Of Djinn and Desi-ness: Kamila Shamsie's 'The Congregation' is an interesting twist on a cliché representation of magical creatures

Kamila Shamsie is undeniably one of Pakistan’s biggest names when it comes to author popularity. Along with her counterpart Mohammad Hanif, she is the author I knew about before I knew much about Pakistani fiction. So it made sense to me that in an anthology about djinn which included stories by three Pakistani authors, her story would be the one near the beginning.

That being said, this isn’t one of Shamsie’s better projects. Maybe she works better with longer word lengths or maybe it was just me, but for some reason the magic usually present in her work, in books like Burnt Shadows or Kartography, seemed to me to be very distinctly missing from this short story about a boy who discovers that he might actually be related to jinn (or djinn, or genie; take your pick).

It certainly has a very strong beginning. Qasim, our young protagonist, upon waking up and rushing to the nearby mosque for prayer, accidentally ends up joining a contingent of praying jinn. The carpet is different, the hair on each head is bright red, and most alarming are the feet. 

There was a moment when everyone was kneeling and he alone stood tall. Then he saw it. The feet of every man in the congregation were turned backwards at the ankles.

My initial reaction to the feet being turned backwards was scoffing disdain, because that is the most cliché description of jinn I’ve ever read. However, further reading of the anthology brought about a dawning realization that it might be a very desi version of what we think jinn look like, and isn’t that the whole purpose of a collection of stories, to show you how different people view the same thing?

Thankfully, the rest of the story is both original and at the same time a stark representation of our own society, which is fascinating since it’s a story featuring supernatural creatures. Even though Shamsie’s story is about Qasim and his relationship with jinn, the most interesting parts of this story are composed of moments when other people are relating events in the past to Qasim. His stepmother’s account of the time of Qasim’s birth or the fortune tellers contortion of Greek mythology into a jinn-related tale both take into account the world we live in while at the same time adding a fantastical element to them. 

“Castor and Pollux were twin brothers, but one was human and one was jinn. A jinn named Zeus had lain with their human mother in the guise of a firebird. Pollux, the jinn, was immortal, but his brother was not.”

Giving away the reason for Qasim’s close association with the jinn would ruin the essence of the story, and there’s only so much one can discuss in terms of plot points in a short story without giving the whole thing away. Suffice is to say that amongst the three Pakistani stories in this anthology, Sami Shah’s Reap is probably the strongest in terms of storytelling, but Shamsie’s is a close second, if only because she has the experience required to write a compelling story, and it shows. 

This is Review Part 1 of the Anthology titled The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories. The remaining reviews for stories by Pakistani authors in this anthology can be found here.