I
don’t think I’m scared of dying. After all, a man like me who has cheated death
so many times has no excuse to fear it. It’s dying alone that frightens me.
The appeal of Omar Shahid Hamid’s writing,
I’ve now realized, rests upon his knowledge of how the country of Pakistan
works. That old, often controversial adage of writing what one knows is nowhere shown more clearly than in his
novels, both his previous one as well as this one.
Involving police officers, jihadis and
kidnappings, both these books use the same template for their plots, making the
comparison inevitable, but it’s hard to say which book comes out as the better
of the two. While I enjoyed The Prisoner to a certain degree, The Spinner’s
Tale has made me realize why I didn’t completely fall in love with it.
And
that’s because Hamid’s books are pure thrillers without any proper artistry
behind them. We’re not reading these books for their brilliant prose or their
deft character handling, but rather because, in the words of the done-to-death
review phrases, they are nitty-gritty
and fast-paced. They’re smart, entertaining books which focus more on the
mystery than on the writing, which are such a rarity amongst the heavy-handed
purple prose writings of most Pakistani authors.
Of course, one could easily accuse Omar
Shahid Hamid of choosing clichéd topics to write about. Religion, politics and
corruption are the holy trinity for Pakistani authors, and all three maintain
an almost constant presence in Hamid’s books.
“It’s
funny. All these years when we were in college, Ausi was just kind of
drifting...but turning to religion seemed to be a seminal point in his life.
Since then, he’s discovered his focus, like he knows exactly where he wants to
go and how to get there. It’s fascinating how faith changes your life.”
From the starting, this book makes it clear
that religion is a major focusing point
in this novel. The major protagonist, our chess player in this story, is Sheikh
Ahmed Uzair Sufi, a notorious Jihadi militant who has been accused of, among other things, beheading a pregnant American journalist and attempting to
assassinate the Pakistani President twice. When Sheikh Ahmed is brought to a
deserted outpost in the Nara desert in Sindh and left in the care of DSP Omar
Abbasi, he begins a game of cat and mouse by convincing Abbasi to search for letters
written by Sheikh Ahmed’s friend Eddy, letters which will apparently reveal the
Sheikh’s history. His only demand? That Abbasi bring the letters back and give
them to the Sheikh, so he can treasure the words of his best friend.
“Arre
baba, he’s one of the most wanted men in the world. I’ve heard the Americans
are offering a bounty for him, but the government wants him on trial.
Apparently,
they consider him second or third in importance after Osama.”
The story makes it clear from the very
beginning that Sheikh Ahmed is a cunning,
ruthless killer whose beheading of the pregnant journalist was videotaped
as proof, so DSP Omar Abbasi jumps on this chance to find out his history. After
all, how is it possible that even during his days of being incarcerated, or
hiding underground, the Sheikh managed to stay in touch with such an old
childhood friend, one whose affections and loyalties didn’t waver even after
videotaped evidence of the Sheikh’s crimes was aired on national television?
“You
were in a new world and you needed a new friend. I remember thinking that you
must have been the loneliest man on the planet. That is how I feel today. I
need a friend and I wish you were here.”
This is thus the premise of our story, a chase for long-lost letters, and
interspersed with this chase are flashbacks to the Sheikh’s early days as a student
nicknamed Ausi. Studying at an elite school, he spends his days discussing
cricket with his best friend Eddy and lusting after the gorgeous Sana, who sees
Ausi as nothing more than a very good friend. The cricket, the connecting point
between these two young boys, is one of the smartest things Omar Shahid Hamid could
have done, because in Pakistan cricket
elicits almost the same level of passionate devotion as religion.
“You
should follow cricket. It’s one of the things that defines us as Pakistanis. It
gives us a sense of self-belief as a nation and brings us together.”
Any Pakistani will easily tell you how
dutifully cricket is followed in this country. A cricket match can easily shut whole cities down, forcing people to skip important events and stay glued to
their TV screens. This book uses that
blind, unceasing loyalty to the game by incorporating it into the story, by
letting it be the connection between Ausi and Eddy.
“When
you explained to me in the greatest detail the variations that Maninder Singh
was bowling in his left arm spin, I knew then that we were going to be friends
for a very long time.”
Each letter that these boys exchange, as
Eddy moves to study abroad and Ausi stays behind in Pakistan, have one or
another reference to the latest cricket match, the scores, the players. And amongst
these exchanges are confessions, expressions of loss and love, and a constant
sense of wanting to stay connected.
“Is
this guilt? After all I’ve done? A bit late now, don’t you think? Or is it
fear? (Perhaps that is why I am writing to you now. When the shadow of one’s
mortality falls upon you,
you turn to what was most familiar in your life.)”
Which would have worked out great, except
these letters are so obviously a
narrative device meant to tell the reader a story that they fall completely
flat. There is no hint of warmth in them, no proper sense of connection between
the two boys. The letters ultimately come off as too pointedly structured,
too obviously manipulated to inform the reader of the boys’ background.
There is always, I have firmly believed, something in the words of an author
that help you care about the characters, help you believe that they are real
and warm and living, and in the case of this book, that something is completely missing. Maybe if the letters had turned into a random,
rambling recapping of memories instead of the awful, awkward tone they employ
they could have been salvaged. As it is, their
tone doesn’t fit into the reality of the narrative at all.
This awkwardness finds its way into the
characterization as well. One of the things a number of Pakistani authors have
tackled is explaining the background and the history of the home-grown terrorist.
After all, what kind of past must one have in order to justify such atrocious
killings, such wanton destruction? Surely a horrible, tortured one. And yet we
have examples like Saad Aziz, a graduate of IBA, one of Pakistan’s
most elite business institutes, who was one of the killers of Sabeen Mehmood,
Pakistani human rights activist and social worker. Aziz’s whole schooling ran
along the lines of privilege (O’level from Beaconhouse, A’levels from The
Lycuem, BBA from IBA) and even his business prospects tended towards the
wealthy (internship at a multinational, owning his own restaurant at Sindhi
Muslim), and yet Aziz was found to be involved in multiple terrorist operations.
This reality finds it version in this book too, with everyone expressing
disbelief over the fact that the Sheikh studied at such an elite institute.
“I
miss school. What a privileged life we led! If only I could return to a world
where my only concern was how to get through my O levels.”
But even though the book uses an adaptation
of that reality, it fails to properly connect the dots of Ausi’s transition
from the smart, serious student to a rampaging psychopath. Sure, his entrance
to university life is disappointing, what with his father not paying for his
university education abroad or his rejection from the cricket team for his lack
of connections. But his overall need for destruction is so sudden, so violent that it doesn’t feel real. One of his
friends dies and he goes on a total rampage at his university, beating up
professors, settings fire to things. Surely there has to be some distance between a friendly,
socially-engaged university student and one who believes it is completely
acceptable to raise your hands at an adult.
“You
are not weak, you are lost. I was too. Sometimes we have to wander in the
wilderness before we find our true destiny. And the pain we suffer fashions us.
It tempers us like a sword that is raked in hot coal.”
The book attempts to trace this story, of
how Eddy and Ausi’s separate paths take them further away from each other even
as they keep in touch, but it doesn’t do as good a job as one could expect. There
are constant shifts in story telling
from the past to the present, which start to become irritating after a
while because it’s hard to keep track of what happened when. Only when we learn
to accept the fact that something in Ausi is angry and looking for revenge, does the
rest of the story begin to slot into place.
Ahmad
Uzair Sheikh is a broken man, and he knows it. The problem is, no one else
knows it.
And of course, it is at this point that religion creeps in. Angry, dissatisfied
young men in Pakistan most often find the concept of jihad being forced down
their throat, because what better weapons of destruction then those who believe
the world has wronged them? This must
be why madressahs all over the country find it so easy to recruit followers and
eager enthusiasts ready to kill themselves through suicide bombs, because no
other explanation seems to make sense to me.
“You are a Muslim. You have a duty to wage
jihad to protect the weak and oppressed. On top of that, you are a Kashimiri.
You have a double duty to wage jihad against those who have occupied your
country.”
Add to that the Kashmir issue and this book really racks it up a notch. Ausi,
or as he is slowly starting to become, Sheikh Uzair, has Kashmiri roots, and
that is where he runs to when he gets in trouble. And that is where his
training properly starts.
He
has discovered that ninety per cent of this war is fought for propaganda. The
lalas try and convince people that Pakistani terrorists are invading the
peaceful land of Kashmir to stir up trouble. On the other hand, his people
stick to the version that it is the unending cruelty of the Indians that has
led to this uprising. There are lies on both sides.
A book about terrorism is incomplete
without some mention of violence,
but Omar Shahid Hamid takes this a step further by placing us inside the mind
of the terrorist as Sheikh Uzair justifies his actions. Even as Omar Abassi,
our DSP at the beginning, races across the city trying to put together the
strands of Ausi’s life, contacting his family and friends, we spend our time
instead various other character’s minds, seeing how they think, and it is within
Sheikh Uzair’s mind that the book produces its most chilling phrases.
“Sometimes
I think random violence is the best way to grab people’s attention. You have to
shock people, deliver a 2000 watt jolt to their system. That is how you change
the world.”
Again and again the story shows us how
Ausi’s mindset is shifting, how the people he surrounds himself with affect him
personally, how he plots and plans to hurt those who have hurt him.
“If
you cannot find humour in the business of killing, then what can you find it
in?”
Even though one could consider Omar Abbasi
the main proponent which forces our plot forward, it is the questions that the
reader needs answer to. Can we trust Sheikh Uzair about the contents of the
letter not being a secret code? Where is this mysterious Eddy? Who is this man
who trusts such a well-known and villainous terrorist? And what keeps these two
men connected to each other across time and space, with changing lives and
priorities, and differing views on so many things? It is in the attempt to
answer these that the plot moves forward, delivering one of the most surprise
endings in a Pakistani fiction book I’ve read recently. If only for that
ending, I’d say this story was worth it.
Eddy
doesn’t understand why one group of people wants to kill another group of
people over things that happened 1500 years ago. But Ausi understands that this
is a basic instinct, and people need symbols to justify doing the things they
could never do otherwise.
Recommendation
To
change the world, you must violate it first.
This book gets a lot of things right: the
pace, the action, the building up of the mystery, but it also gets a number of
things very wrong, especially its treatment of the female characters (including
failing the Bechedel test and Sexy Lamp Test so spectacularly it becomes almost
a joke. Is Omar Shahid Hamid incapable of writing female characters who are
more than props to allow the men in the story to fight, grieve or show their
manliness?) Overall, if you can convince yourself to forgive these failings,
then I suggest you read this story, if only because such an honest account of
the Pakistani police system, terrorist set up and overall mania in the country
is generally a hard note to get so right.