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May 19, 2002
REVIEW: Caught in the crossfire
I DON’T know about you, but I’m the kind of reader who loves to tear through books, finishing them in a few days, devouring the plots and often cheating by looking at the last few pages to see how it turns out before I’ve even reached the halfway point. You can’t do that with A singular hostage, I soon realized. It’s the kind of novel that demands you read it slowly, concentrating on each page and sometimes each word as Thalassa Ali pulls you into the world of Sufis, palaces, and British Raj camps that she’s half-constructed, half-dreamed up in this, her first novel.
Mariana Givens is the protagonist of this story, a young Englishwoman who’s been sent from her country home in Sussex to India in 1838 to find a suitable husband. Fate turns her from an eligible bride to “lady translator” for the two sisters of Lord Auckland, a British officer who leads a huge camp to Lahore. The mission of the camp: to convince the Maharajah Ranjit Singh of Punjab to support the British in their campaign against the Afghans in the northwest.
Mariana is awkward, gawky, and odd. She is different from her more prejudiced contemporaries through her desire to know the real India, to learn its languages and understand its culture. Placed in contrast to the more conventional Eden sisters (unmarried prudes who have the vapours on a regular basis and consider natives mysterious, dirty and ‘foreign’), Mariana is like many other heroines of this genre of novel, longing to discover the mysteries of the East, filled with respect for its traditions and customs, open to adventure.
The adventure Mariana finds, however, is not a love affair with one of the young British officers in the camp, but with a baby, the “singular hostage” of the novel’s title. The Maharajah, afraid of old age and his poor health, has found a child who he believes will act as a talisman against his impending death. Saboor is no ordinary child, but in fact the son of Hassan Ali Khan, one of the Maharajah’s own courtiers, and grandson of Shaikh Waliullah, the leader of the Sufi Karakoya Order.
After a jealous queen poisons Saboor’s mother to death, the baby’s life is in danger. He’s shuttled from palace to camp, malnourished and unwell, withering away for lack of attention and love and grieving for his parents. But the Maharajah is unconcerned with anything but his own welfare, and Hassan Ali Khan is not even allowed to see the child, let alone take him home. The Shaikh, meanwhile, through a series of messages and visions, comes to learn of Saboor’s plight. But it seems no one can rescue him from a lonely death. No one, that is, except for Mariana.
In fluid prose, with vivid imagery and a deliberate, determined tone, Ali takes us through the chain of events that start with Mariana’s journey from Calcutta to Simla and on towards Lahore and Amritsar. Ali has the ability to paint pictures with her words, and composes many beautiful word-portraits of camp life, the atmosphere of the Maharajah’s palace, and the mystical rituals of the Sufis.
The first half of the novel, which deals with Saboor’s imprisonment and his miraculous rescue by Mariana (aided by several benefactors, both Muslim and Hindu), is the most compelling part of the story. Ali makes the reader really feel for the baby’s plight; the scenes where the starving baby is cared for by the gruff palanquin bearers, are subtly, yet heart-wrenchingly, touching. Ali writes from the point of view of a mother towards this lost, grieving child, and she manages to make him sympathetic without ever sounding pathetic.
However, Saboor’s rescue by Mariana is not the end of the story. The Maharajah wishes to string the British along, and decides to make a proposal of marriage to Mariana one of the conditions to his signing the treaty with them. In the meantime, the Shaikh has realized Mariana is the chosen one to protect Saboor until he grows to adulthood and can become his successor as the leader of the Karakoya Brotherhood. He makes a proposal of marriage to Mariana as well on behalf of his son, the baby’s father.
The book loses focus somewhat here, as Mariana is caught in the midst of these two conflicting proposals. Her subsequent actions throw everyone around her, including the baby and herself, into another series of chaotic events. But this time the narrative is not handled as smoothly. A marriage scene, where Mariana is taken captive to the Maharajah’s palace, and forcibly groomed for her wedding to one of her prospective suitors, seems contrived in comparison to the more spontaneous and energetic earlier half of the story.
It’s hard to believe that the British members of Mariana’s party, including her chaperones, would sit idly by and allow a marriage between an Englishwoman and a native to take place against her will.
Though the marriage occurred under political duress and the proposal of the Maharajah is based loosely on historical facts, Ali could have done more to make this credible to the reader. Indeed, Mariana’s belief that her actions are responsible for saving the entire Afghan campaign sounds fanciful rather than reasonable. One point that may also be a stickler for some readers — as it was for me — was the portrayal of women in the book. The Indian women in the story are either victims of culture and patriarchal limitations, or heartless villains. The other two Englishwomen, the Eden sisters, are obvious cliches.
This makes the rightful caretakers of Saboor — his female relatives, who are either poisoned or imprisoned — look inept, while Mariana, an unmarried woman whose last experience of children was seeing her younger brother die when she was fourteen, is gifted with a maternal ability that seems again unlikely. Ali wants to show her heroine as a unique individual, but she reduces all other women to one-dimensional foils instead of characters with psychologies and souls of their own.
The only thing missing at the end of the story is the huge TO BE CONTINUED sign at the end of the page, because Ali leaves the tale unfinished, keeping her options open for a sequel or two. I’m not sure, however, that the book itself needs continuation. Sufis believe in destiny and fate, and it’s obvious that Mariana’s fate is to be the guardian of Saboor and guide him to his adult inheritance, with a cross-cultural romance thrown in for good measure. Knowing that this is all going to pass takes the adventure out of the adventure.
For the most part, A singular hostage seems like a book with two souls; one of a Victorian Raj romance, the other of a tale of Sufi allegory, both vying for dominance in the reader’s mind. The two threads are compelling, yet the energy of both can be distracting. It’s yet to be seen which tale will win out in the end.
A singular hostage: a magnificent novel of Victorian India
By Thalassa Ali
Headline Book Publishing, 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH
Website: www.headline.co.uk
Distributed in Pakistan by Liberty Books
ISBN 0-7472-6979-3. 401pp. £10.99
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