Granta 112: Pakistan by John Freeman

Granta 112: Pakistan Reviews

• 
  W

  Granta,the British quarterly,published a Pakistan edition in 2010. It includes the work of some well known Pakistani writers,some history,some poetry and a look at terror attacks,that were taking place at the time. Also has some interesting photographs,and artwork.
  
  Mohsin Hamid's short story,A Beheading,is the best piece of fiction here. (It was written at the time,when the Taliban were actually beheading people). Fatima Bhutto's essay bored me. Basharat Peer's article,Kashmir's Forever War,was interesting.
  
  I'm not too keen on Nadeem Aslam. Kamila Shamsie's detailed look at Pakistani pop music,is interesting as well.
  There are also excerpts from the books of Uzma Aslam Khan,and Mohammad Hanif.
  
  I skipped quite a few articles,but overall,it is an interesting collection.
• 
  Yamna

  3.5 stars
  
  Every Pakistani MUST read Leila in the Wilderness by Nadim Aslam (titular story). It is absolutely mind-blowing and why I even read the rest of the stories. But every other work featured pales in comparison to the beauty of the first story. Definitely a must read
• 
  Sarah

  I think everyone needs to read this. No, really. This small but dense volume brings home the realities, the hopes and dreams, the desperation, the creativity, the complexity of modern Pakistan in a way that lurid news stories about "Islamization" and the Taliban never can. It contains a myriad of explorations--fictional, journalistic, poetic, artistic--of what it means to be Pakistani. It was at times frightening, at times inspiring, but I came out of it feeling like I have a much greater understanding of what the world is like for the parts of my family that still live in Pakistan, and even those who have become part of the South Asian diaspora and now live in the UK or US.
• 
  Catherine Siemann

  When I began the first story in this issue, Nadeem Aslam's "Leila in the Wilderness," it felt eerily familiar. It happens that I had recently read Krupabai Satthianadhan's Kamala: The Story of a Hindu Child-Wife, a relentlessly grim 19th century realist novel about a child-bride oppressed by her husband's family. Though Leila is Muslim, rather than Hindu, the story began the same way -- a bride in her early teens, beaten for producing girl babies (who mysteriously disappear) and continually browbeaten by her mother-in-law. However, this story moves into post-Rushdie territory by shifting to magical realism, and turns out very differently indeed.
  
  The other standout for me was Uzma Aslam Khan's "Ice, Mating," where the culture clash between an adult immigrant from Pakistan and his American-raised girlfriend, and their differing ideas of "home" come to the forefront. Kamila Shamie's "Pop Idols" was a fascinating piece of reporting; though her topic was Pakistani rock bands, their interaction with a larger cultural and political context is what truly fascinates. Mohsin Hamid's "A Beheading" reminded me a little of the end of Kafka's The Trial; Jamil Ahmad's "The Sins of the Mother" was devastating.
• 
  Jacqui

  Memorable Quotes
  
  Leila in the Wilderness – Nadeem Aslam
  “The divide wasn’t just on the surface: an ‘underground wall’ – delving to the depth of fifteen feet – kept the dishonourable corpses separate from the honourable ones.”
  
  “The strength with which a molar holds on to the jaw when you have it extracted is as nothing to the strength with which the soul is attached to the body. When they begin to tear away from each other, the torment is unbearable.”
  
  “Allah in His wisdom gave us five external senses, and five internal – common sense, estimation, recollection, reflection and imagination.”
  
  Kashmir’s Forever War – Basharat Peer
  “It doesn’t matter how many times I come back, the frequency of arrival never diminishes the joy of homecoming…”
  
  “The dead speak in Kashmir, often more forcefully than the living.”
  
  Ice, Mating – Uzma Aslam Khan
  "Converging is what divided us."
  
  Butt and Bhatti – Mohammad Hanif
  "He has been a customer of women and occasionally their tormentor but never a lover. He believes that being a lover is something that falls somewhere between paying them and slapping them around."
  
  Arithmetic on the Frontier – Declan Walsh
  "Carrying guns is a common fashion around here,' Kamal told me as we bumped along. Like a woman wears a necklace, this is our jewellery."
  
  "...disputes dragged on for decades, handed from father to son like cherished heirlooms. 'You never forgive,' he said. 'You may wait twenty, thirty, fifty years - and then you take revenge."
  
  "Roasting hospitality, smouldering pride, cold and clinical revenge - thus it has always been among the Pashtun."
  
  "Today the population has swelled to 700,000 - as Kamal puts it, 'Sexual intercourse is appealing to everyone. Everyone!"
  
  "Only 12 per cent of women can read and write - unsurprising, perhaps, considering how rarely they leave their houses..."
  
  "...a guilty man may delay jirga justice until his enemies have knocked off an equal number of his own relatives; thereby evening up the score. This is what Kamal calls a 'trick of the trade'."
  
  Pop Idols – Kamila Shamsie
  "…I merely affirmed what every adolescent growing up, like me, in Karachi could tell you – youth culture was Foreign. The privileged among us could visit it, but none of us could live there."
  
  "...East met West in its adulation of the gun and its hatred of the godless Soviets."
  
  White Girls – Sarfraz Manzoor
  "I would look at the rapt expressions on the faces of the white girls and I could practically hear their knickers sliding to their ankles."
• 
  Lawrence

  Interesting issue of Granta. When I started reading it, I was irritated by the characters of the mother and son in the first story, Leila in the Wilderness, so much so that I had to abandon the issue for a period of time. However, when I came back to begin reading the issue again, the story picked up its pace and proved more interesting with its mystical realism-like ending although those two characters continued to be so corrupt, self-serving, downright evil through out the remainder of the story. This issue turned out to be less a fiction issue and more a nonfiction reporting, memoir issue than I had expected. Nevertheless the insights offered throughout the issue satisfied. After the previous few disappoints from issues of Granta, I felt the publication returned to good form with this issue with its focus on Pakistan and writers from that country.
• 
  Chris

  I read the first piece, "Leila in the Wilderness" by Nadeem Aslam, last. It is a beautiful piece of magical realism whose story harkened back to the pieces, fiction, memoir and reporting, I'd read before. I guess if I read the Granta from beginning to end, it would have foreshadowed the pieces that followed. This was a collection of works, prose, poetry and graphic arts that offered a deep look into Pakistan. I was engrossed.
• 
  Todd Melby

  I've only read "The Beheading," a harrowing short story. Love the photography and the colorful artwork on the cover. Need to read more.
• 
  Brian Short

  A rockstar journal covering an urgent and important topic. Not to be missed.
• 
  Jim

  A few very good stories but the rest was hard going.
• 
  Gladia

  I enjoyed this issue of Granta way more than expected. This year I've been doing ok at expanding my reading horizons a bit further beyond my beloved American literature and I think this Granta came at the right moment.
  
  This issue has too many pieces that I liked. So, at the risk of not narrowing down enough, here we go with my long list of special mentions:
  
  - Leila in the Wilderness by Nadeem Aslam -- Opening short story of the issue. Also how I got to know Aslam for the first time.
  - Portrait of Jinnah by Jane Perlez -- For a West European like me with zero knowledge about Pakistan this was a very informative piece. Interesting discovery: the name Pakistan comes from the initials of Punjab, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Sind; and from Baluchistan, the 'stan' part meaning land.
  - Ice, Mating by Uzma Aslam Khan -- Beautiful short story about a couple of Pakistani that meets in California. Nice quote: 'We said 'opposites attract' and we were right. Converging is what divided us.'
  - The House by the Gallows by Intizar Hussain -- Pakistani writer Hussain talks about dealing with censorship. 'Along with religion, an unthinking nationalism had become the other god of Pakistan.'
  - A Beheading by Mohsin Hamid -- Short and stark. Impossible to get it out of your head.
  - Restless by Aamer Hussein -- Story of a boy that moves from Bombay to London. As it turns out, it matters little where you come from and where you move to. The themes characterizing puberty and being a foreigner are the same regardless of ethnicity and origin. 'Pakistan divided. East Wing, West Wing, we'd called its distant limbs, but the body that lay between them belonged to another vehicle, almost all of India: and how long could we fly together with unmatched wings?'
  
• 
  Dorothee Lang

  The Granta collection is a carefully edited, multi-facet read. It includes stories and essay, poetry and photography. And the cheerful, colorful cover itself gives the read a different tune, even though some of the stories are painful and tragic. But it also includes an amazing story about the mountains of Pakistan: "Ice, Mating" by Uzma Aslam Khan, about creating a glacier: ""After five winters, the ice blocks - one male, one female - would begin to creep downhill, growing into a natural glacier.."
  Who knew?
  The story that fascinated me most in the Granta collection: "Pop Idols" by Kamila Shamsie. In a mere 14 pages, she tells so much about life in Pakistan, how it was to grow up there, and how national and international politics influenced everything, including pop bands.
  
  (this is part of a longer book review of "high altitude reads" as part of a global reading challenge, more here:
  http://virtual-notes.blogspot.de/2013... )
• 
  Patrick

  The subscription was a very welcome Christmas present (thanks, Mum...)
  I very much like the idea of a collection of writings: fiction, non-fiction, poetry and photo-journalism, around a common theme. The highlights included the short story about a young woman kept as a virtual prisoner by a Machiavellian local politician, stories of Pakistan's pre-Al Haq pop scene(an aspect of the country I knew absolutely nothing of) and the poem about a plane coming in to land. Moreover, nothing in this edition really dragged. I think the 'theme' idea around which granta is put together works particularly well when the theme in question is a country of which I knew fairly little.
• 
  Fatima Khalid

  I liked this book, I did. The essays in particular, most of which I'd already read somewhere but enjoyed re-reading(Portrait of Jinnah by Jane Pelrez ended too abruptly for me but loved Declan Walsh's Arithmetic on the Frontier)
  BUT maybe one day I'll be able to read about brown men with a hankering for white women without grimacing and find some kind of significance in it, and maybe I'll be able to read one of Nadeem Aslam's novels/stories and be able to tell them apart, and maybe Hari Kunzru is right in that art from Pakistan cannot help but be political in some form.
  All I can say though is read this for Jamil Ahmed. And then go read the Wondering Falcon.
• 
  Queenie

  Not one of my all-time Granta favorites. But good nonetheless.
• 
  Rick

  Wow. Is there any 'happy' Pakistani literature? This book needed at least one story that had a pleasant/'feel good' ending. (I suppose one of the biographical pieces ended well.)
  
• 
  John Clarke

  Some interesting stories, a broad picture of Pakistani life and tribal customs
• 
  Vineeth

  Pieces are hit/miss.
• 
  Basila Hasnain

  I reserve my Review until August. Its too early in June
• 
  Adrian Buck

  Horrifically violent cover to cover; despite some good writing, this book invokes more fear than sympathy for Pakistan.
• 
  Saadia

  I liked his issue, but also it does make Pakistan seem like a a tribal land where women are oppressed and terrorists behead people. Except, overseas Pakistanis are hip (and annoyingly self-absorbed). I knew this was a popular critique of this issue, so its been lying on my shelf for ten years!
  
  Nadeem Aslam, Intizar Hussain and the non-fiction and reports are really excellent. The rest is okay. I don't understand why there's a piece on Popular culture that a non-Pakistani reader would not care about or understand. Shamsi herself is far far from an expert on the matter (and no one calls the clothing brand "J." "J dot").
  The rest of the fiction was okay. I was especially annoyed by Uzma Aslam Khan's "she not like other Pakistani girls" protagonist/love interest. Theres threes stories about diaspora experiences (2 too many). None really treat the subject with any nuance, besides the question of sex and marriage from the male perspective.
• 
  Suman Joshi

  Fantastic collection of stories, essays and poems that throw light on Pakistan - the country, it’s society , politics and culture . Each piece is unique bringing out the beauty of the place as well as its problems . You travel through the length and breadth of the country - from its cities to the mountains in the North West Frontier Province with a feeling of wonder and intrigue.
  Leila in the wilderness and Pop idols were my absolute favourites in the book ! So glad to have been recommended this
• 
  Chiron

  Worth finding for "Leila in the Wilderness" and "White Girls"