Removing old veneers

Is it merely a coincidence that just as Pakistan re-emerges on America’s security map as a nation to watch, its writers are churning out consistently good fiction at a surprisingly fast rate?

The past few months have seen the launch of Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, and The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam, besides several other notable books by Pakistani writers in the recent past.

To this list can now be added The Wish Maker, the debut work of 24-year-old Ali Sethi. Sethi is the son of renowned Pakistani journalists Najam Sethi and Jugnu Mohsin, the couple who have run afoul of Pakistani authorities at several times in the past for running The Friday Times, an independent newsweekly published out of Lahore.

It is the nature of the household that Ali grew up in, perhaps, that provides a ready template for his novel. The story revolves around Zaki Shirazi, a young, free-spirited Pakistani boy who grows up amidst a cast of strong female characters.

There is Zakia, his mother, a crusading journalist who also happens to be the editor of Women’s Journal, a publication which, by its very name, must invite trouble sooner or later in a conservative society. This is especially so when Zakia refuses to “behave” at all like a widow, her husband dead in an air crash when she was pregnant with Zaki.

Contrasted with Zakia’s character is Daadi, Zaki’s grandmother, who only bears Zakia’s many “digressions” because she has given her a grandson. Strong-willed women both, Daadi and Zakia are locked in a permanent battle of wits.

And there is Samar Api, Zaki’s cousin, a girl ill-suited to the conventions imposed by society on how proper Muslim girls must conduct themselves. Zaki and Samar have been inseparable from childhood, but as adolescence approaches, the personal and the political must collide in a society that will not allow the two to remain together.

Sethi writes with real feeling for a Lahore that was cosmopolitan and welcoming. The reader can sense the disquiet that liberal, Western-educated Pakistanis like him must feel at the downward spiral that their country has fallen into. The Wish Maker is a product of love, both for the craft of fiction and for what it lets us remember and keep forever.

The subcontinent also makes an appearance in the other book under review. British-Bangladeshi writer Monica Ali achieved international fame with the 2003 publication of Brick Lane, her Booker-shortlisted novel about the lives of immigrant Bangladeshis in London’s East End.

She followed it up with Alentejo Blue in 2006, a much quieter book than her first, set among a multi-ethnic community in a Polish small town. A significant departure from her first, widely appreciated book, Alentejo Blue received at best lukewarm reviews.

Now Ali returns to original form with In the Kitchen, her meditation on the goings on at the fictional Imperial Hotel in London’s Piccadilly. Her pet themes — migration, multiculturalism, racism, settling in — are in full display, and the prose crackles with verve and vivacity.

The story revolves around Gabriel (Gabe) Lightfoot, the executive chef at the Imperial, who oversees operations at a place run by the “UN” of cooks: nearly every nationality is represented in his kitchen, legally or otherwise. When at the book’s beginning, the body of a porter, Yuri, is discovered in the basement, the investigating officer’s first instruction to the staff is clear: “I’m not interested in your papers. I’m not here for that.”

Ali is a ‘straddler’ in the clearest sense of the term. Born in Dhaka, she grew up in Bolton, a north English textile town, and finally attended Oxford University. She therefore has first-hand knowledge of the devastation wrought on textile towns across England and how immigration deepens already existing social fissures.

Gabe too is a straddler. Working in the metropolitan heart of London, he is nevertheless aware of the racism that runs like dark blood though his hometown in north England. When his sister informs him that his father is dying of cancer, Gabe visits Blantwistle, his hometown. In touching sequences, Ali builds upon the changed landscape of Gabe’s boyhood against his very real worries at work in London.

Gabe’s romantic life is as complicated. While he has a healthy relationship with Charlie, a nightclub singer, he begins an obsessive affair with Lena, one of his employees, after he discovers that she has nowhere to live now Yuri is dead. Originally from Belarus, Lena had been lured into a prostitution ring and had sought refuge with Yuri to escape her assailants.

Gabe’s increasing sympathy for his employees after he hears Lena’s story allows Ali to chart harrowing accounts of what less privileged people in other parts of the world undergo before they have a chance at migrating to a developed country and improving their lot. In the Kitchen is an intelligent and, as a follow-up to Brick Lane, more mature work.

 

THE WISH MAKER
Ali Sethi
Hamish Hamilton (Penguin)
Rs. 499 Pg Ext: 416

IN THE KITCHEN
Monica Ali
Scribner
448 pages; $26.99