Her face is calm and cheerful, refusing to yield permanent residence to the vicissitudes of life. She is warm and hospitable. Defying all stereotypes of authors, Kamila Shamsie is neither aloof nor elusive. Nor does she have those deliberate pauses in speech to gather her thoughts, choose her words. Rather, she is a natural, one who expresses her thoughts with candour, keeping a little window open for debate and dissent. A prolific author at ease with new tools of social engagement, Kamila though retains in some measure the profundity of the old school. She spends more time in the U.K. than in Pakistan. Of course, this does not prevent her from calling herself a “Karachiite”. “I am a Karachi girl who loves to travel. I feel at home in London.”
Strong opinions
She comes to Karachi only when the winter sets in. Today, she is able to dissect the banes and the boons of the city in a dispassionate manner. “Karachi is a dangerous city. It lives in ghettoes and the locals have developed their own immunity. The Muhajirs are there. They did not want to be like the Sindhis. People cling on to their ethnicity. You hear people say, ‘I am a UP-wallah'. This in a country where there is no U.P.! In Karachi ethnicity has become a way of exclusion. I still love the city. It is a big, commercial city now.” She is no mere talker. Her first four novels, beginning with In the city of the Sea to Broken Verses were all based in Karachi while in Burnt Shadows – she won the Orange Prize for Fiction for this book – where the focus was on Nagasaki and nukes, Karachi still managed to find an echo!
Okay, so she is a Karachi girl who has strong opinions about fellow residents of the city. But considering she loves to travel, how much time has she spent in India, that is excluding the time she spent at the Jaipur Literature Festival earlier this year? “Honestly, very little. Visa is such a major issue and then all the police reporting and everything takes a lot of time. In my life I have spent maybe not more than three weeks in India. I have never been to Indonesia but I have spent considerable time in West Asia.”
She may not have spent much time here but Kamila is very well informed about the country, and its literary traditions. “Today, wherever I go, I get asked to talk about the upsurge of Pakistani writing on the global stage. Some even say, Pakistan is the new India in literary world! But I say, no, thanks. Pakistan is not the new India. Our writers are catching international attention. That is fine with us but India for over 30 years now has consistently produced multiple authors of international repute. Maybe some 30 years ago people may not have read Indian writers writing in English but that ceased to be the case long ago.” Interestingly, a little more than a decade ago, when she was first making waves as a Pakistani woman writing in English, she once found her novel placed under the ‘India' section at a bookstore in London! Of course, things have changed over the years with the bookstores across the world beginning to have a little niche for Pakistani writers too.
Living with stereotypes
However, as a Pakistani writer whose books are in demand across the world, doesn't she find there is a demand for a certain kind of writing from Pakistani writers, a certain unexpressed expectation that the novel shall have Muslim characters, hailing from Pakistan or based there? “I cannot say for others, but yes, as a Pakistani writer you do get asked to be a political commentator. There might be issues in your country you would not relate to but you are still expected to have an opinion,” she says, then pauses to add that virtually every place where she has spent reasonable time has influenced her writing. “If I had not lived in London, in the U.S., in Karachi, I would have been a different person, and thus a different writer.”
Kamila, however, feels it is too simplistic to classify Pakistani writing under one head. “The purpose of literature is to have as many different responses. When I write, I know somebody reads me for politics, others for merely expression. It is okay with me. But it is wrong to feel that all writing emerging out of Pakistan will cater to a certain readership. There is Mohammed Hanif, there is Uzma Aslam, there is M.H. Naqvi. Hanif talks of the Zia regime in Exploding Mangoes, Uzma has her own way, her own social fabric in novels, Naqvi talks of Pakistanis in New York. Writing is not a monolith. It has layers, it has variety.”
Through with explaining the different genres of Pakistani writing, Kamila blames the media for generalisations. “The news media reaches more people than a novel ever does. The news media has settled for this monolith idea about Pakistani writing. But we need a counter balancing side in the media. Complexities of culture have to be highlighted through writing. Unfortunately, the opportunity for that is shrinking.”
She might hold the media guilty of not paying attention to details or even different strands of thought on the same issue, yet when it comes to her own writing, Kamila is very clear. She wants time, she needs space. “I do some columns for newspapers. Those I do like any columnist but when I write a book, my brain has to be empty. I need a stretch of a few weeks when during the day time I sit and write. I need focus and concentration with no disturbance, not even emails. I don't know of a writer who can write in a distracted way.”
