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June 2, 2002
REVIEWS: Exploring the roots
The experience of the Pakistani diaspora abroad is the subject of a growing number of literary work by Pakistani writers. We readers have a pretty good idea of what to expect. These literary pieces portray, genre-alienation, marginalization, loneliness; in short, all the wounds of the soul that are the attendant woes of immigrant prosperity.
Bina Shah’s book is close to this subject but written from a different perspective. Karim Asfar, born and brought up in the United States sees the States as his home. Native Americans may not have accepted him as a buddy, but he takes that hardship in his stride and seems quite comfortably ensconced in the brown, new American niche. However one day Karim takes upon himself the exploration of his ‘roots’ — not from an agonizing sense of deprivation, but apparently from healthy curiosity, fed by the affection he feels for his Pakistani cousin Akbar whom he met when the latter came to the States for undergraduate studies.
In Pakistan, that is, Karachi, Karim is in for a lot of surprises. He never expected to encounter so much poverty . His American egalitarianism is shocked by the imperious attitude towards servants that he observes even among nice people like his uncle and aunt, and by the unquestioning acceptance of it by the former.
In Karachi the usual procedure of pulling strings and finding an internship with a lucrative business concern has been arranged for Karim. However Shah’s protagonist follows his heart and finds himself in an NGO, which works to improve the environment. At the NGO he meets the enigmatic Nazli, an unPakistani Pakistani girl who is quite comfortable in the dual roles of a simpering and nubile young lady in polite company and a beautiful professional used to speaking her mind in certain terms, in the society of her co-workers. She also has the tantalizing habit of showing her displeasure with Karim, for reasons hardly understood by him, which leaves him baffled but even more enamoured.
Akbar meanwhile introduces Karim to the social as well as spiritual life of Karachi. An admirer of sufism, he takes his cousin to Abdullah Shah’s mazar, where he joins in the wild dance that betokens sufism to aspiring spiritualists of the modern world. Karim however remains as much of an outsider to such emotional experience in Karachi as he was in the US. But then he discovers Abdullah, the flower seller-beggar. A mixture of professional ambition and compassion drives Karim, aided by Akbar, to meddle in the life of the urchin, Abdullah. They take him from the street and put him in an orphanage. And then Karim writes an article about the transformation in Abdullah’s life that wins an award.
But the award was the only good thing to come out of the meddling. Karim has rushed into territory where a wise inhabitant of Karachi would have feared to tread. The intrusion into the bedrock of crime sponsored poverty launches Karim and his host family into the arms of the underworld, where tragedy follows. Then Karim has a spiritual experience . . .which if told would be unfair to the reader.
Observing the people of Karachi, Pakistan, through the eyes of an Americanized Pakistani offers an interesting perspective. The gruesome plight of street beggars on the one hand, and the conversation of ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ peppered with beti and beta, and replete with advice about marriage, no longer remain insignificant. The horror of the one and the triteness of the other re-acquire their abhorrent substance — a stimulant to impaired sensitivities.
Bina Shah is at her wittiest best in the dialogues between Akbar and Karim — playful teenage exchanges of great charm. But the conversation of the rest is soporific. However, some puzzling issues are left unanswered in the novel. Don’t the members of the Karachi upper middle class ever abandon their banalities? Karim is a wisp of a boy. Do strong-minded women like Nazli fall in love with sweet nonentities like him? (It must have something to do with the American citizenship, one can’t help but suspect).
Shah seems to trust her head more than her heart. In her work, perceptions of the heart seem to be completely upstaged by cerebrally sanctioned observations. In a way that is good discipline for enthusiastic beginners who tend to go in the opposite direction. However absence of heart in a novelist is absence of depth. Yet, I like her lack of affectation. She is probably a diligent and painstaking writer who could emerge as one of our better English novelists if she spends more, time, reading literary works.
Where they dream in blue
By Bina Shah
Alhamra Publishing, Saudi Pak Tower, Jinnah Avenue, Islamabad.
Tel: 051-2823862
Email:
contact@alhamra.com
Website: www.alhamra.com
ISBN 969-516-056-5
325pp. Rs350
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