Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | NXg | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest |

FICTION

Wounded civilisation

Pomegranates, symbolic of a plentiful Afghanistan, lie split on the cover of Nadeem Aslam’s latest novel, The Wasted Vigil. As Aslam puts it in one of the many memorable passages of the novel: ‘It would be no surprise if the trees and vines of Afghanistan suspended their growth one day, fearful that if their roots were to lengthen they might come into contact with a landmine buried near by.’ Life in Afghanistan, as expressed in this poetic book, has returned to dust under the Taliban.

Lately, there have been many writings on traumatized Afghanistan, chief among them being Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Feryal Ali Gauhar No Space for Further Burials. The Wasted Vigil is part of that genre that tells the stories of tortured souls in a nightmare of horrors that is the fate of contemporary Afghanistan. The book is not simply an incrimination of the Taliban but also about America that first cultivated it to counter the Soviet takeover and then sought to bring it down in its offensive against terror. Hidden in its depths is also an indictment of the stranglehold of tyranny that threatens the free spirited mind engaged in writing and thinking. There are thus all types of oppression that have left their residue in this country; but the overarching domination of male patriarchy that is overwhelming in its cruelty is the worst of all. The novel shows us that before the three decades of the Afghan conflict, women had confidence and freedom. In spite of the series of terrifying images that stare us in the face, Aslam’s novel, nonetheless, is about finding beauty and hope in the characters’ common suffering and unspoken agony.In terms of the story line, the novel is an account of several lives ravaged by a history of loss: of Lara, of the English man Marcus, of Casa and David, all of who come together in Marcus’ shattered home in Jalalabad near the Tora Bora mountains. Lara is a Russian woman, who is in search of her brother in Afghanistan. He was a soldier of the Russian army sent to invade the country in 1979, and now believed to be dead. Lara resides with Marcus, whose daughter Zameen, also dead, had been raped by a Russian soldier, purportedly Lara’s brother, and whose Afghan wife Qatrina, went insane after she was forced to chop off her husband’s hand. Thereafter, Qatrina nailed all her books to the roof which fall with a thud occasionally, a bleak reminder of the days of free will and openness in times when such joys are strictly forbidden. Marcus, himself, is a relic of a past, one in which he owned a perfume factory that too had to be shut down in the face of extremism that permits no place for such fancies. His only remaining hope is to discover his grandson who may have survived.

There is a deeper link between the lives of all these characters. Lara’s with Marcus, since her brother and his daughter have a son together; David’s with Zameen, as they fall in love; yet these characters resemble images instead of being allowed to come alive just like the disused perfume factory or the massive Buddha head—reminiscent of the Bamiyan Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban—which lies half excavated outside Marcus’ house. Small chapters devoted randomly to individual characters obstruct a structured story line. The language poses its own problems. The similes and metaphors employed verge on the bizarre: ‘The pomegranate was on a table close to the fireplace. She slit it open now. The outer layer of scarlet seeds had been warmed by the flames. The temperature of menstrual blood, of semen just emerged from a man’s body.’ Aslam describes the brightness of the moon thus: ‘The archangel Jibraeel, he knows, had been asked to blot away some of the moon’s brightness with his wings, mankind having petitioned Allah that it was too strong for the nights. The grey markings on the radiant white disk were caused when he pressed his feathers onto it three times.’ It is laudable that the author attempts to make each chapter resemble a veritable painting but more often than not, this technique tends to distract. Thus Casa’s midnight walk through the town of Usha when he walks into a booby trap has less suspense and more of a wordy picturesqueness.

Overall, the writer’s view tends to become one-sided even though he desires to remain neutral. One cannot help feeling that in spite of his claim that he ‘cannot imagine [his] life without Islam’, Islam is presented as inscrutable and ambiguous. Aslam’s intent may have been to reveal this part of the world to the West, but he has certainly not succeeded in doing away with the brush strokes

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail