CURRENTLY, Pakistan is deeply polarised, its peoples’ freedoms heavily suppressed, and its current affairs in a perpetual state of one-crisis-after-the-next. But if you’re looking for some solution to this mess, I’ve got news: you might just find it in a novel about a talking dog.
Red Birds was published by Mohammed Hanif in 2018. It’s a story of multiple narrators; an American fighter pilot crashed in the desert while on his way to bomb a village, a 15-year-old boy from that same village that rescues him, and the boy’s loyal but heartbroken companion — a stray dog named Mutt.
The book is bold. It’s audacious. It’s a brutal satire about the planet’s most powerful military. Set in a country that both is and isn’t Afghanistan, it takes aim at American foreign policy in a way that hits where it hurts; by depriving it of the seriousness and gravitas that it craves with an addict’s desperation. And in narrating the madness and stupidity at the heart of every war, Hanif manages to convey just as many messages between the lines as within them.
This wasn’t the only time his writing took aim at a big target. When I first read his debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, it challenged my preconceptions of what a book could even be. See, almost all forms of Pakistani media are constrained by some sort of handicap that holds them back from foreign counterparts — budgets, censors, fragile egos, etc.
Whoever decided they were above all criticism?
But for a novel, the only constraint is its author’s imagination. So Hanif was free to explore the sudden death of Gen Ziaul Haq, in all its mystery and grandeur, with an artist’s creative liberty. There were bombs, betrayals, and of course, lots of mangoes. But most of all, there were observations. “The generals who had called Zia a mullah behind his back felt ashamed at having underestimated him: not only was he a mullah, he was a mullah whose understanding of religion didn’t go beyond parroting what he had heard from the next mullah. A mullah without a beard, a mullah in a four-star general’s uniform, a mullah with the instincts of a corrupt tax inspector.’
The word for this is ‘irreverent’. Hanif took the most exalted, untouchable figures in society — those against whom any dissent was unfathomable — and pulled back the curtains. His world is devoid of the self-defeating niceties that have become ubiquitous to Pakistani society. Beneath every façade of limitless power, behind every ‘sahib’ and ‘sir jee’ is a man. A deeply flawed, often narcissistic little man.
Pakistan is still run by men like these. They are subject to quite a lot of reverence. And it’s the absence of it that’s made Hanif’s writings so irresistible. He is still behind some of the greatest columns on Pakistan you can read, in both English and Urdu. But it’s the long-form fiction that really shines as a guiding light for this troubled nation. That makes you question; where else could we use a bit more irreverence?
You can start with judges. Look into Pakistan’s judicial history and you’ll find some of the wackiest decisions on the face of the planet. When a dictator took power in 1958, a Supreme Court judge pulled some mental gymnastics, quoted an Austrian philosopher out of context, and decided that actually, martial law isn’t too bad (look up Hans Kelsen and the doctrine of necessity for more details). When another dictator wanted to get rid of his greatest opponent in 1979, a judge gladly signed the death sentence, only to admit in a TV interview decades after Mr Bhutto was sent to the gallows that the decision had been ‘under pressure’.
There’s not many nice things that can be said about these folks. Nor for the dictators who violated the Constitution and their own oaths by robbing millions of Pakistani citizens of their right to elect their own leaders. But whoever decided they were holier-than-thou, and above all criticism? Above ridicule?
Well, we Pakistanis don’t dwell on the past too much. Oftentimes, we are so polite that we intentionally avoid uncomfortable conversations, lest they cause undue offence. Others, the sheer extent of the ‘sahibs’ and ‘sir jees’ influence on society means that most people simply cannot afford to pay the price of honesty. But whatever the reason, every time we politely refrain from calling out one treasonous sellout for who they are, we embolden another one to take their place.
If there’s any silver bullet to inflated egos, it is satire. But I wouldn’t frame it as a thing to be feared either. Every now and then, we all need to be reminded we are not nearly as important and wonderful as we think we are. It’s good for your health. This philosophy of irreverence is at the heart of Mohammed Hanif’s writings, and dare I say it, Pakistan needs it now more than ever.
Because after all, if you can’t muster the courage to speak truthfully about dead tyrants, what are you going to do about the living ones?
The writer is a lawyer and columnist from Okara, based in Islamabad.
Twitter: @hkwattoo1
Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2022
