We first encounter our protagonist, Hayat, a 2nd generation Pakistani American lad, in college, but very quickly, the narrative goes back to a time when Hayat was 10 years old. He lives with Muneer his mum, and Naveed, his dad, an only child. Muneer and Naveed’s marriage is not a good one from the very start because Naveed serially cheats on his wife. Muneer’s best friend in Pakistan is Mina (or Amina), whose husband divorced her just as she had given birth to their son, Imran. The husband apparently planned to claim his son once the boy had turned seven. So when Imran is four, Muneer brings her friend and son over to the US, to keep them safe.
The beautiful, dazzling Mina is beloved by everyone, especially the adolescent Hayat who is clearly smitten by her. She starts by making up bedtime stories for the two boys, and from there, slowly starts to introduce Hayat to the Quran. Her own love for her faith is transferred to Hayat, who at first learns the Quran and surahs to please her, but then begins to enjoy learning them for their own sake. It is also Mina who first teaches Hayat to pray. Hayat tells us that Mina is spiritual, not just religious, she advocates for ijtihad, or personal interpretation. She believes in the importance of intention, not forms and rituals. But Mina is deeply devout, and fills Hayat’s head with stories of djinns, angels, and stories of the prophet Muhammed’s life. She encourages him to become a hafiz, one who knows the holy book by heart,
It meant not only securing one’s own place in Janaat [Paradise], but a place for one’s parents as well.
p54
Mina also introduces Hayat to the concept of a dervish, “someone who gives up everything for Allah” (p101), by telling him a story of a Sufi dervish who tried to remove everything that lay between himself and God.
At first, the household seems happier for the new arrivals. Muneer is thrilled to live vicariously through and with her darling friend. Naveed enjoys her company and cooking too, and loves her little boy, who, desperate for a father figure, appears to adore Naveed. Hayat of course is happier with both parents happier, enthralled by Auntie Mina, and willing even to try to be nice to Imran and to treat him like a little brother. However, Hayat apparently has a premonition of doom to come, claiming that Pakistanis are different from Americans in expecting unhappiness, not happiness, and claiming furthermore, this is a cultural trait:
I am not convinced we were prepared to be happy. Afterall, we were formed and informed (to various degrees) by an Eastern mythos profoundly at odds with the American notion of happily-ever-after. For though we longed for happiness, we did not expect it. This was our cultural text, the message imprinted in even the movie videos my parents rented from the local Indo-Pak grocer […] These were the moving pictures that had given shape and sound to their souls, stories painted from a darker palette, limned with haunting songs and built from images of elegiac beauty that conveyed an unvarying message: Do not expect anything other than loss, pain, sorrow
p70-71
Now there may well be some truth to the fact different cultures have different expectations underlying, but it would be stretching this a bit far to fall in with Hayat’s claims Pakistanis therefore are culturally predisposed to sadness and to expectations happiness will not last, surely, not all Pakistanis?
That said, this is not really a book about Pakistani diaspora. This is about Muslims in America, and the one key failing of this novel is the rather hectoring tone it takes at times, making the explanations of Islamic beliefs just too clunky. Good writing should seamlessly assimilate information into the narrative, so the learning experience is subtle and compelling. By contrast, there are large sections in this novel where so-called Islamic beliefs are dogmatically and even prescriptively rammed down the reader’s throat, making parts of this novel clumsy and heavy-handed. Intensity is all well and good, but making heavy weather of things is different, and far less welcome. It is no surprise to see, in an interview at the back of the book, the author himself saying:
I wanted to write a book about Muslims-American experience, and as such I knew that I would have to be instructing the reader as well as drawing them more and more deeply into the tale.
p364
Of course, we do not forget this is a debut novel, and not all debut novelists have achieved finesse and that lightness of touch as yet. But it is to be hoped that the author will regard his readers somewhat less patronisingly – that would definitely make for a pleasanter and stronger writing style.
With Mina firmly established in the household, the novel introduces new characters. Naveed has a working partner, a Jewish man called Nathan Wolfson, who falls for Mina. At first Nathan is willing to convert to Islam to marry Mina, but a Jew-bashing episode at the mosque puts him off. The middle part of the novel has a dual focus, on Islamic beliefs of Pakistanis in the US, and on Hayat’s adolescent confusions of his own desires and beliefs. The two are intertwined quite well. The reader’s sympathies also start shifting. Naveed had been stereotyped by Muneer, his long-suffering wife, as just another Eastern man who cannot stop chasing white prostitutes, no better than an animal. However, as the story unfolds, cannot help but have a sneaking sympathy for Naveed, Hayat’s father, who has no truck with religious fundamentalism, and regards Nathan as his true brother. This refreshing lack of bigotry makes him quite exceptional in his community. Moreover, he is rather sweet with the children, even with Imran who is not his own. Meanwhile, wonderful Mina increasingly seems less and less wonderful, feet of clay indeed. She seems to give her affections rather easily (immediately finding another suitor after breaking off with Nathan when he no longer will convert), seems to focus on Islamic form even though she claims otherwise, seems to lack self-control and perspective. Moreover, she seems to make very poor choices and shows a lack of judgement, which perhaps self-creates the suffering she endures subsequently.
The novel begins with Hayat as a young man, and it comes back full circle to his present day, but the present day part of the tale never seems quite as vivid as the Mina-period of his life. The notion of this kind of structure is good, but the weightage of how it is executed is rather lop-sided. Again, it is of course the usual mistakes of a new novelist, and relatively minor. It is clear Akhtar has much to say, and much of what he has to say seems very interesting. Almost certainly, he will find better and better ways of saying it, in his novels to come. He is not a bad storyteller by any means, but there is nothing distinctive, powerful, or memorable about his actual writing style, no flair or original take in the way sentences are constructed. That said, he has demonstrated the ability to create a cast and complex setting with authenticity; his depiction of the relationships between the characters are a lot of showing and not telling, which is all to the good. Perhaps toning down the instructing of readers and focusing on the art of writing may be the way forward for this author.
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