Abstract
Mohamed Hanif is a Pakistan-based author. He is best known for his works of fiction, A Case of Exploding Mangoes and Red Birds. The following interview was conducted in early 2019 via email.
Sasanka Perera
1
Robert Macfarlane, reviewing your first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes in The New York Times on 15 June 2008, refers to it as ‘a historical novel with an eerie timeliness’. 2
The complete review is available at:
Mohammed Hanif:
What is not timeless? There will be several mobile phones, millions of WhatsApp groups, women who have never left their home or their village are connected to the world in real time. In fact, there are so many women in public life, in shops, offices, factories, in banks, in foreign office, in police, and that is what has changed since General Zia’s time. In fact, General Zia’s worst nightmare has come true. He tried to impose chadar aur chardivari. 3
The Urdu term Chadar aur Chardivari in Pakistan’s political context needs to be understood within the politics of declaring Martial Law by the government of General Zia (1977–1988). In this specific cintext, the state was to protect the Chadar—Muslim woman’s honour—and Chardiwari—the traditional Muslim domestic culture. Outside of this term, the two words are unrelated to each other. A Chadar literally means a large sheet of cloth that women in Pakistan traditionally use to cover themselves as the replacement of a Burqa. Chardivari literally means a boundary wall.
Sasanka Perera:
One thing I remember and appreciated about A Case of Exploding Mangoes was its humour; its ability weave an intriguing political tale infused with humour without losing touch with the plot or the overall narrative. But my sense is that in South Asia, people generally do not really know how to deal with humour when it comes to creative enterprises such as fiction and films. Do you think humour is adequately and carefully used in English language creative writing in South Asia? Also, how do you think political players in the region respond to humour or satire when it is used in creative writing as opposed to political sloganeering? I wonder if writers might think of personal safety before deploying humour targeting powerful political actors?
Mohammed Hanif:
You have to think of personal safety even when crossing a road here; so yes always safety first. I think people in our region—I know that is a generalisation because I have not really seen all regions, or read everything that’s being written in the region —use humour to deal with their everyday miseries. Till recent times, there has been a healthy tradition of using humour in political discourse. Mullahs, godless left-wingers all use it to good effect. But in the recent past we have had a new breed of populist leaders, people like Modi and Imran Khan who are a bit of caricatures themselves, so it is a bit difficult to make fun of them. But people have not given up. Turn on a news channel in Pakistan on any day, and it is full of professional comedians. In fact, stand-up comedians who were out of work for decades are now on prime time TV and they are doing a great job by teaching us about our political situation. I can only conclude that there is some demand for it and a certain level of tolerance.
Sasanka Perera:
Do you think that writers in South Asia are somehow limited by their citizenship or sense of belonging to a particular country in their creative approach? For instance, your work is based on what goes on in Pakistan. This is clearly evident in A Case of Exploding Mangoes, though in your new novel, Red Birds, the place remains undefined but seems like war-devastated Afghanistan. Rohinton Mistry’s canvas is India, and often the Parsi community is seen in many of his works like A Fine Balance or Such a Long Journey. This is despite the fact that he had left India and the community, he so vividly describes, long ago. When Khaled Hosseini wrote The Kite Runner, it was based on Afghanistan, which he had also left by then. Why not travel across borders in the creative process? After all, the kind of political intrigue you describe in A Case of Exploding Mangoes or the kind of social and political upheavals these other writers write about can also be found in material from Sri Lanka, Maldives or Nepal. Is it a matter of better familiarity with material where research becomes easier or a matter of hoping for authenticity by being a kind of an insider? Or is it a matter of nostalgia? Can we think of a pan-South Asian literary turn?
Mohammed Hanif:
How can knowing a place, remembering a place, being nostalgic about a place be a disadvantage, how can that be limiting? Again I have not read all South Asian writing in English but writing about one’s own land, about one’s own people, about things you know is not such a bad thing really. The fact that some of them leave their country of birth, but still write about it, why should that be problematic? There is an Indian novel called Goat Days, 4
Goat Days is the English translation of the original Malayalam novel, Aadujeevitham (2008) by Benyamin. It deals with the life of an Indian migrant labourer working in slave-like conditions in Saudi Arabia.
For more information on Kamila Shamsi’s Home Fire, please visit:
For a review of Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman, please visit the following link:
Sasanka Perera:
We all recognise what writers write about is their prerogative. But much of the better-known works deals with violence or an underlying theme happens to be violence as in your own work or in a novel like Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost, which foregrounds Sri Lanka’s political turmoil in the recent past? Of course, violence and particularly political violence is a crucial part of our collective lives. But people fall in love in the midst of these mega cycles of violence. They engage in petty squabbles. And they live ordinary lives in extraordinary conditions. Why not focus on some of these less visible and ordinary things too? Is it that such backgrounds do not work for creative writing, given their seemingly ordinary sensibility? Or is it that violence sells better? Or is it something else?
Mohammed Hanif:
I am still trying to figure out what sells better, as soon as I can figure it out I shall focus on just that. For now, I write everything and that includes violence. So yes there is some violence in the books being written these days, but people who set out to analyse these books tend to see only violence. That happens in real life as well. A city is full of small voices, birds, street hawkers, noisy rickshaws, road side drum players, and then there is a blast or a random shooting, and all the voices are drowned out. Similarly, when there is an act of violence in a piece of fiction, the professional reader goes, ‘hey look the writer is trying to sell violence’. I have never read a novel (and I have read only few) which does not have ordinary things, people falling in and out of love, siblings trying to get along, the daily grind of making a living, some attempt at making sense of our lives. Even the most sold out writer cannot commit an act of violence on every page.
Sasanka Perera:
Often, I have heard in casual conversations, in both India and Sri Lanka, people telling me that creative writing is about experience. That is, fictionalising lived experience. I have read a number of interviews with you in which interviewers have asked you whether your experience as a Pakistani air force pilot and later as a journalist have played a role in your fiction. Without belittling experience, isn’t fiction more a matter of thinking, reading, planning and research?
Mohammed Hanif:
I think mostly it comes out of all the books you have read, all the movies and TV shows you have watched. Experience counts for very little in my experience. Yes, if you have been to a place then you know the weather, the texture of a place and that can be of help. It also comes out of passive thinking, when you let your mind wander; it comes from dreams that you wake up from and then try to remember them. I think the writing process is beautifully summed up by Hanif Kureishi, who calls the whole thing Dreaming and Scheming. 7
For a review of Hanif Kureishi’s Dreaming and Scheming, please visit:
Sasanka Perera:
As you know, South Asia today is marked by political instability. In Bangladesh bloggers have been killed for their ideas. Writers have been threatened or killed in India, which includes the recent threats against Malayalam writer S. Hareesh and the killing of Professor M.K. Kalburgi in 2015. Has South Asia become too dangerous for creative thinking and writing?
Mohammed Hanif:
It can’t be a coincident that this conversation started with safety and it is ending with dangers. Pakistan is always there on the top of the list of countries which is dangerous for journalists. Not sure if they have such a list for writers. I have had my journalist colleagues shot dead, some are facing treason charges for doing some very basic reporting, and now many are losing their jobs, a fate only slightly better than death for a journalist who has not done anything else except journalism all his life. But then, I think was there ever a time when it was all fine for thinking, creative people? Pakistan recently banned a Manto 8
A good exploration of Saadat Hasan Manto’s (1912–1955) life and works is available in Ayesha Jalal (2013).
Footnotes
Acknowledgement
The Editorial Board would like to thank Ajmal Kamal of the PhD program in Sociology at South Asian University for facilitating this interview and Anakshi Pal also of the PhD program in Sociology for coordinating the effort.