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Neither
aboriginal nor postcolonial Zia
Mohyeddin column
interview
presented
in anticipation of the release of his second novel, 'The Reluctant
Fundamentalist'. The manuscript's copyrights have been recently purchased by
Hamish Hamilton, a major British publisher. By Saeed
Ur Rehman The News
on Sunday: Do you think there is something called the postcolonial condition? Mohsin
Hamid: Yes, there are societies that were formerly under colonial rule. But
the word 'postcolonial' is tricky. You can say American literature is
postcolonial because it is the literature of a society which used be a
British colony. British literature is postcolonial because the people of the
British Isles were colonised by the Angles and the Saxons coming from
Germany. Our colonial condition in Pakistan goes back to the beginning of
time because we have always been occupied by invading people. TNS: So
you are saying only Dravidians can produce postcolonial literature?
TNS:
Some theorists argue that though we are independent we are not really that
independent. We are influenced by American intervention in our region, etc.
What do you think about this position? MH: I
don't think that necessarily differentiates us from any other country except
for America. Certainly Britain's affairs are influenced by America and so are
those of the Philippines and Thailand. Japan's policies are dictated by
America. We are living in a world which has a superpower but whether that is
the defining or most important characteristic of our lives is debatable.
Whether we can put a prefix before literature is open to question. TNS: Are
you saying we cannot blame everything on our colonial or neocolonial
experiences? MH: We
have to determine the motives of doing this. To me the purpose of using
phrase 'the postcolonial condition' is laying a certain form of blame on the
colonial enterprise. Even this can be fine if it results in a proactive
agenda in literature or politics or economics. But it is not fine if it
becomes an excuse for inaction and saying, "we are like this because we
were colonised or we behave this way because America interferes in our
lives." TNS: You
are right. So many countries were colonised and still they are doing much
better than we are. MH:
Exactly. Within this postcolonial condition there is so much variation that
we have to ask ourselves, Are we like the way we are because we are less
'post' than the other postcolonials or were we more colonised than the other
decolonised societies? If we are neither less 'post' nor more colonised, then
the components of the postcolonial condition do not help us understand why we
are the way we are. I think the term 'postcolonial' is applicable only in
situations where the sources of power are the former colonial structures. If
you are a South Asian academic in America, England or Australia, you want to
use the term postcolonial to intrigue the former coloniser and you explain
everything from the vantage point of that relationship. You can discuss the
relationship between Pakistan and the West. By inserting itself in a
relationship with the former coloniser, the word 'postcolonial' acquires its
current power. Here in Pakistan, you may not want to use the term
postcolonial. You may be interested in studying the dynamics within the
country. You can say you are interested in the Saraiki and Punjabi
relationship or the Indo-Pak problems, for example. These interactions may
describe our literature better than the global academic terms, but studying
these dynamics may not get you tenure at Harvard. TNS:
Yes, there are things that we have done which the colonisers did not want us
to do. Is our nuclear bomb postcolonial? MH: Yes,
the term postcolonial is a limiting one. It means that you continue to define
your identity in relationship to colonisation and, as long as you do that,
you are, to a certain extent, colonised. TNS: It
means that this term limits the ways your identity can be defined. You are
always referring to the colonisers and not dealing with the current economic
dominance of China. MH: I
think we should use new terms for our literature: pre-independence literature
and independent literature or pre-liberation literature and liberation
literature. TNS: If
this is liberation. MH: Yes,
if this is liberation and if that was colonisation. No one knows what these
terms mean but the point is that the phrase 'the postcolonial condition'
clings to the idea of colonisation as the most significant thing and thereby
continues to perpetuate colonisation. TNS: Why
don't we discuss Arab imperialism and its effects on this region? MH: I
think the difference is that there are some colonisers who leave and some who
do not. People accept those colonisers who never leave and ultimately accept
them as their own selves. Had the British stayed on in this region, they
would also call themselves postcolonial in relation to the American
intervention in this area. I think this is very interesting. That is why in
my first novel 'Moth Smoke' I don't lay any blame on any actor outside
Pakistan. I focused on local day-to-day lives of the people. My second novel
('The Reluctant Fundamentalist'), on the other hand, is much more about the
relationship between Pakistan and America. It is situated largely inside
America but I would not look at it as a postcolonial novel so much as an
American novel. Both my novels are not postcolonial. One is a Pakistani book
and the other American. TNS:
What do you think about the use of the English language as a medium of
creative expression? MH:
English is by far my best language. I could never write a novel in any other
language. I can read a newspaper in Urdu but I would struggle with a novel in
Urdu. I certainly could not write in Punjabi. I know a little bit of Italian
and Persian but I would not be able to write more than two or three decent
sentences in these languages. I write in English because it is the only way I
can. TNS:
Some scholars argue that if you write in English, your books become globally
marketable but you are not contributing a lot to local languages and
traditions. MH:
Well, for me English is the only choice. But even if I could write in Urdu, I
would still want to have more readers through the global readership of
English books. The novel has always been an elitist form of expression
because very few people could read and write. Even today, when more people
can read and write, many people prefer television and film over the novel. It
remains an elitist form. Does it, then, make more sense to engage with the
local elite through their language or with the global elite? For many
writers, it is not a matter of choice. They are simply good at writing in one
language. But those who write in local languages are not paid very well and
lack international readership. TNS:
There may be other reasons for not writing in Urdu. For example, we do not
have fully operational copyright laws. Publishers do not pay the writers
well. MH: And
we do not have readers, if you compare the number of novels sold country by
country. Pakistan has 150 million people. That is more than the population of
France and Germany combined. Compared with France and Germany, we have a tiny
number of readers. Here publishers only publish one thousand books per
edition in contrast to, say, India, where one edition is of a hundred
thousand copies. There is something else too. The awareness of local and
global issues that different literary communities possess varies. The
literary communities of, for example, Sweden or Greece know about Pakistan
and its political and literary problems. Our indigenous literary community
does not know about the political and cultural preoccupations of others. Another
consequence of defining ourselves as a postcolonial literary community is
ghettoisation. What does one's writing have to do with one's place of origin?
For example, when I am dealing with an American immigration officer, for him
the most important thing about me is that I am a Muslim. But in fact, this is
one of many facets of my identity. I am also a man, 34 years old, a writer
and of Pakistani origin. These parts of my identity are not ranked above or
below my religion. So when you enter the global market for ideas, you had
better be recognised on your own merit and not because of your place of
origin or your religion. Many writers love the ghetto but not me. I want to
be recognised just because of my writing. TNS:
What is your new novel about? MH: It
is about a Pakistani living in New York, working in the corporate field. The
novel tries to deal with very political and controversial topics without
resorting to preaching. It is about going to America and coming back. You can
call it a postcolonial novel or an American novel. The majority of the events
take place in New York, unlike 'Moth Smoke' where you have only four or five
pages dealing with the life of Mumtaz and Ozi in New York before their
arrival in Pakistan. That is all I can say at this stage about my new novel. TNS: Why
do you think Pakistan lacks the figure of the public intellectual and a
public that responds to intellectuals? MH: We
are under-performing in virtually all categories. The question why we do not
have a Jean-Paul Sartre is irrelevant at this stage. We need to ask whether
we are evolving as a society. I think we are evolving. The electronic media
is evolving. The channels are growing. Something is happening. We have an
independent media. Many countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, do not have
that. I think we are going in a very good direction. In a generation, we may
see a very vibrant cultural scene where one intellectual makes a statement
and everybody trembles at the sheer wisdom. We do not have this today but we
may have it soon. (Saeed Ur Rehman teaches postcolonial literary theory at
Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. He can be contacted at saeed@bnu.edu.pk.)
Zia
Mohyeddin column I am
sure it's known to many of you that the word 'admiral' has nothing to do with
'admire' or 'admiration'? as one of my students surmised -- but that it comes
from the Arabic word 'amir-al-bahr', meaning 'commander (amir) of the (al)
sea (bahr)', which was the title the Arabs created for the leader of their
navy after he had conquered Spain and Sicily. The
phrase was adopted by the English (and the French as well) who apparently
misunderstood the individual parts of the phrase and thought that the
definite article 'al' meant 'sea'. They dropped the final word bahr because
they didn't know it meant the sea and ended up with a rather eccentric
official title, 'amiir-al', which literally meant 'commander of the'. Lexicographers
tell us that 'amiiral' was introduced to the English language around 1500 AD.
The letter 'a' often stood for the Latin preposition 'ad' (e.g. 'admirable')
so the 'a' changed to 'ad' and soon the title of the ruler of the Queen's
Navy became 'admiral'. Words
have intrigued me for a long time. I am whole-heartedly in agreement with the
old Chinese proverb that 'words are the sounds of the heart'. But, if, I were
to be honest, I would say that I am interested in words largely for
phonological reasons. Wordsmiths,
that is, people who live in a universe of words and are seriously obsessed by
it, have often published lists of their most favoured words. The author,
Williams Espy's list contained: 'gonorrhea', 'lullaby', 'meandering',
'mellifluous', 'murmuring', 'onomatopoeia', 'wisteria'... For me it was
cornucopia. Roll these words round your tongue, they are sharp and silvery
against the teeth; whisper them, speak them full- throatedly; these words
delight your senses like a sip from a vintage Beaujolais. In the
last few decades there have been many competitions held in newspapers and
Radio inviting people to send in their favourite English words. The results
in the Sunday Times competition showed that 'parakeet', 'chrysalis',
'sycamore', 'antimacassar', 'chinchilla', and 'doppelganger' were among the
top ten words. These words were obviously chosen for their sounds and not for
their meaning. It would
seem that a word perceived to be beautiful has to have two or three syllables
(this is not necessarily true of English words; in our language too, words of
two or more syllables are, phonetically speaking, much more attractive: 'sansanhat',
'muzmahil'). There are, of course, other criteria: the vowel sounds varying
from syllable to syllable, but this is the territory of my friend, Khalid
Ahmed, and I do not wish to step into it. Khalid
Ahmed is a wordbuff, a wordaholic and a wordsmith; he is a polymath. He is a
linguist and an etymologist and he can tell you, with great ease, how words
can be pressed, squeezed and manipulated into all kinds of shapes when they
travel from one country to another and from one culture to another. For years
he has been showing us how an Amharic word finds its way through Slavic
languages into Persian and how a Sanskirit word sneaks into Greek or vice
versa. I wonder if he is as amused as I am that given the prominence of
alcohol in British society, the word alcohol is not originally English, but
another import from Arabia. I must
confess I don't know half as much as I would like to about the meaning of
many words -- leave alone their origins -- despite my long-standing
fascination with words and it depressed me no end when I took the vocabulary
test devised by that distinguished Professor of
linguistics, David Crystal. Professor
Crystal's method is simple. In order to estimate the size of your vocabulary,
take a medium-sized dictionary, one between 1500 and 2000 pages. (Collins,
Chambers or Oxford would do). Aim for a sample of pages. If the dictionary is
1500 pages pick only 30 pages, that is, 2% of the number of pages (forty if
it has 2000 pages). You then
break the sample down into a series of selections from different parts of the
dictionary. For a thirty page sample you have six choices of five pages each,
or ten choices of three pages. A representative sample, he recommends, is to
pick your pages beginning with CA, EX JA,
OB, PL, SC, TO and UN. You
begin with the first full page, and go through all the words on each page of
your sample. If you think you know a word or any of its meanings, put a tick
against it. (It doesn't matter if you do not know the alternative meanings).
For your active vocabulary, you only need to be certain that you can use the
word often, occasionally or not at all. Do not ignore words which are
clustered together just showing their endings as in nation-al-ize. You can
also tick idioms and phrases such as call up and call the tune. Add up the
ticks and jot the total down on a piece of paper. Then add up all the page
totals and multiply by 50 -- and you
will get (more or less) the size of your vocabulary. I sat
down with my Concise Oxford which has 1562 pages. I selected three sections
of ten pages, and chose PL SC and UN. My vanity took a severe knocking as I
totted up the figures. Of the 395 words spread over ten pages I only knew
165, not even fifty per cent. Gamely, I went on to the next section and my
result was slightly worse, but I perked up when I got to the section
beginning with the prefix 'UN'. Here I scored heavily (who wouldn't ?); the
only words (in these ten pages) I did not know were; 'unaneled', 'uncial', 'unciform',
'uncinariasis', 'uncinate', 'unguiculate', 'unaxial'. My
vocabulary, judging by the Crystal test, would be a little over 34000 words.
Pretty dismal, I thought, considering that most writers insert into their
sentences the best part of half a million words. Never mind, I told myself.
There are scrabble players who are familiar with thousands of words without
knowing their meaning. But it was no consolation. The
Oxford English Dictionary had over 500,000 words in the edition which came
out in 90's. Scholars and lexicographers are busy preparing a newer edition
which will probably have 2 million entries. Even if I were to disregard a
large number of entries from earlier periods in the history of the language,
as well as names, places and acronyms, I will still be left with hundreds of
thousands of words which I shall never know. Dictionaries are expanding by
the hour. It is estimated that about 900 new words enter the language every
year. I am
reminded of the Emily Dickinson poem: A word
is dead It is
said, Some
say. I say it
just Begins
to live That
day.
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Mohsin
Hamid and I sat in the semi-dark cafe of Nairang Art Gallery and talked
literature and politics for more than two hours. At the time of the
interview, Mohsin Hamid's second novel was in progress. Many people had
described him as an enfant terrible of Pakistani literature in English. I
wanted to know his position on the politics of literary writing in English
from this region. He also talked about his forthcoming novel. Here the
interview is 
MH:
Yeah (laughter). Basically, that is what it boils down to. You can either
have aboriginal literature or postcolonial literature. But, definitely, the
experience of the modern European imperial enterprise has had effects on
Pakistani society, but I don't think it is the defining characteristic of our
people or our literature. I also think that the term 'postcolonial' describes
the generation before mine. I was born in 1971 and my parents were born
around 1947. Their generation was definitely postcolonial but my generation
was very different. We had no direct experience of the colonial occupier. I
did not even have any experience of the West Pakistan and the East Pakistan
problem. Now that is even more confusing. Somebody from Bangladesh can think
of themselves as postcolonial in relation to Pakistan. For me, I have always
seen Pakistan as a place run by Pakistanis, often run badly but not for
reasons that are postcolonial but our own structural and social.