Mapping Mutiny

(As a long-distance friendship freezes, as Raheen resents her buddy’s audacity to presume to explain to her her city from afar, he tells her: “Maps, Raheen, are amazing things. They define a city as a single territorial unit, they give a sense of connectedness, and you don’t want to admit that you are connected to anything that’s painful or uncomfortable.” Later, in her upstate New York dorm he is in turn told: “The word ‘maps’ is an anagram of ‘spam’.”)

Of course, the real pattern they are seeking — dreading — is the cycle of history. There’s Karachi. Is their little universe headed for another split? Is it even one city at all? As they bundle into conspicuous, and often borrowed, long cars and venture out of their upper-middle-class refuges, all Karim can map for them is the danger and chaos closing in. They can hold forth on divisive politics for hours on end, but it’s the wavering timings of “Naila, the malishwali” that provide a true index of Karachi’s daily disturbances.

Then there’s their personal history. Twenty-four years ago, Ali was all set to marry Yasmin, Zafar was engaged to Maheen. Raheen’s extended innocence is terminated when she finally learns what prompted Maheen — Bengali and in that other era of ethnic divisions suddenly a pariah in West Pakistan — to dump her father and instead end up with Ali.

These are age-old questions. Must Raheen compensate for her father’s hateful transgressions? How are the rules altered when parents seek forgiveness? It’s but an allegory for Shamsie’s young nation, rendered so frail by five decades of dashed hopes: must today’s generations make up for errors of previous ones? Are they entitled to explanations for the scars they’ve inherited? Is every generation responsible for scripting its own revolt?

Ali provides a clue in a fraying letter to Maheen: “I will not cower. I will help Yasmin bring up our daughter in such a way that she will have to look at me in horror when I finally tell her the truth of what I said (that day in ’71).” On the other hand, Yasmin despairs of her daughter’s easy acquiescence to quotidian vagaries: “Please don’t tell me conformity is your form of rebellion.”

Fortunately it’s not.

Unfortunately, Zia and Sonia who complete the new foursome have not been brought up to react in horror. And as events put them through the grinder, will they too — just like Maheen and company in ’71 — be forced to partner the wrong ones? Zia and Karim seem determined to repeat the mistakes of the past, but Raheen holds out.

In this busy novel bursting with cricketing parallels (an unexpected reversal is compared to Javed Miandad’s last ball six, a shady character bears uncanny resemblance to Mike Gatting) and humourous asides, an entire urban universe has been mapped. Readers unacquainted with Karachi’s idiosyncrasies will be stunned to find their concerns resonating through the narrative.