Pakistan's fertile artistic ground

[S_O_C_O_M]

Pakistan's fertile artistic ground​

Granta may be showcasing Pakistan's English language writers, but this is only the tip of an artistic iceberg​

A flood victim carries a bed on his back as he walks to his village in Khairpur district, September 2010. Photograph: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 10 October 2010 14.00 BST

It is no coincidence that a wealth of literary talent has arisen in Pakistan as the country faces unprecedented challenges. Like all our artists, the stories our authors weave are proof that there is beauty even in the most difficult of times.

There is little doubt that trauma is a great source of artistic inspiration. Imprisonment in Siberia amid unimaginable deprivation, ***** and the biting cold had a profound impact on Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his writing, much to the benefit of his readers. The great 19th century south Asian poet Mirza Ghalib, whose seven children all died in their youth, gained inspiration from grief, remarking in a couplet:

"The prison of life and the bondage of grief are one and the same
Before the onset of death, how can man expect to be free of grief?"​

This very anguish spurred Ghalib to become one of the world's great romantic poets. So it should come as no surprise that, confronted with great travails and challenges, that Pakistan has proved fertile ground for writers, poets and other artists.

Our English-language writers in particular have reached prominence internationally over the past decade. That is plainly evident in the latest edition of the literary magazine Granta which exclusively covers Pakistan and features prose, poetry and visual art from some of the country's finest exponents.

Writer Nadeem Aslam exquisitely crafts a story about the shame surrounding the birth of girls in rural Pakistan. Although Leila in the Wilderness is a harrowing story about the murder of an unwanted child, it serves as a reminder that there is beauty even in the most torrid of circumstances.

The story also reminds that with trauma comes the inability to comprehend in rational terms. Because cultural sensitivities can make open discussion on topics like *** and infanticide difficult, poetry and allegory become not just opportunities to spin a good yarn but vital means for communicating essential aspects of the human experience. That is why Saadat Hasan Manto's provocative but thought-provoking short stories from the time of partition remain the key barometer of the hidden psyche of the early nation.

But our writers are not merely merchants of the subconscious. Mohammad Hanif's brilliant A Case of Exploding Mangoes expertly crafts a narrative that is arguably the most definitive account yet of the mysterious, sudden death of military dictator Zia ul Haq in 1988. Hanif's latest novel, Butt and Bhatti, extracted in Granta, explores the contradictions of romance in ways that are both universal and peculiar to the subcontinent.

Any traveller to the Mughal-era Anarkali Bazaar in Lahore can immediately relate to the protagonist's dilemma in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a novella that was one of the earliest popular works to intelligently link diaspora Pakistanis with their homeland and the uncertainties that spawn militancy in some. Hanif Qureshi's My Son the Fanatic played this role too.

But even this is only the tip of an artistic iceberg because the bounds of expression in Pakistan are, naturally, not limited to the English language or the written word. Generations of inspired authors, poets, lyricists and visual artists have propelled Pakistan society through every one of the past six decades since partition, and the triumphs and tragedies each decade has revealed.

Many of those stories expose challenges that are not unique to Pakistan. Exiled in India during General Zia's Islamist excesses of the 1980s, the indefatigable poet and activist Fahmida Riaz lamented the rise of a similar fanaticism among Hindus in her poem, New India, which in part reads:

"You turned out to be just like us;
Similarly stupid, wallowing in the past,
You've reached the same doorstep as us, at last."​

Earlier this year we saw the innovative and revelatory Coke Studio, a celebration of Pakistani music ranging from pop and experimental to classical and lyrical.

No wonder, then, that there are thousands of Pakistani community groups and publications dedicated to poetry in Urdu and the several regional languages of Pakistan.

For most of our citizens the story of Pakistan is one of a titanic, daily struggle of survival against challenges new – like the floods – and old – like entrenched inequality and official neglect. But ours is a story also weaved from a rich tapestry of love and hope, imagination and courage that is as diverse as our peoples, landscapes and cultures.

Our writers may have achieved prominence because they are more accessible to international audiences. But all of our artists have achieved acclaim at home because only they can bring clarity to a country as rich in character as Pakistan.

Pakistan's fertile artistic ground | Mustafa Qadri | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk