And it’s not just because his other novel, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, was good, but because he writes nonfiction so well. All of his stuff on NYT and BBC Urdu has always been consistently entertaining and engaging, which was why this book came as a particular shock.
Make no mistake, his commentary is still on-point. When talking about war’s absurdities or the intricacies of familial love, Hanif combines humor with fact to create that wry, satirical tone that I’ve known and loved in many of his columns. In fact, the only parts of the book that I actually enjoyed were when the writing disassociated from the protagonist and entered into an observational mode, commenting on the things around them rather than on developing the character or moving the plot along.It’s a well-known fact that those under assault from outside take it out on their own. The opium eater gets kicked in the bazaar and since he can’t hit back, he comes home and kicks his kids. Big, rich nations get a bloody nose in far-off countries and start slashing the milk money for poor babies at home. You can’t bring an enemy plane down with a stone, but you can smash your neighbour’s window.
But while the sparkling insight and funny bits are all good and well in shorter articles, for a novel you still need some actual narrative arc and characters worth reading about in order to feel invested. And while Hanif’s non-fiction is what I’ve always enjoyed, it's clear that his fiction writing is just not for me. Which is ironic since his novels are what brought his name to my attention in the first place. But after almost falling asleep in the first quarter of the novel, and continuously checking how many pages were left once I passed the halfway mark, I knew this book and I were not meant to be.
Maybe that had something to do with the characters, who all felt entirely boring and purposeless: Ellie, an American pilot who crashes near the site he was supposed to be bombing, gets rescued by Momo, a money-obsessed teenager who dreams about rescuing his missing brother, and is accompanied by Mutt, an actual dog who is our third protagonist.
One could argue that there are lots of hidden depths to the novel, especially in the characterization of Momo, who alternates between dreaming of various entrepreneurial schemes and being interviewed by a young researcher who has come to study The Young Muslim Mind. Momo is an interesting character entirely wasted in this book, and—once again can’t believe I’m saying this—could have been so much more with a better author.
‘We used to drink wine from our enemy’s skull. Now we drink purified water from paper cups made by cutting down trees.” She looks relieved. I think I have given her a glimpse into my young, troubled Muslim mind.
In fact, there are lots of potential opportunities in this novel that are so thoroughly missed that it feels sort of disappointing. ‘Good idea, bad execution’ is not a tag I thought I would use with a Hanif novel, but here we are. Even Ellie, who could have grown from the cynical, vaguely misogynistic, mostly repulsive adult male, manages to have no proper development and learn no lessons. And while I don’t necessarily expect my characters to change in order to justify their presence in a story, I do expect at least some reason for them to exist within the narrative. Sadly enough, the only time when Ellie becomes relevant is when the author uses him as a mouth piece to indulge in the sort of outrageous, in-your-face statements that he’s known for.
If I didn’t bomb some place, how would she save that place? If I didn’t rain fire from the skies, who would need her to douse that fire on the ground? Why would you need somebody to throw blankets on burning babies if there were no burning babies? If I didn’t take out homes, who would provide shelter? If I didn’t take out homes who would need shelter? If I didn’t obliterate cities, how would you get to set up refugee camps? Where would all the world’s empathy go? Who would host exhibitions in the picture galleries of Berlin, who would have fundraising balls in London? Where would all the students on their gap years go? If I stop wearing this uniform and quit my job, the world’s sympathy machine will grind to a halt. You don’t hold candlelight vigils for those dying of old age and neglect. You need fireworks to ignite human imagination.
Even the character of the mother, from whom I was expecting some three-dimensional complexity, gets reduced to her obsession with bringing her son back. I’ll admit, a significant portion of my expectation came from the fact that Alice Bhatti, the protagonist of Mohammad Hanif’s 2011 novel, was such a self-aware and interesting female character, but all of the things that made her alive and relevant seem completely missing here.
One could argue that there are lots of hidden depths to the novel, especially in the characterization of Momo, who alternates between dreaming of various entrepreneurial schemes and being interviewed by a young researcher who has come to study The Young Muslim Mind. Momo is an interesting character entirely wasted in this book, and—once again can’t believe I’m saying this—could have been so much more with a better author.
‘We used to drink wine from our enemy’s skull. Now we drink purified water from paper cups made by cutting down trees.” She looks relieved. I think I have given her a glimpse into my young, troubled Muslim mind.
In fact, there are lots of potential opportunities in this novel that are so thoroughly missed that it feels sort of disappointing. ‘Good idea, bad execution’ is not a tag I thought I would use with a Hanif novel, but here we are. Even Ellie, who could have grown from the cynical, vaguely misogynistic, mostly repulsive adult male, manages to have no proper development and learn no lessons. And while I don’t necessarily expect my characters to change in order to justify their presence in a story, I do expect at least some reason for them to exist within the narrative. Sadly enough, the only time when Ellie becomes relevant is when the author uses him as a mouth piece to indulge in the sort of outrageous, in-your-face statements that he’s known for.
If I didn’t bomb some place, how would she save that place? If I didn’t rain fire from the skies, who would need her to douse that fire on the ground? Why would you need somebody to throw blankets on burning babies if there were no burning babies? If I didn’t take out homes, who would provide shelter? If I didn’t take out homes who would need shelter? If I didn’t obliterate cities, how would you get to set up refugee camps? Where would all the world’s empathy go? Who would host exhibitions in the picture galleries of Berlin, who would have fundraising balls in London? Where would all the students on their gap years go? If I stop wearing this uniform and quit my job, the world’s sympathy machine will grind to a halt. You don’t hold candlelight vigils for those dying of old age and neglect. You need fireworks to ignite human imagination.
Even the character of the mother, from whom I was expecting some three-dimensional complexity, gets reduced to her obsession with bringing her son back. I’ll admit, a significant portion of my expectation came from the fact that Alice Bhatti, the protagonist of Mohammad Hanif’s 2011 novel, was such a self-aware and interesting female character, but all of the things that made her alive and relevant seem completely missing here.
And on a much more random note, I also couldn’t stand the fact that she was constantly called ‘Mother Dear’. It’s entirely possible that, in college classes where this novel might become required reading in the future, there might be interpretations and reasons for why this particular title was relevant, but I didn’t care for it, and it needlessly irritated me.
Mother Dear doesn’t need consultants in this house. She doesn’t need psychological assistance to get a grip on her life. She doesn’t need folklore or any such sad-ass lectures to get her life-work balance right. She wants her son back.
What also irritated me—and there is unfortunately such a long list in this novel—is the dog as a narrator. Matlab, what? Why? An animal as a main character might be cute in certain books, but my god was Mutt a pointless protagonist. Random and rambling and mostly not engaging enough, all of Mutt’s chapters were a test of my patience, except in the places where Hanif broke out of character, taking on the tone of an omnipresent narrator providing commentary from above.
God left this place a long time ago, and I don’t harbour any delusions about my own role on this earth but I can imagine what he must have felt like. He had had enough. I have had a bit more than that.
In fact, pretty much the only person whose existence Hanif has fun with is the young female researcher, Lady Flowerbody, who embodies the sort of do-gooder humanitarian who has come to save the souls of the poor, ravaged children of war. It is in her characterization that his snark truly manages to shine, showering disdain and amusement in equal measures at the very idea of people like her. Reference after reference after reference fluctuates between scorn and a healthy dose of hilarity when talking about those who travel to war-ravaged areas and attempt to ‘save’ the people over there.
First they bomb us from the skies, then they work hard to cure our stress.
Now if only Hanif could have concentrated on channeling his sarcasm, we could have been saved from the frankly disastrous ending. And this won’t even be a spoiler, because to spoil an ending you have to be able to understand what actually happened. Because ghosts? And magical realism? And what the what now? I want to be able to understand what happened at the end, not to have to guess. And I get that allegory and metaphors and allusions to things can make for great literature, but it’s usually a hit or miss, and this time it’s a definite miss for me.
Red birds are real. The reason we don’t see them is because we don’t want to. Because if we see them, we’ll remember. When someone dies in a raid or a shooting or when someone’s throat is slit, their last drop of blood transforms into a tiny red bird and flies away.
I guess the only redeemable thing about this novel is the fact that Mohammad Hanif is still as intensely quotable as always. In shorter bursts he writes well, and in certain paragraphs the authority he has over the language really shows through. Overall though, I just didn’t care for the plot, or the characters, or even about the fact that it had been written by such an esteemed writer. As a recommendation, I’d say I personally didn’t care for it, but everyone is welcome to give it a go.
You got killed, now you are gonna stay killed. It doesn’t matter whether you died bravely or left this world shitting in your pants. White or brown, dead is dead.
Mother Dear doesn’t need consultants in this house. She doesn’t need psychological assistance to get a grip on her life. She doesn’t need folklore or any such sad-ass lectures to get her life-work balance right. She wants her son back.
What also irritated me—and there is unfortunately such a long list in this novel—is the dog as a narrator. Matlab, what? Why? An animal as a main character might be cute in certain books, but my god was Mutt a pointless protagonist. Random and rambling and mostly not engaging enough, all of Mutt’s chapters were a test of my patience, except in the places where Hanif broke out of character, taking on the tone of an omnipresent narrator providing commentary from above.
God left this place a long time ago, and I don’t harbour any delusions about my own role on this earth but I can imagine what he must have felt like. He had had enough. I have had a bit more than that.
In fact, pretty much the only person whose existence Hanif has fun with is the young female researcher, Lady Flowerbody, who embodies the sort of do-gooder humanitarian who has come to save the souls of the poor, ravaged children of war. It is in her characterization that his snark truly manages to shine, showering disdain and amusement in equal measures at the very idea of people like her. Reference after reference after reference fluctuates between scorn and a healthy dose of hilarity when talking about those who travel to war-ravaged areas and attempt to ‘save’ the people over there.
First they bomb us from the skies, then they work hard to cure our stress.
Now if only Hanif could have concentrated on channeling his sarcasm, we could have been saved from the frankly disastrous ending. And this won’t even be a spoiler, because to spoil an ending you have to be able to understand what actually happened. Because ghosts? And magical realism? And what the what now? I want to be able to understand what happened at the end, not to have to guess. And I get that allegory and metaphors and allusions to things can make for great literature, but it’s usually a hit or miss, and this time it’s a definite miss for me.
Red birds are real. The reason we don’t see them is because we don’t want to. Because if we see them, we’ll remember. When someone dies in a raid or a shooting or when someone’s throat is slit, their last drop of blood transforms into a tiny red bird and flies away.
I guess the only redeemable thing about this novel is the fact that Mohammad Hanif is still as intensely quotable as always. In shorter bursts he writes well, and in certain paragraphs the authority he has over the language really shows through. Overall though, I just didn’t care for the plot, or the characters, or even about the fact that it had been written by such an esteemed writer. As a recommendation, I’d say I personally didn’t care for it, but everyone is welcome to give it a go.
You got killed, now you are gonna stay killed. It doesn’t matter whether you died bravely or left this world shitting in your pants. White or brown, dead is dead.