August, 2013

Happy things in sorrow times

by Tehmina Durrani

Book review by Rabia Ahmed (Pique)

The only statement even mildly approaching profound from the author’s pen is to be found in the last chapter of Tehmina Durrani’s latest book, ‘Happy Things in Sorrow Times’, where she writes: ‘Death is an invincible bodyguard.’ There is nothing to equal  this anywhere in the book, except what is incidental to the theme and the situation in which the characters find themselves. Durrani is up for no global awards for this book. National awards are, however, entirely possible.

What could well attract recognition and even awards are the illustrations--some thirty eight of them, endearing water colours that beautifully illustrate the novel and point to the author’s relatively unknown talent.

Tehmina Durrani has an unerring eye for subject. For the international reader, the shenanigans of a feudal lord and the travails of his wife hold a certain awful fascination. To the Pakistani reader, the interest is undoubted given that all these people, the feudal lord, his wife and their family and friends are well known figures in this country. ‘My Feudal Lord,’ Durrani’s first book, offers an insider’s tour of their lives.

Durrani’s second book ‘A Mirror to the Blind’ is a biography of the wonder Abdul Sattar Edhi.  Her third book ‘Blasphemy’ deals with abhorrent religious institutions and male tyranny, a sure fire subject for audiences everywhere.

Happy Things in Sorrow Times, Durrani’s fourth book, deals with the heartbreak that is Afghanistan and the tragedy of a child Basrabia’s life when Russian bombs destroy her home and family.  Nothing in this book explains its title.  The story traces the upheavals in that country’s history, from the Russian occupation to Taliban rule, to Afghanistan’s role of victim to American bombings and intrigue. Durrani touches on a few exposed nerves along the way which adds interest to the story, such as here in the conversation between children belonging to different countries now together in a refugee camp in Pakistan:

‘Why are you in our refugee camp?’ Basrabia enquired, and the boys replied, ‘The Amreecans recruited us from Muslim countries, trained us in Pakistani madrassahs, and dispatched us as soldiers to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.’

Elsewhere, the girls realise that ‘had they not felt used and discarded after the Soviet retreat, there would have been no terrorism and therefore no war today.’ It’s an overreach as a complete explanation of terrorism and war, nor is it a novel thought, but it makes you say ‘hmmm’ because you’re hearing it out of the mouth of babes who would have been barely born when the Russians arrived, and who, as the woman who runs the school realises have no understanding of the political situation whatsoever.

Basrabia, the heroine of the story is an endearing child who realises with the abruptness of a bomb that her world has changed, and that her mother is dead. She takes refuge with another Afghan family, and eventually at a school run by an American philanthropist in Peshawar where she grows up amongst other refugees of various nationalities.

You get the unmistakable impression that the characters in this book are supposed to have been drawn with a touch of whimsy and with an eye to the bewildering wonder of the world as seen through a child’s eyes.  Certainly, that is the vantage point from which the story is told, but it remains an impression.  It is as if an inebriated person, lurching, misses his mark. Basrabia can safely be called ‘weird’. Childlike and wide eyed, she has a habit of skipping instead of walking.  Clearly not unintelligent, when older and at the brink of applying for American Ivy League Colleges she retains the habit of skipping instead of walking. The impression is of a somewhat hysterical, slightly insane girl, one who speaks her native Pashtu, and also Urdu, English, French, and Arabic, pretending to be Alice in a mad world. Perhaps Durrani lives vicariously through this child because her own grasp of language, English, is somewhat tenuous. She skips and muddles through punctuation very much like Basrabia’s gait, and at one point she produces the following,: ‘Celavie!’ he mused, with a wide sweep of his hand that symbolically encircled the whole of Aghanistan. Clearly, either her grasp of French is equally nebulous or the publisher failed to get a good editor for the book.

Somewhere towards the end, the book morphs into a love story, although that is not strictly true.  Basrabia has yearned for her childhood friend throughout the book but at the end, the valiant young lady who has braved horrors is ordered to ‘look after her children, which is what women are supposed to do.’

And she’s still skipping.