The Other Wonders of Khanpur

In another age, the only Pakistani writing in English was the product of the now little-known Ahmed Ali. His 1940 novel, Twilight in Delhi, is remembered as a masterful portrait of the elegant charms and rich, tolerant culture of pre-Partition Delhi. Later in the 80s, things changed a little. A few English-language writers met with success – Bapsi Sidhwa published The Crow Eaters and later, Cracking India. And we read work by writers like Sara Suleri, Adam Zameenzad and Hanif Kureishi.

But today something much more remarkable seems to be happening – Pakistani fiction in English seems to be going through a renaissance. Lately, we’ve seen a flurry of first-rate fiction as young Pakistani writers begin to confidently address turmoil and change in their societies in a refreshing, contemporary way.

Among this year’s most striking debuts has been Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders – a collection of inter-linked short stories, “in the spirit of Turgenev’s Sportsman’s Sketches and Joyce’s Dubliners,� that illuminate a world defined by class struggles, misfortune and manipulation. Mueenuddin gently, and wryly, confronts the atrophy of the old feudal order and the myriad advantages and limitations of ambition and social standing.

The 45-year-old Mueenuddin himself has a complex story. Born to an American mother and a Pakistani father (the late Ghulam Mueenuddin), he left Pakistan at 13 to attend boarding school and university in America. Later came a degree from Yale Law School, time spent as a Fulbright scholar in Norway (where he met his wife Cecilie) and a brief stint as a lawyer in New York. Soon he moved back, wife in tow, and took over the family farm at Khanpur in the Rahim Yar Khan district of southern Punjab – becoming a mango-farmer, and writer.

It may well be that we will not understand the heart of rural Pakistan until it is explained to us by Pakistani writers of first-rate ability like Daniyal Mueenuddin, much like we understood nothing of Russia until it was explained to us by Turgenev and Chekhov.

I met with Daniyal at his mother’s Manhattan apartment for a chat:

Q. There is something of a dichotomy between the representation of Pakistani and Western women in your stories. The Pakistani women seemed more scheming and promiscuous, while the Western women were somewhat easier to relate to.

A. The only Western women in the stories were the girlfriend in Our Lady and the wife in a Spoiled Man, the second of which is not a very developed character. So I don’t think you can relate to it that way. Helen is just a young law student, and not a very complex character. I don’t think it’s very useful to distinguish the women on this basis; these are just women of very different circumstances and have different personalities. The distinction and the intention were based on their circumstances, not their nationalities.

Q. Well the Pakistani women of poorer backgrounds in the story seem more grounded in the Pakistani culture too, while the more privileged Pakistani women were far more ‘westernized’ – they might as well have been European.

A. That’s really what I’ve observed in Pakistan. The women of the upper class are generally much more Westernized and not as rooted in Pakistani culture. Characters like Rafiya have lived abroad for a while. We all know these people. Yes, they are Westernized – but they are also not to some extent. Lily, for example, is in some ways a very traditional Pakistani girl if you scrape off some of her excesses.

Q. Your own background is an interesting mix between American and Pakistani. How do you balance that personally, and how does it reflect in your writing?

A. Well, one thing is true, I’m a translator in fact. I’ve had these experiences living in Pakistan. And what I’m doing is describing those experiences in a way that can be understood by a Western audience.

Q. So translating Pakistan for the West is your objective.

A. I’m translating Pakistan for an English-speaking literate audience. Wherever they may be. My book is being read in Pakistan, India, England and other places too. Part of what makes my position different from many other Pakistani writers is that I am very steeped in both places. They say about translators that “you have to know the language the poem is written in very well, but you also have to know the language into which it is being translated better.� So of course I have to have a good understanding of Pakistan, but I also have to have a good understanding of my readership.

Q. A lot of Indian and Pakistani writers have tended to live abroad, and analyze from a distance. You’re more unique in that you live in Pakistan. How has that changed things? Was there anything that you just couldn’t write about?

A. I wasn’t really aware of any self-censorship. People have remarked that there is no discussion of religion or mullahs or bombings.

Q. And the one description of a mullah is that of a very timid man.

A. Yes, a very timid man. But I’m describing here what I know of Pakistan. In Pakistani villages, or in the village where I live for example, the power structure is not headed by religious types. The politicians pay lip-service to religious causes but it is very much a feudal structure.

Q. So the feudal structure totally trumps the political atmosphere?

A. The feudal structure sort of trumps any other power structure. All these guys are working together – the religious types, the politicians. All these different powers work together to shape the landscape. But up till now at least, the elites in Lahore and Islamabad and the villagers in Punjab, their lives are not so much shaped by religion until now.

Q. But their lives are shaped by politics.

A. Very much so, yes.

Q. But even then the decision to exclude political themes from your work was conscious.

A. Well I’m not a social scientist, but I’ve written about a figure who’s a politician. But I don’ t think fiction should aspire to espouse any political ideas. Politics and fiction are two very different battles and if I wanted to write on a separate political track I could do that. But it’s a whole other project. This is fiction. I just don’t think fiction is a very good medium to deliver a political argument. And that’s not what we do. In fiction, we don’t and shouldn’t take sides or espouse a cause. That’s not the business we’re in, we’re trying to make beautiful things.

Q. So you’re saying there was no self-censorship, you felt comfortable writing about any subject. At a talk you gave recently in New York, you’d said that self-censorship was crushing in Pakistan.

A. When I was writing these stories, I wasn’t really aware of self-censoring in any way. But as I think about it now, I think in the background there is this sort of oppressive atmosphere. If I was choosing stories now as I’m writing my second book, it would be quite natural of me to be a little cautious on certain themes. Now that I see that I’m likely to gain a certain degree of prominence, I’m much more likely to think in terms of subjects that might not be so good for me.

Q. What sort of subjects are those?

A. Well there are certain things that you just don’t talk about in Pakistan. You don’t talk about religion in certain ways. You don’t make certain kinds of statements about religion. Why? Because I live in the middle of nowhere in Pakistan with a foreign wife, I don’t want to be shot at.

Q. And what else aside from the topic of religion?

A. Mostly just religion. There seems to be no restriction in writing about sex and things like that. There are so many things written and published in Pakistan, and talked about like the fast-living elite and so on. So that seems fine, but you do have to be careful when you’re talking about religion.

Q. How does it feel for you, as a writer, to be living through all the turbulence in Pakistan today?

A. It’s an incredible mess. I’ve been astounded by the way in which the situation is deteriorating and I’m very fearful that it’s going to get much worse. But I’m not a political theorist, and my analysis of what’s happening and why it’s happening is just as a layperson. I just see my own little world.

Q. And how has your world reacted to what is happening in the broader context?

A. The countryside is relatively more insulated. Certainly, in Lahore and Islamabad there’s been a much more dramatic effect. These cities are changing very quickly. The incident with the Sri Lankan cricket team happened when I was here, but during the siege of the Red Mosque and the firing and the check-posts – it’s almost become like a warzone.

Q. But in your stories you describe Pakistan as a beautiful place – and you place the soft picture of the countryside and the farmland against the rugged ruthlessness of the characters. Can that be something of a metaphor for Pakistan itself?

A. Well the life there in the 80s and 90s was very different, which is when these stories were set. They’re set in a different time, in a different world. Pakistan has changed unrecognizably in the last five years. It’s true that in terms of the harshness of the characters, when people are put in testing situations, they act in desperate ways. And that’s true of many of my characters, because theirs is not a gentle, suburban world. There’s tremendous poverty, inequality, suppression of women. So because of these circumstances, they react in more violent ways.

Q. Your stories seem to lean towards the argument that to succeed in rural Pakistan, your ambition must be accompanied by this absolute ruthlessness and manipulation

A. Not complete ruthlessness. But you know, you can say that’s true in New York as well; it’s not the nice guys that get ahead. As they say, “behind every great fortune, a great crime.� And that’s true in Pakistan too, perhaps more true. It’s a much more political place. When you live in such a hierarchical society, all behaviors have a political aspect to them. Everything is much more politicized.

Q. The jacket of your book mentions Turgenev’s Sportsmen’s Sketches. Turgenev, with Tolstoy and Chekhov, really brought the Russian countryside to us. So would you like your book to be read as a look into the Pakistani countryside?

A. I think what’s really valuable in Turgenev and Tolstoy is not as much what they say about a particular place but more what they say about humankind. And certainly that’s how I’d like to be read – not as a Pakistani writer, but as a writer.

Q. And how has the reception for your book been in Pakistan?

A. I’m not really sure to be honest, because I left a few days after it appeared on the shelves. Although the reviews in Pakistan were somewhat more snarky, considering I am a complete outsider to the literary establishment there. In India though, I hear it’s selling like hot cakes.

Q. Pakistani writing in English seems to be thriving. In a certain age there was only Ahmed Ali, and then you had a trickle later. But today there are many more writers coming from Pakistan.

A. There have been some Pakistani writers coming out. Jokingly I’ve said that it’s like a dog walking on its hind legs – you’re not surprised that it does it well; you’re surprised that it does it at all. I think people are just amazed that out of this country that is described as being up in flames, ruled by fools and about to be taken over by rabid fundamentalists, that there’s any writing coming out at all. Pakistani writers are getting a lot of attention partly because of the situation Pakistan is in. There’s good writing coming out of Pakistan though and that’s partly just chance and partly because there’s tremendous pressure in Pakistan. And wherever there’s tremendous pressure, you can make diamonds. Heat and pressure make diamonds.