University of Notre Dame

SOUTH ASIAN MUSLIMS: FICTION AND POETRY IN ENGLISH

Author(s): Muneeza Shamsie
Source: Religion & Literature, Vol. 43, No. 1 (spring 2011), pp. 149-157
Published by: University of Notre Dame
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23049363
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 FORI IVi 149

SOUTH ASIAN MUSLIMS: FICTION AND POETRY

IN ENGLISH

Muneeza Shamsie

Since the creation of Pakistan as an independent country m 1947, there

has been a continuous tradition of Pakistanis writing creatively in English, a
language acquired by South Asia, or the Indian sub-continent, as the direct
result of the colonial encounter. The links between European literature,

Islam, and the sub-continent date back into antiquity. Travel, trade, con
quest—all this contributed to the transmutation of tales and literary forms
across cultures, through the ages. The bhaktipoetry of India influenced the
mystical Sufi poetry of Islam (Jalal 17); the vernacular Hispano-Arabic
poetry of Andalusia influenced the troubadour poetry of Provence (Meno
cal 31-33), the earliest vernacular poetry of Europe; its theme of "courtly
love," which combined both a romantic and a spiritual yearning for the
Beloved, resonates with mystic Islamic poetry. However, when the European
Renaissance and Europe's new nation states asserted a unique European,
Greco-Christian culture, Euro-Arab influences were marginalized. In 1492,
the Moors were expelled from Spain; in the same year Columbus discovered
the New World. All this created a narrative which defined the European
identity and fuelled the imperial dream (M. Shamsie, "Pakistani Litera
ture"). Today's widespread notions of Christianity/the West vs. Islam have
roots in early ideas of European statehood where religion (Christianity vs.
Islam, Protestants vs. Catholics) shaped monolithic national identities. These
concepts of nationhood did not exist in the symbiotic Indo-Muslim culture
of Mughal India, but by the early twentieth century, under the impact of
colonization and the struggle for modernity, language and religion became
contentious issues in the fight for statehood. The political events leading to
the Partition of India in 1947 and the creation of an independent Pakistan
are central to the novels of several South Asian Muslim writers, including
the Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie (b. 1973) and the Indian writers Attia
Hosain (1913-1998) and Salman Rushdie (b. 1947).
The first major South Asian Muslim novel in English, Twilight in Delhi
(1940) by Ahmed Ali (1910-1994) pre-dates Partition. This was an era when
the independence struggle was at its height and a new breed of South Asian
English writers challenged the narratives of empire as well as orthodoxies
in their own society. In 1932, Ali was among the four English-speaking

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150 Religion & Literature

Marxists of Muslim origin who co-authored Angare, a radical Urdu story

collection, which was condemned as blasphemy and banned by the British
Raj. The country's literary community rose to its defense and launched
the influential Progressive Writers Movement. Soon, Ahmed Ali broke
away from this group, because he did not want to be confined as a writer
to Marxist proletarian literature (Ahmed Ali, "Afterword" 162).
Ahmed All wrote his first novel, Twilight in Delhi, in English, about a
traditional but decaying Muslim household belonging to the urban elite of
Old Delhi, the erstwhile Mughal capital. Ali juxtaposed the 1911 Corona
tion Durbar of George V with memories of past Mughal splendors and
the loss of Mughal power in India, following the Uprising of 1857.1 Ali
also experimented with the English language to try to capture the essence
of Indo-Muslim culture—its poetry, its street songs and sounds—although
this led to awkward sentences. In 1947, Ali migrated to Pakistan, where he
translated classical Urdu poetry into English and also tried to incorporate
elements of the Urdu ghazal into his own English verse. The ghazal. which
is the oldest poetic form still in use (Faruqui and Prichett), dates back to
seventh-century Arabia; in Urdu poetry it has attained great complexity and
elegance, and various Pakistanis such as the poet Alamgir Hashmi (b. 1951)
have tried to incorporate it into their English poetry.
The major breakthrough was made by the Kashmiri American Agha
Shahid Ali (1949-2001), who wrote sophisticated English ghazals and also
what is possibly the only marsiya in the English language. The marsiya is an
elegy which recalls the martyrdom of the Prophet's grandson at the battle of
Karbala and is integral to Shia Islam. At Shia funerals the marsiyaassumes a
spiritual and symbolic significance: in Ali's skillful 12-part sequence "From
Amherst to Kashmir" the poems mourning his mother alternate and reso
nate with those describing Karbala. In the same collection, Rooms are Never

Finished, published posthumously (2002), the dying Ali also translated and
adapted "Eleven Stars over Andalusia" by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud
Darwish (1941-2008), about the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. In
this multi-layered sequence, the loss of Andalusia, a much-loved homeland,
becomes a metaphor for Palestine and Kashmir, to which Darwish and Ali
belonged respectively; it was also their farewell to this world.
Prior to this, Salman Rushdie (b. 1947) made literary history when he
appropriated the English language in his innovative Midnight's Children(1981)
and became the first to capture successfully the hybridity of the South
Asian sound. His novel, which examines the birth of the newly indepen
dent India and Pakistan, is radically different from earlier Partition novels
because it merges European and South Asian texts. This tale of colonial
ism, independence, confused birthrights and switched babies highlights the

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 FORUM 151

commingling of many identities across the centuries—British, Portuguese

and Indian, Hindu and Muslim, Protestant and Catholic—and queries
notions of monolithic nationalities and cultures. The Satanic Verses(1988)
marked a watershed in contemporary literature: it enraged Muslims
many
who considered it blasphemous and it was banned in many countries, caus
ing various commentators to fall back on notions of Christianity/the West
vs. Islam (K. Shamsie, Offence5). Rushdie's next novel, The Moor's Last Sigh
(1995), employed a series of paintings portraying the farewell to Andalusia,
of Boadbil the vanquished Muslim King of Granada as a metaphor for
diminishing spaces in India for multicultural Jewish and Christian communi
ties, threatened by rising Hindu fundamentalism. Thus Andalusia becomes
the symbol of a lost world and a contemplation of exile (as it did in the Ali/
Darwish poem), and also an anguish at religious fanaticism. These themes
emerge again in a series of historical novels by the Pakistan-born Tariq Ali
(b. 1943) about the encounter between Islam and Christianity: The Shadows
of thePomegranate Tree (1992) about the fall of Granada, The Book of Saladin
(1999) describing the Crusades, The Stone Woman (2001) set in the twilight of
the Ottoman Empire, A Sultan in Palermo (2005) on the Norman conquest of
Muslim Sicily and the comparatively slight Night of theGolden Butterfly (2010),
which juxtaposes Pakistanis living in the west with ideals of their left-wing
student days in Lahore. Ali is best known as a political analyst and his light,
readable novels are strong on historical details which reflect and engage with
the West-Islam encounter today.
The universalist approach of Shahid Ali, Tariq Ali and Rushdie was pre
ceded by Zulfikar Ghose (b. 1935), who migrated to Britain in 1951, then
to Texas in 1969, and has written mostiy about his wife's homeland, Brazil,
revealing several parallels between South America and South Asia. Many of
his books, including his historical trilogy The IncredibleBrazilian (1972-1978),
and his tenth novel, The TripleMirror of theSelf! 1992), are quietly embedded
with a metaphorical imagery rooted in mystical Islam.
These writers provide a marked contrast to an earlier such
generation,
as Ahmed Ali and Attia Hosain, for whom English was the creative vehicle
to convey nationalistic messages. Hosain's Partition novel Sunlighton a Broken
Column (1961) gives a panoramic view of an elegant Indo-Muslim court cul
ture of Lucknow, but highlights its glaring inequalities of class and gender.
Hosain links India's struggle for independence and modernity with that of
her privileged narrator, Laila, an intelligent young woman, for self-empow
erment. Riots, political tensions, and bitter political arguments foreshadow
Partition: in 1947, many of Laila's friends and relatives leave for the new
Muslim homeland—Pakistan—but Laila stays on in India and Lucknow
becomes a city of ghosts. Hosain's view as an Indian provides an interesting

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152 Religion & Literature

comparison with Salt and Saffronby the Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie
(2000), who is Hosain's great niece (M. Shamsie, "Sunlight and Salt"). Unlike
Hosain and indeed, Rushdie, Shamsie (b. 1973) does not debate or query
Partition: Pakistan is intrinsic to the identity to her cosmopolitan narrator,

Aliya, the daughter of urban professionals. Aliya, however, is caught up in

the reverberations of her once-feudal family which was divided by Partition
and the social pressures of modern Karachi, her hometown, which is also
divided by class/money. The influence of Rushdie is evident in Shamsie's
hybrid prose and her multicultural narrative technique, but she takes this
further by appropriating a famous Urdu couplet, written in the Arabic script,
into her English text. Her fourth novel, Broken Verses(2005), which revolves
around the murder of a famous poet and the disappearance of his lover, a

fiery women's rights activist in Pakistan, draws on the Arabic/Sufi legend

of Laila Majnoon which Shamsie imbues with the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed
Faiz's concept of revolution as the face of the beloved.
Shamsie belongs to a young generation of Pakistani writers born in the
late 1960s and early 1970s whose English language writing has increasingly
engaged in a discourse with the United States. Her fifthnovel, Burnt Shadows
(2009), a tale of multiple migrations, revolves around the friendship between
two families: the Tanaka-Ashrafs and the Weiss-Burtons, and it takes the
reader across six decades from war-torn Nagasaki, to Delhi, Karachi, Af
ghanistan, the United States, and ultimately, Guantanamo Bay. The novel

highlights the horror of war and the nuclear threat and challenges the
prejudices and divisive rhetoric of nationhood.
Mohsm Hamid (b. 1971) looks at Pakistan's 1998 nuclear tests and the
ensuing economic disaster in his firstnovel, Moth Smoke (2000), set in modern
Lahore, which is framed by a notorious episode of fratricide from Mughal
history and echoes the novel's central themes: power, powerlessness, social
iniquity, and corruption. Hamid's second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
(2007), consists of a clever, ambiguous monologue in which the Pakistani,
Princeton-educated narrator, Changez, talks on and on to an American

stranger in a Lahore tea shop. The 9/11 bombing and, subsequently, re

actions to Changez in the United States as the alien Other, are central to
the plot. Changez says very little about Islam, Islamic culture, or indeed
religion, although his sense of a Muslim identity is quietly slipped in, during
the bombing of Afghanistan and a near-war between India and Pakistan.
Shamsie, Hamid and Uzma Aslam Khan (b. 1969) all grew up in Pakistan
during the urban violence of the 1980s and 1990s; a backdrop of guns,
drugs, and lawlessness runs through their novels. Uzma Aslam Khan's
third novel, The Geometryof God (2008), compares the universalist, humane,
mystical traditions of Islam with the politicized Islamic extremism fostered

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 FORUM 153

by the military regime of General Ziaul Haq. The novel, which is embed
ded with mystical tropes, alternates between three narrators: Amal, the

only woman paleontologist in Pakistan; Mahwish, the blind younger sister;

and Noman, who works for the fanatical Party of Creation. At the heart of
the novel is the trial and arrest of Amal's elderly grandfather, Zahoor, also
a paleontologist, who is accused of blasphemy for teaching the theory of
evolution.

Ziaul Haq's military regime and his attempt to "Islamize" Pakistan in the
1980s was a watershed in the country's history and it targeted in particular
the two most vulnerable groups: women and minorities. Mohammed Hanif's
(b. 1965) witty political satire, A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008), revolves
around the dictator's last ten days and was inspired by Mario Vargas Llosa's
novel, The Feast of the Goat (2000), about Trujillo. Hanif alternates between
the first person narrative of Ali Shigri, a cadet at the Pakistan Air Force
Academy, the third person account of Zia and the corridors of power, and
a raped blind girl, incarcerated for adultery under Zia's 'Islamic' laws. The
novel highlights how Zia reversed the liberal, modernizing ethos of Pakistan's
founding fathers and inducted his fanatical brand of religion, and how the
notions of jihad and militarism were reinforced by Pakistan's involvement
with the U.S.-backed Islamist Afghan mujahidin against the Soviet occupa
tion of Afghanistan.
Nadeem Aslam s firstnovel, The Season of theRainbirds (1993), set in a small
Punjab town, leads up to the victimization of Pakistan's small Christian
community, due to the abuse of Zia's blasphemy laws. Aslam (b. 1966) also
focuses on the growing power of a new breed of politicized, fire breathing
cleric and the marginalization of the kindly old fashioned maulvi. Aslam's
next novel, Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), revolves around an honor killing in
an all-Asian community in northern Britain. Aslam draws a very fine por
trait of the murdered man's bereaved family, particularly his sister-in-law
Kaukab, a kindly, loving woman who cannot cope with alien, hostile Eng
land. Her religion is her one certainty, but this implodes into superstitious
beliefs which alienate her from her British-born children and her literary
husband, a non-believer. Aslam's third novel, The Wasted Vigil (2008), set
in contemporary Afghanistan, is the only South Asian Muslim novel to
explore the mind of a suicide bomber and his extremist beliefs, which are
juxtaposed against Islam's literary, cultural, and intellectual dimensions.
The novel highlights the interconnectedness of nations and their history
through a range of characters—Russian, American, British, Afghan—who
converge on a villa owned by Marcus, an English doctor. He converted to
Islam to marry Qatrina, his Afghan wife, also a doctor, but she has been
executed by the Taliban; their only daughter, Zameen, is dead. Marcus lives

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154 Religion & Literature

in the hope of finding her lost son, Bihzad, and he embodies the suffering,
wisdom and compassion necessary to spiritual enlightenment.
Unlike all the writers discussed above, Hanif Kureishi (b. 1954), the
son of a Pakistani father and an English mother, was born in Britain and
made his first trip to Pakistan at twenty-eight. His screenplay, My Beautiful
Laundrette(1985), and his first two novels, The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) and
The Black Album (1995), focus on issues of identity and integration that face
British Asians and the exclusions against which they battle. In The Black
Album, these lead the main protagonist, Shahid, to contemplate joining a
group of young Islamists. This novel, written shortly after the Satanic Verses
affair, was hailed as a celebration of British multiculturalism, but it is more
interesting for its comment on the British racism which pushes young Brit
ish Asians towards fundamentalism (M. Shamsie, "Complexities" 266). In
marked contrast, Kureishi's work often portrays an older, first generation
of South Asian Muslims with little interest in a religious identity. His new
book, Somethingto Tell You (2008), spans several decades and reveals changing
British attitudes and an increasing hostility towards Muslims, leading up to
the London suicide bombings of 7/7. Kureishi challenges British stereotypes
of Muslims as the incomprehensible Other and his story revolves around a
half-Pakistani London psychiatrist, Jamal Malik, haunted by the memory
of his lost love, Ajita, a Muslim girl, and he is befriended by the renowned
pop singer George Cage, who turns out to be her brother, Mushtaq.
The Pakistan-born Moniza Alvi (b. 1954) is the daughter of a Pakistani
Muslim father who grew up in Britain in her English mother's Christian
faith: her lyrical poetry celebrates her dual inheritance. Alvi writes about
cultural conflict with a greater sense of distance than the Pa kistan-horn
Imtiaz Dharker (b. 1954), who was raised by Muslim parents in Glasgow
and was married for awhile to a Hindu Indian. Dharker writes extensively
on identity and belonging; she reflects a universalism as well as a strong
feminist consciousness in protest poems about the veil and gender roles. Her
2006 collection The Terroristat My Table includes a sequence, "Remember
Andalus," where she writes:

Andalus was open doors

A conversation between equal voices
A poem made simple with words (Dharker 79)

Clearly, while so many Muslim writers unflinchingly portray the frac

tious present, there exists in the Indo-Muslim imagination a symbiotic
Euro-Muslim past which points the way to a new narrative and a new,
more equitable, multicultural future. However, a deeper, older fascination

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 FORUM 155

with al-Andalus includes that great mystical poem, "The Great Mosque of

Cordoba," written in Urdu by Sir Muhammed Iqbal (1877-1938), which

inspired the Pakistani American poet, Shadab Zeest Hashmi (b. 1972) (S.
Hashmi, "Kneading"). Her first collection, The Baker of Tarifa (2010), set
in Andalusia, consists of poems which use bread as a central metaphor
across generations and catch whispers and ghosts of the past to comment
on enduring legacies.
From all this it can be surmised that English language literature written
by Muslims from South Asia has developed and grown since Ahmed Ali and
Attia Hosain wrote their pioneering if self-conscious narratives to convey
nationalistic messages. Agha Shahid Ali published a collection of his own
English ghazals, Call Me Ishmael Tonight(2004), and also invited American
poets ranging from Marilyn Hacker to Paul Muldoon to contribute ghazals
to his anthology Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English (2000). The
expatriate Zulfikar Ghose, an early post-war diaspora writer, transposed
his experience of the sub-continent into his novels about South America
in particular, blending references from classical English literature with
mystical Sufi themes of quest. Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, with
its intermingling of literatures and languages, so captured the imagination
of the Anglophone world that he drew huge audiences, and his linguistic
experimentation inspired new generations of South Asian writers. Unfor
tunately, the negative fallout from Satanic Verses led to the demonization of

Islam, and a damaging rhetoric increased with the 9/11 bombings. But
this also led to literary outpouring by Muslim authors. The left-wing Tariq
Ali wrote his Islam Quintetin response to ignorance of Muslim culture and
history displayed by the western media during the First Gulf War. The
novels of Nadeem Aslam, Uzma Aslam Khan, Mohsin Hamid, Moham
med Hanif, and Kamila Shamsie have all engaged with geo-politics and
the rise of religious extremism in Pakistan and the diaspora. While Aslam's
second novel, Mapsfor Lost Lovers, revolves around the pressures on Muslim

family in an all-Asian neighborhood in Britain, poets Moniza Alvi, Imtiaz

Dharker, and Shadab Zeest Hashmi provide a lyrical exploration of cultural
commingling.
The scope of this article cannot hope to cover the diversity and of
range
contemporary fiction and poetry by South Asian Muslims, which includes
the work of Tahmima Anam from Bangladesh and Ameena Hussein from
Sri Lanka. All have forged an important place in mainstream English lit
erature which challenges the imperial narratives of the past and points the
way to a new discourse for the future.

Karachi, Pakistan

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156 Religion <fcLiterature

NOTES

1. Also known as the Indian Mutiny or The First War of Independence.

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WRITING "ISLAM" IN FRENCH

Alison Rice

Some of the most captivating and innovative recent works of fiction in

French have emerged from the pens of writers with roots outside France. It is
therefore not an accident that the first four French-language contributors to
this forum are prolific authors who presendy publish their novels in the most
prestigious publishing houses in Paris, yet come from a very different cultural,
geographical, linguistic, and religious background than that of "mainstream"
France. Salim Bachi, Azouz Begag, Malika Mokeddem, and Leila Sebbar,
prominent participants in "The Place of Islam in Contemporary Europe"
symposium, all have ties to Algeria. One of France's longest-held overseas
territories, Algeria is a land the French dominated for over one hundred
years, beginning with the conquest of 1830 and culminating in a violent
eight-year war that resulted in Algerian independence in 1962. Over the

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