Same Blog New Address

Because I can't for the life of me figure out how to unglitch the glitch in my archives. Thanks for reading me here and please continue doing so at www.blogspot.soniahkamal.com

Loving or Hating Arundhati Roy?

Saba Bhaumik's opinion piece in Outlook India once again attempts to explain why Indians may not be madly in love with Arundhati Roy while the West supposedly is but Bhaumik doesn't say anything that hasn't already been said a million times: Indian males are envious coz Roy is smart, the women are confused by her outspokeness and, while Roy's hair styles challenge beauty norms, her sense of style sets dressing trends. Ye Gods, cries the plaited, sari wearing, stay at home Indian woman according to Bhaumik, how does Roy do it. Bhaumik should get off the looks wagon--traditional or modern-- and go straight for the brains-- Roy's politics. I do think Bhaumik has a point about Roy's controversial politics and how her views have made her a household name in many worlds but it would have been stronger to have cited reasons other than

the Sunday Times carried a full-page article that somewhat absurdly equated Roy with Victoria Beckham, both described as "role models for young British women". Ridiculous as the comparison between a sexy footballer-wife-pop-star and a serious novelist-essayist may be, it does reveal that Roy has been an icon in the West for some years now.

Roy's greatest crime of course is that of perceived anti-nationalism i.e. not yelling, pompoms aloft, 'East or West, India is the best.' How popular would Roy be if she was American-- or lived in America-- and did not say 'East or West, America is the best and always right'? Or in any country where she was to go against the status quo? Roy's 'style, articulation and high profile causes' may get her attention in the West but is she really an icon? Do women and men look to her for courage to stand up for the depressing issues of the day be it how 'really' poor people are going to fend for themselves, or whether a particular 'terrorist' ('freedom fighter'?) is guilty or framed? Recently Arundhati was on the US radio show Democracy Now saying that, when she talks to journalists from the West, all they want to hear is how absolutely great things in India are and how the great is getting greater by the day. If she goes against that she's suddenly not the most popular guest around. I must add that it hardly escapes notice how journalist after journalist never fail to mention how petite and pretty she is and of course what state her hair is in. If she was obese and plain looking and had ratty hair how much attention would anyone give to what she has to say? Or would her words have more weight, no pun intended? As for Bhaumik's supposition that 'most of us still think of Roy as a Booker Prize winning author of a novel we have never read', I'm assuming she means that Indians have not read it and, with that assumption, I'd like to know which Indians she's talking about because, if there's one novel I would think they'd actually have read, it would be The God of Small Things. This is certainly true in Pakistan where Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' and Naipal's 'A House for Mr. Biswas' may grace many an English reader's bookshelf but it is Roy's lone ranger that has actually been read.

An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire is Roy's essay on modern day imperialism and the Bush administration. Read a review here. Buy it here.

Review: 'This is Not Civilization' by Robert Rosenberg

A former Peace Corp volunteer, Robert Rosenberg uses his sojourns in an Apache Indian Reservation in the US, in Kyrgyzstan and in Turkey to weave a treat of a cross cultural novel where even Americans are just one more people finding a meaningful address on this earth. However addresses come at the cost of permanency and a bond, if not to land, then perhaps to the people met and promises made. It is this bond that his debut novel This is Not Civilization explores: what do relationships mean in a world where it is increasingly easy to get up, get on a plane and move on.

Twenty three year old Jeff Hartig, college graduated son of white upper-middle class America is shattered by his father's adultery. As a distraction he decides to be useful to humanity and, straight after college, applies for the post of manager at a Teen Center in Red Cliffs Apache reservation, Arizona. However Jeff’s efforts—a computer laboratory, a functional library, a game room with music, Ping-Pong, foosball— are repeatedly vandalized and finally Jeff packs his bags.

Conflicted Apache teen Adam Dale, ‘the only student at the high school trailer with the attendance record to qualify’ for the job of Jeff’s assistant, is sorely disappointed with Jeff’s incumbent departure. Also he is mystified by Jeff’s non-committal lifestyle: how is Jeff able to break ties so easily, indeed to run away from a sense of responsibility?

Next the self centered Jeff is accepted by the Peace Corps and sent to the remote mountain village of Kyzyl Adyr Kirovka in post-Soviet Kyrgstan to teach English. Rosenberg deftly weaves a comical picture of the languid Kirovka folk going about their life as they know it while their country transitions from a communist economy to the opportunities of privatization. The gracious, party loving villagers submerge their new English teacher with generous hospitality- eat, vodka, eat, vodka then eat and vodka some more. However all the villagers secretly hope that Jeff will marry one of their daughters and whisk her away to the good i.e. financially secure American life.

Most hopeful to this end is the energetic Anerbek Tashtantaliev manager of the village’s main livelihood, a defunct cheese factory still financed by the ex-communist government because of a bureaucratic mix-up. Anarbek lives in fear of discovery, but soon he has greater problems when his daughter Nazira falls from grace on account of running away from the man who would be her husband via the ancient Kyrgyz tradition of bride-kidnapping. Rosenberg’s ability to seamlessly weave in cultural nuggets without exoticizing a culture or pronouncing judgments is one of the novel’s strong points. In fact it compels the reader to ponder what exactly it means to be civilized and who decides that--the locals or visitors, the native born or the immigrants, the domestic governments or those providing foreign aid?

Nazira is Rosenberg’s most realized creation. A thoroughly progressive Muslim woman, smart, resourceful and independent, she sets out to seduce Jeff as best as she can. But Jeff, a somewhat vapid character perhaps because he really doesn’t have much of an inner conflict save that of good intentions laced with apathy, moves when his Peace Corp gig ends feeling guilty for the impulsive one night stand with Nazira but with, as usual, no real strings attached.

Jeff travels to many countries finally landing in Turkey. In Istanbul he finds a job resettling refugees who are trying to get into the US, the home Jeff has no desire to return to. The irony does not escape Jeff and, even more poignant is his feeling that this job, between anchorless folk, has finally anchored him and given him purpose.

Jeff’s jollity is put to a test when his past knocks on his door and his home becomes a communal address. First enters Adam. University completed, Reservation left behind, he wants to see what the world has to offer, can he crash at Jeff’s? Next comes Anarbek who is being blackmailed in Kyrgstan to the tune of twelve thousand dollars or else his cheese factory fraud will be reported to the authorities. When her father does not return to the village in the prescribed time Nazira, her heart heavy with the secret she’s keeping from Jeff, arrives in Istanbul too.

Particularly enjoyable is Rosenberg’s depiction of big city Istanbul, a delectable mix of East and West, ancient and modern, city slick and village bumpkin, ‘the sense that this city lay at the center of the world.’ The prose is always vigorous and never gets bogged down with details for the sake of details or pretty sunsets in different countries like so many cross-cultural novels tend to do. True to form the novel does not end with a sunset over the Bosphorus, instead, just when it seems everyone is set, Istanbul is rocked by the devastating earthquake of 1999 and the novel spirals to its satisfying conclusion of what home and obligations ultimately mean for each character.

This is Not Civilization goes deeper than being merely a tale of similarities and dissimilarities between East and West and whether the twain shall ever meet. Instead it attempts to probe what happiness means and how, in all likelihoods, it means the same thing everywhere, or does it? Rosenberg says in an interview, “I find this amazing: how quickly the world has become connected, how straight forward it is for even relatively impoverished people to search out a new home. It no longer requires an epic journey across the sea, or a year's trek across a continent. I wanted to write a novel which reflected this reality, this flux and interconnectedness.”

What Rosenberg sets out to do he achieves above all with humor. The novel begins with one of the funniest opening I’ve read in a long time: ‘The idea of using porn films to encourage the dairy cows to breed was a poor one’; the earnest blooper is carried further when Anarbek supposes that perhaps the scheme failed because the videos featured sheep.

Iraqi Kid Runs For Water

What will be on this child’s heart and mind on his walk back? As for the soldiers, do they even have hearts and minds coz if they do they're not in the right place. Actually if they concede that they’re just as morally rotten as the rest of the world they could happily continue making desperate children run for their water and no one would be more disgusted than they are with anyone else.

A Nice Warm Feeling

'And the World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women' was reviewed in Newsline.
About my story 'Runaway Truck Ramp' Talib Qizilbash writes:

Many of the selections are much more effective in showing how truly contemporary these women writers are, as the pieces are daring both in content and style. Soniah Kamal’s ‘Runaway Truck Ramp’ is a standout story for openly tackling the quintessential Pakistani taboo subject: sex. Her approach is both clever and candid. It’s candid for the relaxed manner in which she delivers the details of a fling that quickly turns ugly for a young woman because of her partner’s double standards and his view that she is just “practice.” The cleverness lies in how Kamal explores inbred and distasteful attitudes towards sex, for her heroine is not a young Pakistani woman, but a white American who hooks up with a charming Pakistani man.
read rest of the review here

'Visa Blues'-- When You Know Who You Are But Your Country Does Not

No matter where an immigrant makes their home they have a country of origin, a country they believe 'their's' whether they return or not. Hafiza Nilofar Khan believed the same of Bangladesh. Only did Bangladesh believe it too? Add yet another twist in the story of 'where am I, who am I, why am I.'

Nilofar writes:
When I had a civil marriage in St. Helens, Oregon in the year 1998 with a Caucasian American, my father was alarmed since he believed that a Muslim woman cannot marry a Christian man without first converting him into Islam. In my gender ignorance about Islamic rules, I tried to pacify my distressed father by arguing that people who are “ehlekitab”, meaning, believers in the book (Torah, Bible or Koran) may marry each other without having to convert. When my father retorted that only Muslim men are allowed to marry a non-Muslim woman, and not vice versa, I did not grasp the full significance of the convention, and took it for my own religiously inclined father's desire to have a Muslim son-in-law. This August, when I was allowed to leave Dhaka only after paying eighty thousand taka to the Passport and Immigration office in fees and fine, and going through endless stress on account of having a foreigner for a husband, and a daughter, did I realise the actual import of my father's premonitions. If my father were alive today, he might have said, “I forewarned you"
read the rest here

So This Means if I'm Raped in Pakistan I Won't Be Stoned to Death? Or what one General Did another General UnDoes.

A woman is raped every two hours and gang raped every eight hours in Pakistan.

Pakistan Independent Human Rights Commission
2006

1979. General Zia-ul-Haq's takes over running of Pakistan in a military coup. He decides Pakistan will be governed under Islamic law and so the Shariat Laws and the Hudood Ordinance come into effect

The Hudood Ordinance deals with women's issues and the Zina Laws in particular with
a) abduction of women
b) prostitution
c) adultery
d) rape

New rule: to prove she's been raped in Pakistan a women must produce four males who've witnessed the rape. If she can't, the rape is prosecuted as adultery.
Punishment for adultery: includes imprisonment, lashing and stoning to death.

Behind the Scences of this particular Islamic law:
The indiction to providing four male witness applies in Islamic law to a case where someone accuses a woman of adultery. Four male witnesses must corroborate that this particular married woman cheated on her husband. If four male witnesses cannot be found the accuser is in big big trouble. However General Zia and his band of bearded (and some unbearded) brothers twisted this Islamic law and applied it to women who were raped.
(A lawyer friend of mine once told me that bascially women can get away with having sex in Islam because who the hell can find four male witnesses who can prove without a doubt that they are not lying).

2006 Summer
The government of Pakistan proposes a Woman's Protection Bill that states women who are raped will no longer need to produce four male witnesses.
Many bearded members of parliament protest.
The bill is put aside.

2006 November.
Government returns to the bill.
It is passed.
Women and Men who have been waiting to exhale for the past 27 years, exhale. And again breathe deeply to see what will become of this in the real world of lawyers, courts and appeals.


ps. Muktar Mai maintains an Urdu blog about her day to day life in her new found role

pps. The fundo dudes are very upset. Says Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the Islamic Alliance: "the bill will turn Pakistan into a free sex zone." Darling- it will be what it will be only now rapists won't go scott free just because they didn't invite four dudes to watch them perform or, rather, the four dudes who watched joined in instead of holding back in order to do the right thing and testify later.

pps. check out the excellent Pakistaniat blog's excellent write up

ppps. the day Pakistan separates religion from law will be the finest moment of its life

pppps. A pat on the back for President Musharraf and his government for passing the WPB.
His previously egregious statement that women cried rape for fame and money had my heart sinking to new found depths. It's beginning a bit of an upwards float. Although the Pakistani part of my mind will soon begin to wonder what's in it for Musharraf, what's it in for anyone who voted yeah, what's in it, what's in it....because being altruistic is usually not the Pakistani politican's way if any politician's.