I wish I wasn’t my age. I wish I was as old as my parents. Or as young
as my son. I wish it didn’t have to be me telling my wife to stay where she is,
saying everything will be fine in a voice she doesn’t believe and I don’t
believe either.
Mohsin Hamid’s 'A Beheading' is pretty much
the only story I have ever read where the word vivid applies in all its glory. You hear that word quite often,
mostly as a throwaway adjective for either an incredibly intense reading
experience or as a synonym for ‘must praise the story but can’t find the right
word’. Here, though, it fits very well.
A few other adjectives also come to mind once one is done
with the 3-page short story in Granta’s 2010 issue. Disconcerting.
Jarring. Depressing. But that is as
it should be, given the subject matter Mohsin Hamid has taken upon himself to
write about in this story that begins as quickly and abruptly as it ends,
taking us from the explosion of a window in a silent night to the eventual,
inevitable conclusion of blood and death.
I don’t want to die but I don’t mind dying. I just don’t want to be
tortured.
The summary
I hear the window shatter.
It is maybe an indication of how the story will progress by
the way it abruptly begins, throwing us right in the middle of the scene. Our
unnamed protagonist gets up suddenly in the middle of the night, woken up by a
smashed window. He knows what’s happening. He knows who is coming. But that
doesn’t make it any easier to deal with the reality of the situation.
I shut the bedroom door and lock it behind me. Shadows are jumping and
stretching from multiple torches. I raise both my hands. ‘I’m here,’ I say to
them. I want to say it loudly. I sound like a whispering child. ‘Please. Everything
is all right.’
It picks up pace, short choppy sentences that carry a
remarkable amount of lucidity moving us forward as our hero is beaten up,
dragged outside, and stuffed unceremoniously in a car’s trunk. He’s distorted,
confused, scared, and we are right there
with him, living these feelings.
My mouth doesn’t work properly so I have to speak slowly. Even then I
sound like I’m drunk. Or like someone has cut off half my tongue.
We feel his fear when he’s left alone in a room with paint
peeling, dried urine sticking to his legs. We watch with dread as the men
return, tripods and cameras and UPS unit carted along with them. It’s
inevitable, the story’s conclusion, but we continue reading anyway. It’s like a
train wreck you can’t look away from, except this time you’re inside the train,
watching it race towards the cliff from which it is bound to go over, crashing
and burning as it goes.
Tears are coming out of my eyes. That’s good. The more pathetic I look,
the better. ‘Sirs,’ I say in the most grovelling Urdu I can manage. ‘What have
I done? I beg your forgiveness.’
The story is short
but very, very effective. Mohsin Hamid doesn’t waste words, instead writing
with such clarity that it’s hard to not get sucked in immediately to the
desperation of the scene. This owes its greatest credit to the faithful
attention paid to the basic concept of ‘Show,
don’t tell.’ Each sentence is a feeling expressed, an action our
protagonist does. It’s a close-up, first
person encounter of the most disturbing kind, and in that lies its very
appeal.
The background
I know this. I don’t want this. I don’t want to be that goat.
Being a journalist in Pakistan is a risky business. There is always the threat of being murdered,
of ending up missing,
of dangerous assignments and extortion and getting caught in the cross fire.
It’s a hazardous job,
made more so by the various volatile elements in the country willing to endorse
target killing, torture, and kidnapping as a method of shutting up those who want to report the truth.
Mohsin Hamid puts us in the position of one such journalist
who is hours away from paying for writing something he shouldn’t have. And
coming from a country where reporting the truth can get you in trouble gives
the story an extra edge, a depth that will resonate with anyone who has spoken
out against a wrong and lived to regret it. Journalists in Pakistan are under
constant threat, whether they be reporting on ethnicity or on religious groups.
From cosmopolitan cities like Karachi to war-ravaged areas like Fata, violence
on those who are part of the news dissemination process has been a constant
problem for days, and Mohsin Hamid seeks to bring it to the front and centre
with one of the most effective forms of influence: storytelling.
I’ll never write again if you don’t want me to. It doesn’t matter to
me. It’s not important. We’re the same. All of us. I swear it.’
The Questions
‘Look, don’t do this...I’ve always censored myself. I’ve never written
about religion. I’ve always tried to be respectful. If I’ve made a mistake just
tell me. Tell me what to write. I’ll never write again.'
In an article printed in Express Tribune on 4 June, 2011, Mohsin
Hamid writes: “Just
before moving back to Pakistan a year and a half ago, I wrote a short story
called “A Beheading”. It was about the imaginary kidnapping and beheading of a
nameless Pakistani writer, told from that doomed and terrified man’s own point
of view.”
This raised my first question: the identity of our unnamed, unknown protagonist. Because until I read
this, I hadn’t realized the main character was a writer. In retrospect, certain
lines make this fact obvious, but because being
a writer has such a fundamental importance in this story, given that Mohsin
Hamid is literally basing his kidnapping on his profession, this seems like a
pretty important thing to miss. But throughout the story, I didn’t connect the
dots between his pleas to let him go and his promises to not write. And this
happened because in Pakistan, one can be dragged out of their houses for a beheading
for a variety of mind-boggling reasons. And while a profession is a chosen,
well-thought out decision for this particular narrative, other offences which can lead to such things happening are far beyond the control of the people who are accused of them.
I wish I could remember how to say my prayers. I’d ask them to let me
pray. Show them we’re the same. But I can’t risk it. I’ll make a mistake and if
they see that, things will be even worse for me.
I, in fact, thought this person was of a religious minority. I thought the
protagonist was a Christian or a Hindu, an Ahmedi or a Hazara. In Pakistan,
it’s dangerous to be anything other than a heterosexual Sunni Muslim male with
a job that isn't threatening to anyone with a gun. And given the constant,
widely-encompassing violence against the religious minorities in our country,
it’s easy to see why one’s mind would go that way.
Once one digs into the religious layers of this story, it
opens itself up to multiple
interpretations. I thought the man was a member of a religious minority who
might know a few Muslim phrases because he lived in a Muslim country. My best
friend thought he was a secular person born in a Muslim family, who would
stumble over duas and not be in the habit of praying. It is precisely this that
shows how exposing the barest of details means a reader will project their own
world view onto a story. Mohsin Hamid might not have meant for these
interpretations to exist, or even thought about someone paying attention to
these details, but moments like these make
the story bigger than just words on paper.
I wonder if my wife is still alive and if she’s going to sleep with
another man after I’m gone. How many men is she going to sleep with? I hope she
doesn’t. I hope she’s still alive.
My second question
was one about stereotypes, and about
how one’s gender can define one’s thinking. After reading this story, I texted my
best friend: Is a man about to be beheaded capable of thinking of one’s wife’s
future sexual exploits?
Maybe it’s a reflection of the ‘men constantly think about
sex’ idea, she pointed out. Maybe it’s him trying to distract himself from what
is happening around him, I debated. Still, the fact remains. On the very cusp of death, what does one
think about? And more importantly, how are these thoughts limited by gender?
The point, underneath all this speculation, comes to how
much we trust one male writer to act as a representation of all men everywhere.
Maybe Mohsin Hamid thinks this way. Maybe he thinks most men think this way.
Maybe he thinks most men should think this way. It’s a mystery, but maybe it’s not a
blanket depiction of everyone with a Y chromosome everywhere.
They tape my mouth shut and pin me flat on my stomach. One of them gets
behind me and pulls my head up by the hair. It feels sexual the way he does it.
The recommendation
This entry in Granta is probably the quickest read with the greatest
impact. It’s wonderful in its handling, written with equal counts feeling and
control, and tackling an important issue. Definitely
Recommended.
This is part two of reviews of stories written by Pakistani authors published in Granta112: Pakistan in 2010. Granta is a literary magazine and publisher from UK. Reviews of other stories in this issue can be found here.