Written by: Hala Syed
Posted on: December 13, 2018 | 
| 中文
Red Birds, a novel by Mohammed Hanif
There is a gentle longing in the shadows of Mohammed Hanif’s clever, biting and not quite didactic third book, Red Birds. Every line is quotable. Open any page and you will land on astute commentary and shrewd satire, “We used to have art for art’s sake; now we have war for the sake of war,” says Major Ellie in the novel.
Hanif’s wry voice and storytelling takes the subject of American Intervention in War, a topic that often seems preachy and distancing, and makes it vividly human. We are told the story in three distinct voices: a brash, clueless American pilot, Major Ellie, who has been stranded in the jungle; jaded but determined teenage ‘entrepreneur’ Momo; and pansophical and detached dog Mutt; each one straddling the line between sincere and ridiculous. Through an oft meandering plot, these three separate points of view eventually converge to become something more, something other, than the sum of their parts. As Mother Dear says in the book, “We are not here to save our national honour, we are not here to save our national anything.”
At the book launch at British Council Library, Karachi, Hanif’s sardonic wit that made Red Birds so readable, even when it’s not necessarily easily understandable, was on full display. Sanam Maher, journalist and author of the recently released non-fiction book, The Sensational Life & Death of Qandeel Baloch, talked to him about his writing process. He laughed at the thought of carefully mapping out plot points and using Excel sheets to track character, even while acknowledging that it works for some people. Instead, he said, he writes as a form of therapy in terror of the blank page, “I wouldn’t be able to write, if I knew where my story was going.”
Hanif’s writing is a search. It asks questions, sometimes vague and cryptic, sometimes immensely relatable. His style is disconcerting at first, surrendering narrative line, in favour of emotional impact. War is upheaval, loss, destruction and we experience all of this as we navigate Momo’s family life in a refugee camp. His brother is missing, his mother is distraught with grief and hopelessness, and his father has become a cog in the machine because he knows no other way. Meanwhile, Momo conspires to beat the Americans at their own game. All of their grief feels palpable and organic, because it is rooted in Hanif’s own sense of loss when confronted with the sudden deaths of some people he knew. As he said, “After an unexpected death, promises and plans you made are in the air. I began to wonder, when people die, do they take a bit of us with them?”
In the book, red birds stand in for those people we lose. They flutter among us even as we try to move on and as Mutt puts it, “All we need to do is to look up and there they are.”
Like his first two books, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, and Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, Red Birds uses humour and witty observations, to dig deeper into the human condition. However, Hanif is wary of over-explaining the meaning of his text. He likens reading to be as lonely an endeavour as writing: everyone reads alone and brings their own context to any book. The ambiguity of Red Birds can be frustrating when we are so used to straight forward storytelling, but there is a unique pleasure in being allowed to go on an idiosyncratic journey where you can come to your own conclusions.
Of course, it is in nature of Q & A sessions to look for definitive truths, and many people at the book launch wanted to know what certain things meant. An audience member asked Hanif if Mutt represented his point of view, but he smartly countered that all the characters were him. It would be too easy if Mutt was always right and had all the answers. There are no answers. A talking dog isn’t interesting because it’s better than humans, but because humans are interesting. This is not a contrast, it is addition. So when asked if Mutt was the author’s narrative or a symbolic representation of something, he said “He’s a street corner philosopher, there are lots of them in Pakistan.”
The author signed copies of his books for the audience at the conclusion of the event.
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