The Afghan Campaign by Steven Pressfield - A Book Review

Afghanistan is supposed to be the graveyard of foreign armies and empires. The US and other coalition forces are relearning this lesson now. Soldiers from the British Empire, many of whom were recruited from the subcontinent, learnt this over a century ago. However, Alexander the Great’s invasion of the various kingdoms that comprised modern day Afghanistan was an exception to this rule. Despite enormous losses of men, Alexander managed to subdue Afghanistan after a three-year campaign, after which he moved to India. Steven Pressfield, author of the highly acclaimed Gates of Fire, an account of how 300 Spartans held the Persian army at bay for many days, has written an equally exciting account of Alexander’s Afghan campaign. Mind you, this book came out almost four years ago, though I managed to read it very recently.

Narrated by a lowly soldier, a cavalryman named Matthias, The Afghan Campaign starts with Matthias’s enrolment and his departure for the field of war, Matthias’s father has recently died of Sepsis in Afghanistan,whilst serving Alexander. Two of Matthias’s brothers have been with Alexander for many years. And what’s Matthias’s motive for signing up? Glory and wealth. This seems to be the case with most Macedonians and other Greeks.

One of the most interesting things about this book is the author’s abundant use of modern military terminology. Catapults and bolt throwers are described as ‘artillery’ and ‘missile troops’. Alexander’s army has whole divisions of ‘engineers’, whose jobs range from building bridges to undermining forts. Macedonians are referred to as Macks and military ranks in Alexander’s army vary from sergeant to corporal to captain. In between, Pressfield slips in mentions of phalanxes and Xiphos (sword). More often than not, Matthias and his colleagues carry out ‘cordon operations’, using ‘block and search’ tactics.

Here’s a sample of Pressfieldese:

“The column marches in four sections. The vanguard breaks the trail. These are army engineers. Their division leads three thousand camels, laden with timber post and beams, cables, ropes, planking and fittings; they will fabricate bridges to span the torrents and gorges in spate. The van drives sheep and oxen as well, not only to drag timbers for the construction, bit to beat down the trail - and to be slaughtered for meat. To protect the fore elements, the engineers have archers, slingers and javelineers, mercenary cavalry of Lydia, Armenia and Media, with hired Afghans of the west, mountain troops who hate the Panjshiri and our own Mack pioneers. The latter are the miscreants of the army, stripped of the privilege of bearing arms and handed axes and mattocks instead. The poor scuffs are clearing tracks through twenty and thirty foot high drifts. Alexander and the elite units come next, the agema of the Companions, the Royal Guardsman, battalions of Perdiccas’s and Creterus’s crack brigades with Agrianian javelineers, Cretan archers and specialised mountain companies, including combat engineers with stone throwers and bolt-hurlers. These divisions will take the foe in strength, here in the Panjshirif if the tribesmen contest our passage, and on the plains of Bactria beyond, when the King overhauls Bessus’s and Spitamenes’ cavalry. Next the central phalanx brigades, including ours, Hephaestion’s and Ptolemy’s and the non-detached battalions of Perdiccas and Craterus; then the heavy sections; then the light brigades of Erigius, Attlus, Gorgias, Meleager, and Polyperchon, along with mercenary and Iranian cavalry. The baggage, such as there is, comes between them and the rearguard, composed of foreign contingents and native light troops. The total is nearly fifty thousand.”

I initially found Pressfield’s use of contemporary terminology disconcerting and even upsetting. I felt cheated. However, by the time I was half way through, I had settled in and stopped differentiating between English, Greek and Afghan words.

The Afghan Campaign has plenty of drama. Matthias practises Greek philoxenia (love for stranger) which easily comes into in conflict with Afghan ‘Nangauli’. Nangauli translates into honour, revenge and hospitality. If a woman is in distress and her male relatives are not in a position to help her, but a stranger does, the woman has brought dishonour to her family and should be killed! Does that make sense to you? It doesn’t to me and I wish I could find out if Pressfield made that one up or if Nangauli was a historical fact. To me, Nangauli appears to be a more extreme version of the Sharia, as practised in certain parts of modern day Afghanistan.

Pressfields’ description of battle scenes are excellent. There’s one where the Afghan warlord Spitamenes is facing Alexander’s troops across a river. Afghan archers are itching for the fight and they think they have the upper hand. Alexander, the master deceiver, has a few trumps up his sleeve and the result is a rout for the Afghans. After a few pages of masterly narration, Matthias the narrator makes an innocuous statement: “The Afghan does not understand modern artillery” (emphasis supplied) Towards the end of the book, there’s a final battle where Alexander’s troops decimate Spitamenes’s army. Those few pages alone make it worthwhile to read the entire book. I won’t spoil the fun, please do read it for yourself.

What was the secret of Alexander’s (relative) success in Afghanistan? There are two secrets. One, Greek soldiers were brutal, as brutal as the Afghans who thought nothing of flaying captives alive or using equally painful methods to torture and execute men. There were wholesale massacres of villages and communities. Opposition was simply not tolerated. Two, at the end of the book, Alexander marries Roxane, daughter of the Warlord Oxyartes who was one of the various chieftains opposing him. Alexander’s marriage earns him a number of friends and pacifies most of Afghanistan. If you think I am being a spoilsport in disclosing the ending, you are wrong. The Afghan Campaign begins with Alexander’s wedding and the rest of the book is a flashback.

Can the US and the rest of NATO take a leaf from Alexander’s book? I doubt it. These days, western solders can’t be ruthless and cruel. However, Obama can and should emulate Alexander and take Mullah Omar’s daughter as his second wife. May be that will pacify Afghanistan and enable the troops to return home.

Jinnah by Jaswant Singh – A Book Review

I got hold of this book mainly because I hoped it would answer a simple question I’ve had for a long time. Did Jinnah fight for an independent Pakistan because he genuinely believed that Muslims would not be treated fairly in India? That creating Pakistan was the only possible way Muslims’ rights could be protected? Or was it because he was an egoist who could not bear the thought of playing second fiddle to Mahatma Gandhi and his protégée Jawaharlal Nehru and wanted a signal achievement of his own?

Jaswant Singh starts off his tome with great promise. The initial chapters which tell us about Jinnah’s childhood are well-written and very interesting. Jinnah was a Khoja. Khojas are Shia Muslims who owe allegiance to the Aga Khan and whose ancestors were Gujarati Lohanas who converted to Islam. Jinnah’s father Jenabhai lived in Kathiawad till he migrated to Karachi. I find it extremely interesting that of the two main actors in India’s freedom struggle and partition, one was from Kathiawad and the other had his roots in the same principality. Jaswant Singh’s account of Jinnah’s time in London where he trained to be a barrister and his initial struggles to establish a name for himself in the legal profession are inspiring to say the least. As for my question why Jinnah fought to create Pakistan, Jaswant Singh gives us a clue in the initial stages when he says Jinnah was a man of impeccable integrity which was never called into question by anyone.

However, after the first chapter – Jenabhai to Jinnah – the book starts to digress. What was till then a crisply written narrative about Jinnah the human being becomes a history book about India’s independence struggle between1910-1947. The narration moves back and forth in time and there is an great deal of repetition. Not all of the text relates to Jinnah or throws light on him. To be honest, I had bought this book in August 2009 almost immediately after its release, but had abandoned it half-way through. It was only recently that I girded myself and picked it up again. Was my dogged determination worth it? I am not too sure. ‘Jinnah’ continues to be a history compilation for another four hundred odd pages. The entire book, with its appendices and index, runs to 669 pages, of which the bulk of the text is about the freedom movement in general. Granted, it is not possible to understand Jinnah or his motive(s) in fighting for the creation of Pakistan unless it is read in the context of the freedom struggle, the book is almost a blow by blow account of the events leading to independence and one gets the feeling of having missed the tree for the woods.

We are told that in his early days Jinnah was an ardent proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity, one who rejected the demand for separate electorates and who did not take part in the Khilafat movement. Until he joined the Muslim League in 1913, Jinnah was a devout Congressman who swore by its secular credentials. As head of the Muslim League, Jinnah entered into the 1916 Lucknow Pact with Gandhi which helped the Congress and Muslim League present a joint set of demands to the British. Then came the unravelling in 1920. Gandhi launched the Non Cooperation Movement and Jinnah was not a big fan of such an approach which required one to break the law. Anglophile Jinnah was also not as big a fan of going native as Gandhi was. We are also told that during the Second World War the Muslim League under Jinnah cooperated with the British and won a number of concessions whilst the Congress party leadership went to jail en masse. However, Jaswant Singh is still unable to tell us why Jinnah started to take the view that Muslims would be better off in an independent Pakistan. Did he really believe that or did he just want a show of his own? Was it the Jinnah who had opposed Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement (because it would break the law of the land) who later called for a Direct Action Day in August 1946?

I assume that not much information is available on many of the key events in Jinnah’s life. Unlike Gandhi, Jinnah did not write his version of ‘The Story of My Experiments with Truth’. For example, Jaswant Singh has little to tell us about Jinnah’s estrangement from his second wife ‘Ruttie’ who was a Parsi and the daughter of a personal friend. Jinnah also became estranged from his only child Dina when she got married to Neville Wadia, a Parsi. There is much more information to be gathered from Wikipedia on matters such as these than in Jaswant Singh’s 669-page book! What is even more surprising is that Jaswant Singh is totally silent on the attempt to assassinate Jinnah by an alleged member of the Kashkar movement on 26 July 1943. The Khaksars, I am told by a number of unreliable sources on the internet, fought for the rights of Muslims, wanted independence for British India, but opposed partition! I don’t know any more about the Khaksar movement other than that it was founded by Allama Mashriqi (also known as also known as Inayatullah Khan) who in 1957 was all set to lead 300,000 of his followers into Kashmir to fight for its liberation until the Pakistani government persuaded him not to.

My biggest grumble therefore is that on topics where there is very little information available in the public domain, especially on what motivated secular Jinnah to push for Pakistan, I would have liked Jaswant Singh to express an opinion or a thesis. The final chapter aptly titled ‘In Retrospect’ is all about Jaswant Singh’s views on partition and how it was a horrible mistake and how it could have been avoided. A lot of the blame falls on the Indian National Congress and Nehru. Jaswant Singh does not say that Jinnah is not to blame. What would have been wonderful, but is conspicuous by its absence, is a view on whether Jinnah himself continued to remain proud of his achievement in the short period that he lived after partition. After reaching August 1947, Jaswant Singh takes his readers directly to the day on which Jinnah died!

One of the things I liked a lot about this book is its opinion on Lord Mountbatten. Various writers, especially Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins in Freedom at Midnight, have taken a very benevolent view of Mountbatten and his role in the partition of India. Jaswant Singh (rightly in my view) exposes Mountbatten to be a show man who was thoughtless and incompetent and who hastily rushed through partition which resulted in the deaths of over a million Indians.

Jaswant Singh’s writing is straight forward and to the point. At times, there are literary flourishes, which read rather well. However, because it is so lengthy and because it does not have a specific focus, I doubt if the BJP leadership which expelled Jaswant Singh for this book, actually read it from cover to cover!

When I finished ‘Jinnah’ my most basic question about Jinnah and the partition remained unanswered, For this reason, Jaswant Singh’s treatise reminded of the book I once received as a gift. Titled, ‘All That Men Know About Women,’ it had 200 odd blank pages.

Talk Your Way To USA – 1986 – Anyone Around?

1986. Air India organised a speech competition for school children in Tamil Nadu. Captioned “Talk Your Way To USA”, competitors were supposed to talk extempore about Travel and Tourism. The winner got a return ticket from Chennai to the US for self, one parent and a teacher. Number two earned a return ticket to the US for self and a teacher. The third prize winner got a return ticket from Chennai to New Delhi for self, one parent and a teacher. There were three consolation prizes after that – return tickets from Chennai to Mumbai for the winner and a teacher. I came fourth and travelled by air - for the first time! The highlight of the final ceremony held on 14 November 1986 (Children’s Day) was the presence of the then Chief Minister MGR who graciously gave five thousand rupees each to all six finalists! Thanks to MGR’s presence, the final prize giving ceremony was shown as a News clipping at various movie theatres in Tamil Nadu. Needless to say, I was a hero at school for the rest of that year.

1986 was the first time Air India held this competition. It was repeated a few times after that. The next year, the competition was held in Tamil and I didn’t get past the district level.

I haven’t kept in touch with any of the other finalists or semi-finalists for that matter from 1986. It would be grand if I could. Please email me if you were there.

Book Review: A Journey by Tony Blair

The Journey

It was meant to be “The Journey”, but a last minute editorial change made it “A Journey”. We’ll never know the reason why. Most probably, it was a case of eleventh-hour nerves and a desire to avoid the charge of being pompous. A Journey is a political memoir but Blair does dwell on various aspects of his personal life very often, telling us how became reliant on alcohol at one point. However, many chunks from Blair’s personal life are carefully avoided, such as his recent conversion to Catholicism, though towards the end of the book, Blair says that he has always been more interested in religion than in politics.

What Makes A Politician?

Politics is not for the faint hearted. What is it that makes a man or a woman pursue capricious voters (who are usually interested only in their personal welfare) and make a career out of it? A successful politician has to be someone who enjoys being in the limelight, is willing to be subjected to scrutiny and is good at communicating with the public. A good politician is someone who wants to make a difference. Blair is a successful politician and a good one. Blair wants to make a difference. More importantly, Blair, like any other politician wants the entire credit for what he does. Blair takes his journey very seriously. For him, it is The Journey. Blair believes that he is a man of destiny, a man meant to make a difference to millions of people not only in the UK but also in the rest of the world.

The Ends Justify The Means

In his 700-odd page tome, Blair devotes a fair amount of space to explain how the son of a self-made barrister and Tory politician became interested in politics and joined Labour. Blair is not in politics for power alone. Yes, he is interested in power. The detailed descriptions of his tug of war with Gordon Brown make that amply clear (see the last paragraph). But Blair also believes that he is the best man for the job. When Blair indulges in politicking, he is doing it not just for himself, but for the good of everyone – no sarcasm intended here.

Book Layout

Though this book traces Blair’s political life from his childhood till the time he quit as Prime Minister, it is written thematically, rather than chronologically. For example, there are chapters devoted to the Iraq War, Princess Diana and to the intervention in Kosovo. I should confess that my main motive for reading A Journey was to understand Blair’s rationale for the invasion of Saddam’s Iraq.

Iraq War

Blair makes a special mention of the fact that in February 2003, over a million Britons marched in London against the Iraq war. The million-man march is mentioned more than once. Does this faze Blair? No. To quote Blair, “there had never been a larger demonstration, reminding me of my isolation and the responsibility of the decision I was about to take”. Blair takes responsibility for the decision he took. Does he regret his decision? Would he have done differently with the benefit of hindsight? The answer to both questions is a hesitant No. Blair says that his objective in talking about Iraq is not to persuade his readers of the rightness of the cause, but to merely persuade that such a cause can be made out and that his decision may have been right. Blair takes a great deal of pain to delve into Saddam’s human rights record and the fact that Iraq had a programme for production of chemical weapons. True, they did seriously believe that Iraq still had them – why else would Saddam obstruct UN inspections? However, if Saddam had not been removed from power, Blair believes that Iraq would have once again reverted to its old game and recommenced production of weapons of mass destruction. Many Iraqi children died as a result of malnourishment and lack of medicines during the era of UN sanctions. Whose fault was it? Saddam’s of course, for choosing to not buy food and medicines and wanting to show the world that UN Sanctions were causing deaths. I agree with this bit of Blair’s assessment and analysis, but on the whole, Blair leaves so many questions unanswered. Weren’t their other regimes which had a worse human rights record than Saddam’s Iraq? What about North Korea? Iran anyone?

Blair says that so many people told him that the Shia Iranians would never forge an alliance with Sunni groups in the middle-east. But they did, for short-term tactical reasons. In a way, he makes it clear that the USA and UK could have done better with their predictions for the post invasion scenario. They should have expected the long-oppressed Shia majority to reassert itself and possibly align with Iran. They should have expected Iran to intervene in Iraq so as to build a sphere of influence for itself in Iraq. They should have expected the Al Qaeda to enter Iraq.

Towards the end, Blair gives a clue to the main drivers behind the Iraqi invasion. He says, “the region needed a fundamental change. And this change was to be of a different character. In the 1980s we had armed Saddam as we had the mujahideen in Afghanistan, so as to thwart Iran in the one case and the Soviet Union in the other. It was a tactical move, but a strategic mistake, This time we would bring democracy and freedom. We would hand power to the people. We would help them build a better future. We would bring, not a different set of masters, but the chance to be the masters, as our people are of us. And hadn’t we shown that such idealism was indeed achievable? In Afghanistan they were preparing for their first election, and the Taliban at that time was seemingly banished. In my first term we had toppled Milosevic and changed the face of the Balkans. In Sierra Leone, we had saved and then secured democracy after the ravages of the diamond wars. We had the military might of America, not to say that of Britain and others. There was no way that Saddam could resist….”

In other words, Iraq was do-able. The belief in the existence of weapons of mass destruction created the grounds to do it. In any event, Iran or North Korea or Cuba were not do-able.

UK-USA Special Relationship

Blair takes the special relationship with the US for granted. In any event, he does not take up much space in justifying it. Instead, he says that the British like their leaders to stand tall internationally. Do they? I am not too sure. Blair says “Brits would want to know that in Toulouse people would recognise me. Our leaders should stand out, and if not cut a dash, at least make an impact. The problem is, as time has gone on and the world has changed, and Britain’s relative size and weight have shifted, it becomes harder to do so. Not less desirable, just harder.” One is left with no doubt that Blair wanted to stand tall internationally. “Those who thought that our closeness to America was a problem in the rest of the world, could not have been further from the mark. On the contrary, it gave us immediate purchase. There was no greater nonsense that that our alliance with the US lost us standing in the world. The opposite is the case.” Blair cites the example of Harold Wilson who did not support the US on Vietnam and still lost the 1970 general election.

First Names Please

Blair ranks George Bush very high not only in terms of integrity, but also intelligence. Making a convincing case, Blair says only a very intelligent person could have ended up as the President of the United States of America. Blair refers to George Bush as ‘George’ throughout the book. However, Bill Clinton, who Blair is says he was just as close to and who is ‘progressive’ (while George Bush is admittedly ‘conservative’) is referred to as ‘Bill Clinton’ or ‘President Clinton’ throughout, except when Blair talks of the Monica Lewinsky incident and in a very few others instances. I wonder why. Blair screws up his courage and actually refers to Vladimir Putin as 'Vladimir' a few times. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall and listened to a real conversation between Blair and Putin. ‘Vladimir,..’ Blair begins and holds out his hand with a warm and open smile. ‘Anthony…,’ Putin responds and clasps Blair’s hand, and they start talking earnestly. Was it ever like that, I wonder?

Hilary Clinton

There are very few references to Hilary Clinton, too few I thought, though Hilary assumed office more than a year after Blair resigned as Prime Minister. Blair mentions Hilary’s visit to the UK as the US representative at the time of Princess Diana’s death. And then Blair tells us how Hilary stood by Bill Clinton when the Monica Lewinsky incident broke. Does Blair think Bill and Hilary remain married for political convenience? Do read this book to find out.

Barack Obama

Obama too does not occupy much space in Blair’s journey. Yes, Blair admires Obama’s communication skills and election campaign, but does he ideologically agree with this fellow progressive? For example, Blair praises Obama’s Cairo speech. “The speech was carefully calibrated. The hand of friendship would be offered, even to Syria and Iran. It was in part an apology, and taken as such. The implicit message was: We have been disrespectful and arrogant; we will now be, if not humble, deeply respectful. But join us, if you will.” “The trouble is: respectful of what, exactly? Respectful of the religion of Islam, President Obama would say, and that is obviously right; but that should not mean respectful of much of the underlying narrative, which many within Islam articulate in its politics today.” Mind you, on this issue, I am more with Blair than with Obama as I have explained in one of my earlier posts.

Nicolas Sarkozy

Sarkozy (sometimes Nicolas Sarkozy, sometimes just Nicolas and sometimes just Sarkozy) on the other hand is spoken of with warm admiration. “He was fascinating company – engaging, energetic and with that captivating French bravado around women, life and laughter that I loved. I liked too the fact that he was a ‘my way or no way’ person. He had the spirit certainly to demand change, and to get it or go. And I was very sure that was the only way to get the necessary reforms fast. But, as ever, it is one thing to propose in theory; another to execute in practice. In that first flush of limitless possibility which characterises the new incumbent, I saw something of my own feeling ten years before. ‘It will get tougher,’ I warned him.”

China and…. India

India finds a few mentions, usually in the same breath as China – “possibly we have not yet internalised the true significance of China’s rise (or indeed that of India)”; ”…and will not India and China, each with three times as many citizens as the whole of the EU put together, once their economies have developed sufficiently, as they will do, reconfigure entirely the geopolitics of the world and in our lifetime?”

Israel and Palestine

With regard to Israel and Palestine, Blair says he understands the Palestinian position and finds Israel unreasonable in some respects, but on the whole, he feels that the Palestinians and their supporters are not trying hard enough to find a solution. I fully agree with Blair. During the Israel/Lebanon war of 2006, Blair refused to condemn Israel, though Israel’s actions caused a lot more damage to the Lebanese than Israel suffered on account of Hezbollah’s rockets. “Hezbollah were and are an urban guerrilla movement. They target civilians deliberately. Their weapons are poorer, so they kill relatively few. They assume the posture of the plucky underdogs. Israel is a government with a well-armed and well-trained army and air force. They do not target civilians. But their only weapon, in a civilian setting, where the guerrilla movement is located, is deterrence. Therefore, they use their force to try to deter further attacks. Inevitably, large numbers of civilians are killed. They quickly assume the mantle of oppressors.” I fully agree with Blair’s position and his analysis. I had taken a similar view with respect to Israel’s invasion and bombing of the Gaza strip in 2009.

Pakistan and Kashmir

Kashmir is mentioned a few times in the same breath as other hotspots such as Sri Lanka and Kosovo. Blair tells us of a conversation with Musharraf regarding the linkage between Pakistani nationalism and Islam (General Zia’s doing) which is rather interesting. “The connection between the two, Musharraf explained, had furthered radicalism in the country, heightened the issue of Kashmir and made reconciliation with India harder. ‘Surely’, I said, ‘economic development is the key challenge for Pakistan.’ Of course,’ he said, ‘but the reality is today Pakistani politics is about nuclear weapons and Kashmir.’ What can we do to help?’ I asked, expecting an answer to do with aid or India. ‘Do Palestine,’ he immediately shot back. ‘That would help.”

Gordon Brown

The tussle with Gordon Brown is dealt with at length, the initial friendship, the tussle to be leader of the Labour party as it came close to power in the mid-nineties, the unspoken promise to step down after two terms (was it ever made?), the friendship (almost like a married couple), the quarrels, Brown’s attempt to bully Blair into stepping down….. let me not say anymore. Blair writes very well, in limpid and functional prose which is a pleasure to read. Do read about Blair’s Journey and find out for yourself.

Book Review: Insomnia by Aamer Hussein

I recently happened to read Aamer Hussein’s Insomnia, a collection of seven fine short stories, which came into print in 2007. I had heard of and read Hussein before since he reviews books for the Independent, but hadn’t read any of his books till now.

The best thing about the stories in Insomnia is that they are so beautifully and delicately crafted, without a single wasted word. Hussein comes across more as a calligrapher than just a writer. The first story, ‘Nine Postcards from Sanlucar de Barrameda’ gives a foretaste of what’s to come. Each ‘postcard’ is a snippet of life as a Pakistani man visits Sanlucar with a special friend. ‘Do you still feel Pakistani?’ the narrator is asked. ‘I do, when I feel anything at all.’ A little later when Muslims’ loyalty to their adopted countries is questioned, the narrator says, ‘I guess I am a Muslim in Europe too. And foreign wherever I go.’

I finished ‘Nine Postcards from Sanlucar de Barrameda’ in no time and moved on to other stories. However, I was forced to return and read it again because the fleeting images created were still floating around in my mind and I had to confirm if they were real.

The Crane Girl has a number of foreign teenagers, children of expats, playing teen games in the posh West-end in London. It took a bit of time for me to realise that Hussein has set this story in the 1970s. Murad is the protagonist and he strikes up a friendship with Tsuru, a Japanese girl of fragile and unusual beauty with ivory skin. But Tsuru soon goes away and Murad misses her so much that missing Tsuru becomes a habit and Murad stops noticing how much he still did miss her. When Tsuru is away, Murad and Shiego become friends. Shiego is a bit older than Murad and he has a lot more money, which he splashes on Murad. It becomes a bit too obvious for the reader to find out what the girlish Shiego has in mind, but then Tsuru returns unexpectedly. The ending is not conclusive, but this is a great story and I’ll leave it to you to read and find out for yourself.

Hussein seems to have special admiration for authors who write only in Urdu and who fight the ‘system’. Does this arise out of any guilt which Hussein feels in being a Pakistani writer based in London, when there is so much action taking place back home and so many battles being fought on a daily basis? Armaan in Hibiscus Days is one of those writers whose writings (in Urdu) can cause workers to riot on the streets. But Armaan also has a drinking problem and beats his wife Aliza before they break up. Armaan may be a brutal man, but Hussein handles him very gently. Rafi Durrani and Saadia from The Angelic Disposition appear to be much more saintly. They are also very different from Armaan. Rafi Durrani likes to read Wodehouse and ends up flying for the Royal Airforce in the Second World War. Saadia finds reading in English to a be a chore, even if it is book gifted by Rafi.

I liked The Angelic Disposition best, mainly because of the way Saadia maintains a close friendship with Rafi Durrani, whom she has met just seven or nine times. The friendship is nurtured through correspondence and both parties remain loyal to their spouses. Saadia didn’t marry her husband for love, he is much older than her and theirs seems to be a platonic relationship, though Saadia does conceive once. The story starts from pre-partition times to the late seventies and Hussein keeps one guessing till the end.

Murad from The Crane Girl fame makes two more appearances, in The Book of Maryam and Insomnia. The Book of Maryam is short and sweet and has poetess Tahira, chaperoned by Murad make a cameo appearance in London. There are vague references to a dictator, but one is left guessing as to the period when this story is set. In Insomnia, which has lent its name to this collection, Murad has a special friendship with Sri Kunti, a poetess from Java. Though there is a lot of similarity with Tsuru and The Crane Girl, Sri Kunti and Insomnia are none the less very different in that, the teenage angst which characterises The Crane Girl isn’t there.

The Lark, set in the years during which the Second World War raged, tells the simple tale of a young man going home after a long absence. He likes those he will leave behind, and he will miss them greatly, just as they will miss him. Nevertheless, he is happy to be going home. As usually, this slip of a story leaves behind many flavours for the reader to swirl around and enjoy.

After Insomnia, Hussein has published a novella ‘Another Gulmohar Tree’