Book: Kartography

Author: Kamila Shamsie
Publisher:

Kamila Shamsie is an original and successful (not to mention attractive) young Pakistani author. She was born in Karachi in 1973, and brought up in Karachi, till she left to attend Hamilton College in New York and then moved onwards to the University of Massachusetts. She has written three novels, which could effectively be called, “The Karachi Trilogy.” She wrote the first of these, titled, “In a City by the Sea,” while she was a student. It was short listed for the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize. This was followed by, “Salt and Saffron,” which placed Kamila on the Orange Futures list of 21 female authors to watch for in the 21st century. Her most recent work is titled, “Kartography.”

All of Kamila’s novels share one common feature as a backdrop to their respective main stories: the ethnically divided, violent, sometimes unlivable, yet seductive city of Karachi. The author’s love for her city of birth comes through very clearly in her writings, as she repeatedly describes Karachi as a city of hateful and lovable contradictions:

“Karachi at its worst is a Karachi unconcerned with people who exist outside the storyteller’s circle, a Karachi oblivious to people and places who aren’t familiar enough for nicknames. What I’ve sometimes mistaken for intimacy is really just exclusion. But Karachi is always dual. Houses are alleys; car thieves are the people to help you when your car won’t start; pollution simultaneously chokes you and makes you gasp at the beauty of unnatural sunsets; a violent, fractured place dismissive of everyone outside its boundaries is vibrant, embracing, accepting of outsiders; and, yes, selfishness is the consequence of love.”

The city’s name is part of the book’s title - a witty and deliberate misspelling of the word that describes the art of map making. It takes its first three letters from the city of Karachi and the name of its main male character, Karim, and joins them with cartography - the profession adapted by Karim.

Kartography is a love story, which combines Karachi`s geographical backdrop, visited by the various conflicting ethnic groups of the 90s, with the social conflicts that were a part of the 1971 war between West and East Pakistan. The narrator is a young girl, Raheen, from the upper class supper-yuppie neighborhoods of Karachi. She is the Muhajir daughter of Muhajir parents, Zafar and Yasmin. Her love interest is Karim, from the same neighborhood – the off-spring of a Bengali mother and a Muhajir father, Maheen and Ali. Raheen and Karim are joined in their adolescent adventures by two close friends, Zia – the cool suave son of a Karachi wheeler and dealer, and Sonia – the beautiful and well-mannered daughter of a nouveau-riche and suspicious businessman.

''I am a Muhajir, Zia.' I poked his shoulder.....
'Oh, don`t give me that. You`re nothing. You`re just a burger. And thank God for that.'.....
'You macho Sindhi ass,' I said with a yawn'.....
'Only half my ass in Sindhi. The other half is Punjabi.'
Karim did not join our laughter.'

The book starts off when all four are thirteen years old. Raheen has a crush on Zia, who has a crush on Sonia, while Karim, in his intellectual efforts to understand the problems of Karachi, develops an interest in drawing maps of the whole city. However, Raheen feels an unexplainable bond with Karim. They have been playmates since the days they shared the same crib, and have an uncanny ability of finishing each other’s sentences. The book explores these relationships beautifully, highlighted by the author’s uncanny ability to maker her readers laugh:

“I wondered if Karim was also recalling that long-ago monsoon day when we had hidden in the bushes of my grandmother’s house; I had pointed out that my mother said that if you stand around in wet clothes you’ll catch a chill, so in the interests of good health we had thrown all our clothing in a pile and: “That’s so funny-looking, Karim. Can I hold it? Can you make it move?” No, but I can wiggle my ears.”

Raheen’s and Karim’s parents are best friends, and have been so for ages. While the teenager’s adventures introduce us to the school life of English-speaking Karachi children, their parents’ social gatherings introduce us to the Westernized forty-something crowd of the city.

The book jumps back and forth between the ethnic violence of present day-Karachi and the anti-Bengali sentiments that dominated Karachi in 1971. The two main characters part company, when Karim’s parents decide to move to England. Raheen then realizes that she truly loves Karim. However, their relationship completely falls apart, as they grow older and Raheen moves to the USA for studies. The book takes us through the ups and downs of this relationship, with the ups and downs of many other relationships in the background, until one evening everything reaches a disastrous pinnacle, when Raheen discovers the reasons due to which Karim does not feel for her, the love she feels for him. The remaining part of the book is the journey Raheen takes to deal with the issues of her love life, her relationship with her father, her relationship with her city of birth, and most importantly her relationship with her soul-mate Karim.

Shamsie is, without a doubt, a talented writer. She can probably hold her own against most writers of her age and (in) experience. Her characters display a charming wit, an adorable sense of humor and, every now and then, she can come up with the most touching prose. Raheen, now a final year student in New York, one day recalls her childhood with Karim:

“I closed my eyes, saw the snow before me transform into fields of white. Tired clouds coming to rest on the ground. My wrist remembered the pressure of a thumb and forefinger encircling it. A boy with ears too large, and legs accustomed to leaping touched a cotton boll to my palm and tiny insect feet crawled across my skin….. It was an unexceptional moment, but, lord how he smiled when he watched me watch a ladybird take flight.”

This book goes out of its way to explain to the reader Karachi, the creation of Bangladesh and all the ethnic baggage that Pakistan carries with it. If the objective of the author was to explain the above, she has achieved it with flying colors. However, if her objective was to write a very good book, a book that would appeal to non-Pakistani audiences also, who maybe more interested in the love stories developing between its various characters, and not the one between the author and Karachi, then the book may fall short of expectations.

There is too much information about Karachi, pre and post 1971, for the reader who is already familiar with the city, and not enough for the one who maybe unfamiliar with it. The book thus steps in and out of being a romantic novel and a sociological documentary. On too many occasions, the young characters are forced to speak in long monologues, sometimes in a manner that belies their ages, struggling to explain the geography, sociology and history of Karachi, when they should be speaking more in the witty and touching simplicity with which the book starts.

Thus, somewhere in the middle of the book, the innocently funny and interesting love story, that keeps the reader glued to the book, starts to drown in the author’s attempts to explain Karachi and Bangladesh - each turning into a plot of its own, making the book half a plot too crowded.

On the whole, this book is a definite and must-read for the Pakistani audience, and perhaps for the whole South Asian audience. It describes Pakistan, in general, and Karachi specifically, in a manner all Pakistani readers are bound to enjoy.