Afghan Madhouse (Book Review – No Space for Further Burials)
Decades of imperialism have left Afghanistan and its people devastated. But the fall of the Taliban, and the much touted ‘liberation’Â of Afghanistan, has produced a new spate of novels, films and other artistic media dealing with the ‘Afghan victim’.Â
And when I say ‘Afghan victim,’ I mean a nauseating overdose of burqa-oppression, Taliban brutality and other Oriental tragedies. Not only are these subjects sexy they tie into the global imperatives of terror and Islamism but they also artfully exonerate the aggressor, whether it is the Soviets, US imperialism or NATO. As such, the bulk of this new subgenre of fiction addresses the Western, English-speaking world; writing about reluctant and not-so-reluctant fundamentalists sells ‘Over There’. Meanwhile, literature is turning into a grand extravaganza of marketing, prizes, commoditization and short-lived shelf lives.
Feryal Ali Gauhar’s second novel, No Space for Further Burials, attempts to break free of many of these stereotypes. A trained economist, filmmaker and former UN Goodwill Ambassador, Gauhar opts to publish her book in India , not a Western outlet. More importantly, No Space inverts the oft-hackneyed themes of displacement, war, America and the suffering Afghans, ultimately treating these grim motifs by focusing on the sanity and insanity implicit within personal narrative.
Gauhar’s protagonist (and narrator) is not the radical Muslim torn with existential dilemmas, as might typically be expected. Rather, he is a small town US army medical technician who has been captured by Afghan rebels and locked up in a local insane asylum. The asylum is a microcosm of Afghanistan itself.
It is September 2002, one year after 9/11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan. The narrator, an American who like millions of others has been disempowered by the war machine, has no particular ideological pretences about the war for ‘freedom’Â As his captivity drags on, he realizes the word means nothing to him at all. “No one knows which is outside and which is inside, sister. No one knows which is the earth and which is the sky,” the narrator tells a woman at one point.
When the novel begins, the reader is given no hints as to who the asylum inmates are . Refugees or derelicts, fugitives or simple folks declared insane, we don’t know. All that is certain is that the asylum has imbued upon its tenants a constant state of loss their personal, civic and political lives have all been violated. As the story progresses, we find out how each inmate has landed in this dilapidated, sub-human institution, which acts both as a clever device to keep the plot and action taut and a comment on the sheer lunacy of the world and Afghanistan’s place within it.
Gauhar uses the captive narrator’s journal ostensibly kept to fight the loneliness of imprisonment as a literary device with which to draw in the reader. It is not a particularly unique approach, but it works remarkably well in No Space . The journal is simple, sometimes poetic and almost always haunting. The gravity and cliche of war are subtly conveyed through the myriad lives within the asylum. The personal stories together provide a reflection of the collective complicity so often present in the perpetuation of violence. The inmates’ tales of displacement (including the US medic’s own) mirror the dislocation of oppressed and war-stricken people in Afghanistan and, indeed, throughout history.
Readers are asked to empathize with the narrator as he strives to cope with his dire circumstances; the irony is almost heavy-handed. For it is the American ‘liberator’ who is confined within “a tomb for the living”. We find out that the medic aspired to be a writer before he was sent to Afghanistan; but in recounting the miseries of war, he loses the ability to truly communicate. Instead, his language is the language of the asylum, a language that cuts across nationality and culture. Gauhar’s novel indeed has an element of magical realism, for the ability of people to understand their suffering signifies the characters’ ultimate humanity.
Yet there is also a darker message hereone that insists humanity is unable to heal itself. From the colonial Great Game in Afghanistan to the brutalities of the Cold War, violence seeps into the collective conscience through generations, eventually becoming a part of Reality. It is a curse endemic to the human condition, Gauhar stresses. It does not matter if you are an external or an internal victim.
If anything, No Space is too heavy. By book’s end, it has been hammered in that war has no victors; there is only a destroyed country and its people who have withstood the madness of it all. Still, Gauhar and her novel step out of cliche and articulate a global voice. In the age of the constructed “Islamic Threat” the novel deftly attacks the myth. War, violence and suffering in Afghanistan have had little to do with Islam. Even the ‘victor’ is in effect a victim, and the narrator’s predicament becomes a metaphor for all that Afghanistan and a war-ravaged world stand for.
An earlier version of this review appeared in the Friday Times. Also posted at Pakistaniat.
Unfortunately i have to say ths. There is no joy when i say this. its a horrible feeling, yet the damn truth must be uttered. Millions died at the birth of Pakistan (migration / either side of the horrible Partition Aug-Sep 1947) in mob-violence. Millions will die AGAIN at the demise of Pakistan. Tears at birth, and tears at demise ! Pakistan is not working. It simply cannot work. i think man’s basic instincts come to the fore in times of danger. “An intellectual cannot bear a tooth-ache”, said Voltaire ! I think people who have a sense of history will start selling their assets in Pakistan – and migrate to other lands (that may accept them as immigrants). Upper-middle class Pakistanis must sell their homes and hearths and migrate NOW while there is still time.. Pakistan is on fire and crumbling… otherwise they will become Muhajir-II (or Sharan-Ar`thee II) again. It was a lesson in history, sociology and political science. It was an experiment in the Jinnah Laboratory which failed ! Narendra Modi wants to repeat a similar experiment in his Modi Laboratory. He will fail too. Hatred is destruction and rubble, in the long term. Its life is short ! 60 years, to be precise.
I am sorry Dastagir, but what has that to do with this particular post?
Dastgir Saheb
Your email, well intentioned as it might be, betrays a lack of in-depth knowlegde on Pakistan. I don’t blame you but the key source of information on our country – the corporate media is biased, hollow and promotes falsehoods.
Pakistan is a robust country with 160 million inhabitants who have proved themselves across the globe. yes it has many problems and it is passing through a difficult phase but it will not wither away – such predictions were made right from its inception. I suggest that you visit Pakistan and see for yourself how close it is to the situation that you painted.
And, also let me object: the comparison between Modi and Mr Jinnah is irrational to say the least. Mr Jinnah wanted a separate country but he did not order or manage porgroms in the name of religion. Above all he was a democrat and former ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity until he was pushed to the wall by the strong center politics of the Congress. He had even agreed to the Cabinet Mission Plan until Pandit Nehru, Mr Patel and others rejected that vision of Unity.
In India, history is viewed in a partisan sense like Pakistan – I suggest that you also read H M Seervai’s Partition of India: legend and reality to see how some Indians tried to view history objectively. Alas, such views are sidelined in India.
Yes we lost East Pakistan but that was a separate story. That was unworkable anyway – two wings separated by a country that to put it mildly was not keen on its unity. And, Rahul gandhi’s claim that ‘we’ the Gandhis destroyed Pakistan should make it clear.
I, like many others numbering in millions – the middle class – will not pack up and go – Pakistan is the only country we have!!! And we love it and want it to prosper.
And , we shall overcome the difficulties that we face like most other developing countries including India in due course.
I respect your views and participation on this blog and forgive me if I was improper – I just wanted to make my point.
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