This was quite the most pretentious piece of writing I’ve read in a
while. It was also, unfortunately, self-involved in the most appalling way.
I understand that one of that most oft-repeated (and
contentious, I should add) advice in the literary world is to write what you
know. I also know that writing can be a way of placing yourself into a
narrative which you can’t live through (fan fiction, say, but even that can be
brilliant without the author being visible). But to write a story about a boy
who waxes philosophical about the type of people in this world is about the
worst form of conceit from a male author. At least try to be a little original; I have no patience for a repetition of
the canonical white male author and his ramblings.
Zahid, our one-dimensional protagonist, has apparently been
sinning like every ‘modern day sinner’ (what does that even mean?), so to calm
his mortal soul he ventures to the mosques sometimes, where he meets an old man
who for some unknown reason likes to sit and have tea with Zahid. This,
from that moment on, is a platform for our protagonist – and through him, our
author – to ramble on about their views of humanity. And I’ll admit that that
could be interesting if the conversation was sparkling, the ideas new, the
writing smart and witty, but nope, nope, and overall nope.
Zahid stared into his
teacup – it was almost empty. He could see the granules of tea bathing in the
shallow pond of doodh-patti. He swirled his cup and marveled at how similar
life was to a cup of tea; once you drink all the sweet liquid, all that remains
is the bitter, dark reality!
My god. If you didn’t roll your eyes at that horror, you
haven’t read enough good literature yet. And while good literature can be
subjective – as is this piece, which someone somewhere must have thought worthy
of publication – there are still certain things I prefer a story have to keep
me engaged. Unfortunately, this story had none of that. Zahid’s philosophical
rant about the four categories of humans is listened to by the old man, Dilbash
Uncle, who then interrupts Zahid to talk about his own experience as a soldier,
and how being a soldier makes it impossible to put people into categorizes. So
interesting. Much wow. Not.
“I am sixty-one, boy,
and yet I could never claim such superior knowledge… and you know why? Because
the world is infinite, the people in it are infinite.
It could have been great, but it wasn’t. There could have
been better plotting and character development, but there wasn’t. We could have
been faced with depth and understanding in this conversation, but we weren’t.
Turns out that the writer needed an audience for his pseudo-intellectualism,
and I guess it was a matter of time before some magazine gave it to him. Shame it
had to be the only good literary magazine in Pakistan though.
Skip this, I’d say.
Snowflakes by Hisham Sajid is from Volume 16 of the magazine Papercuts, a biannual literary magazine by Desi Writers Lounge, a South Asian community of writers.