THE moment writer, chronicler and poet Aqeel Abbas Jafari started reciting his poetry about na-maloom afrad the audience immediately jumped onto the bandwagon. There were times when the poet was totally ignored by the audience members who were too happy giving voice to their own emotions. It was apparently collective catharsis in motion.

Though for the most part the literati did their best to avoid talking openly about terrorism, sectarianism, ethnicity, fundamentalism, violence and such other things, the audience used every single moment they possibly could to have their sentiments registered.

For instance, when Intizar Husain was asked about his passion for Buddha and old Hindi classics, he said it was much easier to answer such questions in the days gone by, but the scenario has now changed. Mustansar Hussain Tarrar, while talking about his own sense and interpretation of history, suddenly stopped in his tracks, saying: “It’s a tricky path … I must not proceed any further. Let’s talk about something else.”

Novelist Mohammed Hanif, an outspoken proponent of liberal causes, said he looked forward to a long life even in today’s Pakistan because he is “a Punjabi, a man, and a Sunni Muslim.” Perhaps as an afterthought, he added: “But Karachi is probably not the right place to say that.”

In all these cases, one can see the finesse with which the learned said things by leaving them unsaid. The audiences, meanwhile, were more interested in giving voice to their feelings. And it reflected almost everywhere.

Amjad Islam Amjad read out a poem about Karachi and it received booming applause. The session with Zehra Nigah ended with a video presentation of her remarkable poem about the difference between lawlessness and the law of the jungle. The curtain came down with sustained clapping. When, in the session on Habib Jalib, his daughter recited the famous poem, ‘Mein Nahin Manta,’ the audience got enthusiastically involved. Even when Nusrat Ali used the same poem to mimic Habib Jalib at the former’s one-man show, it got way, way more applause than whatever else Ali did. The applause was clearly for Jalib and his defiant poetry.

The organisers did a good job dedicating a full session to the subject of terrorism and literature. The audience was a bit disappointed with the way it started as panelist Asif Farrukhi started reading out a narrative that had Buddha and Aungli Mala as two characters defining the good and the bad in human beings.

Probably the reference to terrorism was too indirect for many and they indulged in a bit of abrupt clapping which is generally an indication of a crowd getting bored with the proceedings. Luckily, Buddha soon afterwards convinced Aungli Mala that he had taken to inhuman acts because of social isolation which needed to come to an end.

The session picked up some momentum when moderator Masood Ashar asked the panelists if the story can be replicated in today’s Pakistan where “terrorism has become an institution”, and if so, who is today’s Buddha and how would he convince the much deadlier descendants of Aungli Mala.

It was the venerable Syeda Arfa Zahra who gave the session its life and soul. “Today, it is happening the other way round,” she said. “The Buddhas sitting in Islamabad are not trying as much to change the Aungli Malas, but make us, the masses, surrender.”

Zahra continued. “As far as the public is concerned, today’s Aungli Mala is the fear inside us which is forcing us into silent submission and complete capitulation.” Her exhortations, though bordering on the idealistic, were again well received, which again was a reflection of the mood of the crowd in attendance.

Another reading somewhat disrupted the momentum, but this time it was Intizar Husain who came to the rescue, quoting several examples from Buddha’s tales to underline the difference between what was and what is. Husain has a fascinating presence that gives deeper meaning to his words and when he talked of Buddha’s reincarnations and linked it with the metamorphosis of terrorists over the last several centuries, people listened.

But perhaps the session had become too Buddha-centric by then. Someone from the audience asked Husain if he had given up on his earlier idiom of Scheherazade, which he has used with great literary finesse to talk of what literature can do in times of chaos, anarchy, and, indeed, terrorism.

Husain first explained that idiom and ended with a quote from Iqbal’s poetry which encourages the reader to rally round the tree in the hope of spring. The moderator raised the point that while there is no harm in hoping for spring, the tree, sadly, doesn’t seem to exist.

PUBLISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD

THE session featuring publishers was quite an eye-opener. Hoori Noorani and Masood Ashar talked of pathetically small print runs, distribution hassles and narrow profit margins in Pakistan, and Mandira Sen spoke of the plight of small publishers who generate writers only for them to be hijacked by the giants. But it was Marc Parent from France who sort of stunned the crowd with his utterance: “Pakistan and India together represent the future of the global English-reading market.”

As if he had noticed the wide-eyed response of the audience, Parent, who has exposure to the American market as well, went on to explain it a bit further. Books don’t sell in the West like they used to. The publishing houses are undergoing mergers and while mergers are nothing new, the reason behind the move is certainly new.

Earlier, he said, mergers represented an effort to expand and explore newer markets and audiences. Today, they happen out of the fear of Amazon, the internet-based company which has become a giant in the last decade or so. The mergers today are about cutting costs even at the risk of compromising editorial discretion.

Against that backdrop, the English-reading market in the subcontinent is a lucrative proposition for global publishers. “India alone is worth more than 300 million potential readers,” he said. Gioia Gverzoni from Italy agreed, but placed the Pakistani market “on the periphery of the global scene,” which matched the perception of the audience a tad bit more.

Talking of Pakistani writers, Parent said he had published Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories directly from Urdu into French. “I just could not think of leaving this world without introducing Manto to people in France,” he said, adding, however, that the books didn’t do well commercially, the biggest reason in his opinion being the negative image of Pakistan in the eyes of the global community.

“I am sure they will love Manto if they pick up the book, but as soon as they hear of anything, any writer from Pakistan, they just put it back on the shelf, saying they can’t have anything to do with a country that does this and does that,” he said.

Talking of Pakistani writers settled abroad, Parent said their writing was slightly easier to handle because they are not seen as purely “Pakistani writers.” To the Western eyes, they are “more like Anglo-Indo-Pakistani writers,” which is “quite different to being a Pakistani writer.”