Malik Sajad’s Munnu: A Boy From Kashmir takes all preconceived notions about Kashmir and breaks them into pieces. This graphic novel is far from what the title suggests — a surface biography of life in the valley in the ‘90s and 2000s. Be prepared: early on in the book you will be shown a raw and purely visceral war.

Munnu is a thoroughly important, alternative narrative of events in Kashmir, portrayed through a personal coming-of-age story in which life mirrors national events. Munnu starts off as a seven-year-old, grows older and becomes Sajad, while Kashmir continues to serve as a playground for opposing forces. Growing up in India-held Kashmir, he introduces us to his family, his neighbours, his teachers, and the routine “identification parades” that form the backdrop of his childhood. As he grows older, he becomes more and more politically aware, and at a very young age feels helplessly disillusioned, frustrated by how none of the involved forces — the pundits, militants, the army, even EU delegates — seem concerned with the human lives brushed off as mere statistics for death tolls.

Sajad does a fantastic job at walking us through Munnu’s life as a child caught in war. The memory of his first neighbourhood death seems to haunt him; he paints a picture of a child going from room to room, to all his siblings, asking if he can sleep in their room, wetting the bed every night until his father says “He has to get used to the situation then. Nothing else can heal him.” It’s heartbreaking.

Malik Sajad takes us on a chilling ride as he tries to grapple with Kashmir’s history

Each coming-of-age chapter is peppered with the background of war. His first real love affair, with an American researcher visiting Srinagar, ends because of the sheer disconnect between their lives. To her, Kashmir is a breathtaking tragedy, to be admired behind the lens of a camera; to him, it’s a jail he must endure every day. When he goes to school as a young child it is school where students get publicly humiliated for speaking Kashmiri instead of Urdu. When, for the first time, Munnu has to attend to his sick mother, he faces near-fatal hurdles on the way to the hospital. He has to dodge curfew police by stepping off his bike after every few minutes, holding up his mother’s MRI scans like a placard. Many times, the narrator himself loses track of who is killing whom and for what. Eight-year-old children continue to become “just another statistic.”

Where visualisation is concerned, the images consist of well-thought-out detail, cleverly-placed metaphors and strategic text. The style is reminiscent of Art Spiegleman’s Maus series, in which Nazis are depicted as cats and Jews as mice. Kashmiris, in Munnu, are depicted as “hangul”, an endangered species of deer native to Kashmir. That’s the specialty of a graphic novel: without prose to weigh it down, the narrative is distilled into its purest form.

Sajad lays emphasis on Kashmir’s history, its now slowly eroding cultural heritage, its thrilling shrines that once drew so many “Western tourists” but now gather grime. The museums hold artefacts which also double as drying racks for army men’s underwear. Abandoned houses that once belonged to pundits bear intricate carvings now covered up by newspapers. The “intellectuals,” Munnu scowls, build off the conflict to travel abroad and live in self-absorbed luxury. All this adds to the gloom and the sinking feeling of lost generations.

Munnu starts off as a seven-year-old, grows older and becomes Sajad, while Kashmir continues to serve as a playground for opposing forces. Growing up in India-held Kashmir, he introduces us to his family, his neighbours, his teachers, and the routine “identification parades” that form the backdrop of his childhood.

Through Sajad’s eyes as a political cartoonist, we understand Kashmir in ways outside of what can be found in textbooks. There are important political interpretations of the events at play, the origins of the conflict (going as far back as the Mughal era, and the British who sold Kashmir for 2.5 million rupees), the role of the resistance leaders, the role of the Indian military. A stark reality is presented here, and for a while, you are on that motorcycle with Munnu, talking through the surrounding “We want freedom!” chants, hiding from the Indian police, ducking to avoid the barbed wires.

Still, despite all this, the story is told without a trace of sentimentality.

“The world is well-aware of the Arab Spring and the Intifada in Egypt and Palestine,” says Munnu’s friend, in one of the self-referential sections of the book. “[Name your novel] Intifada. It makes it easy for an international audience to understand your story.” To which Munnu replies, “the world isn’t just East and West. What if you were writing about the French Revolution, would you call it French Intifada? It’s ridiculous.”

Too often, our stories, our national narratives get consumed by the media’s current trends, often denying them the agency they deserve. Munnu is an important reminder of this: it stands out amongst the din, a narrative singed by the anger of injustice, and a plea for recognition.

The reviewer works for an NGO dedicated to education in Pakistan.

Munnu: A Boy From Kashmir
(GRAPHIC NOVEL)
By Malik Sajad
HarperCollins, UK
ISBN: 978-0008165628
352pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, June 19th, 2016