Shattering Perceptions

The woman sitting on the stage in the Fugard Theatre at the Open Book Festival yesterday could have been from anywhere in the world; perhaps the braiding on her blouse suggested an eastern influence. And then she was described as a Muslim woman from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, shattering any perceptions about Muslim women and Pakistanis that I may have had.

She told a story of her mentor, a poet from the Indian-occupied part of Kashmir who always introduced himself as a Muslim in spite of being as secular as can be. When questioned about this he said that he felt a responsibility to challenge the stereotypes that people may hold of Muslims. It struck a chord with me living in SA where we are still grappling with making people fit neatly into a box - race, religion and sex, neatly ticked off.

Kamila Shamsie was born in Karachi and has published five novels which have received a number of awards, including awards from Pakistan’s Academy of Letters for three of her novels. Burnt Shadows, her latest, has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize and she is one of Granta’s Twenty Best Young British Novelists for 2013.

I sat up half the night reading Burnt Shadows. In it she explores themes of love and war from Nagasaki in 1945 to India on the brink of the partition in 1947, to Pakistan in 1982-3 and from New York to Afghanistan in 2001-2 in the wake of 9/11. New wars take the place of old and people learn about longing for something they didn't know they would long for until it was destroyed. 

The book is about being foreign, about wanting to belong, about crossing borders, about coming together. It’s about how war reduces us from being human to being a country, a race, to what we look like on the outside. Her prose is achingly beautiful. I want to read more.

Burnt Shadows is published by Bloomsbury.

The Open Book Festival is on at The Fugard Theatre from 7-11 September. More information at www.openbookfestival.co.za