BROKEN IMAGES

Thinner than Skin By Uzma Aslam Khan, Fourth Estate, Rs

499
In Uzma Aslam Khans new novel, mountain peaks are windows in a door, vices hitch a
ride in the bells o mountain !oats, thou!hts scatter like moonseed, horses are win!s to
the world, owls to the ne"t, and !laciers mate, witnessed by silence# It is a beautiul novel
where almost every word has a taste and a colour, which e"pand in circles in the readers
mind# $odern lives are woven in with old le!ends, pa!an rituals are carried over into
days o $uslim belie, the city impin!es on desolate, or!otten countries, the %est makes
inroads into the &ast and is aced with the impenetrable# The plot, i there is one at all, is
in the loatin! ima!es' therein lies the stren!th and the weakness o the novel#
There are two distin!uishable strands runnin! parallel here# (ne o them involves
$aryam, a woman o the )u**ar tribe, who traverses the plains and the mountains o
northern +akistan, her nomadic blood resistin! the idea o settlin! down and the State
makin! sure that she can call no place her home# The other is about ,adir, a youn!
+akistani livin! in America, who has to !o back to the land o his ori!in because his
!irlriend, -arhana, o )erman.+akistani parenta!e, /lon!ed or a country0# The stories o
$aryam and ,adir conver!e in a moment o disaster when $aryams dau!hter drowns#
Thereater, there are only shards o lie that are never pieced to!ether a!ain# $aryams
ancient spirit 1 stretchin! beyond her own lie into that o her ancestors, who have
rou!hed it out like her in the wilderness 1 is able to cope with the tra!edy better than
,adir# 2ost in the mountains, separated orever rom -arhana, ,adir has to become a
naturalized nomad to learn the meanin! o lettin! !o# $eanwhile, on the olden Silk
3oute, which is the novels settin!, lie !oes on4 5hina continues to encroach upon
+akistani territory while +akistanis, Uzbeks, 3ussians, 5hinese and A!hans, each
i!htin! or an ima!inary homeland, or!et their dierences everyday in the interests o
trade#
The predominant ima!e in all this is that o the eye and its kin, the window or the camera#
,adir is a nature photo!rapher who cannot succeed in America because /a Sheikh must
be a war photo!rapher o the %ild &ast6 7e must wow the world not with the assurance
o !race# 7e must wow the world with the assurance o horror#0 The &ast must it itsel
into the way it is seen by the %est so that Bushbabies can i!ht ri!hteous wars that also
serve to rob the ormer o its riches# 8et sympathetic interventions, like the one made by
-arhana in the lie o $aryams child, also turn out to be ruinous# -aced with inscrutable
reality, ,adir hides behind his camera when he is not lookin! out into the ordered,
mana!eable world o the %est rom the bay window o -arhanas apartment# But sinister
windows 1like the mountains, $alika +arbat and ,an!a +arbat, in the araway Ka!han
9alley 1 which open on the !rey void, beckon him# ,adir must put away his camera in
the Ka!han 9alley to stare naked at /loneliness, the absolute absence o anywhere or
anyone to turn to0#
The intensely poetic, even mythic, :uality o Khans prose produces mi"ed results# It
!ives the story a resonance beyond itsel but the story is oten lost in the resonance#
+erhaps this eect is deliberate4 Khan may have been tryin! to make the novels structure
ollow the elusive Silk 3oute 1 still thrivin! at places, lost to the rava!es o time at
others# &ven as the heap o broken ima!es in Thinner than Skin live on, the story be!ins
to ade rom the readers consciousness as soon as the book is shut#
A,USUA $UK7&3;&&