction includes an unpicking of the life of Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber; an examination of the much disputed legacy of Pakistan’s founding father, Mohammed Ali Jinnah; and a piece by Fatima Bhutto, niece of Benazir, on the Sheedi of Karachi, an ethnic group said to be descended from African slaves. The journalist Basharat Peer returns to his home town of Srinagar – “a medieval city dying in a modern war” – where he meets teenage Kashmiri stone-throwers inspired by their Palestinian counterparts.
The issue, while absorbing, leaves a hankering for material examining some of the lesser-known aspects of life in Pakistan, or exploring some of the country’s obscurer pockets. That said, there is much to reward readers who already have some knowledge of the region, as well as newcomers seeking something beyond stereotypes.
Mary Fitzgerald is the Irish TimesForeign Affairs Correspondent. She has reported from Pakistan several times since 2002
