| BOOKS: INREVIEW
TRESPASSING IN PAKISTAN
By
Shailaja Neelakantan/NEW DELHI
Issue cover-dated November 27, 2003
Trespassing by Uzma
Aslam Khan. Flamingo. $26.85
In Trespassing, Uzma Aslam Khan's deft second novel, Daanish,
a young Pakistani man studying journalism at a university in
Boston, cannot resist pointing out the prejudice behind the
headlines of American newspapers reporting on the 1991 Gulf
War. He refers to one such headline--"More Than a Madman"--about
Saddam Hussein, and remarks, "The irony is that the top
of the article begins with a photograph of schoolchildren in
front of a photograph of Saddam and the caption reads: From
birth, Iraqis are taught to obey their supreme leader's every
command. The caption could easily read: From birth, Americans
are taught to obey their ruling troika: the White House, Pentagon
and the Media."
His professor, who has been teaching the class about objectivity
in journalism, shows him the door. Daanish feels he does not
belong in an increasingly jingoistic United States. But, later,
back in Karachi for his father's funeral, Daanish's "Amreeka-returned"
status makes him an outsider at home, too.
Khan, like fellow Pakistani English-language authors Mohsin
Hamid and Kamila Shamsie, grew up in Pakistan in the 1980s and
went to the U.S. for graduate studies. She writes about contemporary
Pakistan and its problems, but she is more overtly political.
She makes Daanish a left-leaning character who realizes that
America isn't as free as it pretends to be.
At home, Daanish meets Dia, a liberal college student whose
life is circumscribed by society's restrictions on women. Daanish
and Dia fall in love but have to keep their relationship a secret,
because society frowns upon nonarranged relationships.
In Trespassing, everybody is a transgressor rebelling against
the confines of society and history.
At the other end of the economic spectrum, Salaamat, a son
of a fisherman is heckled and harangued for being a Sindhi.
"Everything about him--his looks, accent, language, carriage--was
mocked and shredded by the 30 or so workers who poured their
lives out on bus art." Salaamat is the most disenfranchised
of Khan's characters. In a sense, he is the embodiment of Pakistan's
problems.
Khan's descriptions of Karachi are vivid, vibrant and violent.
It is easy to picture the garishly painted buses, see the boys
playing cricket on every street corner and sense the terror
of violent hatreds lurking everywhere.
Khan sketches a world where the weak are shoved around by the
strong and the strong are dominated by "Amreeka."
Trespassing is a chilling reminder of U.S. realpolitik gone
horribly wrong.
Shailaja Neelakantan is a writer based in New Delhi
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