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review Old
bottle, new wine Zia
Mohyeddin column
review You Deserve Nothing By Alexander Maksik Publisher: John Murray, 2011 Pages: 322 Price: $ 15 Human freedom, the ultimate condemnation to be and the baggage of responsibility are not the most cherished ideas on today’s post-existentialism world for there are still beliefs crossing them out, religion for one. These Existentialist or Sartreian ideas have been scathingly criticised, brutally condemned and shamelessly challenged since their birth. Unsurprisingly, however, the absurdist influence on post-modern literature is unsurpassed because of its involvement in anthropology and psychology. It is not as clichéd as it may sound and there is no escape from it. And Alexander Maksik in his debut novel You Deserve Nothing makes no excuse. For the students of
literature, You Deserve Nothing has a familiar as well as nostalgic air. The
never-ending arguments, the The setting is Paris, obviously — home to the giants Sartre, Beckett, Camus, De Bouvior. But the characters are not. They are America, a little too American perhaps. The dislocation is apparent and the baggage that comes with it, the dissatisfaction, the nostalgia, the fear and the isolation. That the author chooses Paris as the setting of his novel shouldn’t be viewed an attempt to make obvious connections between what he’s trying to say and the birthplace of Existentialism. Because the character that Paris adds to the book formularises the unsaid. If you are looking for the hand of a protagonist to be lead through the book, don’t. There is none. It is all about a multiplicity of perspectives, or a clash of perspectives or an integration of it, whatever you want. Will, in his late thirties teaches literature at an international school in Paris. Marie and Gilad are his students. These are the three voices in the novel. Marie and Gilad idealise Will in their own respective ways, she fantasises about him while Gilad epitomizes intellectual prowess. Will and Maries’ relationship leaves Gilad frustrated for he has to break the idol he himself made. Will is not just another teacher, his students look up to him, emulate him, and love him. His unconventional teaching methods make him less popular with the school administration but his students adore him, some a little too much for comfort like Gilard and Marie or Ariel. Will “can have any girl he wants” for he is this perfect man — speaks and mind and appreciates honesty. Unlike your conventional Existentialist characters he is not a loner. The book doesn’t answer
any questions because Will’s students are teenagers. It is not a reflection
on Existentialism from the Will and Maurie’s relationship raises the poignant issue of man “condemned to be free.” Society’s imposition of rules and the individual’s innate desire to rebel leads to choices that are unacceptable, like a student-teacher relationship and how far it can be stretched. Will is not even the rebellious sort but then, choices have to be made. Then of course, there are characters who have stuck to your mind like chewing gum sticks to hair — Camus’ Meusault from The Outsider or Doctor Rieux from The Plague, Sartre’s lost soldiers form Iron in the Soul or Mathieu from The Age of Reason. At times, Will seems like a supporting actor yearning to become the next Mausault. Like him, Will has no justification for the choices he has made. The court scene from Camus’ novel where Meusault is dumbfound when pressed wit charges against humanity finds a place in Will’s story as well. The dichotomy of making a choice because there is no choice but to make a choice and followed by a social compulsion to render explanation, the reader then becomes one with Will’s dilemma. The clash of perspectives
brings out the difference in how people perceive each other. The way Will
looks at Maurice’s discomfort in the hospital is not how she feels. While
he believes she wants him there, she has a strong urge to be left alone.
While the individual takes the centre stage, the novel also imposes the
prying presence of the society in the form of colleagues, friends, class Few writers have managed to represent Existentialism the way Maksik does. He has the potential to become a strong voice in the world of fiction if he manages to retain individual voice. You Deserve Nothing will be
Old
bottle, new wine The 9/11 Wars By Jason Burke Publisher: Allen Lane, 2011 Pages: 709 Price: Rs 1095 Eight days before his departure as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of United States, Michael Mullen got unprecedented news coverage by issuing a controversial statement to the media about ISI’s involvement with the Haqqani network. In Pak-US relations, Mullen’s statement will be remembered as playing to the gallery, a usual style of officers posted in hard areas. August 2011, a month when US Senate confirmed his retirement, was the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since the recent conflict began. Mullen was among those officers the Obama administration inherited from the Bush administration, the initiator of the 9/11 wars. During these 10 years a number of books have appeared on religious extremism and the post 9/11 scenario. The 9/11 Wars by Jason Burke, a British journalist who works for The Guardian and The Observer is one of them. Currently based in New Delhi, the author is supposed to be the first western journalist who interviewed Pervez Musharraf in October 1999. But Burke ‘s credentials
are not that ordinary, for one, Burke quite literally wrote the book on bin
Laden — copies of his 2003 volume Al-Qaeda, were standard reading for
coalition commanders in Iraq as they struggled to understand why people were
blowing themselves up around them. And as one of the Observer’s
longest-serving foreign correspondents, he has rich experience of the places
he is talking about, be it Kurdistan, Waziristan, Kandahar or Fallujah Burke tries to unfold gaps and slip-ups in US policy during the last 10 years of 9/11 Wars. For all Burke’s ground-level eye, however, this is as much a book of scholarship as reportage, deftly analysing the shortcomings of both the bin Laden and the Bush camps, no doubt, the last 200 pages section of notes and references is worth reading as it is deluged by inside information, normally inaccessible by readers. The author criticises the beginning of the Iraq war which segregated the priorities set by 9/11 syndrome. “By April, May 2002, we began losing people to the groups that were preparing for the Iraq war,’said Mike Scheuer. Bob Grenier, the then head of Islamabad CIA station, remembered that a large number of the best and most experienced people were drawn off pretty early from Afghanistan and switched to Iraq, especially those with extensive counter-terrorism experience or regional specialties”. Ron Nash, the British ambassador in Afghanistan in the autumn 2003 also recorded his reservations regarding withdrawal of experience officers from Afghanistan while Art Keller, a CIA counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation specialist called that act as ‘the scraping of the barrel’. “Obama too used this argument against Bush administration during his election campaign which served as the core criticism on the 9/11 wars. Burke has done some exhaustive reporting in The 9/11 Wars, but obviously there is a bias involved and he seems to sometimes miss the big picture altogether, such as till October 2007, US officials in Islamabad had confirmed in front of Burke that Pakistan has no links with rogue Taliban. Burke not only confirmed agenda-driven Afghan government reports against Pakistan’s support to Taliban as inconclusive but also pin-pointed Indian involvement in Afghan affairs yet limited himself not to comment on regional or international interests in or around Pak-Afghan borders. Burke also tries to fix 9/11 syndrome with rise of new urban middle classes , from Morocco to Malaysia yet ignores religious-sectarian groups as political weapons by superpowers in respective societies to fulfil their foreign policy initiatives. The
9/11 Wars is available at Readings
Zia
Mohyeddin column Austin, Texas, with its beautiful Victorian buildings, may have breathtaking vistas and a skyline that grows and changes every year; it may have a vast selection of live music venues — more than most big cities — but it is known, principally, for its prestigious university. I was not able to see the entire campus — it is spread over hundreds of acres — but whatever I saw was a very pleasant mix of old world architecture and modern facilities. The university enrolls 50,000 students. No wonder they have seventeen libraries and seven museums. Only the library of Congress, I am told, has more books. The University of Texas Performing Arts has evolved into one the largest in the country. It has helped establish the university and the city of Austin as a venue of international culture. This year the PAC is celebrating its 25th anniversary and a host of world class performers have been invited to present their art in the six PAC venues on campus. Its Bias concert hall seats 3000; other concert halls are not so vast. The three intimate theatres for dramatic performances range from the intimate 200 seater, Oscar Brockett, to Iden Payne, which has a capacity for 500, people. Professor Akbar Haider who heads the Urdu department organised a lunch for me to meet some of his students. It was pleasing — nay, refreshing — to hear all of them (including Max Bruce and Peter Knapczyk, two Americans who are part of the Faculty) speaking fluent Urdu devoid of English words. Max Bruce whose “non de plume” is Nadir, is now an established poet. He is frequently invited to recite his ghazals in Mushairas in India. I have heard many Westerners speaking Urdu but none, not even Ralph Russell, who taught Urdu at the London School of Oriental studies, could speak the language without a heavy accent. Max Bruce Nadir does. His sheen qiaf is spot on. The sheen is not a problem for Europeans but the qaat (as in qehqaha or quqnus) defeats then. Where and when did he learn to speak Urdu? I asked him. He stood up, bowed, acknowledging the compliment, and in perfect imitation of a poet from Lucknow said, “Na’cheez ko Nadir khetay hain.” He then sat down and after a pause went on, “When I was twelve I heard people around me talking of philosophy. The names they mentioned again and again were Wittgenstein and Descartes”. This puzzled him. Surely there must be some philosophy and philosophers in the East. So he began to study Hindi but after a year or so shifted his energies to Urdu which fascinated him a great deal more. He obviously had an extremely good ear for he has cultivated his speech to such an extent that he can produce the sound of and when he pronounces the word rog (meaning grief), he makes sure that the word does not sound like “rogue.” This is a commendable feat. Currently, the focus of his attention is Zareef Lucknavi whom he rates very highly as a poet. Peter Knapcyzk, who is working on his doctorate speaks Urdu reasonably well but not quite with the same facility as Max Bruce Nadir. His thesis is Marsia and its form up to the time of Mir Anees. Mussadas, a stanza of six lines, he has discovered, went through many changes especially in Oudhi. Knapczyk is a scholar; the poet, Nadir, lives in the world of ghazal. ******************* The South Asian Institute of UT was established as part of a university initiative to promote South Asian programmes especially those pertaining to contemporary issues. The institute sponsors major conferences, scholarly symposia and a weekly South Asia Seminar. The seminars are mostly about recent works in the South Asian humanities and classics. The topics range from a fourth century Tamil anthology of Poetry to women’s autobiographical writing in the Muslim world. The central mission of the institute is to promote the study of contemporary South Asian languages in cooperation with the Department of Asian studies and the Urdu/Hindi flagship programme. Bengali, Telegu, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Sanskrit, Urdu and Pushto are currently taught in the department. The director of the South Asia Institute, Kamran Asdar Ali, who invited me to Austin to deliver a lecture in their auditorium, is a refined scholar and a man of high intellectual standards. He taught at many universities in America before settling down in Austin as the Professor of Anthropology, Middle East Studies and Asian Studies. An author of many publications, Asdar Ali’s recent work has been on ethnic class and gender issues in Pakistan. His forthcoming book is about the cultural history of the political left during Pakistan’s early years. Last year he was awarded a fellowship to go to Berlin on a sabbatical. His only obligation was to offer a lecture or two a week at the Wissenschaftskolleg. He could spend the rest of his time researching whatever subject he wished to pursue. “Progressives and Perverts” is one of the papers he wrote as a part of his book. He was kind enough to present a copy to me. In this cogently written essay, he discusses some of the intellectual debates among literary people in the newly formed state of Pakistan. He suggests that “as much as the new country was formed in an ideological platform of Muslim nationalism, the shape of its future initially remained an open question”. It is an extremely valid observation. “The rupture and the calamity of the partition”, he continues, “was constituting new identities in Pakistan, and a language of tolerance and compassion that was being perpetuated by liberal and conservatives — one language, (Urdu), one religion (Islam), one people (Pakistanis), could not work as palliative of the unsettling, troubling and disabling wound.” Asder Ali’s knowledge about the towering intellectual personalities of the 50’s is extensive. For a don, steeped in research, his sense of humour is Puckish. “If Nasim Akbar had not cast her spell over Faiz Ahmed Faiz,” he said to me with an impish grin, He might not have been arrested in the Rawalpindi conspiracy case.” He was particularly pleased to have traced Joan Afzal in London. “She was a mine of revelations” he told me, “She is eighty eight but has all her wits about her.” Joan is the wife of Comrade Afzal, a dedicated communist, everyone called him Comrade) who died many years ago. I remember meeting him a few times with Faiz Sahib in London way back in the sixties. He was the only man I knew who called Faiz Sahib “Toon”. “Oye Faiz, toon mainoo dus ke…” I remember him saying more than once. Even Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum, who was Faiz Sahib’s mentor, addressed him as Faiz Sahib when there were other people around, a fact I should have mentioned in my dissertation on Faiz Sahib.
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debates, the I-hate-to-say-this-but and maybe-we-should-consider seem
familiar as well as depressing. The latter because at the end of it all, you
leave the classroom ten times more confused than before. None of your
questions have been answered. You might put down the book with somewhat the
same emotion. The book is instantaneously engaging and then ends at a,
let’s say, disappointing note. Not because it is disappointing but because
you were expecting too much of it. As always, Godot never shows up.
aspect of Will’s classroom for there is something essentially innocent and
clichéd about the questions raised there — Is there a God? Do we need a
God? Does God really exist? If God doesn’t exist who makes our decisions
for us? We make up the idea of God so we could blame someone for our
decisions.It is outside the classroom that these questions are raised more
evidently, in Will’s personal life. The choice, the freedom to choose and
the responsibility.
fellows, parents. Sartre focused on man’s condemnation of having to make a
choice; Will follows the road down to facing the society for having made that
choice. Will’s relationship with his pupils is not defined by his position
as a teacher but by his ability to raise questions and challenging opinions.
Abdul, one of his Muslim students is a prototype of conformity. No wonder he
is presented as a Muslim. He upholds the popular belief that God makes
choices for us and nods consistently when thronged by questions like He makes
people suffer? Even for the children who die of hunger? Even for the man who
was pushed under the train by a lunatic. He nods. Like the author, Will makes
no pressures to ascent.
