Letter From KARACHI
Amid Violence
Pakistan is still reeling from the shock, violence, uncertainty, accusations and counter-accusations that have followed Benazir Bhutto's horrific assassination. Shortly before her return to Pakistan in October, she had submitted the manuscript of her book Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West to HarperCollins. Six hours, before she died her friend Mark Siegal had sent her an e-mail her to say that the publisher was very pleased with it. The book is now being rushed into print and will be released in February. There is also much demand for the new, revised and updated version of her 1988 autobiography Daughter of the East which was published shortly before her return to Pakistan in October.
As political commentators, expatriate Tariq Ali and the late Eqbal Ahmed have frequently looked at Pakistan and its history, as well as regional and global relationships. Both Ali and Ahmed have been extensively interviewed by the the American broadcaster and journalist David Barsamian, the founder of Alternative Radio www.alternativeradio.org. The interviews with each have been published as books and are quite riveting. As I have mentioned before, late Eqbal Ahmed was incredibly prescient; while Ali, once a radical left wing student leader and now a broadcaster, journalist and novelist, is more controversial but provides analyses interwoven with rare historical details and entertaining personal anecdotes.
I was really sad to have missed Barsamian in Karachi where he delivered the Eqbal Ahmed Memorial Lecture. As luck would have it, on the same evening, I was involved in an OUP literary event on Pakistani English Literature. This consisted of readings and a panel discussion. Fawzia Afzal-Khan, the Pakistani American poet, academic and actor gave Pakistani audiences their first taste of performance poetry during which she used music, song, masks and backdrop sounds from a CD to recite her poems. She also spoke of the need to give Pakistani English literature a greater cognizance and paid tributes to Taufiq Rafat's pioneering poetry. Poet Kaleem Omar spoke of Rafat as a mentor, friend and poet and read from his own work too, as did poet Adrian Hussein. However Hussein's biting criticism of Rafat and also of the Booker shortlisted The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid generated much debate. I had rather liked Hamid's novel and read extracts from it, as well as Trespassing by Uzma Aslam Khan and Broken Verses by Kamila, while discussing fiction trends. Asif Farrukhi, the translator and Urdu short story writer, made some pertinent comments on the choice of language and the importance of translation.
Our event was held at Karachi's new 'happening' venue, a café called The Second Floor, or T2F. The brainchild of Sabeen Mahmood, it adjoins her consulting firm Beyond Information Technology Solutions (b.i.t.s) which she co-founded. Her romance with the computer began as a teenager. She also describes herself as "a blogger and a peace activist" and is involved in many cultural and educational projects. With the help of the South Asia Foundation and some money from an expatriat uncle, she set up Peace Niche, a non-profit NGO to 'transform Karachi' by providing a cultural outlet which would generate a social change through a public discourse: T2F events have snowballed to include films, literature, arts, science, music and politics. The café is decorated with paintings and posters, has a small book corner and serves beverages and snacks until midnight. The pine-coloured furniture is easily re-arranged for cultural events/talks and can seat around 100 at full capacity, T2F's first event took place last summer with a reading of contemporary Urdu poetry by Zeeshan Sahil who has written some very moving and powerful poems on Karachi's urban violence. These Karachi poems are included in his new collection On The Outside, elegantly translated by Tehmina Ahmed.
As always, the winter saw a number of ex-pats visiting family and friends, regardless of troubled times. It was a rare treat for Karachi audiences at T2F to see Sara Suleri Goodyear, who is a professor of English at Yale. She read the title chapter from her famous creative memoir Meatless Days which recaptures her Lahore childhood and reclaims memories of her sister Ifat and their Welsh-born mother, both victims of hit-and-run accidents. About three years ago, she wrote her second memoir Boys Will Be Boys, as an elegy to her late father, journalist Z A Suleri. Dominated by his full-blooded personality, it also introduces her American husband, Austin Goodyear, who died shortly after the book was published. She has written a ground-breaking book in post-colonial literary criticism The Rhetoric of English India which covers almost two centuries from Burke and Hastings to Naipaul and Rushdie to explore how words have tried to cope with uncertainties to define perceptions and ideas about the sub-continent. Sara also carries a strong consciousness of her bilingual inheritance and in distant America, has nurtured her love of Urdu: she has now co-translated a selection of Ghalib's verse which OUP will publish soon.
T2F held another very enjoyable evening with novelist Uzma Aslam Khan. She lives in Lahore with her American husband, the novelist David Maine. She read from her new novel The Geometry of God, which is set in the Punjab and tells of a rare pre-historic discovery there by woman paleontologist. Central to the novel is the conflict between science and religion during the regime of Zia-ul-Haq, which banned teaching the theory of evolution, I look forward to reading it, having greatly enjoyed her previous novels The Story of Noble Rot and Trespassing.
The art publication Nukta held a moving memorial at T2F for the distinguished artist Ismail Guljee and his wife Zarro, who were both murdered brutally a few days before Benazir. Their bereaved son, the artist and sculptor Ameen Guljee spoke on the occasion, as did Nukta's editor Niilofar Farrukh and artist Naz Ikramullah Ashraf.
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