‘The book started out as a prank’

By Editor on November 21, 2008 6:00 am

Mohammed Hanif is the author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes, a novel about the death of Pakistani president, General Zia, in a plane crash. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008, the critically acclaimed and popular work is part detective novel, part conspiracy theory, part journalistic inquiry, and part satire. Hilarious and shot through with a finely controlled pathos, the novel is a telling comment on political power, the world of contemporary Pakistan, and the absurdities that are the stuff of history itself.

A graduate of the Pakistan Air Force Academy, Hanif is also a playwright, filmmaker, and journalist. The head of BBC UK’s Urdu service, he is currently based in Karachi. In this interview with Rohit Chopra, he talks about the curious and varied inspirations for the novel, having to overcome his journalistic training in writing the book, and his scepticism about the category of ‘South Asian’ writing.

How was this book born? Could you tell us something about its genesis?

I wanted to write a book, a novel, for a very long time but didn’t really have any idea where to start and where to end. As a journalist I had tried to investigate General Zia’s plane crash and found it quite amazing that I didn’t find any verifiable facts but came across a number of theories. It just seemed that everyone had a motive. I was quite fascinated by that notion. What if everyone was trying to kill him? And then came the next logical thought, what if I was trying to kill him? So basically the book started out as a prank. When I started the actual writing, I wanted it to be in a thriller mode, a humorous take on the John Le Carre-type novels that I used to love as a young man. It was only when I had finished the novel and it went out to the publishers—and I didn’t really know much about genre—that I found out that I had written what people in the business insist on calling a ‘literary novel.’

One of the powerful achievements of the book is its effectiveness in combining satire and pathos, humour and incisive political insight. Did you feel that the story you wished to tell required a particular genre or mode of writing?

As I said it started out as a prank but after I started writing it, after I had a setting, the details started coming to me. I had grown up during Zia’s time but I had led a very protected life. I was in a military academy. In fact I left the air force a couple of months after Zia died. Since there was complete censorship during his time, all you ever got to hear about him and his regime was through rumours, gossip, and jokes. And these things used to travel really fast. So I think that that must have influenced my style of writing. I come from a small town in Pakistan where being a wit, having a way with words, in a very non-literary kind of way, was as important as being rich or successful. And I think I was really impressed with that. I left the air force and got into journalism. Among my friends from that earlier time were a couple of brilliant cartoonists. I think their influence also lingered on for a very long time.

To follow up with a related question, do you feel that political and social life in South Asia demand certain representational frameworks or strategies from authors and artistes in general?

I don’t know. I am sure there are some very responsible authors who know about things like representational frameworks, and they can deal with such matters. I was just consumed by the idea of telling a story that someone might want to read. I really never saw myself as a South Asian writer— I am just this guy who comes from a village near Okara and who ended up in London via Karachi because he got a job there. Now that I am back in Karachi sometimes I get asked who did I think my readers were when I was writing. And I really think that I was thinking of certain friends from Pakistan who would get a joke or would come up with a better one if mine didn’t work.

Could you share some thoughts on the ways in which you think that your experience of being a journalist has influenced your fiction?

I think in the beginning journalism was a bit of a hindrance. Since I was fictionalizing some real-life events, there was always this nagging feeling at the back of my mind that my journalist colleagues would read it as history and would raise objections at every turn. If you know journalists then you probably know that there is nothing more that they love than to impress other journalists. But at some point I was able to convince myself that I was writing fiction. Some names might be real but I had no obligation to follow any editorial guidelines. I had to go from the journalistic essential of two sources for every fact to ‘no-sources’ required because I was not dealing with the realm of fact.

Journalism also prepares you for instant gratification— you file a piece, it gets published the next day. You sit in a radio studio and broadcast a program. Some people like it, some don’t, most are indifferent, but the next day you are ready to file another story. With fiction you have to learn to do away with those temptations and keep the story to yourself month after month, year after year. You don’t know whether what you are writing is any good or even if it makes any sense. I am trying to think if being a journalist influenced my fiction. Well journalists are great rumor-mongerers and a lot of the action in my novel is driven by rumors that I heard in newsrooms that never made it into print. And as a journalist you also know how to type, proofread, look up the dictionary, etc. That was really useful.

Writers from South Asia have been enjoying their share of the spotlight, both critical and popular, for the last several years.  Do you think the notion of ‘South Asian writing’ is a coherent and viable critical category?

I don’t really think so. The ones I have read, and I haven’t read many, have written about vastly different subjects. They also come from different backgrounds. The media likes to categorize, it wants to spot trends, and then everyone goes with the latest coinage. During just this year, I have read about half a dozen articles in the international press about the new trend called hot new Pakistani writers. And I find it funny that when these articles rattle off half a dozen new names they don’t point out that I am the only debut author. The others have been publishing books to wide acclaim for more than a decade. A literary agent in London told me recently that they were actively looking for central Asian writers because apparently they are going to be the next big thing. So one just hopes that occasionally there are good books from where ever and they get noticed for whatever reason.

Could you share your thoughts about recent political developments in Pakistan and about politics in South Asia more generally? On the one hand, South Asia is home to very old civilizations and cultural traditions; on the other hand, it is afflicted by problems of political instability, poverty, and corruption. Global capitalism has the region in their sights for its markets, while, at the same time, the region is also affected by the vagaries of international power relations such as the ‘war on terror.’ What kinds of futures, in your view, are in store for South Asia?

I wish somebody knew. I just met a seventy year-old trade union leader in Karachi who pointed out to me that what kind of f….d people are we that even after sixty years of partition we still don’t seem too bothered about shedding blood on our borders. A lot of people in Pakistan seem to think that the Taliban burning schools in the northern Pakistan are actually Indian spies. And in India every Muslim is obviously a potential Pakistani spy.

I am not sure if we count Afghanistan as part of South Asia but we seem to be too happy to collude in the destruction of a whole country twice over within two decades. As a citizen I find it truly bizarre that all South Asian countries have their unique set of problems and their neighbours have always, always, tried to add fuel to these fires. There are a lot of well wishing liberals like us who keep moaning that it’s not the people who want to keep this going, it’s the politicians. I don’t think that’s true. My late mother used to say that if your neighbour has red cheeks, don’t start slapping yourself.

But I think we have gone way beyond that. Can you imagine that India was actually envious of Pakistan’s client state relationship with America? Can you believe that India is trying to pay back in Afghanistan for what Pakistan did in Kashmir and Punjab? I have just moved back to Karachi after living in London for twelve years or so I am a bit disorientated. But it’s difficult to think of South Asia as an entity when Pakistan itself seems too busy tearing itself apart.

Your book offers, among other things, a devastating critique of the idea of the Islamic state. Could you elaborate on this?

As I writer I had no intention of doing that, I was desperately trying to recall the details of the period but now that the book is out, I have begun to realise what was going on. I think General Zia was the first modern ruler in Pakistan who started using words like shariat and jihad with a straight face in public discourse. Even mullahs during his time were meek and only demanded a vague version of something called an Islamic system and in Pakistan people interpreted it to mean that they were asking for some halwa [sweets]. There were songs and jokes about it. And they actually took it seriously and started distributing halwa after every little triumph.

The mullahs in Pakistan got rich and influential because they were being given US dollars and weapons and weapons training. So they started thinking that the whole world was a bit of a halwa that they could gobble up after their evening prayers. I still like to believe that Pakistan can never become an Islamic state because it’s too diverse and too poor. Our masses have never looked towards religion for deliverance. And every half-decent election result has proved it. It’s only our military and civilian elites who keep flirting with religion in the hope that they can make a few more bucks in this world and then get some cushy deal in the afterlife as well.

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EXTERNAL LINKS

A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Book website

On Mohammad Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Book review by Chandrahas Chaudhury on The Middle Stage

Categories: Interview