'These songs don't end...'
Ali Sethi
Ali Sethi grew up in Pakistan in a family of dissenting journalists and publishers. He recently graduated from Harvard graduate, where he studied under Zadie Smith and Amitav Ghosh. The Wish Maker is his first novel.
Even now, in the refugee camps, there are people who are trying to recruit young men for the fight against the declared enemies of Islam.
Sunday
After a maddening three-week book tour in America I am now in London, and everything is more bearable: the temperature is not too high; the rain falls every few hours; there is light until ten o'clock at night. And I can stay here for some days now without having to pack and unpack my suitcase.
I am staying with my parents and sister in a rented flat in a sooty, unattractive building near the Edgware Road. The flat is on the fifteenth floor; the day I arrive there is a rock concert happening in the park below. My sister, who is two years younger than me and is trying to read a book in her bed, curls the corner of her mouth and says, 'These songs don't end...'
My mother is ironing her clothes in the hallway. She looks up and says, 'You can shut the windows.' But we don't want to shut the windows, because we want to keep the air currents going.
Monday
I am reading tonight from my novel with Kamila Shamsie at the Wanstead Library. We are trying to describe what it is like to write about a country that has shut out much of its own past. Kamila is talking about censorship, and I am talking about the different cultural identities we have imported into Pakistan to compensate for the ones we have denied.
A man in the audience raises his hand. His skin is dark like mine, but his accent is British. He says, 'Isn't Pakistan just a space between Persia and India?'
I say, 'It is. You're right. That's the context.'
He is nodding.
People are looking at him.
Tuesday
I have written on a piece of paper: 'Your context determines your politics.'
I scratch it out and write: 'Your context must determine your politics.'
This morning I have read the latest reports from Mardan and Swabi, where most of the refugee camps have been set up to receive the people who are fleeing the Pakistan Army's secretive 'operation' against the Taliban. The reports quote children and old men and women, most of whom are cursing the Taliban for disrupting their lives but also the army for launching its destructive operation against them. There are hundreds of pregnant women in the camps. Where will they go? And will their children grow up to hate the state? Even now, in the refugee camps, there are people who are trying to recruit young men for the fight against the declared enemies of Islam.
At night I say to my father, 'Can the world be explained?'
And he says, 'Not even a little bit of it.'
He is sitting on the sofa in the rented flat. His blood tests have come in today, and the doctor has told him he is fine.
I say, 'Why?'
'Because,' he says, 'everything is changing all the time.'
Wednesday
The rock concert again. But I am used to the noise now, and after a while I don't hear it.
Thursday
I am waiting at the Waterloo tube station for my friend Kash to show up. He and I went to the same high school in Pakistan, and he is now living in Norbury, where he was born and raised until his family went back to Pakistan. These days he is making a new kind of electronic pop that is inspired by old Indian and Pakistani songs but is otherwise difficult to describe.
While I wait for Kash I look at the big white clocks in the station, the screens that keep showing new times for arrivals and departures, the trains that are lining up at the platforms and the people who are moving briskly and intelligently in different directions. Why is the rest of the world not experiencing this kind of thing?
'We're late,' says Kash, who is here.
We are going to hear Arundhati Roy's talk on Democracy and its Discontents. (Or something like that.) Kash bought tickets two months ago, and we have good seats: the dim hall is filling up and it soon seems that there will be a thousand people. Roy appears on the stage. She reads from her new book of essays, chats with Shami Chakrabarti and takes questions from the audience. I can understand what Roy is saying - the working model of democracy that is found in places like India and Britain and the United States allows and even enables the powerful to exploit the weak - but I can't relate to the details, which involve companies and corporations and judges and elected politicians. She seems to be describing the workings of another universe.
Afterwards Kash says to me, 'Did that make sense to you?'
I say, 'It did. In a way. But in Pakistan we don't yet have a working model of democracy...'
Kash says, 'That's true.'
And I say, 'I'm not sure anymore if that's a good thing or a bad thing.'
Friday
I have seen a copy of my novel in a bookshop. And I am now recording an interview at the BBC building near Tottenham Court Road. The interviewer is a polite young woman. She has short black hair and wears a nose ring. She says, 'Your book shows a side of Pakistan that we don't really get to see in the news.'
And I hear myself saying, 'I don't think any one book can represent all of Pakistan.' And: 'I think it's true that we haven't yet resolved many of our internal differences.' And: 'Pakistan's identity comes from many different parts of the world, so it's hard to pick one.'
And the interviewer is nodding, appearing to understand, though I'm not sure she can relate to what I'm saying.
Saturday
I am walking along Edgware Road and am stopped by a bearded young man in a white robe. He gives me a pamphlet.
'You're a Muslim, isn't it?' he says.
'Yes,' I say.
'Basically,' he says, 'we're trying to teach people here about the benefits of sharia.'
'What sharia?'
'The Islamic system.'
'It doesn't exist.'
'But it should.'
I say, 'Where are you from?'
'From here,' he says.
'Your family?'
'Kashmir.'
'I'm coming from Pakistan,' I say. 'I can tell you that people there don't want sharia. They've just rejected sharia and asked for constitutional reform.'
The boy is surprised. He's not accustomed to hearing this kind of thing from the people he stops to lecture on the street.
He says, 'Look at this imperfect society. Look at the rise in pedophilia.'
I am shaking my head.
He says, 'You're a Muslim?' And this time it's a rhetorical question, a challenge, almost a dare.
I say, 'I am.'
He says, 'You believe in sharia?'
I say, 'No.'
He says, 'Then you've got to walk on, brother.' And he points to the sidewalk and looks away.
Monday, 13 July, 2009
In My week
- Charlotte Grimshaw
- Susan Hill
- Ed Hollis
- Ali Sethi
- Wells Tower
- Con Coughlin
- Dirk Wittenborn
- Kathleen Kent
- Daniel Everett
- Mark Crick
- Glyn Maxwell
- Rabih Alameddine
- Nicholas Hogg
- Charles Boyle
- Mohammed Hanif
- Sarah Hall
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