Existentialism in a Bangladeshi village

Tree Without Roots by Syed Waliullah (translation of the Bengali novel Lal Shalu). Edited by Niaz Zaman, with an introduction by Serajul Islam Choudhury. Dhaka: writers.ink; distributed by UPL; pp. 136; Tk. 350

Intriguingly, the translation differs substantially from the Bengali original. The overture is longer and the finale completely new--the whole of Part Four, all of twenty-six pages. Within the main body, at least one incident--Majeed's encounter with the pir--has been left out, and throughout the text bits of detail have been altered or added. Glancing at the two texts side by side, one can only be amazed at the looseness of the correlation.

Who but the author himself could take such liberties? Though four translators are named--one of them is Anne-Marie Thibaud (Madame Waliullah), who had very little Bengali. They were obviously a smokescreen behind which the author performed his second act of creation with the same basic plot, the same setting, the same characters as in Lal Shalu. And that makes Tree Without Roots as canonical as, say, Beckett's English versions of his own own work; and, indeed, the first novel in English by a Bangladeshi writer.

On my return home I enthusiastically told friends that Bangladeshi universities offering courses in postcolonial or South Asian writing in English ought to include Tree Without Roots. If only someone would reprint it! It's the only wish of mine that promptly came true.

Dr. Niaz Zaman, Professor of English at Dhaka University, has quietly added another colourful feather to her hat by launching writers.ink, a publishing house committed to the promotion of good writing, with UPL as the distributor. The maiden title of her imprint is a handsomely produced Tree Without Roots, with the same cover design as the London edition: a reproduction of a painting, illustrative of the text, by the author himself.

The editorial preface provides conclusive proof of the author's hand in the translation (or, rather, re-creation) of Lal Shalu. The late Anne-Marie Thibaud has left an unpublished memoir, "Wali, My Husband as I knew Him," where she states that her French version of the novel was done 'from Wali's own translation into English.' Significantly she does not mention any co-translators. Madame Waliullah also draws our attention to 'a certain grandeur' that the protagonist Majeed displays in the English version but lacks in the original. Professor Choudhury in his introduction passes a more general judgement--and quite rightly too--in describing Tree Without Roots as 'certainly a revised and improved version of Lal Shalu' and 'a great artistic achievement indeed.'

Lal Shalu was written by a young man, probably when he was still a college student and was published in 1948. When he wrote Tree Without Roots he had matured, become better read, acquired a commendable mastery of the English language. He had also become an UNESCO official in Paris: this was perhaps the most important factor affecting his creative life, for in Paris he absorbed existentialism and successfully infused it into his writing. The Majeed of Tree Without Roots is more amenable to an existential analysis than his original.

Majeed hails from a southeastern district of the country (not named but easily identifiable) where the pressure of the population on the land--powerfully evoked in a lyrical prose--drives the children of the poor to become mullahs and seek employment in other parts of the country. Majeed starts his career as a muezzin in the Garo Hills, where he meets a government officer out on a hunt. He sniffs an opportunity in what he learns about the officer's ancestral home 'in the area further north'--clearly North Bengal--and soon heads in that direction. He fetches up in a small, poor, remote village called Mahabbatpur, where he plays his famous confidence trick, convincing the people that an old overgrown, lichened tomb is that of a great saint. He becomes its self-appointed guardian and plays on the religious susceptibilities of the poor and gullible villagers to make a comfortable niche for himself.

It's no mean achievement. He make an ally of the local honcho, the landowner Khaleque (in Lal Shalu he is a byapari, a merchant or trader: I suppose the change is aimed at making his character more convincing to Anglo-American readers used to country squires), who becomes his chief patron, bullies and cajoles the villages into submission. There is a broad streak of sadism in his dealings with them and with the two wives he acquires. We are given a vivid sense of the workings of what Michael Foucault has called "micro power" which operates at the most basic level of our inter-personal relations and provides anchor points for the larger power structure in society and the state.

Majeed is anxiously aware of the 'game' he is playing and its attendant risks, but once he has embarked on it there's no turning back: 'It was he who had created the mazar, and he could not destroy it,' he muses. 'For he was now its slave'--which is a good example of mauvaise foi (bad faith). But when a deluge threatens the mazar his decision not to abandon it is not made willy-nilly but in full consciousness of his freedom. Readers may be reminded of Narayan's Raju, another unlikely existential hero, but Majeed in the last four paragraphs of the narrative is much more of an exalté, closer to Sartre's Mathieu in his final moments.

Tree Without Roots should appeal to the common readers, academics and students alike. A research student looking for a worthwhile M. Phil topic could profitably compare it with the Bengali text. For Dr. Niaz Zaman this is the first step in what I hope will be a long adventure in publishing. But I'll be failing in my duties as a reviewer of I don't point out editorial lapses. The publisher of the London edition is given as Heinemann on the copyright page and as Chatto and Windus in the editorial preface.

The text, though eminently readable, has a few oddly used words that should have been commented upon: 'huskies' (for strong men); 'arroyo,' a very American word, used in an image describing Majeed's thoughts; 'mazar-room' for the Bengali mazar-ghar; 'unceremoniously,' when the author means that there wasn't much ceremony; 'scavenger' for the Bengali dom, for which 'untouchable' would have been appropriate. But that's about it--remarkably little to quibble about in a full-length novel.

And Dr. Niaz Zaman, I'm sure, will be more careful next time round.

Kaiser Huq is Professor, English department, Dhaka University.