your novel this is where the snake lives Can be read in many different ways. This is a picture of Punjab province of Pakistan. Some readers may see these as stories of inequalities and social mobility. I read it as a novel about masculinity. In it, all the men start out as lonely puppies and their lives are defined, even changed, by the compassion and warmth they find in each other. Was it meant to be a novel about complex masculinity?
I was very conscious that I was going to write about power, and about power and position. I guess I haven’t thought about it – I mean, power in Pakistan is mostly exercised by men or by women through men. I suspect it is the same in India. Of course, there are women who are powerful, like, Benazir Bhutto, like an honorary man. And she was, in a certain sense, in her father’s place.
So, I think I was conscious that I was going to write about male power and so I was writing about masculinity. I hadn’t really thought about it explicitly in terms of masculinity. I was thinking more about describing the structural qualities of that place. I was more concerned about the individual personalities rather than their symbolic meaning as types. I think, for me, this is a group of people who are shaped by a very sexual culture.
I read Shahnaz as a kind of kingmaker figure who shapes the lives of many of the men in the novel. Like you, he is also the son of a diplomat. Where do you think his strength comes from – and have you gotten some of that yourself?
She’s not like me at all. For one thing, Shehnaz never lived inside Pakistan until her marriage to Hisham, so she is largely an outsider.
And, I think, in a way, I betrayed him a little bit. I think it would be very difficult to find someone who has lived outside Pakistan as well as she does, who understands it as well as she does. But I think this is partly a result of the fact that she is a woman and so she is used to understanding her world, even as a child, as the daughter of a supposedly overbearing Pakistani. For the daughter of a diplomat, there are similarities between life outside Pakistan and her life in Pakistan. In each case, she will be experiencing it in a way through the male figure. And hence, there is not as much difference in the way he behaves in Pakistan as there was in relation to his father in his childhood. So, I think that, to some extent, may explain why she is so good at doing this, why she is so well able to make the transition to living in Pakistan.
There was no model for Shehnaaz in my mind. If you ask me on whom Shehnaaz is based, there are many women I know who I can mention. But more so than some of my characters, she’s someone I put together from pieces. He is a composite.
The novel comes together as interconnected stories. Who and what did you start with?
There were two characters: Rustam who is more or less based on me and Bayazid who is based on a person who still works for me.
I think he started working for my father in 1973. I always knew I would write about them. That’s just a moving short story. If I were to go in that direction, I haven’t even begun to exhaust all the stories that could be written about. He’s an amazing character and I know a lot about him because he’s a very, very, deep, close friend of mine as well as my employee and we’ve had a lot of adventures together.
And then the Rustam story, I wrote small fragments of it a long time ago… There is a part of the Muscles story in which they are sitting in the police StationAnd the DSP (Deputy Superintendent of Police) goes and urinates in the corner. This is a true story. I have a farm in South Punjab… and exactly the same thing happened to me. This is about 1987-88. He looked at me, he knew who I was, but he was trying to insult me. So, he did just that. He actually went and peed in the corner. So this was written long ago. I only wrote that one scene because I thought it was so funny.
I have a lot of little things I’ve written that I keep in various files so I can use them in stories later. So, you could say these characters were floating around in my head for a while, and then I took these guys out and started moving them around.
Shahnaz credits Russian literature for her understanding of running a property. She tells Hisham, “I keep my eyes open, but most of all, I study the Russians. Turgenev. All kidding aside, you should try it.” People compare your work to Chekhov and Tolstoy all the time. Do you also turn to Russian literature to manage your farm?
I would not advise anyone to try to learn how to run a farm in Pakistan by studying the Russians. However, while you are running your farm in Pakistan, I would recommend you to study Russian: A, because it will be good for your mental health and B, because there are useful similarities in terms of the structure of the places.
And of course, in terms of empathy. The Russians teach you empathy – and teach empathy to people in the relationships I’m describing in the book. So yes, reading Russians isn’t useless, but it was meant to be more tongue-in-cheek.
This book comes 17 years after your first book, In other rooms, other surprises. When did you start working on it?
I’m starting to think about it in 2020-21. I was working on another book for 10 years. There was a gradual period where I had to accept that I would not be able to complete that book. It was a book about my mother and set in America and it never made any sense. I wrote several drafts of it and eventually put it aside. There was a time when I was still working on that and starting to work on it, during the COVID time, and then I said, ‘Poof,’ and put that down and started working on it.
What does it take to put aside something you’ve been working on for 10 years?
Of course, it was painful because of the amount of time I put into it. But that book was about my mother’s death. My mother died under very complicated circumstances. And I had a very deep relationship with him, a very close relationship. She was the person who helped me become a writer.
So, those 10 years were not wasted. I was writing all the time. I wrote a huge amount. I think if I wasn’t able to write, it would be very, very difficult because there is nothing more painful for a writer than not being able to write. I’ve been lucky. I have had moments where I might have difficulty starting a task, but I have never been blocked.
But it was hard and I kept having to throw it away. At one point this thing was 600 pages long and I could tell it was all bullshit, it wasn’t working, and I threw it away. I went back to a little bit of it and I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll build from this one section,’ and I tried it and it didn’t work. And so, it was very frustrating because I couldn’t get it to work.
There was a long period of time and I thought, ‘Hey, this is working well.’ I look at my journals, and I can’t believe how long I spend being happy with what I’m doing and thinking it’s great.
In the end, it was complicated to tell myself and my publisher and other people that I just wasn’t going to publish the book. Obviously, this is not the result you want. But then it was also very exciting because then I was like, ‘Oh, great. Now I can actually sit down and do something I really want to do.’
Life is complicated and things happen. And I think it’s important for a writer or anyone to just be flexible. Sometimes you fail at what you try to do, but then try to make that failure part of the next success, which I think is the case here. Whatever I wrote in that book and whatever feelings I had in my mind while preparing that book, it all is included in it. So, this book builds on that in a certain way.
The novel begins a few years after Partition and depicts six decades of Pakistani life. Tell us about your relations with Pakistan?
I am sure it is the same among Indians also. Our relationship with this country is strange. This is my country, I love it. This is where I was born and raised and where my family history is. And I have spent most of my life in Pakistan. And yet, it’s a very depressing place, but still depressing everywhere. I mean, if you were American right now, you’d be banging your head. So, it is not that easy to be from any place. Being from Norway is easy. My children are at school here and so I see Norway very closely through them. It is a much better place to live than most places, but in many ways it is very challenging to live here.
Pakistan is like a very powerful medicine. I think once you have that, everything else seems bland. When I’m in Pakistan, I’m mostly in rural areas where life is even more dramatic. Therefore, when I come abroad, I find the life here very dull and without any interest. It seems as if there is not enough salt in it.
I love Pakistan and yet I am very disappointed with Pakistan because nothing is done right. And it’s so frustrating that no one will come together and help each other and try to do things properly and therefore make a better country. Everyone is struggling in his own way.
There is a scene that I remember when I asked some people about Pakistan. I am a mango grower. I grow mangoes – we do everything, Sindri, Chausa, White Chausa, Dussehra, Langra… So, a few years ago, I was trying to build relationships when commission agent (agricultural middlemen) in the market of Lahore. We were selling it to these people. So, I said, I will go and meet the people in Arhat androni cityThe old city of Lahore where he arhats. they do auction – Sell goods – very early in the morning. As we were driving in, there was a donkey there who was obviously very sick. He was lying there, writhing in all sorts of ways and making so much noise. And I told people, ‘hey, it’s false here,’ and he said ‘ji ji will pick him up and take him away.’ So anyway, I went and met this guy and we talked. And I was driving outside, the donkey was still lying there, still alive. He was kind of raising his head and making noises and someone was pouring water on him. Then for some reason that evening I had to go again. So then, I wore my shalwar kameez and we got in the car and went into the inner city and the donkey is still there, except now it’s dead. The place where they do Arhat is a big square because you are driving in Arhat. I had to move my car around this dying donkey to get across it. It was six o’clock in the morning and now it is six o’clock in the evening. 12 hours later, the same bloody ass – he was there dying; Now, he is dead. Who knows how long he’s been dead? No one thought of removing him.
This is my version of why things don’t work in Pakistan.
all these commission agentWho are these billionaires, they’re way richer than me, they own these shops – all they have to do is hire a guy to clean the thing sometimes. It’s just lying there, probably still lying there.
