In the winter of 2015, upon her return to Ireland after finishing a residency with writers and poets from 30-odd countries at the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, Sara Baume wrote an essay. She discussed the stark differences under which writers in troubled countries live, what drives them to write, and what haunts them when they choose their themes. Baume said, “In the past, I had chimed in with the abstract expressionist painter, Agnes Martin. ‘It is not in the role of an artist to worry about life,’ she said, ‘to feel responsible for creating a better world.’ But what, in the past, I had failed to appreciate is that many writers don’t feel they have the luxury of choosing what to worry about.”

But is that generally the case with Pakistani creative writers, something which Baume refers to in her essay as the absence of the luxury of choosing what to worry about? Last week, Peerzada Salman — while reviewing the first collection of Urdu verse by Waheed Noor — lamented that there were very few like Noor who write what they feel like writing, about things that truly worry them. Instead, they seek ready-made approval from either the public or the critic. Salman thinks that little importance is now attached in literary circles to resistance poetry or commenting on the suffering we go through, something that may jolt and pinch people to come out of their emotional and intellectual comfort zones.

Among the best of readers and critics across the world, the prevalent artistic sensibility and the ability to appreciate literature are largely shaped by the contemporary experience of writing in affluent societies. In these societies, writers have the luxury of choosing what to worry about — be they white American, Norwegian, German or Japanese. However, we forget that while artists and writers in settled societies explore newer themes and experiment with style and genres, what has bothered the more settled societies of today in their recent past continues to be discussed, debated, written about and screened in films. Events from the times of fascism, the Holocaust, wars, slavery, etc., remain subjects of inquiry and retrospection, artistic expression and emotional representation.

There is a large mix of themes and genres on offer which are old and new, traditional and modern, classical and avant-garde, in the literature produced in affluent societies. But the new questions arising in their cultures and civilisations do not displace the old questions, even after some have apparently been resolved in their entirety. On the contrary, in our case, how much literature about Partition, with all its hopes and miseries, continues to be written and discussed in our times, conditioning our national psyche to this very day? What do we find, in terms of both quality and volume, in our creative writing about the secession of East Pakistan from the Western wing and the establishment of Bangladesh enveloped in a human tragedy that marks one of the darkest episodes in our history? In recent times, how many poems and fictional pieces highlight the experience of an individual, family and community in the violence of Karachi, Balochistan, Fata and Swat? Is there a critical body of contemporary creative literature available in Pakistan which has poems and stories about workers being burnt alive, religious minorities being persecuted, peasants driven out of their land and women buried in unmarked graves? Here, one is not speaking about journalistic reporting or opinion pieces in newspapers which have a limited shelf life.

Undoubtedly, there are exceptions to this general apathy. One in no way suggests that nothing consequential has been written or is being written in Pakistan. Nor is there a reason for any writer to compromise the aesthetic quality of his or her work in order to reflect on the current human condition. It is more a matter of producing good literature and works of art that capture this enormity of pain. Some of us who write on these themes time and again are faulted for repeating ourselves. Maybe we shouldn’t. But notwithstanding the importance of literary merit for a piece, if one witnesses death and destruction all around for decades unending, one is left with little luxury of choosing.

The writer is a poet and essayist based in Islamabad. His collection of essays Crimson Papers: Reflections on Struggle, Suffering, and Creativity in Pakistan was recently published by Oxford University Press

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, March 19th, 2017