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Across the border,
spanning time Season of the
Rainbirds
The fictional milieu is set in Pakistan against the backdrop of civil wars, assassinations, changing regimes and religious tensions. The time span of the novel’s surface-narrative is a mere 11 days. A sack of letters, lost in the train crash 19 years ago, suddenly reappear and the inhabitants of a small town wait anxiously to see what long-buried secrets will come to light. The discovery of the lost letters is tailed with Judge Anwar Ali’s gruesome murder. A discerning reader can easily make out after reading a few more pages that it is not a mere coincidence, but what bearing the letters have on the Judge’s murder cannot be made out. In delineating characters like Mujeeb Ali, Arshad Ali and Azhar, the author expresses the decline of human, moral values and captures the despair and the agony of the weaker and powerless sections of society. Mujeeb is notorious for committing political murders and is never caught. Mysteriously enough, he is quite perturbed about the discovery of the letters. The postman’s flat refusal and insistence to deliver the letters make him suffer the wrath of Mujeeb. He and his wife disappear mysteriously and the post office is closed. Saif Aziz, a "metropolitan" journalist and ex-political activist, too, disappears—either he is picked up or he goes into hiding—after an attempt on the General’s life. This incident leads to many unjust arrests and people hardly come out of their houses for fear. That Saif had gone to prison under every government in the past 30 years goes to show the price the Press has to pay for speaking the truth. The novelist has woven the real life incidents into the text. The terrorist attack mentioned in the seventh chapter Wednesday is based on the first attempt on General Zia’s life, when on February 7, 1982, al-Zulfiquar, a terrorist team led by Benazir Bhutto’s brother, Murtaza, fired a SAM-7 missile at a plane carrying the General. Elizabeth Massih becomes a helpless victim of the unspent fury of the Islamic radical fundamentalists, who drag her out by the hair and parade her naked in the streets for being a mistress of a Deputy Commissioner, Azhar. The Deputy Commissioner, who is a party to the offence goes unpunished, is proof enough to show the bias and power of patriarchal hegemony. The author makes the reader realise that Mujeeb, Azhar, the Judge and the other religious machinery are just small pawns in the hands of a larger agency of evil hungry for power at any expense. The rift within Islam—Shia and Sunni (rival sects)—comes alive with Maulana Dawood and Maulana Hafeez’s denominations and their arguments in a Friday sermons, relayed to the whole town over the loud speaker. Also how Kasmi, a retired school master, is looked down upon by Islamic fundamentalists for being an Ahmadiya, points a finger at the sectarian intolerance that propagates divisiveness. Maulana Hafeez’s secret weeping in the bathroom over the treatment meted out to Elizabeth shows a helpless man, desiring peace and secularism. His decision—to undertake a visit to Elizabeth’s house along with his wife in the end of the novel—is like a lamp trying to dispel the darkness of religious fanaticism. Humour, though not all
together absent, is scant, blending well with the overall atmosphere of
the plot. Realistic portrayal of the characters is gripping. The author’s
dexterous craftsmanship combines the story with a commentary on the sad
state of affairs in the country, the plight of the ordinary people and
their silent endurance of injustice, oppression and bloodshed. Combined
with the glossary of Urdu words at the end, the Betty Trask
Award-winning novel makes a good read. |
Here is a book that can
be judged by its cover, in fact, the picture of a train crash on the
cover is the focal point around which the story revolves. The
intermittent cries of the papiha against the backdrop of rainy season,
which the characters in the story register, aptly earn the title for the
prose of this exquisite fictional debut.