October 21 , 2011

The Wandering Falcon - Riveting Tale about Pakistan’s Edge

 

Jamil Ahmad, 80, a retired civil servant of Pakistan, has emerged overnight as a gifted story teller and applauded in several literary circles of the world as a writer par excellence, with his just published book ‘The Wandering Falcon’. The book is as much a work of fiction as it is a humanized presentation of the way of life of the people, particularly the nomadic tribes, inhabiting the edge of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan.

Officially called the Federally Administered Areas (FATA), it is a territory geographically within Pakistan but beyond the applicability of that country’s laws. It is governed by tribal chiefs who follow a unique code of conduct called Pakhtunwali. It lays down, inter alia, that besmirched honor must be avenged; sanctuary must be provided to anyone who seeks it; hospitality is a commandment rather than an option.

The system devised by the British during their colonial period to maintain their suzerainty over the area has been followed by Pakistan since independence. The tribal heads remain in touch with the Political Agents appointed by Pakistan and receive subventions for loyalty.

Jamil Ahmad, on joining the Civil Service in 1954, elected to serve in that daunting area and developed a genuine rapport with the indigenous tribes enjoying their respect and affection. The nine interlinked short stories in his book, written over four decades back, portray a milieu of custom and cruelty, of hate and vendetta, of love and tenderness, of hardship and survival of a people long considered ferocious and unreliable.

The honesty and integrity that the author brings to bear on his narration endears his to the reader who is left with lingering thoughts even after finishing the book.

Interestingly, the stories were composed over three decades back before the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the emergence of the forces of resistance including the Taliban. The developments since then have changed the shape of things in several sectors, but the values cherished by the tribal people have remained almost intact. That is where the attraction and value of the book lies, apart from its beauty as a work of art. The book, released in the US in mid-October, has attracted worldwide attention owing to the significance of the locale of the story in the context of the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

That country has been called the graveyard of invaders. Alexander had warned that it would be easy to enter the country but difficult to get out. The British went to wars with Afghanistan but failed to conquer it; nor could Tsarist Russia. The Soviet occupation of the country in 1979 ended a decade later in disaster and in disintegration of that super power. Now, the United States is trying to relinquish its decade-old occupation but seems to be still groping for a successful exit strategy.

Never in the annals of history has a nation produced as many suicide bombers as have the dissidents in Afghanistan. What kind of people are these? Jamil Ahmad’s book provides some useful insights. Hence, the spurt of interest noticed now in this work essentially of fiction. The locale of the story, Pakistan’s tribal belt, sometimes called the badlands, has never been properly assimilated into modern statehood and it is known now in the West as the hiding place of Islamic terrorists and Taliban.

The book is not a research product like the authoritative work ‘The Pathans’ by Sir Olaf Caroe, a senior British administrator and a former Governor of the Frontier Province. But ‘The Wandering Falcon’ charts the lives of the tribal people who live in inhospitable conditions and are often misunderstood.

Jamil Ahmad has lived with them a good part of his life. His account may therefore be regarded as that of an insider. He has followed the dictum of Mark Twain that one must write only about a subject he knows best. That explains the vividness and clarity in his narration.

Sir Olaf Caroe has observed, “There is a strange fascination in living among the Pathans. Many attempts have been made to catch and convey that feeling, but the spell is elusive.” Jamil Ahmad’s attempt has been fairly successful; hence it has been widely applauded.

The book touches on various emotions: loyalty, commitment to family ties, camaraderie, clan cohesion, graciousness, forgiveness and the feeling of belonging to a tribe. The reader gets to feel such emotions through the experiences of Tor Baz, meaning literally the ‘black falcon’, who serves as the warp in the fictional tapestry. But, it would be not quite correct to say that the book is about Tor Baz. It is more about the unruly tribal belt of Pakistan with Tor Baz serving as the apparent link in seven different episodes, which barely cohere as a novel. The locale with its peculiar cultural milieu is the constant feature and serves as the central piece in the fascinating mosaic crafted by Jamil Ahmad.

His story in the Wandering Falcon begins in Baluchistan in early 1950s when the daughter of a tribal chief, married to an impotent man, elopes with a servant of his father and finds sanctuary in an isolated fort manned by some soldiers of Pakistan army. They are allowed to live in a corner of the fort where a son is born to them who is named Tor Baz. The tribe, Siahpad, hunt them down six years after the dishonor they had caused. Both were killed but the boy was left to die. He was found and adopted by another tribe. He keeps moving from area to area doing odd jobs for a living and unraveling in the process the values governing the lives of the tribesmen, the tragedies wrought by political boundaries restricting their free movement and nomadic life, the inhumanity of modern laws as against the humane Pakhtunwali. Two stories, The Death of Camels and A Point of Honor, symbolize the crisis and conflict in the lives of the simple tribal people caused by the encroaching modern way of life. The author’s empathy for the tribes and his forthright description of their feelings reminds one of Manto’s remarkable stories about the tragedies in the lives of ordinary citizens that followed the partition of India.

One is also reminded to the simplicity of expression used by Hemingway in his masterly novel “The Old man and the Sea”. Jamil Ahmad’s prose also shows a similar economy of words, avoidance of compound sentences and restricting each sentence to less than 20 words. Jamil Ahmad may not be as great a storyteller as Manto or Hemingway but with his debut novel he has indeed carved a niche for himself among outstanding writers. By any standard, the book is a must read and reread.

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