BOOK REVIEW: Untold stories —by Mehr Tarar

We Are Not in Pakistan
By Shauna Singh Baldwin
Goose Lane Editions; Pp 266

Unsaid words. Incomplete phrases. Broken sentences. Half-hearted declarations. Strangled wishes. Forgotten promises. Unshed tears. Empty eyes. Vacant souls. Unlived dreams. Fragmented minds. Glacial hearts. Semi-lived yesterdays. Blank todays. Shadowy tomorrows. Unrequited loves. Comatose marriages. Abridged relationships. Censored sentiments. Shrill, fake laughter. Whispered lies. Cold embraces. Jagged touches. Barely-functional human beings. This is the world of Shauna Singh Baldwin’s We Are Not in Pakistan, and like any other good work of literature, notwithstanding the bleakness of the lives of its characters, the book has a distinct brightness, and an immense promise. Reading the book becomes a highly enjoyable experience, and the most remarkable impression it leaves is of the tremendous talent of the author as an extremely versatile storyteller.

We Are Not in Pakistan is a uniquely interesting compilation of 10 stories, and is Baldwin’s fifth book of fiction. Very few short story writers, trying to write their miniature novels manage to produce an end-result that is both compelling as a book as well as noteworthy for its intellectual content. Her stories are so varied and individualistic in content that, at times, it is hard to imagine they have been penned down by the same person. There is a common thread, a certain identical motif to her ideas, a shared soul in her themes and an identifiable pathos in her writing, which seamlessly connect her myriad tales into one harmonious whole. Each story, albeit all that, stands proudly on its own — as diverse and as singly splendid as one of the colours of the rainbow — beautiful together yet each one plainly perfect on its own. She goes from one character to the other with an effortless ease that camouflages the intricate complexities of the same. There is the apparent stillness covering the deeper turmoil. There is the superficial quietness muting the deafening cacophony of jumbled emotions. There is the subdued simplicity airbrushing the fierceness of life’s unforeseen blows. Very cleverly and very effectively, Singh maintains this narrative status quo throughout her book. The unseen intrigue, the layered baffle, the half-glimpsed tantalise and the promised mystify. The author, however, does not allow the invisible, the not-to-be-seen and the intangible to manifest involuntarily. There is an incredibly smart sassiness to her writing; there is a perpetual tongue-in-cheek naughtiness to her stories, wickedly cajoling you to read between the lines, to peel the layers off, to discern the nuanced hidden. The stories are short and concise, but the meaning, the interpretation and the understanding of each one may be multi-dimensional and multiple-layered to each one of her readers.

The book opens with ‘Only a Button’, the poignantly disturbing saga of a Ukrainian woman, spanning almost two decades. Olena’s life: her subservience to her husband, her acceptance of her surroundings, her noiseless conditioning to others’ will, her silent surrender to the annihilation of her own self — this could be the story of any woman living in any patriarchal, fear-ridden, gender-biased, unequal society anywhere in the world, even today. The Communist USSR, providing a backdrop to the many acts of drama that are Olena’s life, bears testimony to one basic universal truth — that any system of government, which may be well intentioned but is shoddily executed, will never work in the long run. The individual will retain his unique traits even if he is forced to exist as a faceless statistic in an ever growing whole. No system of governance would be able to perpetuate itself if the fundamental rationale for its formation were flawed. No society would go on existing if the rotting, putrid and festering elements jostling in its ugly underbelly are allowed to grow uninhibited. No party in power would rule forever if its ideology is based on the very notions of unaccountability and omnipotence; where the sins of leaders go unpunished, where the malpractices of the ruling majority are whitewashed shamelessly, where the towering facades of untainted, seemingly innocuous monstrosities take the place of honour everywhere. No minority would go on enjoying unfettered freedom and dominance subjugating the majority to an unnatural and unpopular code of conduct. Human beings, in general, do not like to be subdued and suppressed to co-exist as one big happy unit where the mass output is exacted at the toll of undesirable extinction of the one, the self, the individual.

On September 11, 2001, the world changed. As the hijacked aeroplanes slammed into the two towers of the World Trade Centre, the world watched in horror and divided into two. The pro-American world, and the anti-American world came into existence on the doomed day. What transpired after that D-Day is for everyone to see, everyone to, directly or indirectly, experience — and everyone, sooner or later, to make any sense of. The mighty US was attacked. The loss of human lives was gigantic, and as the Americans mourned trying to come to terms with the horrifying reality of that unthinkable tragedy, the rest of the world wept with them. A moment in history. When wise decisions could have been instrumental in bringing fractious continents together, where the common bonds of human grief and suffering could have opened new frontiers for sorting out religious, linguistic and ideological issues, where plans for general appeasement could have worked out for warring nations — they were swept under clouds of rage, of blind fury. The US unleashed its machinery of vengeance and the catastrophic human, spiritual, moral and financial loss is staggering in its stark truth — a never-ending debate for the chroniclers of human history.

This changed world is the dominant, brooding backdrop to many of Ms Singh’s stories. A few bad ones committed an inhumanly cruel act and millions ended up paying the penalty for it. Her characters — be they Mexicans, Costa Ricans, Indians, Pakistanis, and, of course, Arabs — live in the 9-/11 hued US, and learn what it is like to be of any non-white nationality. Their adopted country, which they perceive as their own, reminds them rudely, without warning, and unashamedly, that they are outsiders, intruders, and, worse still, traitors. Nothing they do and say would ever change that, and in Ms Singh’s stories, these victims of American narrow mindedness sigh and go on living their second, third or unranked citizen lives in the US of A.

Ms Singh is a multi-award winning writer, and We Are Not in Pakistan is another truly commendable addition to her literary achievements. Her tales speak of profoundly primal human longings for tenderness, for nurture, for acceptability, for warmth, to be heard, to be understood, for someone to hold your hand, for someone to lessen the darkness, for the loneliness to stop haunting your very being, for your aloneness to quit gnawing on your insides. And for love. Always.

The reviewer can be contacted at mehrt2000@gmail.com