July 21, 2002

The global domination of English today is unprecedented in history and, as recent events have shown, no country can exist in isolation. A discussion on pluralism and multi-culturalism is essential to our understanding of each other. The role of literature, language and words is fundamental to this discourse. The issues of language, identity and migration, that this article touches upon, evolved from the two anthologies of Pakistani English writing, that I have put together.

The first revealed that there were many English language writers of Pakistani origin, living in the diaspora. Yet many people questioned their ‘Pakistani’ identity. This led to a second anthology about different migrations to and from Pakistan, which explored perceptions of “home” and “belonging” in a mobile world.

The problem of an identity is complicated by the fact that Pakistan is an ideological state and its concept was trans-geographical. The universalism of Islamic philosophy has also meant that many Pakistani English writers perceive themselves in international terms, yet identify with Pakistan. Nevertheless geography has continued to assert itself, creating conflicts of language and ethnicity.

Pakistani English writing has been created by a myriad of influences, including world literatures in English and its history and attributes are different to other Pakistani literatures because its language was acquired by the East-West encounter.

South Asia’s first newspaper was established in 1790 by an English trader. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, English writings and newspapers published by Indians, played a pivotal role in explaining the South Asian point of view to the British. But because English was the language of the colonial power, the acquisition of English, became a form of migration: it meant establishing a dialogue with the British on British terms and being sensitive to their ideas, living and conduct.

In 1794, the autobiographical Travels of Dean Mahomet became the first English book written by a South Asian. The author had served in the East India Company and migrated to Britain. His book was written to explain South Asia to Europeans. A sketch of him wearing European dress, with the inscription underneath ‘Dean Mahomet, an East Indian’, embodies the duality of all South Asian writers in English.

Original, creative, South English poetry, fiction and drama, however came into their own in the twentieth century. Pre-Partition pioneers such as Ahmed Ali wrote in English to challenge the imperial narrative and experimented with language to find a place for the subcontinental experience in English. After Partition, a high standard of Pakistani English poetry developed before fiction.

In Lahore, Taufiq Rafat successfully introduced concepts of a culture-specific Pakistani idiom in his sophisticated verse and influenced other poets from Kaleem Omar to Athar Tahir. In Peshawar, Daud Kamal forged his own distinct voice, building up sparse poems with brief visual images. In Karachi, Maki Kureishi, Salman Kureshi and Adrian Hussein explored and expressed an East-West duality in their poetry. Alamgir Hashmi, who spent many years away, wrote about reclamation and exile, overlaying images of different countries and cultures.

In Britain, the award winning Moniza Alvi found her identity as a mainstream British writer through her lyrical verses about dual-belonging — a theme also explored by poet Tariq Latif in Manchester. Now you have Hema Reza experimenting with language, rhythm and space while the bilingual Harris Khalique, writes both English and Urdu poetry.

In 1980 Bapsi Sidhwa became the first Pakistani English novelist, living in Pakistan to receive international recognition since Ahmed Ali. Her third novel Ice Candy Man, was particularly important, because it was written in the multi-lingual cadences of Pakistani English. Her English speaking narrator, happily snatched indigenous words and sounds, the way that bilingual Pakistanis do.

Many writers of Pakistani English literature, including the expatriate Aamer Hussein and his playwright sister Shahrukh Husain, are translators of Urdu and other indigenous languages. Aamer has introduced elements of the Persian masnavi into his English fiction, as well as the stylistic and structural approaches of the contemporary Urdu literature he teaches.

Then you have the work of dynamic younger writers, including Zeeba Sadiq and Nadeem Aslam in Britain. While Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie, Uzma Aslam Khan, Bina Shah are rather global people, educated in both Pakistan and foreign countries. Bilingual or not, nearly all have imbibed a sense of Pakistan’s literary heritage. In Hamid’s award-wining Moth smoke, the central image of the moth and the flame — is straight from Indo-Persian literature and the book’s literary icon is Manto. In Shamsie’s Salt and saffron, a couplet by Ghalib is pivotal to the plot and she draws upon aspects of South Asian culture, such as a kathak dance, as metaphor, or the nuances of ada’ab, as a comedy.

So, a very exciting kind of migration, or mingling and appropriation of language and literary traditions is taking place. The accomplished, Sialkot-born, Texas-based Zulfikar Ghose has published five poetry collections and over ten novels, but written only one novel, set in Pakistan, The murder of Aziz Khan. He writes extensively about his wife’s country, South America which he says has a resonance with the subcontinent. His 1991 novel, The triple mirror of the self is an exploration of exile across four continents.

In Pakistan, there exists this perception that a Pakistani English writer must write about this country or live here, to “qualify” . But it’s important to respect the identity, or identities that the expatriate writer wishes to claim, because that influences sensibilities, responses and narrative. Multiple migrations or multiple-identities is one of the re-occurring themes in Pakistani English literature.

In his fourth novel, Cyrus, Cyrus, the Pakistani-born, Adam Zameenzad follows an man’s search for dignity and salvation across three continents. While Tariq Ali writes plays and novels about post-Communist Europe and is writing a fiction quintet on Islamic history. Exiled in the 1960’s, as a left-wing student leader in Pakistan, he became one in Europe. To illustrate this internationalism, without loss of identity, my migration anthology Leaving home uses an extract from his memoir, Streetfighting years.

The writing of the British-born Hanif Kureishi and Ayub Khan Din has been clearly shaped by their half-Pakistani heritage. Their work makes a comment on contemporary Britain and the exclusion that Asian Britons battle against. Theirs is the voice of an angry, discriminated minority; it is rooted in a different social strata to English-speakers in Pakistan who are essentially privileged. Often, the latter cannot identify with the former and are offended. To date, no lower/lower-middle-class literature exists in the work of English language writers, living in Pakistan, even if many do portray the poor.

In Leaving home, a collection of Pakistani English prose, Hanif Kureishi’s story “We’re not Jews” provides a chilling portrait of British racism and looks at the victimization of Azhar, a half Pakistani boy and Evie, his English mother on a London bus. But you find a different, more gentle and affectionate treatment of race and mixed marriages in Sara Suleri’s creative memoir, Meatless days. which reconstructs memories of her late, Welsh-born mother in Lahore. Reclamation and nostalgia are also evident in the essay of the half-German Anwer Mooraj, who once considered pre-World War II Berlin as his home.

Interestingly, most Pakistani English fiction writers live in the diaspora, the non-fiction writers do not; yet they are part of the whole. Hardly anyone in Pakistan today has not been touched by an experience of migration. Hamida Khuhro’s essay “Another kind of migration” describes pre-Partition Karachi and its changing face since 1947; while Intizar Hussain’s English essay “My fifty years in Lahore” records his migration from India and the process of adjustment and adaptation that he has witnessed between host and migrant communities.

Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel, The bride, revolves around several migrations within Pakistan. A Kohistani man, Qasim, comes to Amritsar to find work. While fleeing to Lahore at Partition, he rescues a child Zaitoon, from Sikh attackers. He adopts her and later marries her into his tribe, but she is city-bread and cannot adjust to Kohistan. Her conflicts run parallel to that of an American woman married to a Pakistani in Lahore.

Much of the feminist writings of expatriates Talat Abbasi, Rukhsana Ahmad and Tahira Naqvi are set in Pakistan, but their stories often reveal that the past or patriarchal, social attitudes are not eradicated by moving to the West. Isolation, the loss of a mother tongue, the importance that words and their resonance assume in exile, is another important aspect of migration, but ultimately, almost all literature is about storytelling.

The Karachi-born Roshi Rustomji’s essay ‘Elephants and jaguars’, begins with a jaguar story in Mexico, recalls childhood fables in India and Pakistan, and looks at revisions and adaptations as magical tales are carried from one culture to another. Through oral and literary traditions, they are transmuted into new, wondrous forms, knitting continents together into a seamless narrative.

Writer’s email: mshamsie@cyber.net.pk

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