Letter from Karachi
Of History and Memory
Saima Hussain, Niaz Zaman, Intizar Hussain, Asif Farrukhi and Asad M Khan. Photo: Metroblog
There seems to be a great spurt of cultural activity in the city from literary, music and other events at the T2 Café, I had written about earlier and last weekend, there was a well-attended panel discussion on Fault Lines: Stories of 1971 edited by Niaz Zaman and Asif Farrukhi. This is a really important and groundbreaking collection, because it brings together, for the first time, so many different, moving and often, unflinching stories of that war, told by writers in both Pakistan and Bangladesh. I cannot presume to imagine/comment upon what anyone from Bangladesh might have to say about this, but from this my own perspective I think the book can go a long way towards generating a meaningful dialogue. I have been dismayed, always, at the public amnesia that surrounds 1971 in Pakistan which poet Kaleem Omar summed up, aptly, in his satirical English poem 'It Did Not Really Happen,' published in his anthology Wordfall (1975). The tales in Fault Lines capture the human dimensions of the conflict, whether they are set in Bangladesh, Pakistan or the Diaspora. For me, the realistic stories have a much stronger resonance than the metaphorical ones, because they reflect the essence of that upheaval and bring out both the horror that befell Bengal as well as the remarkable acts of humanity amid great carnage. The panel at the T2 function consisted of Niaz Zaman, Asif Farrukhi, their two contributors, Asad Muhammed and Intizar Husain, and journalist Saima Hussain. During question time, one of the issues which emerged very clearly was that 1971 has such passing mention in our textbooks that a younger generation is often shocked to discover what really happened, either through a study course in a foreign college or a Bangladeshi friend there. At T2F, the younger people were among the most engaged members of the audience: they wanted answers. No, there were no heated arguments. Instead, people listened and wanted to hear what the others had to say. It was really interesting the way the discourse kept going round in circles: it would move away from one subject and then come back to it, to be fleshed out further. Lots of opinions were aired and expressed, from the complicity of the media and Bhutto's role, to analogies between Bangladesh in 1971 and modern Baluchistan - and amnesia, or memory loss, as a coping mechanism. I came away thinking that if any book could achieve all this, it had achieved a great deal. Onto lighter things… the Arts Council Auditorium was finally opened a couple of years ago and has become pivotal to the city's performing arts. Almost opposite, is the equally new National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) headed by acting legend Zia Mohyeddin and housed in one of Karachi's pre-Partition buildings, the Hindu Gymkhana, the smaller of the city's two, pink and domed Rajastani-style structures. So far, I have seen two productions of their Repertory Theatre Company. The first, 'Habib Mamou,' was a translation of Chekov's 'Uncle Vanya,' which I saw long, long in a famous British production and remembering thinking, at that time, of Chekov's great relevance to the sub-continent. 'Habib Mamou' brought this out with great clarity. There were some really good performances, particularly by Talat Hussain and Rahat Kazmi, but the play, which revolves around a landed family unable to cope with changing time or declining fortunes, was set in pre-Partition UP. Many in the Karachi audience thought it should have been set in modern Pakistan. Well…that is a possibility, but it would have overlooked the historical context to Chekov's play: he portrays landed gentry shortly before the Russian Revolution, of which they have no inkling -- a situation more akin to that of UP zamindars who were wiped out by Partition, unlike the zamindars of Pakistan. The second production was 'Sufaid Khoon' by Agha Hashr, an Urdu adaptation of 'King Lear' by the famous nineteenth century Parsi theatre. The play, starring Talat Hussain, was not as cohesive as 'Habib Mamou' and lapsed into melodrama from time to time, but it was thoroughly enjoyable. Of course, unlike Shakespeare's original, 'Sufaid Khoon' had to have a happy ending with a much-wiser Lear duly restored to his throne and virtuous Cordelia at his side. There were also song-and-dance sequences -- rather sedate compared to modern Bollywood - but it was easy to see how the Shakespeare adaptations of the Parsi theatre inspired the Indian film industry in later years. Shortly before this Zia Mohyeddin had given a riveting talk for The Shakespeare Society of Pakistan. He said that King Lear had given desi movies that great line "Mein kahan hoon? (Where am I?)." Zia also spoke about stagecraft and how difficult it is for a young actor to master Shakespeare's language whereby he quoted John Gielgud who said you must learn to 'float' on it, without breaking its rhythms. To hear Zia read Shakespeare is a sheer delight and he introduced us to the folio version of Hamlet's speech 'To Be Or Not To Be' which is quite different to the one that most of us know. And now I am settling down to read a new Pakistani English novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif about General Ziaul Haq. Muniza Shamsie has edited three anthologies of Pakistani English writing.
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