Short stories from Pakistan

Short stories from Pakistan
Reading Daniyal Mueenuddin's mesmerizing first collection, "In Other Rooms,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Other Wonders,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," is like watching a game of blackjack, the shrewd players calculating their way beyond their dealt cards in an attempt to beat the dealer. Some bust, others surrender. But in Mueenuddin's world,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], no one wins.
Set in the Pakistani district of Punjab, the eight linked stories in this excellent book follow the lives of the rich and powerful Harouni family and its employees: managers, drivers,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], gardeners, cooks,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], servants.
The patriarch,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], K. K. Harouni,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], of the feudal landowning class,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], owns a farm in Dunyapur and a mansion in Lahore. In the title story,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], we meet him in the final years of his life,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], living mostly in Lahore, apart from his estranged wife, having surrendered the management of his farm to the corrupt Chaudrey Jaglani. When Husna, a distant relative whose branch of the family "had not so much fallen into poverty as failed to rise," shows up at his door,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Harouni takes her in,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], first as a servant,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], then as his mistress. For the aging paterfamilias, Husna is a distraction whose unrefined speech and manners offer a temporary escape from the infinite politesse of his own class. For her part,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Husna, a more hard-boiled Madame Bovary,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], envious of the glittering, jet-setting lives of the rich, ingratiates herself to the old man through calculated flirtations,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], believing sex is her ticket out of her lowly status. And for a while she is right. Until she no longer is.
The women in these stories often use sex to prey on the men, and they do so with abandon at best and rage at worst - in this patriarchal,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], hierarchical society, it is their sharpest weapon. Like all other attempts at betterment in Mueenuddin's world,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], this too fails, as Lily slowly reverts to her old ways. Motion in Pakistani society - be it social or moral - can only be horizontal.
But the women are not alone in their scheming. Manipulation unifies these stories, running through them as consistently as the Indus River flows south of Punjab. A dance of insincere compliments and favors asked at just the right moment - when the supplicant detects a benevolent mood - is performed by everyone. This bewildering pas de deux is familiar to all but the two American characters, whose ignorance causes grief to themselves and others.
Corruption too is ubiquitous here. Nawabdin the electrician cheats the electric company; Chaudrey Jaglani sells Harouni's vast lands at half price, keeping the best parcels for himself. For a country whose name means "land of purity,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," Pakistan is startlingly blemished. Yet Mueenuddin's talent lets us perceive not just its machinations but also its beauty - the mango orchards,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], a charpoy laid out in the shade of a mammoth banyan tree, the smoke of a hookah on a spring afternoon, "eucalyptus trees planted by some briefly energetic government."
In this labyrinth of power games and exploits, Mueenuddin inserts luminous glimmers of longing, loss and, most movingly, unfettered love. But these emotions are often engulfed by the incessant chaos of this complicated country. As Lily tells her eventual husband in a rare moment of quietude: "You know what's amazing, we're actually alone here. That never happens in Pakistan."
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