6 Nadeem Aslam Nadeem Aslam is a novelist who was born in 1966 in the Punjabi city of Gujranwala, Pakistan, and went t© a mediocre Urdu medium school, belore moving to Huddersfield when, he way 14, knowing no Faglish. He continues to live in West Yorkshire, but now in a lakeside setting in the countryside Given his eelatively late arrival in the UR, he is neither a dias sporic ‘British Pakistani writer’, nor a Pakistani writer, but is situated in an in-between position, complicating conceptual boundaries between East and West. He dropped out of a bio= chemistry degree at the University of Manchester in his third year, because he felt that if he had the safety net of qualifying as a marine biologist he would be ‘dragged into worldly affaizs’ and never become a writer, Given that Aslam is one of the most lin= guistically adept and poetic of contemporary English-language ‘srilers, i is surprising to learn that he only studied for a science 134Nadeem Aslam education because his English initially wasn’t strong enough to allow him to pursue his love of literatuce. Aslam comes from a large, broadly working-class, family, and hhas over S0 first cousins. He describes the paternal side of the family as being bohemian and artistic, whereas his mother's side is more conservative, although he stresses that his mother was not the blueprint for one of his more hardline Muslin characters, the strict but lonely: Kaukab in Mops for Lost Lovers His father is Mian Mohammed Aslam, who was a communist poet and film-maker and 9 member of the Progressive Writers, Association,’ writing under the pen-name of Wamag Saleem ‘The family ‘shuttled between Britain and Pakistan’? for many 1g persecution by Zia-ul-Hag's regime in the 1980s, Once permuaneritly settled in Britain, Mian’ was compelled to give up writing by the pressures of supporting his family ay a political eefugee.* His fath six great Urdu poet Wamag Saleem as a homage to Mian, the fictional poet said to have done for Pakistan ‘what Homer did for the Mediterranean and. what the Bible did for Jerusalem’ Wamaq frst appears in Season of the Rainbitds as a luminous poet who learns Persian in order to come to a greater understanding of Urdu’s nuances, and who is so widely beloved that his name is even tattooed to-a police sergeant’s chest In Maps for Last Lovers, the charac- ter Suraya recalls Wamaq’s trip to England during his enforced exile fom Pakistan's military regime, and both @ young gil and the Qawwali singer Nustat Fateh Ali Khan (iho makes a cameo appearance in the novel) are described singing his poctry® In The Wasted Vigil, Wamag appears ‘visiting Alghanistan to give a recital of his poems’,’ Finally, in his recent novella, ‘Leila in the Wilderness’, which opens Freeman's celebrated Granta 112 fon Pakistani writing, the male protagonist Qes's brother Wamaq, Js named after the socialist poet.” Aslam explained to me that the brothers in ‘Leila in the Wilderness’ are in part a coded reference to himself and his father, because Mian wanted to call his son Qes. His moth years before finally fleei 's psendonyan is ificant to Aslam, who created the 13s.ris Muslim Fetions felt this to be an insufficiently orthodox Muslim name, so they compromised on Nadeem, alter the Pakistani short story weiter and poet Altmad Nadeem Qasimi, thus linking Aslam to Urdu literature fom birth. Like V. S. Naipaul, Orhan Pamuk, Hanif Kurcisht, and others,’ then, Astam has achieved sriterly success where his father was unable to, in part because of Mian’s exile and childcare responsibilities. As Aslam described it to me, ‘sometimes the constraints are to much for one person to become a whiter in ane generation; you need two lifetimes to do that, so T hit the ground running after my father prepared the way’, Aslam originally envisioned his three novels to date as a triptych, with the first examining Pakistan, the second multicultural Britain, and the third Afghanistan. Astonishingly, hhe now has a further eight books mapped out very precisely, anid Waray Saleem features to varying, degrees in every pro: jected volume in what he describes a ‘relatively unified body: ol work’ His ttst novel, Season of tie Rainbitds, written in LL months when he was just 22 vears old, was shortlisted for of won several awards including the Betty Trask Prize, In this novel, Aslam por luays a member of a strict Muslim sect breaking a child relative’s toy as he sees it as idolatrous, somettiing which atv uncle did to. Aslan himself when he bought a mask as a boy." Like Salman Rushdie’s Shame anid Rukhsaria Ahmiad'’s pathbreaking We Siafid Women anthology of English translations fram Unda poetry," Season of tite Rainbieds is an carly text to examine the damage that Ziaul-Hlaq’s Islamizing regime did to Pakistan het 1977 and 1988, and continuing residues in the post-Zia era Aslam lambasts Zia’s programmes of censorship and Islamization (the latter taking the form of blasphemy laws which persceute minorities, such as the novel's Christian character, Elizabeth), and his fiercely misogynistic Hudood Ordinance, Season of the Rainbinds also revolves around the trope of lost letters, as a bag ‘of post that had been lost in a train crash two decades earlier is rediscovered, The impact of this mailbag coming to light Js similar to that described in Agha Shahid) Als later poetry 146Nadler Aston collection The Country without a Post Office, which deals with lewers fost in the sar zane of 1990s Kashmir Letters enable intimate and more prostic communication across borderlines and between farang places. In some respects, both Astam’s and Al's writing fumnetions asa series of letters hetween an exile and his homeland. Never one to shy from conteoversial or difficult toptes, Aslam is unequivocat in his condemnation of superstitions associated ‘with Islam, whieh harm many people, particularly women. He isan impassioned opponent of ‘honour’ killings, about which he writes extensively in his second novel, Maps for Lost Lovers, which was garlanded even further than was his debut by eritics and literary prize judges (For example, st found a place on the Booker Prize longlist of 2004), He wrote Maps for Last Lovers over 11 impoverished years, sleeping in friends’ Hats in Huddersfield, Leicester, and Reading.”* Dusing our dialogue, tne explained that in the third year of the novels ereation, he stopped working on the forward momentum of the story, a in order to develop his characters more thoroughly, spent the nent four years writing hundied-page biogtaphies lor each one. Around the same time, Jonathan Franzen was using similar methods and also spent about a decade writing The Coreections, although Franzen’s write’s black appears to have beent greater than Aslam’ (the latter extensively educated himself in litera ture during his apparent 11-year disappearance). As well as scrutinizing Aslam’s sharp critique of problems in Pakistani Communities, which has led to critics rightly observing that he overloads the abuses,” it should be noted that he is caustic about White racism. This racisen (which he depiets as stemming from colour prejudice towards Pakistani migrants in Britain, rather than from Islamophobia, for example), is condemned for is aggression and ignorance. However, alticial Faber book club material argues that Aslam ‘decided not to tread the well: trodden. path of white racism" in Maps far Last Lovers, While this 18 ton sweeping, certainly his inversion of the ugliness of racisn is innovative, Here, for example, he describes Pakistani Edinbur 17Bish Muslin Fetians migrant families’ responses to the violent, physical attacks prevalent in 1970s Britain: At night the scented geraniums were dragged to the centres, of the downstairs rooms in the hope that the breeze dense with rosehips and ripening limes would get to the sleepers. upstairs ahead of the white intruders who had generated it by brushing past te foliage in the dark after breaking int Here, Aslam characteristically finds a Yeatsian ‘terrible beauty" in the flowers designed to raise a perfumed alam if racists force nntry info the somnotent house, Throughout his pewre, Aslam also demonstrates that class is at least as important an issue as race or religion in characters’ inter actions with each other. For example, in’ Maps for Lost Lovers, he describes a wealthy Pakistani woman who blames poor immi grants for White racism towards their better-eshucated compatriots memorably denouncing them as ‘sister-mmurdering, ase-blowing, mosque-going, cousin-marrying, veil-wearing, inbred imbecile Pakistan's complex class divisions are further explored: when Kaukab responds, ‘w/e are driven out of our countries because fol people like her, the rich and the powerlul. {...] And now they resent ous being here too. Where are we supposed to go?" Similarly, in ‘Leila in the Wilderness’, Aslam provides a searing portrayal of the suffering ol the 1wo brothers, Qes and Wamaq, sho are just seu of the ‘millions of youths who do] menial work’ throughout Pakistan,” and whom: the bourgeoisie prefers to Keep illiterate so that they don't get above themselves, According to Mungeza Shamsie, Aslam’s Aighan paternal grandmother was very important in his childhood and contin tugs to influence his fiction.** His most recent novel, The Wasted Vigil, recounts 30 years of war-torn Alghan history through the stories of several characters trapped! together ina house including two doctors, Marcus (now an English perfume factory owner, who has his hand amputated by the Taliban) arid Qatrina {his wife of 20 years, nonetheless considered his mistress because 18Nadeen Adam 4 female cletle performed thelr wedding rites). The violence in Afghanistan was Uiggeted during Zis's regiene when te C1A, was encourag. via Pakistan in support of the mujabideen fighting against the Soviets. This has had a devastating impact on both nations because the weapons and jikadi mindset have continued to proliferate in the subsequent Afghan civil war and America’s ‘occupation from 2001 onwards, “The style of Aslam’s novel is intense and uncompromising, and yet there is more incongruous beauty in many of his images. For example, Marcus's mutilation is described elegiacally and horrii cally a5 follows: ‘the skin cup he could make with the palms of hhis hands is broken in halt'* Aslam’s borrowings in this novel are extremely eclectic, ranginy from Michael Ondaatje and Jolin Beager to Aamer Hussein and Yeweny Vinokurov, One of the novel's scenes is deliberately set in March 2001, when ancient Buddha statues were destroyed in the Bamiyan valley,”* and a picture of| the statue of a Buddha's head makes the frontispiece of both hard back and paperback editions, so this was Aslam’s retutation of the Taliban’ desteuction. He says of the Taliban, ‘although I may not have been able to stop you in real life, in my mind and my book you won't succeed in destroying this Bucklha", On the debit side, however, The Wasted Vigi’s only significant Afghan character, Casa sometimes lapses into acting asa one-dimensional moutlspiece for ‘violent, joyless Islamism, and the shpperiness of the nat voice means that misleading statements such as Lara’, [fhe reli gion of Islam at its core does not believe in the study of science’ can all too easily be mistaken for authorial diktats.”” Finally, the long short story ‘Leila in the Wilderness’ centres on a child-bride whose daughters are taken away from her and who is punished by her husband and mother-in-law for not pro- ducing boys. Her husband's family has prided itself on turning, out exclusively male progeny for countless generations, so suse picion also falls on Leila that her daugtiters may come from ant alfsir with another man. Although not guilty of adultery, the mattiage was a forced one, and the teenaged Leila is still in I to. pour anoney and weapons into Afghanistan nersh Muslim Fictions love with hier childhood sweetheart, Qcs, the latter embarking oon a quest to find her during the course af the story. As wel detailing what he axgucs is a prevalent antipathy towards the birth of girl-children in by the ancient Arab legend of Leila and Majaun. This is sig nalled, for example, in the chaice of both the hero's and her fine’s names, because Qes in the legend is alten known as Majnun, meaning the Mad One, due to his gre at the loss of his lover, 1eila. The ancient love story of Leila-Majnun is ane of the centzal metaphorical, comantic, and mystic texts of Musbin civic lization, its subject matter foreshadowing Romeo and fact Like Shakespeare's Iater tale of star-crossed lovers, Leila-Mai influence is extensive, and other Lnghshanigaage wter, janeAmerican Khaled Hossein, ke reference to it The issue of female infanticide is Aslam’s addition to the existin of forbidden love andl Insanity in Lella-Majtun but, despite this gloomy synopsis, ‘Leila Jn the Wilderness is also a love story shot through with opti- nist and with 2 fairytale happy ending, | would like to conclude by quoting an excerpt rom a breath taking (both literally and figuratively) two-page sentence, which stopped me itt my tracks fanother deliberate pun) towards the end of the novella, It describes Lella’s loves, Qes (now an amnesiac) telepathically sensing Leila’ suffering from hundreds fof miles away, and being drawn to the train station in a way that is ‘almost involuntary [..] like falling, or like rising in a dreams" Once there he buys a ticket, telling the official his name is Leia, just as the legendary Leila and Majnan’s identities Decomie almost interchangeable." From there te travels through Pakistan to be by her side, the train going takistan, the lush novella is also inspired Karnila Shamsie anc Mg nelany past the towns and cities and villages of his immense home, land of heartbreaking beauty, containing saints and sinners and a gentle religion, kind mothers and dutiful fathers who indulged their obedient children, its crimson dawns, and its Dlue-smoke dusks and its unforgivable eruelty: [1 its 40Nadeem Aslam rich for whom the poor died shallower deaths, its pour for whom only stories about hunger seemed true, its snow- bind mousitains and sunburned deserts and beehives producing honey as sweet as the sound of Urdu, and its unlorgivable brutality and its unforgivable dishonesty [..) The long sentence, from which | have abstracted just a fragment of its many clauses, reflects the rhythm of the train journey in that it sometimes slows down and at other times maintains a uniform pace or speeds up, mimicking the iterative repetitive- ness of the train’s clacking on rails, and also indicates the great variety of sights spotted through that being a nocturnal writer he wrote it at two in the mornin Returning from a 20-minute run, he immediately sat at his desk and, without even taking lis trainers off, wrote the sen tence detailing all the things he could remember about Pakistan inv an intense fives its window. Aslam explained dnute burst. With iis paradoaical blend of despair and joyful optimism, irony and stream-of-consciousness candour, this ane sentence shadows forth many of Aslamn’s bit rary concerns int his work as a wvhole, including aestheticism, gender, religion, Urdu, sexuality, violence, and poetry CC: You provide a subtle portrayal of the internal life of the orthodox Muslim character Kaukab in Maps for Lost Lovers, so that the reader has some sympathy for her despite her fre quent mistreatment of her family, However, do you worry about presenting gloomy depictions of Muslim/Pakistani culture given prevalent negative images in the media? Na: People like Kaukab exist and therefore can be dismissed neither as incomprehensible, nor inconsequential. She is an amalgama- tion of my aunts and the mothers of my friends and girlriends, Wole Soyinka said recently, ‘England is a cesspit [.] the breeding, ground of fundamentalist Muslims." Ke is entitled to his opinion, However, he went on to say that, asa result of Ayatollah Khomesni’s 1989 fatwe against Salman Rushdie, ‘the assumption of power over Ife ant death then passed to every’single inconsequential Muslim 14in the world — as if someone had given them a new stature’ Again, Ido not have a problem with the point he is trying to make, bout Lam troubled by his reference to certain. Muslims as ‘inconse quential’. What kind of a worldview is it when people like Kauka ‘clogated to an inconsequential category because, in Soyinkals view, she ist involved in things that he considers of consequence? Soyinka is right to say thal a sense of empowerment w from the fatwa against Rushdie by some people, who then derived used this as justification to commit aets of violence, But to say some people are inconsequential; that I don’t understand, in response to the part of your question about counter balancing media representations, Fwould say that ['n not going, to do PR for Islam, or Pakistan, oF US imperiatisms. My novel The Wusted Vigil has many different characters and invites con tasting readings. | did some events to promote the novel, and in New York, an American man who hadn't been on a plane since 9/17 walked out of my reading hecause he said Tt made him sympathize with a jitudi character and that [was clearly pro-Taliban, In Lahore, a woman was angry because I'd made her empathize with an American, and she circulated a pamphlet claiming that the CIA and M15 had directed my writing of the novel. Ata event in London L vas criticized for writing a sym pathetic portrayal of a communist Russian character, A novel is a democracy, and as a novelist | have to work hacd at making. the reader understand every character. You can't present three characters and explore the childhood and relationships of the First two but not the thisd. The reader will reject your writing if you don’t make everybody human, but that’s also what gets me Into uouble with certain ideologues. CC While an understanding of the process of Casa's radi calization is arrived at in The Wasted Vigil, there is less sense ‘of his internal world than there is with Kaukab in Maps for Lost Lovers, Was that deliberate? Nés This novel differs from Maps for Lost Lavers both structurally and physically. It is shorter, yet there are more characters, 142Node Asa meaning a degree of allusion was necessary. The fist 70 pages or So of Maps for Lost Loves consists of rotting but textare, sith the eentral plot element (Shamas's affair) not oecurring until some way into the navel. With The Wasted Visi, the plot begins with the first line, 1 don't necessarily want readers to sympa- thize with Casa, ax many ceaders have told me that they do, but I want them better to understand swhere these people come fom, and how they arrive at the point they have. This is not to encourage Forgiveness, but is rather about preventing such ra calization in the luture. I've been criticized for lines such as, ‘t]he religion of Islan at its core does not believe in the study of science, but [tied to make it clear that that thought came from Lara, not me. In the earlier payes Yam at pains to make it apparent that we are in somebody else's mind, through free indirect discourse. By the stage this statement occurs, Tsas hoping the reader would realize we ane in her mind, without me having to explicitly say, she thinks’, Lara is someone who earlier had thought about “Muslim terrozists’, rather than ‘Islamist terrorists’. The irony is that this is a woman from Russia sshose own avorkdview is a spiritual one based on Christianity: She may say that the Muslims are irrational, but és Gabriel coming down te. Mary rational? Once she has bee she begins to see the house asthe ruins of Islamic eiviliz in the house for a couple of weeks, CC: All three books contain unexpected metaphors, partic. ularly Maps for Lost Lovers, in which the writing is loaded swith imagery. NA: The metaphors actually become less frequent with the later hovels. My intention with Maps for Last the literary equivalent of a Persian muniature, in which there is a remarkable density of detail, know this perlaps can't he done sucessfully 18 prose, just as a song cannot be painted, but can only be sung. At that time, [was experimenting with a language that was sill relatively new to me, while al the same time going back to my Urdu roots, in particular the lush imagery of Urdu overs was to create vsBrish Muslin Fictions poetry, [don't know how successful {have been in carrying this ‘out, but on the other hand, as an artist, I don’t think it is my concern to think how my work will go dawn in the baakshops, For me, my job ends the day I write the last full stop. Beyond that, itis the publisher who takes over. CC: Speaking of which, you did remarkably well to be signed to André Deutsch and then Faber, so could you describe your experiences of publishing? A: T was very young and naive when I wrote my first novel, Season of te Rainbieds, wing, in the provinces. Some of my favou- rite writers were Gore Vidal, John Updike, and V. S. Naipaul, all fof whom, | learnt from looking at the copyright pages of their novels, at the time wrote for André Deutsch. So I sent my man scrip! to Deutsch, not knowing to make a copy of it oF to 6 Tater, | got the call from them, asking, ‘Could I speak to Miss Nadeem Aslam?" They thought was a woman, because Season of te Rainbinds (and all my subsequent writing) explores womten’s issues either obliquely or directly The publisher adr 45, when [ was actually in my early twenties, because as a young, writer | didn’t feel able to take on the grief of the young which the world often: underestimates ~ until "a written about older charactets fst. I’S only now, in my forties, that I'nn beginning to turn my attention to the young int a sustained way, Anyway Deutsch called me and invited me to come to lunch to discuss the manuscript, [refused on the grounds that I had no money {to pay for any lunich and they said, ‘Dan’t worry Then f was picked up by Faber, which 9s a wonderful house, with areal ‘family’ feel. The editors look alter you, they love the books, promote them well, and make you feel appreciated They've publistied Kureisli, Pamuk, Peter Carey, and Paul Auster, these gods | was reading when I was younger, and of course thelr poets are peerless, As for promoting my books: on the one hand, Fd rather be with anew novel. The whole process of bringing through agents and, sone tin sted later that sted also assumed | was at Teast ‘I give you 144Nadeem Astam ul a book takes about a year, during which time you can't sit twiddling your thumbs, so you're working on new material, On. the otter, | am deeply involved with the aesthetic appearance lf the books, as [ have lived with them for years and know what the key’ images should be, With The Wasted Vigil, | wanted the novel to breathe, so such things as font size and layout were important. Fortunately, [am involved with the top publish: ing houses around the world, such as Knopf in the States and Germany's Rowahlt, and each is very cooperative, CC: Returning to the miniature form, was Pakistani minia- turist Abdur Rahman Chughtai your main influence when producing Maps for Lost Lovers as a detailed, intricate work? NA: When [ first went to India in 2005, 1 visited the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, There was something unfathomable about the pictures there. 1 walked around three or four times, yet I still couldn't quite grasp what they were sayi tome, The following day’ | returned, in order to work out what made the place special and asresting. Then, alter aday and 4 hall, { realized: every att gallery [ had ever visited up to tat point had been in the West, anid the subjects in the paintings hhad been White peaple. For the first time, | was in a gallery where the people on the walls staring back at me were the colowr of my own skin, Thad worked so hard at settling in England that [ had almost forgotten who | was and sshere | was from. My early years in Pakistan had beer erased and I thought [would never go there: again, because [ couldn't afford the tip. East and West at one level are complete opposites: you guys take your hats off on enter. ing a holy place, while we [Muslims] cover our heads in a holy place. A friend visited Pakistan, and gave mea book by Chughtal containing paintings of people who looked! ike me; people who) ead the Qur'an, rather than the Bible. This was a great influence, and of course the dedication to Maps for Lost Lovers reads, ‘for My Father, who advised me at the outset, all thase years ago, 10 always write about love, and for Faiz Atmed Patz 1911-1984 and 145British Muslin Fictions Abdue Rahma Chhughtal 1897-1975, wo masters who taught ze, each in his own way, what else is worth loving’ Chughtai showed me that art can be composed by people Tike me, This statement indicates how difficult it ean be to five iny another culture, it $s easy to idealize cultural migration, and fof course it can be a positive experience. However, more alten than not, migration is terribly traumatic, particularly for those people trom the Indian subcontinent who are not afluent and. have lived in ant enclosed environment all their lives. Personally, [think cultures should intermingle, but we mustn't romanticize the immigrant’s often cruel journey: If people assume that immi: gration t@ the West brings comparable wealth and happiness, they should speak to a taxi driver, can protect myself from the racism of certain White people, but a taxi driver can't, because they're getting into the back of his car, drank, on a Saturday Nt, His idea of inn ation will be totally different from mine and, asa writer, Have to keep that i tind, CC: Please discuss the different circumstances faced by the first gencration of Pakistani immigrants who came to Britain, and their sons and daughters who were born here NA: I many ways the children became conduits to the outside world, For example, a mother whe didn’t speak English: would have taken the child with her to the doctor's surgery to act as an interpreter. I'S been over 40 years now since the beginning of immigration, so the circumstances for the grandchildren are different again. The younger generations have to consider the and to what extent they fecl an affinity question of identity, with their background. In my own extended! family, when staying with my father’s rela tives, people were painting, singing, the radio was on, and there: ‘were beantifal pictures on the wall, My mother’s side of the family ‘was far more austere; theis walls were iwhite in line with Islamic law ~ there was no radio and we were forbidden to have toys Although | found my mother’s side difficult, it helped me under stand a range of people, It is interesting to consider what being 146Nadeem Aslan ‘good’ means, outside of religion: there's a lot to be said for religion enhancing the importance of such i¢ ‘obligation to you was as a fellow human being, but with Christ ‘came the idea of the ‘brotherliood of man’: [am good towarts vou because you are my sisterzbrother. That is not to say that Buddbisia and Eliniduisin do not preach compassion, but it is without this same sense of strarigers’ relationships involving filial obligation, If wwe were to remove Christianity from the workd, would that idea go away? Idon’t think we need Chiistianity to enforce this notion, Decause itis part of the fabric of the world now als, Before Chiist, my moral CC: What did Islam add to these existing beliefs about human interaction? Na: My understanding of Islam, from a non-believer’s perspec tive, is that Mohammed was trying to build a state. 4 state needs armny, taxes, and so forth essentially, he was a politician, What happened on 9/11 to the West was just a widescreen version of what has been happening in the Muslim world sinee day one. The factions began to fight as soon as Mohammed died Through an uncle breaking my toys, I got to learn about the conflict and contradictions trom a very early age. Ewas born inte this struggle, one that until recently the wider world was ignerant ol. Atter the Rushdie Allair, people ‘was going an, but it wasn't 3 pressing cance to mainstream society The West has obviously to some degree acided to these tensions For example, in the epigraph to The Wasted Vigil, lite a pre-9/11 interview with Zbigniew Breezinsky, President Carter's Nasional Security Adviser, during which, he was asked whether he regret ted giving weapons and advice to future tecrorists in Alghanistan He shortsightedly replied, ‘{w[hat is more important to the history of the world = the Taliban or the [J end of the Cold War?! However, we musta't romanticize, Whatever the Americans are doing to maintain their power now, Muslims, incas, Spams, aed British colonizers would also have done. This is what empites do. [amt deeply suspicious of the idea of ‘empire’, or that someone re aware that something vrFaitish Musto Fictions can be converted with love, which for me means nothing, (Once you are in somebody else's country, you have already alterest the balance ol power ane way or another, There ate 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, but five billion other people, so Muslisns make up ¢ about a fifth of the world’s popmlation, and that is something that Islamists don't understand. CC: You provide a fascinating depiction of the Taliban madrasa, in which Casa is indoctrinated as a child. How did you go about researching such schools? NA: [made a research trip to Afghanistan, and in Pakistary you are never more than a few people away from someone who has direct knowledge of these things, so I asked people, For example, | got speaking to a young nan while on a bus from Faisalabad tg Lahore, [told hin Iwas writing a hook about a boy wha grew hap inv a muirase and went on to join a terrorist training camp. He grinned, and said that he himself had spent tine in a terrosist, camp in Kashmir. On another occasion, [went to see my aunt wtto was a headmistress, and she was visibly shaken, | asked her what was wrong, arid she told me she'd had a triumphalist call from a student whose brother had just died fighting in the Kashmir insurgency. My aunt asked to speak to her mother to pass ‘on her condole es, but the gir refused, saying that her mother ! by her father for grieving, when she should hhe celebrating that the boy Soit wasn't difficult 4o research at all, as these things are eecurring all around us, | had no ditect experience of studying in a madasa, because as a boy | wasn’t interested in learning Arabie or studying the Qur'an. However, my city, Gujranwala, now sends more boys to terrorist training camps in Kashmir than any other town in Pakistan, and ne af my old schoo! friends also died fighting svas being chastizs there CC: What has caused this level of insurrection in this part of the Pakistani Punjab? NA: The two main contributing factors are its proximity to Kashmir and the poor standatd of schooling. The school [ went aeNadees Aslam to was termible, and in no way equipped you tor adult life in the modem world, When you are so poorly trained, you either have to move abroad to find work, o you fall into the hands of 1s school friends, but everybody has lelt due to the lack of employ hauls. The last Hine | went over, [tried to look up some old ment. They take up menial jobs abroad: some are driving taxis in New York, others are washing dishes in Barcelona, but no ‘young person stays in Gujranwala, if they can help i CC: Tt seems as though you've encountered a lot of despair about the future of Pakistan NA: While what I have said may sound quite desperate, you cannot gel me to believe that Pakistan will not exist im ten) years. The whole country could be on fire, and yet | would still believe everything will eventually pan out, Ultimately’ | feel it is a good thing that Pakistan's problems are being discussed. This, is why I'm so suspicious of what fs going on iu India, this idea ol ‘India Shining’. While India's middle-class populatio have grown to around 100 million ~ an enormous number of people there are 900 million other people whose voices are not being heard, At least we don’t have a ‘Pakistan Shining campaign to obscure the social problems of the country CC: A central idea in Maps for Lost Lovers is that immigrants are involved in anew cartographical enterprise, remapping, English landscapes, and translating the northern street names. NA: One of my ideas for the cover was a map ol England with all the city names in Urdu, which I thought would be a strange, powerlul image. As writers we may exaggerate, but in fact, there are people from my community ~ particulary from the pres ous generation ~ who fee! apprehensive about venturing into some areas of Huddersfield because they are straying outside the Asian neighbourhood. In these predominantly Asian areas, everything in the neighbourhood, from the post office to the doctor’s surgery, is Pakistani-run. It’s strange to think there are people, living in England, who can count on the fingers of 9Fritish Muslin Fictions one hand the number of White people they have spoken to, In the neighbourhood | grew up iit, where Maps for Lost Lovers is set, most of the White peaple moved out years ago, [ have seen small children, kids of six or seven with their jaws on the floor because an elderly White lady has walked by. However, Ido not feel there is any cause for despair with this younger generation. Once they get to school, or start heading into town, they will mingle with everybody. People olten say my books are datk, Dut [ill not accept that Muslims and White people are going, to kill each other, Of course there will be problems, but all 1s, not lost CC: There are elements of magic realism in Maps for Lost Lovers, which bring to my mind the following observation by Salman Rushdie: ‘If one is to attempt honestly to describe reality as it is experienced by religions people, for whom. God is no symbol but an everyday fact, then the conventions of what is called realism are quite inadequate. The rational ism of that form comes to seem like a judgement upon, an invalidation of, the religious faith of the characters being described. A form must be created which allows the mira- culous and the n exist at the same level." NA: In Islam, it is ssritten that the angel Gabriel spoke to Mohammed, so you ate required 10 believe in the existence of a winged! creature, It says in the Qur'an that God created angels out of light, humans out of earth, and the demon andl dines out of fire, which people absolutely believe, So if Lam to talk about Kaukab seriously, then | also have to deseribe djs ir earnest, because she believes they are around her, lve heard a family anecdote in which a gi!'s lather tried to break into her room to molest her and she screamed), so he used the smokescreen expla. nation in the morning that she was alarmed because she heard a djinn come in, Of course it’s lie, but devout people are going to believe it. Is the way I write about these issues magic realism? don't know, but then | don’t ceally care! Tam not going to condemn magical realisnt just to be fashionable, If] feel [eat toco- 130Nageen Aslam make a point using a magical realist device, then I will, Not to do so would be like a painter deciding not to use the colour red, In ‘Leila in the Wilderness’, the two lovers yearn for one another so much that their hearts become magnetic: that could bbe considered magic realism, but it makes my point well, ay do various literary devices in other situations. CC: To what extent are you influenced by modernist techniques? NA: | was speaking to a young writer some time ago, and he said he could ne a 25-year-old in our times being Interested in the work of Proust, Now L remember being 2S, and | was totally obsessed by Proust! foyee was also a great influence, particularly the frst story of Dubliners, “The Sisters’! The whole fl Season of the Rairthinds comes out of that story; it gave me the confidence to go ahead with my first novel, Books by Camus, Hardy, Faulkner, Lawrence, Joyce, Proust, Dostoevsky, are all within an arm's at am ath of me when F write CC: How do you feel about the legory of ‘Muslim writing’ that is under scrutiny, of are you more comfortable being interpreted in terms of your nationality? NA: Having lived in England for most of my life, ['m more fare of my class than my tace of religion. If initiatives around the category of ‘Muslin writing’ are being made because British, Bangladeshi and Pakistani kids are riot doing well at school ¢ of poor White kids in the same area, I'm writing about human beings. While it is impossible to say alll people and nationalities are the same, there are certain con= stants that permeate all humanity: mothers, fathers, friends, cousins, and so on. The social, economic, political, and religious categories into which we are dropped of course shape the way swe act as mothers and fathers, bul parenthood retains the same basic reality Lam Pakistani, British, northern, working-class: that is my background, and you can find my books in the ‘ethnic’ section the same will beBritish Muslin Fictions fof bookshops, but also in the alphabetized Ierature section, Nation js of little importance 1 me ay a writer, because [come Irom a country that came into being in the name of natio ideology, religion, and politics. As a result, ane million people were killed in the violence of P this ideology it gets into the wrong hands. On this issue of Partition, if Lavere alive back in 1947, ideally: | would have been against the idea that Muslims needed a country for themselves, but that belongs to.a longer conversation, We have to undesstand what Congress were up to, and why the Muslim League made their demands, But to say now that Pakistan should not exist is to play into the hands of the Hind fundamentalists: only in ¢he dreams of U BIP-wallahs can Pakistan ot exist, Its not part oF India, but adistinct country int My own right, there are similarities, but it has its own distinct identity, While some Pakistanis love Indian people and vice versa, if our rulers do not want us ta be tagether, ‘we will not be together. Politicians don’t give a damn what ordi nary people think, and if they wa a lovely idea to think we can and let the powerful know they are answerable to us, Yet in 1965; and 1971, relatively speaking there was greaver cultural exchange than there is now, and there were wars, Betore 1947 we lived in the same country ~ what more cultural exchange can you wish for than that? ~ yet a different country was ercated, In truth, eul- tural exchange is never going to mean anything, if the polit cians aren't kept in check, tition, Lam deeply suspicious of # nationhood, as | know what can happen when var there will he war. It is ‘ake over, empower the peopl CC: Would you agree that in comparison with your serious criticisms of what Nawal [1 Saadawi calls ‘establishment Islam’, you are more positive about Sufism and associated art forms, such as Qawwali music? NA: In Lahore on a Thursday sight you can go to the tomb of Sufi saint Shah Jamal and hear the former tonge-svaliak, Pappw Sain, playing the drum. It is two o'clock ia the morning, pitch black, and you see brilliant points of light as people smoke 152Nadeem Aslam marijuana, All the while, the Taliban are just over the horizon Yer Sufism has its corruptions too. The last time | was at the mausoleum, | saw a six foot five transvestite = this is in a coun try supposedly in the grip ol clerical militancy = and with him ‘was a girl who could not have been older than 12. They sat down with another man, passing a joint between them, and the gir! left with the man. tn short, a deal was done and the gicl was sold. So we mustn’t romanticize and say how wonderful Sufism is, because there are two sides to everything ‘When light travels through a prism, depending on where you are standing, you are either going to see only white light, or all the colours af the spectrum. If there isa theme in my writing, it is that [am standing on the side of the pristn in which {ean see: that the fight isn’t just white.“ Vim lucky that my family is so diverse, including communists and rightwingers, religious nuts and atheists, educated and illiterate people, poor and rich. Some ff my female cousins ate covered head-to-toe in. urgus and haven't left the house sinice marriage, while there are feminists and one woman cousin is a flight insteuctor in the Pakistani army. Since a very early age I have been acutely aware of the various different ways in which one can be a Muslin. If you ask me what a 25-year-old Pakistani woman is like, I would be unable to generalize, As a novelist it isa great gift, CC: Is the discovery of the cache of photographs of immi grants in Maps for Lost Lovers* a reference to Tony Walker's Belle Vue portrait studio in Bradford, which from 1926-75, was known for taking archaically formal photographs of the city’s immigrant workers and their families?" NA: That’s right. I saw it on the cover of the independent maga- zine in the 1990s when Twas writing Maps for Last Lovers. | will come back to those photographs, as I want to write another novel about the north. Mups for Lest Lovers by and large concentrates ‘on the older generation, but 1 will write a novel about younger people i the same town, because my generation's story has yet to be told, It will incorporate the 7/7 bombings, because the 133Bish Myst Fictions perpetrators came from Leeds, The mosque in Dewsbury at which bone of the bombers was radicalized was actually founded by my late uncle = the same uncle who used to break my toys and beat my mother when she svas young. [n the 1960s anid 705, he used to go on preaching missions to the West, and when he moved to Dewsbury he helped found a mosque, the Marka Masjid, sshich became the European headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat.** Thar is how deeply linked 1am to all of this, and I'm going to discuss it in my future novel, H heard the bus explosion go off on 7/?, 1 was a couple of blocks away coming out my agem'’s office, | thought it was a car backfiring. My mother rang me in a panic, as 1 was due to get a train up north, 'd had no idea about 9/11 on the other hand, and didn’t find out until 20 September because [was swtiting, My father saved all the newspapers {rom 12 September through to the ‘liberation’ of Afghanistan in Novetnber, whieh am using now for a new novel Of course it's a good thing the Taliban are gone but, once again, one can't say this without qualification. If you read books ahout postwar Europe, people knew that people in certain towns hhad been Naai sympathizers, bul while the big leaders were taken ‘out, the town needed order anid if members of the police force hhad collaborated, you had to tolerate the snore minor criminals and just keep ant eye on them. Pn not saying that this was right, but it happened in Maly, France, and Germany. This isa phenom. enon Lwsrite about in The Wasted Vigil, Tragically, i's all about money, and no we of this isin the control of us ordinary people jaw what the Taliban have done, but the town needs to be run again, so these people are brought back in. CC: A lot of Pakistani writers are now depicting Afghanistan, so how much of an impact have the various Afghan coniflicts had on Pakistan and in particular its writers? NA: I can only speak for myself, and I was writing about these Uhings in my first book in 1992, AI! three of my books have started with a personial concer. [wanted to talk about religious fundamentalism, which | did in Season of the Rainbinds, and 154Nadeem Aslam honour Killings, which I wrote about in Maps for Lost Lovers. In the time it took me to write those books, those concerns became everybody else's concesns, and it looks as though T chose them because they were popmlar topics. Yet when P started writing Maps for Lost Lovers, the term ‘honour killings’ was not known and [thought J would have to explain to people what it means, Now there have been honour killings in Spain, Canada, and Germany. Likewise with The Wasted Vigil, it appears that I decided to write about current events in Atghanistan, but the story is actually as old as Maps for Lost Lovers. Why, as a writer, would you not want to talk about that if you're from that area? In the 1980s and 90s, there were hundreds of thousands of war onphans. It just so happens that over the course of time those orphans, now militarized, have become something the whole world knows about, CC: Could you dese n the Wilderness’? previous writing I'd discussed women’s issues tangen- tially, but in the novella | wanted to come at these head-on Some topics are so obvious that they're never discussed, and the antipathy towards female children in Pakistan is one of those. I thought about writing about this for 15 years, and kept think ing that another writer would get there first, but nobody dic. For some time, [ didn't have the courage to write the story, because i's upsetting to talk about people not wanting their daughters. About four years ago, T went to Pakistan, and two incidents occurred to galvanized me, which I've written about in Where to Begin’ The fst was reading about a woman who gave birth and promptly accused the hospital doctor of swap. ping her son for a girl baby, later admitting that she lied due to fears about hee husband's reaction to having another daugh tet, The second came when | met an educated man at a party and, on learning that | am child-free and think of my books as my children, he advised me to view my successful novels as my boys, and my unsuccessful ones as daughters. Pakistan is ye why and how you set about writing 155British Must Fictions tne of the few countries in the world that fas more nen than women, so | wrote ‘Leila in the Wilderness’ for all she women who should be there but are not.*” [ heard that Granta, one of the world’s great literary magazines, with more history, was producing a Pakistan issue, so | finished the novella in two months during carly 2010, | thought they might find it too long, at over SO pages, but they immediately bought it and put it at the front of the volume ana century's CC: What do you think of this emerging category of ‘new Pakistani writing’ in English, as showcased in Granta 112? NA: In his 2008 Nobel Prize lecture,*! Jean Matie Gustave Le Clézio named some of the seminal works of our Limes, among which he mentions Queratulain Hyder’s novel Ag ka Darya [River of Fire]. To most, it would seer that this work is something of a lost classic, being relatively unknown in the West, In Lahore, however, Hyder’s novel has been considered a masterpiece from the Instant it was published in 1959, When | was growing up, It was one of the s understandable that the majority of Westerners have no prior knowledige of Riverof Fire, just as I'm sute there are great Latvian novelists of whom we have not heard. Atriving in England at il then, it it was as a result of having spent time minal works of Urdu literature. It is perfectly 14, [was very troubled by the concept of racism. U somebody disliked me swith me and formed an opinion based on my personality, The idea that people could decide they did not wish talk to me based on appearance alone freaked me owt. My position was sup. posed to be one of in of ill repute. Hower from Pakistan, this so-called inferior part of the world. So my relationship (0 this country #s different to that of my cousins who were born here, They internalize this apparent inferiority as they don't have 14 years’ worth of experience to fall back fon and give them confidence that the slurs are unfounded. This relates to multiculturalism: should we not teach dark-skinned siority, having came Irom this country I knew that some of the world’s great Singers, painters, thinkers, and leaders had come 156Nadeem Aslam kids in schools something about their own background, their ‘own history and culture? You ean he totally ruthless and say we want to produce competent people who contribute to society but one way to da that is to make people leel good about them: selves that they come from somewhere that is @ part of the world's story I's complicated, hecause as well as a Pakistani writer, 'm also ‘an Englishman, whether or not I, or anyone else, ikes it, Within that, I'm a Yorkshireman and, even though I have a pl London, after a month there, [begin to miss my hills, Asa writer, a artist, and a thinker, the only nationality | have is my desk: this is my passport. When | look at Yellowstone Park, [ don't say to myself, “This is American’, and if gazed at Lake Geneva, I wouldn’t be thinking of It as a Swiss lake; I'd be thinking of the world’s beauty. Nature, beauty, and art belong to everyone and are without nationality, To quote Derek Waleott, with his mixed Caribbean heritage, ‘either I'm nobody or I'm a nation’. So either I'm everything or nothing, and | don't really see a con- tradiction there, My alphabet doesn’t only have 26 letters, but also the 32 of the Urdu alphabet, so [ have a total of $8 letters at my disposal as