BOOK REVIEW
Beyond the Crumbling Heights
(Colors in the Life of a Slum Boy)
Author: Rafiq Ebrahim
Publisher: Createspace, a subsidiary of Amazon.com
August, 2009
PRICE: $9.99
Review by Prof. Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg , CA
“BEYOND THE CRUMBLING HEIGHTS”, is a fairly readable book because it attempts to reveal some of those hidden truths (social and moral evils) that in real life remain muffled. The story meanders around the life of a motor-mechanic, Zahid, who, as the events unfold, witnesses some of the great vicissitudes of life and its tribulations; comes face to face with some of the bitterest realities of life, and yet remains morally and spiritually intact. Zahid, the protagonist of the story, is a simple character whom one can come across at any street corner, and so are the events that crisscross his life.
The hero helplessly watches the person he loves most - his mother - being abused on daily basis by his father; is a coy lover who is never able to profess his love to “a girl next door”…invents silly excuses to interact with her, “Can I use your cell phone?” ; commits his first crime by pick-pocketing a man in order to buy some medicines for his mother manhandled by her husband; nurses in his heart a great desire to change the people and the place he lives with/in, Kamalpura, but is constrained by the paucity of resources; falls into bad company, and as a result rises vicariously financially, but falls morally, though not spiritually; seeks solace thus lost in the process of making quick money, and lands himself into a yet another kind of den, Maqtab-e-deen”, a religious madrassa run by people like Sheikh Aatish Bokhari, and finally gets liberated from the shackles of these religious fanatics by none else but by a natural calamity, an earthquake whose “Crumbling Heights”, symbolically represent his own spiritual fall, “whenever I reach a height it crumbles”.
The books, however, ends on a happy note, and in a clean and cut-and-paste way, like most Pakistani TV serials, or movies do, with the hero and all the good characters (Ramzu Chacha and Kaleem barber) being rewarded ( Najia, his next-door girl, in the story telling the hero, Zahid what he should have told her long before, “You are not lonely any more. I am with you. I am also a prisoner of time… You said you see crumbling heights everywhere. I will take you beyond the crumbling heights”) and the bad characters getting their share of punishment, like Aatish Bokhari and Zahid’s own father, Ashfaq Malik. Thank God, Zahid escapes the weight of the crumbling heights of moral and spiritual degradation just in time.
The plot, character, thought, language and even the diction and the conclusion, all appear so familiar because the author’s basic thought-process throughout the story is vernacular. He appears to have conceived the plot of the story in Urdu, but then chose to express it in English. “Thanks for the tea. I really relished it. I felt as if my ma had made it. It had the same flavor and affection blended together”, and his reunion with her, “I have come back for another cup of tea…” I view this pattern of thought-process positively because it gives the reader the benefit of getting two in one. Some personal intrusions in the form of comments, which element in literature is termed as the “Essay element”, could have been avoided, had the author chosen to do so.
For example, it is too obvious for the reader to understand why Zahid had come back. The author doesn’t have to explain it, “I see,” said the old man, “I don’t think that is the only reason why you came back….” Expressions like, “A flash of lightning made Zahid saw their scared faces”, or “The funeral was largely attended” or “…a squeeze to Maqbool’s chin and passing the razor rather sharply”, could have been improved.
On the whole, it is a readable piece of fiction that can be read while traveling by air or waiting for the rain to stop on a long week-end.
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