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Prince Claus Fund Journal # 11,
a Special issue on Asylum and Migration,
has been produced in association with
Biblio: A Review of Books, India
Guest Editor: Tabish Khair
Assistant Editor: Manisha Sethi
Design: Brinda Datta
Prince Claus Fund: Fariba de Bruin, Geerte Wachter,
Els van der Plas, Mette Gratama van Andel
Cover Design: Irma Boom
Cover Image:
Taxi ‘Marseille-Algérie’ by Dominique Zinkpè, France, 2002.
Photo: Elise Daubelcour
© December 2004 Prince Claus Fund, The Hague
No part of this Journal may be reproduced in any form without
prior permission of the publisher.
ISSN 1388 5456
www.biblio-india.com
The Dutch Postcode
Lottery supports the
Prince Claus Fund
CONTRIBUTORS
Mahmoud Darwish is an acclaimed poet, activist and journalist, one of the most powerful
Jamal Mahjoub was born in London and brought up in Sudan. Originally trained as a geologist,
interpreters of the exile and hopes of the Palestinian people.
he is the author of five novels, including the critically acclaimed Travelling with Djinns (Chatto &
Aidan Day is professor of English at Aarhus University, Denmark. His publications include the
Windus, 2003). He currently lives in Spain.
study, Romanticism, in the New Critical Idiom series of Routledge, and books and papers on
Zayd Minty is a cultural producer and curator. He is currently based at the District Six Museum in
Angela Carter, Bob Dylan and Lord Alfred Tennyson (forthcoming).
Cape Town, South Africa where he is responsible for arts and public programming.He has previously
Siddhartha Deb is based in New York and writes for a number of British, American and Indian
newspapers and magazines. His first novel, The Point of Return was published to critical acclaim
by Picador in 2002. He is currently finishing his second novel.
served as director of the Cape Town Festival 2000 (One City) and 2002, as co-ordinator of Robben
Island Museum’s arts programme, as director of the Community Arts Project (CAP) and has worked
extensively as an independent producer under the banner of ONE. He was an initiator and coordinator of the activist orientated and “discourse building” BLAC project (’99 – 2003). His work in
Rose George writes for the Independent on Sunday, the Guardian and the Sunday Telegraph. Her
visual arts includes curating A Place Called Home (Durban/Cape Town) and co-curating exhibitions
book, A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge in the Modern World (Penguin, 2004), is a major
such as Isintu and Softserve 2 (both at the SA National Gallery), 30 Minutes (Robben Island Museum)
intervention in contemporary discussion on asylum and refuge.
and Returning the Gaze (public art).
Rula Halawani is a Palestinian freelance photojournalist and the founder of the Department of
Rukmini Bhaya Nair is professor of Linguistics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Her
Photography at Birzeit University, Palestine, where she also teaches. She has received numerous
third volume of poetry, Yellow Hibiscus, Penguin Books, appears in December, 2004. In the area
awards, including, the Grant award from “International Mother Jones”, San Francisco, award of
of literary theory and linguistics, her last two books were Lying on the Postcolonial Couch: the
the Palestinian Journalist Union, and the Ministry of Culture & Arts, Palestine. Some of her recent
Idea of Indifference and Narrative Gravity: Conversation, Cognition, Culture, both published by
exhibitions have been Negative Incursion (Art Car Museum, USA, 2003) and Jerusalem: The Warm
Oxford University Press.
Light Still There (The Museum of the City of Rome, 2002).
Kaiser Haq is professor of English at Dhaka University, Bangladesh. He has published four
collections of poetry and a number of other works, including The Wonders of Vilayet (Peepal
Tree, 2001), the only English translation of an excellent Persian memoir of a visit to Europe by a
Bengali Munshi in 1765.
Tabish Khair is associate professor at Aarhus University, Denmark, and a critic, poet and writer.
His latest book is the novel, The Bus Stopped (Picador, 2004). Khair has just edited Other Routes,
an anthology of Asian and African travel writing from before 1900, due from Indiana University
Press (USA) and Signal Books (UK) in 2005.
Charles Lock is professor of English at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His publications
include books and papers on literary theory, Mikhail Bakhtin, Thomas Hardy and various postcolonial writers.
Kishore Mahbubani is both a career diplomat and a writer/scholar. He has been in the Singapore
Foreign Service since 1971 and his overseas postings have included Cambodia, Malaysia, the United
States and the United Nations. Currently, he is serving as Singapore’s ambassador to the United
Nations, New York, and concurrently, as Singapore’s High Commissioner to Canada.
110 P R I N C E C L A U S F U N D J O U R N A L # 1 1 / A S Y L U M & M I G R AT I O N
Achal R. Prabhala works on Intellectual Property Rights and Access to Learning Materials in
Southern Africa.
K. S. Radhakrishnan is a sculptor based in Delhi working on monumental sculptures in bronze.
The latest work titled, ‘The Ramp‘ was on view at Sridharani Gallery, New Delhi in October 2004.
Many of his sculptures are installed at TMI Foundation in Southern France.
Pradeep Saha is managing editor of Down To Earth, a science and environment fortnightly and
associate director of Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi. Also a graphic designer,
documentary producer and occasional photographer. Collaborates with Raqs Media Collective
on art projects. He lives in Delhi and can be contacted at [email protected]
Ashwani Saith teaches Economics and Development Studies at the Institute of Social Studies in
The Hague, The Netherlands and at the London School of Economics, UK.
Sebastiao Salgado, born in Brazil in 1944, based in Paris, France, started his career as a
photographer in 1973 and traveled to over 100 countries for his photographic projects condensed
in books including: Other Americas,Sahel el fin del camino, Workers: an archaeology of the industrial
era and Migrations. His work is exhibited throughout the world.
A S Y L U M & M I G R AT I O N / P R I N C E C L A U S F U N D J O U R N A L # 1 1 111
Sebastiao Salgado is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He has been awarded numerous prizes in
recognition of his work, among which: Eugene Smith Award for Humanitarian Photography (USA) in
1982, Rey de Espana Award (Spain) in 1988, Grand Prix National du Ministëre de la Culture et de la
Francophonie (France) in 1994, Principe de Asturias Award for Arts (Spain) in 1998, Honorary Doctor
of Fine Arts, The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University (USA), International Award of The 2003
Photographic Society of Japan’s Award (Japan), and is in 2004 Comendador da Ordem de Rio Branco
(Brazil). In 2004, Sebastiao Salgado starts a project, named Genesis, aiming to depict the unblemished
faces of nature and humanity, a series of black-and-white photographs of landscapes, wildlife and
human aspects including World Heritage sites.
Mapping Worlds, established in 2004 by Desmond Spruijt and Oene Bouma, aims to raise
international awareness through innovative cartography. It regards maps as a powerful
communication tool for both public information and policy development. Important themes are the
United Nations Millennium Development Goals, European cooperation and Migration. On the first
theme, Mapping Worlds is constructing various world maps for the Dutch National Committee for
International Cooperation and Sustainable Development (NCDO). For the Dutch Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and the Brussels-based European Policy Center, Mapping Worlds developed maps on several
MANU ANAND
aspects of European cooperation.
China’s most successful export to the West: Visitors at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, Shanghai get their
photographs taken in front of a display of Yao Ming, the NBA star who plays for the Houston Rockets
A S Y L U M & M I G R AT I O N / P R I N C E C L A U S F U N D J O U R N A L # 1 1
ESSAY
this essay, a recently published volume of poems stares up at me from the mini-Everest of unread
books on my desk. It is by the Mumbai writer Jerry Pinto and is simply called Asylum, while in
central Delhi this week, the sculptor K.S. Radhakrishnan holds a large exhibition which has ‘migration’
as one of its main themes. Now, in my view, artistic conjunctions of this kind are hardly fortuitous.
Instead they indicate that around the world today, words like ‘asylum’ and ‘migration’, often
accompanied by a dark penumbra of other terms like ‘refugee’ ‘terrorism’, ‘human trafficking’,
‘nuclear threats’ etc., compulsively occupy imaginative space. Furthermore, in their choice of this
Guess what ashraya
means?
category of subject matter, poets and artists are obviously required not only to absorb contemporary
trends and draw upon a common global vocabulary but also, more problematically, to ‘authenticate’
their representations against a backdrop of local history. This is because, like it or not, issues of
identity and place are impossible to avoid in any depiction or discussion of migration or asylum.
They are as intrinsic to the conceptual geography of these words as the Indian subcontinent is to
the terrain of Asia.
Just as Tolstoy once maintained that all happy families might be alike, but every unhappy family
The art of asylum
is unhappy in its own way, so the wrenching experience of migration and the possibilities of asylum
cannot but be specific to the cultures being entered and the regions being left behind. It is exactly
this sense of each migrant self disintegrating and reforming in its own unique and unpredictable
BY
RUKMINI BHAYA NAIR
fashion that Salman Rushdie, for example, seeks to capture in his dramatic description of a plane
crash in the first chapter of The Satanic Verses. “The migrant aboard the disintegrating aircraft...
SCULPTURES BY K S RADHAKRISHNAN
I
ndia is a travelling subcontinent. For more that 50 million years, it has been ramming into Asia
and, in a process that once produced the massive Himalayan ranges, still ‘migrates’ north at the
rate of about 5 centimetres a year. In the frenetic 21st century, this ponderous pace may not
seem like much; nevertheless, it has real consequences. The shattering earthquakes that convulse
the region and the slight rise in the height of Mount Everest each year (so that, in effect, every new
team that scales the highest peak in world sets a new record) are both direct results of India’s
persistent geographical movement.
In contrast, Indians do not seem to be great travellers. Perhaps they do not need to be, when
the ground beneath their feet literally, as well as allegorically, moves for them! At any rate, the
latest estimate for the net migration rate out of the country stands at a modest 0.08 per thousand
of the population. This means that, out of every million Indians, only 80 leave to settle abroad
permanently—which is reassuringly low for a ‘developing’ economy.
Somewhat to my surprise, though, these limited numbers do not appear to indicate that concepts
▼
like ‘migration’ and ‘asylum’ are off India’s cultural radar-screens—not in the least. Even as I write
‘Migrating onto a Dome‘
mingle[d] with the remnants of the plane, equally fragmented, equally absurd [and] there floated
least, can be robustly fashioned as one in literature and art—which makes her appeal as irresistible
there the debris of the soul, broken memories, sloughed off selves, severed mother tongues.” In
as the fantasia that characterises in quite different circumstances, the narrative, say, of the Raj in
the context of India, such ‘broken memories’ would almost certainly include the historic Partition
India. Between The Far Pavilions and Brick Lane is this hidden thread of literary descent. When the
of India, which involved about 15 million people crossing the freshly drawn and bloody borders of
guest editor of this special issue says in the opening lines of his Introduction that “this is a supplement
India and Pakistan—one of the largest and most violent forced movements of populations ever.
devoted to the positive aspects—mostly cultural—of migration and asylum”, I read him as partially
They would also include at least tactic knowledge of the large, annual internal migrations of labour
urging us to risk making such links in literature, in the arts—and in language.
between the various Indian states, as well as of the tens of thousands of ‘stateless’ Tibetan asylumseekers currently living in India.
Consider for a moment just one of these Tibetan immigrants—my friend, the poet Tenzin
Tsundue, arrested several times for protests at the Chinese Embassy and a ‘natural born’ refugee, in
the sense that his birthplace was not Tibet at all but a border camp. Tenzin records the event
L
anguage, then. Tenzin’s language, Sino-Tibetan, belongs to one of the four main language
families that have long ‘inhabited’ the Indian subcontinent, the other three being the AustroAsiatic, the Dravidian and the Indo-European. Of these, numerically the most dominant are
the Indo-European languages such as Bengali, Gujarati or Hindi. As a linguist, I often point out to
my students that the lexicon of modern English has hundreds of cognates in these distant Indo-
faithfully in ”Refugee”:
Tenzin’s primary identity in this poem is clearly that of a
European tongues. You have only to compare Hindi sitara
branded refugee, marked by the scarlet letter ‘R’ on his
or tara to the English ‘star’, vidhava to ‘widow’, aath to
forehead, in a manner consonant with the highest of ‘global’
‘eight’, kendra to ‘centre’ and so on, for the affinities leap
literary traditions. Nathaniel Hawthorne would surely approve.
out at you. William Jones, of course, demonstrated this as
At the same time, his poem manages to add a very non-
long ago as 1786 with his own set of examples. And now,
Hawthornian word—rangzen—from an unfamiliar Sino-
to my delight, I seem to have another stable cognate.
countries of the world today,
Tibetan ‘severed mother-tongue’ to that Rushdiesque ‘debris
There is a very good case, I think, going by the principles
one way to reduce tensions is
of the soul’ swirling around the troubled concept of the
of phonological and semantic plausibility routinely used
refugee. This is precisely what I meant when I suggested a
in all etymological detective work, for positing a close
little earlier that, despite the awful costs that often accompany
relationship between the Hindi word ashraya, deriving
the actual business of migration, there is to be found in the
from the Sanskrit and the English word ‘asylum’, taken
negotiated elsewhere. The
art and literature of the contemporary world, a certain energy,
from the Latin. For one, they mean pretty much the same
inclusive ideal of ashraya, for
a buzz, around the figure of the asylum-seeker. The refugee
thing: a place of refuge. For another, the sound shifts are,
I have three tongues
The one that sings
Is my mother tongue
is a vital resource for creative experimentation because she is
to my mind, convincing: ash ➔ as; ray ➔ y, via a standard
the prototypical ‘glocal’, embodying the multiple problems—
process of reduction; and a ➔ um, via an attested
legal, economic, bureaucratic—that plague the political set-
preference for closed syllable-endings for nouns in the
subcontinent for a couple of
The R on my forehead
Between my English and Hindi
The Tibetan tongue reads:
ups of modern nation-states. Concurrently, she is also an
Latin. In English, the word ‘asylum’ derives from the Greek
thousand years, and involves
inheritor of one of the most powerful and ancient cross-
asylon meaning ‘private,or protected from seizure, not
cultural tropes in human history—as much of a metonym as
to be seized’ and the Oxford English Dictionary cites its
RANGZEN
the wandering Jew, the penniless minstrel or outcast etranger,
first usage in Lydgate,1430: “A territory that called was
who each stand for entire histories of diasporic wandering
Asile...This Asilum was a place of refuge and succours...For
persecuted as in the Christian
and discovery.
to receyue all foreyn trespassers.” Well, nothing of
traditions of Europe
REFUGEE
When I was born
My mother said
You are a refugee
Our tent on the road side
Smoked in the snow
On your forehead
Between your eyebrows
There is an R embossed
My teacher said.
I scratched and scrubbed
On my forehead I found
A rash of red pain
Notwithstanding the slew of prejudices, the dehumanisation, not to say demonisation, faced
When asylum and migration
are such contentious topics
amongst the powerful
to show how these matters
have been conceptually
example, has been prevalent
in the discourse of the Indian
creating precisely the same
inviolate space for the
moment seems to have altered in this basic definition for
by the individual Pakistani or Sudanese or Tibetan who seeks to make a new home in an alien land,
several centuries now—and it’s the same with the Hindi. Yet it is legitimate to ask: what in heaven’s
the aura of romance surrounding ‘the refugee’ is palpable. She is a marker of resistance—or, at
name has all this recondite word- archeology to do with the lived experience of asylum-seekers?
My view is that, when asylum and migration are such contentious topics amongst the powerful
countries of the world today, when they constitute significant election issues both in Europe and
America, one way to reduce tensions is to show how these matters have been conceptually
negotiated elsewhere. Nor is this ‘elsewhere’ as remote from ‘the West’ as it might appear. The
inclusive ideal of ashraya, for example, has been prevalent in the discourse of the Indian subcontinent
for a couple of thousand years, and involves creating precisely the same inviolate space for the
persecuted as in the Christian traditions of Europe. Indeed, connections lost in English become
suddenly transparent again when we glance across at modern Hindi, which derives the word for
‘refugee’, namely, ashrit, from the word ashraya meaning ‘asylum’—showing how closely allied the
notions of ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum’ are linguistically. Moreover, the idea of ashraya survives as vibrantly
in the welter of modernity as does ‘asylum’ in English. Just click on Google and you will find no less
than 45,000 websites listed under the ashraya umbrella, seeking to give shelter to groups as diverse
as homeless widows, street-children and AIDS victims. Clearly, this word and its age-old semantics
have sturdily adapted to the demands of the contemporary.
In the arena of art, one might similarly argue that old prototypes of the huge Jain statues of
India, as well as the gigantic Buddha sculptures that mark the landscape of Asia from Afghanistan
to Thailand are reinvented in the Giacometti-like modernist sculptures of K.S. Radhakrishnan which
illustrate this essay. Size matters here, indicating the moral stature of the guru, standing tall and
unmoved while a myriad passers-by mill around. These sculptures, antique or recent, silently
announce that anyone who comes to them for ashraya or refuge will be granted protection, in the
▼
same way that the great cathedrals and churches of Europe offered to the public at large a most
imposing vision of sanctuary.
The cultural variation is, at most, one of
emphasis. In Asia, the actual imagery of ashraya,
‘Musui as
Gandhi’,
bronze, 117 cms
x 179 cms, 1998
as we observe, traditionally involves a human
form dominating an exposed and open space,
while in Europe, the idea of asylum was perhaps
For example, when Radhakrishnan renders the chaotic spill-over of Delhi’s immigrants from their
associated with a more enclosed, built-up space.
box-like dwellings into the streets and urban areas around them, it is apparent that he is
But in any case, with the secularisation of the idea
commenting on the power of these ‘ordinary’ people to effect dramatic changes in their
of asylum today and with the power to grant
environment, social as well as physical. Radhakrishnan himself brings out this point both in the
asylum invested in the nation-state, these
structure in his sculpture ‘Migrating into Maiya Space and Musui Space’, and in a caption to it
divergences are not so pronounced. What seems
where he emphasises that the migration of thoughts and ideas into new territories preoccupies
more worthy of comment is the way in which the
him as much as the migration of people into metropolises. We have definitely moved away from
concepts of asylum and migration have now
the religious idiom attaching to ‘asylum’ at this point.
moved
into
the
socio-political
sphere.
Likewise, if we go back to the towering figure of Gandhi leading a motley crowd across the
▲
Indian subcontinent in stubborn defiance of colonial rule—an iconic image in Indian art—we find
‘Migrating into a Container’
again a fount of cultural inventiveness. Gandhi extended the notion of ashraya to encompass
a related concept, which is the idea of the ashram or hermitage, another old Vedic word retooled
for modern purposes. Gandhi’s ashram is a place of rest, of peace and retreat, as well of refuge.
In other words, you did not have to hounded or persecuted to find a place in Gandhi’s ashram
in Sabarmati, Gujarat. Instead, anyone, including the British rulers of India, could voluntarily
choose to enter it and to adopt the values that it offered—of non-violent protest, a nonmechanistic work ethic etc. The language of freewill, social choice and political resistance was
thus brilliantly merged with the vocabulary of submission to divine will, self-sacrifice and
universal brotherhood in the concept of the ashram. And I believe that these unifying, semantic
moves by Gandhi still possess some relevance, if only as an object lesson in the political
management of a bewildering multiplicity of discourses and aims—but Gandhi’s angles were
always so original that they might be accounted distinctly peculiar.
At a recent seminar I attended the psychoanalyst Ian Parker related what could happen
to asylum seekers today who make the mistake of admitting Gandhi-like symptoms to their
British psychologists—for instance, that they tune into offbeat ‘inner voices‘ or ‘hear‘ things
in their heads. Such trusting immigrants, says Parker are prescribed mind-numbing regimen
of drugs. But as soon as they are back to ‘normal‘ and find their own Gandhian modes of
resistance, like devising a game of ‘three-cornered football‘ as a counter to the triumphal
and binary You versus Us establishment thinking of the Euro League. It is this spirit one might
argue that makes an immigrant.
B
ack to my friend Tenzin for a moment. It’s official. The poet may not exactly be
Gandhi, or a player on the wild side of a football pitch, but he too is believed to have
earned himself a place in an asylum—a lunatic asylum—by reason of his commitment
to the cause of Tibet. His own brother says so. “Tenzin Tsundue is mad,” writes Choney
Wangmo in his preface to Tenzin’s privately published book of poetry. “He has no money, no
job, no official position, no house, no belongings, but is hell bent on writing and activism for
a Free Tibet. I have never seen a more obstinate activist than this man.” Nor have I, making
me wonder for the nth time whether a line can ever be drawn between mad obstinacy and
sane resolve in the case of persons like Gandhi, Tenzin or the anonymous migrant.
For, let’s face it, the migrant has to be courageous in a manner that those middle class
folks traipsing to Hawaii for a holiday or attending a conference in Guatemala and then
charmingly declaring that we are all travellers these days, all immigrants of one sort or another,
do not. The safe and tepid pleasures of travel on a return ticket are not to be compared to
the dangerous gamble taken by that small percentage of the world’s population who stake
▼
everything on a dream of elsewhere. Most of us, whether compelled by taste or necessity, are
‘Ramp’, bronze, 260 cms x 450 cms, 2004
▼
in the end a bit like Philip Larkin, who allegedly said that he would not mind visiting China if he
‘The Human Globe‘ (maquette),
bronze, 58 cms x 42 cms, 1999-2002
could be back home for tea! Migrants, on the other hand, are unusual because they must steel
themselves to encounter the worst of that primeval self-protective instinct that causes all
communities to fiercely reject ‘untrustworthy outsiders’ because they might turn out to be
freeloaders. Indeed, this innate suspicion of the migrant is encoded in the etymology of the word,
which for a long time signified mainly non-human movements, such as the migration of birds—as
well as, more tellingly, ‘parasites’ travelling from one part of the ‘host’ body to another. But this
familiar and vicious association of the migrant with a ‘parasite’ is now overlain with another layer
nervousness has been amply justified” But there are
no such marches, and so I’m told: “We were able to
prevent trouble because of our foresight and skill.”
To my mind, the ambiguous psychology of this
‘security world-view’ is one of the chief problems
of paranoia in the post 9/11, post Iraq world.
that the world in general, and immigrants in
‘S
occer moms’, I learn from a news-report on the imminent American elections, are in
the present scenario fast turning into ‘security moms’, concerned about the safety of
their children being attacked by unknown intruders into the US of A. The real guns so
readily available in America evidently cause them far less distress than this new, shadowy menace—
which reminds me of a report by Rushdie, whom I’ve already quoted on the disasters besetting
the immigrant. Unlike that passage, Rushdie is being ‘factual’ here in his account of the police
presence that enveloped him on his long-awaited India visit in 2000: “After a couple of hours of
high tension waiting...the news is good. Only about 200 people have marched [against
Rushdie]...and it has all gone off without a hitch... ‘Fortunately,’ Mr. Gupta tells me, ‘we have
been able to manage it.’” Rushdie
then goes on enquire:
“What really happened in
Delhi today? The security worldview is always impressive and often
persuasive, but it remains just one
version of the truth. It is the
characteristic of security forces
everywhere in the world to try to
have it both ways. Had there been
mass-demonstrations, they would
have said: “You see, all our
▼
‘Migrating into a Vessel‘,
30 cms x 21 cms, 1997.
The vessel in the sculpture is
used to signify migration into
an internal space as well as
external boundaries.
particular, will be likely to encounter in the 21st
century. ‘Human security’ is a favoured phrase in
aid agency babble, benignly extending to all
displaced persons, but when these very same
migrants come up against the security world-view
with its claims to always being right, to absolute
omniscience, they are stopped short. No longer can
The refugee is a vital resource
for creative experimentation
because she is the prototypical
they be so sure of their entitlement to human
security because their versions of the truth—like
‘glocal’, embodying the
Tenzin’s vision of a ‘free Tibet’ or those benighted
multiple problems—legal,
players of three-cornered football in Britain—now
economic, bureaucratic—that
appear outmoded, unrealistic, absurd. But are they
plague the political set-ups of
really? I do not know. What I do know is that as
India continues its relentless drift upwards, violently
modern nation-states.
pushing into Asia, it is not only Mount Everest that
She is also an inheritor of one
rises in height, but also the Tibetan Plateau, ‘the
of the most powerful and
roof of the world’ and along with it, the aspirations
ancient cross-cultural tropes in
of Tenzin and others like him. The burden of this
essay has been that our challenge today, confronted
human history—as much of a
by cultural homogenisation the world over, is at the
metonym as the wandering
very least to create in the realm of literature, the
Jew, the penniless minstrel or
arts and common discourse a safe haven, ashraya,
outcast etranger, who each
for all these crazy aspirations—however chimerical
they seem. For in the end, imaginative license must
stand for entire histories of
always be the best guarantor of true human
diasporic wandering and
security.●
discovery
SHORT
STORY
blackened refrigerator, its shelves missing. There were crumpled paper bags around the doorways
of the bodega, empty beer bottles peeping out of the bags like birds in a nest, while to his left a
long, bedraggled procession of convenience stores marched up 125th Street, faltering at the
intersection with Broadway before continuing all the way up to the Hudson river.
Deep knew he hadn’t noticed any of this when he first came here, searching for a cheap
apartment close to the university. He had looked at the grim project buildings and thought they
were luxury housing, seen the pizza outlet and assumed he was in an Italian neighbourhood, each
Silence, Exile, Cunning
failure to read the signs adding to the next one until he was like a
man stranded in a strange country without knowing how he had
got there in the first place.
BY
SIDDHARTHA DEB
money he had been
received the letter announcing his admission into the Ph.D
forced to become
programme with a monthly stipend of 1000 dollars. A thousand
parsimonious about.
ll through his first fall and summer Deep had called his mother exactly at ten on Sunday
dollars! He had felt himself expanding even as he read the letter,
America demanded
nights, so that it was seven-thirty on Monday morning in Calcutta when she shuffled
comparing the amount to the salaries of business executives and
towards the phone to answer his call. She didn’t understand the time difference, so she
civil servants, judging it against the money he made from giving
always asked him about breakfast and if he had slept well. He answered her questions quickly,
private lessons to high school students, converting and multiplying
everything: words,
listening carefully to the small background noises that communicated the feel of Calcutta mornings
and dividing until he felt he was awash in money and success.
feelings, desires, time.
to him: the passing of the fish-seller, the flower girl outside the verandah, and occasionally the
that he hoard
That feeling hadn’t survived his contact with America. He took
singing beggar with the hole in his throat that made his pauses for breath seem like dying gasps.
the bad news about the expenses in New York well enough, moving out of university housing as
More than five years had gone by, however, since he made those calls. He spoke to her at less
soon as he found a cheaper place. He reduced his expenses, came to terms with the knowledge
specific times now, sometimes only when midnight had parted the week just about to begin from
that he would not be able to go home during the summers. At the beginning of each semester, he
the weekend already lost, when it was impossible to avoid the task any further. When he called
went to the midtown Bank of Baroda office and sent his mother a draft for six hundred dollars.
these days, he said little, his relief at hanging up giving way to sadness only when he lay in bed and
But it was more than money he had been forced to become parsimonious about. America
demanded that he hoard everything:
listened to the subway train.
He still had a couple of hours to go
words, feelings, desires, time. He had
that evening, so he drifted towards the
expected friendship among a circle of
window, past his old Mac displaying a
intelligent people at the university,
blank Word page. The regulars of Old
but he found his professors and
Broadway had withdrawn early, leaving
fellow students constricted by career
the one-way street to a NYPD prowl car.
concerns,
Black garbage bags propped up the
awkward and lonely foreigner.
crumbling building across the street, a
Where he had thought of engaging
heavy pile of uniform, packaged trash
with new ideas, he encountered the
that
more
exhaustion of thought. Desiring the
heterogeneous objects: an old sofa, a
city when he first saw it, he had
stained mattress, a table lamp, and a
watched it recede from him. Now he
was
fringed
with
uninterested
in
an
91
PHOTO:SANJEEV SAITH
A
PHOTO: OUTLOOK
He had not thought America would be like this when he
But it was more than
rarely left the apartment except to teach, and if he went to the library it was with a sense of panic
Deep decided he would avoid Shankar from now on.
about his dissertation— the subject of email queries from his department administrator and with
“You can pay later if you’re short of cash. Take credit cards, too, though that’s a bit of a pain.”
not a word written after two years of staring at the screen.
“Maybe later. When I have money.”
Deep knew where he was heading, towards that shadowy world of immigrant students who
“Later then,” Shankar said, pushing the book into his bag with a slight shrug of one shoulder.
dropped out without finishing, people who didn’t go on to become professors or post-doc scholars
but retreated into the recesses of Queens or Brooklyn, skulking around the edges of the campus
The last time Deep saw Shankar was just a few days ago, around the corner from 125th, near the
long after they had left their programmes, drawn to it by the faded glow of their earlier legitimacy.
check cashing centre. He was dressed in a baggy tracksuit and his hair was loose and matted, but he
He avoided Shankar for that reason, even though he had been happy to talk to him in the beginning.
looked more ragged than cool. Their interaction was short. They told each other they lived in
It had always been unclear which department Shankar studied in, but Deep had sensed in him
Harlem, but did not exchange phone numbers.
an aura of success. He was a creative type, perhaps in theatre or film, writing a novel even as he did
That encounter with Shankar had shaken Deep. He had felt bad about not helping out, but he
his coursework. He had been grateful for the occasions when they made small talk, hoping some of
thought that perhaps his way was better than Shankar’s, after all. Shankar had burnt out, but Deep
Shankar’s luck would rub off on him. His first impressions about Shankar didn’t change even when
could avoid that by pressing on. If one page could be written, others would follow, he thought, so
he discovered Shankar had left the university. “Living in Brooklyn, man. The artist’s life. What’s a
he sat down at the Mac and typed out the first words before realizing it was midnight. He picked
degree?” Shankar said when Deep met him. He was finishing a novel on India called The Colonial
up the phone to call his mother.
Curse. When there was time to spare, he did freelance writing for the Village Voice.
2
Deep had been impressed, though the difference between the almost finished state of Shankar’s
novel and his own unwritten dissertation depressed him. He spent that afternoon in the library
searching for Shankar’s name on the Voice website.
Just before the semester ended, when Deep’s dismal failure to write a single page was reinforced
by a balmy New York spring, he had bumped into Shankar at Butler Library. Shankar’s long hair was
neatly brushed back in a pony tail, the small gold-rimmed dark glasses and light brown suit he
T
he clock was slow that morning, Chaya thought as she waited by the window in Deep’s
room. The hands on its face looked as weary as the old men she saw in the neighbourhood,
resting in the middle of the road with grocery bags too heavy for them. The view in front
was blocked off by the squat shapes of B7 and B9, their fences and verandahs reaching out towards
wore giving him the air of a dapper young professor. When he saw Deep, he opened the expensive
the potholed roads that led to the market and the bus stand, while to her right a wailing sound
leather bag he was carrying and revealed a stack of books.
rose over and above the more regular keening of the fish-seller doing his rounds. In the other
“Finished,” he said, holding out a copy.
direction, near the water tower rising sharply above the flat-roofed buildings of the housing estate,
Deep was so overwhelmed by despair that he didn’t look at the book.
an old man stood in the shade, nodding to the clerks on their way to work. He didn’t realize he was
“The novel’s done?” he said. “Congratulations.”
delaying them, she thought irritably, but then she saw that it was Mitra, slightly mad and always
“”S not a novel. Much better market for non-fiction, man. Gotta go with the flow, you know.”
asking for money or cigarettes.
Deep examined the book being pressed into his hand. The title on the electric green cover read
Chaya felt like crying as she looked at him, not so much for Mitra as for herself, and because of
Bridge Across Troubled Waters: A South-South Dialogue Between Desis and the Diaspora. He flipped
everything that had happened since Deep’s departure—the necklace, the plumber, Sharma and his
through a few pages. On the copyright page, there was the address of a printing house in New
sons, the wailing that had to be Sharma’s wife. Mitra was beginning to shuffle away, looking a
Jersey.
little puzzled that no one wanted to talk to him, and Chaya, whose own problem was that too
“Ten bucks,” Shankar said.
“What?”
many strangers approached her, felt she was watching someone very much like her.
A year after Deep’s departure, an elderly man had stopped Chaya in the market. It was ten in
“Ten bucks. For the book.”
the morning, with people around, and she couldn’t believe that an old man with white hair and
“You interviewed people for this book?”
wrinkles on his face was saying he wanted to be friends with her. She had stood there in shock, not
“It’s an imaginary conversation. Between the Desi Indian self and the Diaspora American self.
able to take her eyes off his face, although she managed to reply, “I don’t understand.”
Kind of a Socratic dialogue. There’s a market for this stuff out here.”
“Nothing bad, nothing bad,” he had said, crinkling the corners of his eyes slightly in an effort
93
to reassure her. “I’m a widower. Can’t cook. Your husband’s dead, the son’s in America, right? You
to ask her for money at the beginning of the month, standing there as casually as if he had never
need someone to pay the bills, go to the bank, to help you out with forms and money. I thought we
fought with Deep or with the other people in the building. His eyes were red and unblinking, and
could do things for each other. Look, the son’s not coming back, not in this day and age. Now, if you
she noticed scars on the thin, spidery arms sticking out from his rolled-up sleeves. He wasn’t a big
were to cook for me...” She had not waited for him to finish but pushed past him with such fury
man, but people whispered about the deals he was involved in, about the men who came to his
that a couple of the fruit vendors near the post office looked up and said, “Are you okay, Didi?”
place at night and the kind of stuff his sons were up to. “I have no money,” she said to Sharma in
Chaya knew that the sudden, unwelcome attention she had been facing since Deep left had
her small voice, trying to sound firm. “Dipu’s a student there, he has very little money.” Sharma
nothing to do with her but with being a conduit for the desires of the people around her, for the
kept talking in his harsh voice, not listening to her. “Forget about the loan I wanted,” he said,
touch of wealth they thought America conferred upon everyone who formed some connection
looking past her into the flat. “I just wanted to find out about you. A woman on her own always
with it. The relatives and friends who dropped in speculated openly
needs help.” He leaned a little closer towards her and she smelt liquor on his breath. “I have a heart
Chaya knew that the
about why she looked so sick in spite of all the money Deep must
of gold,” he said, straightening himself and tapping his bony chest. “You understand? Remember
sudden, unwelcome
be sending her. Her neighbours frequently came to her with bills
that. If you call out at night, the only ones who’ll come running will be me and my boys.”
attention she had
been facing since Deep
left had nothing to do
and statements she did not understand, asking her to pay her share
She hadn’t known whether to take this at face value. The next evening she came back a little
for maintaining the building. “Dollars,” people said to her when
late from the market. They had not had a light in the stairwell ever since the tenants disagreed
she went to the market. “Oh, mother of the dollar,” some of the
about sharing the costs, so she stepped carefully, looking out for dung left by the neighbourhood
young men sang out when she passed them.
bull that often took shelter in the building. She was fumbling with her keys when she heard someone
with her but for the
A year after Deep left the tap in her kitchen jammed, the water
running down from the floor above. She didn’t see who it was but felt the brush of fingers on her
touch of wealth they
overflowing and running onto the floor, depleting the reservoir
neck, the tug on the thin gold necklace she wore, and then the metal gate slammed and whoever
on the roof so that Roy banged loudly on her door and asked her
it was had gone.
thought America
to get it fixed right away. She told Kamala the flower girl, the fish-
conferred upon
seller, and the vegetable vendors in the market, pleading with
Chaya had kept all this to herself, never mentioning a word to Deep so that he would not be
everyone who formed
them to find her a plumber. That afternoon a man carrying a small
distracted from his work. But now she felt she had to tell him everything, especially how America
some connection with
nylon bag knocked on her door, saying he had come to look at her
had been nothing but trouble for her. Other people thought she was lucky because she had an
tap. She was in Deep’s room as the man went about his work in
apartment and a son in America earning dollars, but she was so weighed down by her luck that she
the kitchen, relieved that help had come so quickly but worried
wanted Deep to come back and take care of her. It was a son’s duty.
it.“Oh, mother of the
dollar,” some of the
about how much he would charge her. The man was very polite;
The crying in Sharma’s flat had stopped without her noticing the silence, but now the crying
young men sang out
when he came out of the kitchen he said he had to get a washer
began again, breaking into her thoughts. She had heard the crying early in the morning, soon after
when she passed
from the hardware store and would be back in ten minutes. She
two police jeeps drove up to the building. Around six-thirty Kamala the flower girl came in to tell
became worried only when an hour had passed and the man still
her that Sharma’s younger son had been with a gang. He had been carrying home-made bombs in
hadn’t returned. She went to the kitchen first, then to the her
a bag when he fell from his bicycle and the bombs exploded. “The body was in pieces, Didi. The
them.
room, and she couldn’t find her watch anywhere, nor the two thousand rupees she had taken out
from the bank for the month’s expenses.
face was gone. The old man’s the real bastard, he’s the one who pushed his sons into it.”
Chaya got up from the window, closing the shutters to block out the fierce sunlight and the
No one in the market had sent anyone, she found out later. That evening she sat in Deep’s room
pathetic wails and the housing estate threatening to devour her. As always happened when she
with the front door locked and bolted, listening to the steady trickle of the tap in the kitchen, her
was upset, she went to the kitchen. She washed the saucepan and filled it with water for tea,
eyes sweeping over the room that she had maintained as if Deep could come back at any moment.
noticing the smaller measure she poured in Deep’s absence and how much longer the supplies
She did not get up even when Roy came to the front door and began shouting about the water,
lasted her. The water began singing in the pan, a hopeful humming that sounded like “Dipu’s
thumping on the door as he shouted.
coming home, Dipu’s coming home.” She was pouring the tea leaves into the pan when she thought
She had not told Deep any of these things. He didn’t know, for instance, that Sharma had come
she heard the phone ringing and hurried out of the kitchen.
95
3
followed Leon as he walked to the front door, distracted momentarily by the sight of Anna’s small,
pale hand emerging from the opening before it was hidden by the bulk of Leon’s black coat. The
S
hankar had been doing all right until his girlfriend split up with him, locking him out of the
door shut in his face. He began knocking on it gently, whispering “Anna, come on, let me in.” He
railroad apartment in Brooklyn where he had kept his belongings and the half-finished novel.
was involved in what he was doing, trying to sound sad and lost in his whispers, so that he didn’t
The break-up had happened more than a month ago, and although he managed by
realize that the kitchen door further down the passageway had been opened to let the prospective
persuading two Nigerians to let him stay at their apartment off 125th and Lenox, he had been
certain that Anna would let him go back to her.
tenant in.
Shankar cursed himself for thinking it would be easy and waited near the front door, remaining
It was only the events of the morning that made it clear even to him that it was over. It was a
silent even when he heard Anna’s voice. He was beginning to feel tired and hot when he saw the
bad day, cold with the promise of another winter, this one even more uncertain than the last. It was
man let out quickly through the kitchen door. He made a half-hearted pretence of running towards
not the long future, however, that worried Shankar as much as the immediate prospect of having
the door, shouting as he did so, but he returned quickly to his earlier position and waited. When
to spend the night in Butler Library, surrounded by the grunts and squeals of Columbia
Leon tried to come out from the front, Shankar thrust his shoulder and foot into the crack, pushing
undergraduates and the oppressive amounts of trash that followed in their wake.
hard against the weight of Leon’s body on the other side.
He had thought it best to leave the Lenox apartment for the night, finding the Nigerians in a
bad mood because one of them had lost his job at a grocery store after a fight with the owner. He
tried to be casual about it, coming out of the apartment with the air of a man so popular that even
“Anna,” he yelled past Leon’s yarmulke-clad head. “It’s all
right. I just want to talk to you.”
Shankar had not
waited to go through
Anna said nothing, though he could hear her moving through
the trash. He had
Sunday nights hold social opportunities for him, but the ebullience left him as he made his way
the rooms and it was Leon who replied each time he spoke.
towards Columbia. He walked slowly down 125th, the hood of his sweatshirt drawn over his head,
“Shankar, go away. Anna doesn’t want you inside.”
always believed in
thinking of the trip he had made earlier in the day.
“Hey, I’m a tenant here, you know. Anna darling, I love you.”
cutting his losses and
Leon shook his head regretfully.
running. What was a
He had reached Williamsburgh early in the morning, getting off the train in something of a
panic because Anna’s number seemed disconnected. As he approached Anna’s apartment, he could
see Leon, the Hasidic Jew who owned the building, struggling with a large trash can. “New York
City recycling laws,” Leon said affably when he saw Shankar, even though he knew the whole
scene between Anna and Shankar quite well. “So, how are you Shankar?”
“Not so bad. And you?”
“Oh, it goes on from day to day. She won’t let you in, you know.”
Shankar had been wondering if he could slip into the building unnoticed.
“Who won’t let me in?”
“Annah,” Leon replied in a great expulsion of breath as he finished sorting the trash and shoved
the last can to the edge of the sidewalk.
“Oh,” Shankar said, shrugging his shoulders. He was wondering why Leon was waiting instead
“No Shankar, she’s my tenant. The one who pays the rent is
the tenant. Your name’s not even on the lease.”
“She’s leaving, Leon. You were showing the apartment to
someone else. Anna! Let me in please. I just want to talk to you.”
“Shankar. She’s still my tenant. Until she leaves I am
responsible for her.”
“Let her come to the door if she’s the tenant. Anna, please
manuscript or a
girlfriend when you
had left behind your
life, your country, your
memories?
baby.”
Leon tried to close the door and Shankar held it back, and they went on speaking across the
crack, Leon’s beard and Shankar’s goatee almost touching.
“Go away, Shankar. She’s going to call the police.”
of taking off in his battered sedan. Then he saw the man approaching them and guessed that Leon
“Let her,” Shankar said. “Anna, listen, I don’t want to talk to you. I just want my stuff.”
was meeting a prospective tenant. Shankar picked up his backpack and got off the stairs, waiting
There was a quick discussion behind the door.
while Leon and the man exchanged greetings. “Hi,” Shankar said to the man. “Nice building. Great
“Anna says she’s thrown it all out. Look in the trash can. Quickly Shankar, before the garbage
apartments. Terrific landlord.” Leon looked sourly at Shankar and slipped into the building. The
truck comes.”
prospective tenant went in and Shankar followed, gently but firmly, and Leon let out an exasperated
“Garbage trucks at this time of the day? Come on Leon, what do you take me for?”
sigh.
Then he realized what had just been said and he screamed.
Anna’s apartment had two entrances, one at each end of the long, dim passageway. Shankar
“You threw out my stuff? My manuscript?”
97
Leon tried to close the door again.
building, with a giant hoarding towering above the wall, a recruitment advertisement for the US
“Shankar, she’s calling the police. Go away, please. You’re making me angry.”
Army saying “Be all you can be.” The ad reminded Shankar of the Status Quo song “In the Army
“My manuscript, do you understand? We’re talking art here. Not apartment leases.”
Now,” and he began singing it loudly. He had a good voice, and he enjoyed hearing himself sing as
Leon didn’t say anything about the manuscript, but his face was almost regretful. “Shankar,
he inspected the crackhouse on the other side with an almost proprietorial air, feeling mildly envious
she’s calling police on her cell phone. You’ll be deported if they catch you.”
Shankar had not waited to go through the trash. He had always believed in cutting his losses
and running. What was a manuscript or a girlfriend when you had left behind your life, your
when he thought of the amount of crack being stashed away behind that crumbling faÁade. Then
he faced Deep’s building. There were lights on in the apartment on the fourth floor and he sang
out “You’ll be the hero of the neighbourhood” loudly to the figure at the window.
country, your memories? When Anna had him figured out in the final days of their relationship,
Shankar had made it to the doorway, had in fact looked at the buzzer and kicked away the beer
she accused him of carrying out a scorched-earth emotional policy. Shankar had been genuinely
bottle at his feet, when the police searchlight came on, hitting the doorway square and lighting
puzzled because he did not think of himself as evil. He was like Buddha, stripping off the veils of
him up in a perfect silhouette. The high that had brought Shankar so far was still working and he
illusion that lesser mortals were trapped within.
wasn’t scared. The bullhorn began crackling, telling him something he could not decipher, when he
The comparison to Buddha cheered him up as he strode across Harlem and he drew a sense of
remembered the hooded sweatshirt and baggy trackpants he was wearing—almost a uniform that
vitality from the different strands of hip-hop he heard from the boomboxes and car speakers. Near
in Harlem and often the only reason you needed to go to prison—and pushed at the door in
the post office, a homeless man stumbled out of the shadows. Shankar grinned at him, twisting his
sudden panic. It was unlocked and gave way and he went with the motion, now remembering the
lips and right cheek in a gesture of casual fellow-feeling. “Hey, brother, where you from?” he
ganja in a Ziploc bag in his pocket, taking the steps three at a time along the narrow, green stairway.
heard. “I like your style, brother. Like your style. Hey. You black, Indian?” the bum shouted behind
him and Shankar laughed, already on a high that lifted him out of the day’s setbacks.
A large black man in a baseball cap was swabbing the landing on the third floor, using something
with a very strong concentration of ammonia in it. Shankar wondered if it was possible to get high
He knew enough about himself to understand that the manuscript had been bad, as bad as the
on ammonia as he asked for the number of Deep’s apartment. The man got to his feet laboriously,
197 copies of Bridge Across Troubled Waters lying in the apartment of the Nigerians. He also knew
big bones creaking, and looked at him suspiciously through old, thick glasses. “The Indian?” he
that Anna and Leon and the Nigerians were right about him, just as before them his retired civil
asked hoarsely. Shankar smiled in response, taking the hood off his face with a flourish. The man
servant father had been right. But being right wasn’t as important as being alive, and with all his
pointed up and got back to his knees slowly.
lack of abilities, that was what he had attempted in this city that he loved even as it destroyed him
bit by bit.
Shankar took the remaining stairs slowly, almost as if the noise below of buzzers being hit at
random had nothing to do with him. Deep opened the door, holding a cheap cordless phone.
He crossed Amsterdam Avenue and passed a small Dunkin Donuts. The brown, squat face of the
“Who’s ringing? What do you want?” he said, staring at Shankar. There were footsteps and shouts
Bangladeshi manning the counter reminded him of Deep and the building he lived in. It was right
at the bottom of the stairs. “Mind if I come in? I’m not feeling very well,” Shankar told Deep and
across from the biggest crackhouse in Manhattan, Shankar thought, and he doubted that Deep
pushed past him. He was, in fact, feeling a little sick as he stood in the badly lit room, taking in the
knew had any idea about his neighbours. He himself knew about the crackhouse from Michael, the
floor with its fake wood tiles, the piles of library books and the
homeless man who hung out near the Teachers College building and who had invited Shankar to
Village Voices in the corner, the Hawkins pressure cooker with the smear of dal on its lid and
come with him to Florida for some orange-picking work during the summer. Michael had told him
the computer screen with a blank Word page. Shankar was wondering what to say to Deep when
that the men running the crackhouse had some funky name like the Black Tops gang, and that they
the bell rang again.
sold tonnes of crack in vials with black tops right under the nose of the police precinct around the
corner.
He sighed and stood aside, feeling the Ziploc bag with the ganja and deposited it behind the
pressure cooker as Deep opened the door. The phone in Deep’s hand clattered to the floor as the
Shankar wasn’t alarmed as he remembered this, and as he passed the empty stretch between
policemen came in, their uniforms surprisingly bright in that pale, featureless space, their bodies
Amsterdam and Broadway, he wondered if he could convince Deep to give him some food out of
much too big for the dimensions of the room. “New York’s a bitch,” Shankar said loudly, with a
fellow-feeling. He turned right at the laundromat, the prospect of hammering at Deep’s door at
shrug that was only partially regretful, but Deep wasn’t listening to him. He had his hands pressed
midnight a mildly interesting possibility, and he thought nothing of the deserted street and the
together in a gesture of supplication and was saying over and over again, “Sir, sir, please I do not
police car standing at the other end. There was a blank stretch of wall before he reached Deep’s
know this man. I do not know him at all.” ●
99
FILM REVIEW
Mix and Match
BY MANISHA SETHI
Bride and Prejudice, produced by Miramax Films and Pathe Films;
directed by Gurinder Chadha; 2004
T
he sun doesn’t seem to set on the Indian summer in Britain. Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and
Prejudice opened to huge box office collections in England and Ireland, pipping such
Hollywood offerings as Saw, Wimbledon and Exorcist to the post.
In her earlier films, Bhaji on the Beach (winner of the 1994 BAFTA award), What’s Cooking?,
and the supremely successful Bend it Like Beckham, Chadha—herself a second-generation immigrant
whose family followed the familiar route from India to Kenya to England—dealt with the
experiences, aspirations and dilemmas of the Indian immigrant community in the UK. B&P though
is not so much about a transplanted people as about a whole storyline transplanted to another
time and place. The 18th century classic, Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen is Indiansed, or rather,
‘Punjabified’ for the 21st century: Bennets are transformed into the Bakshis of Amritsar; Elizabeth
morphs into Lalita; William Darcy, well remains Darcy, but in acknowledgement of the ‘global soul’
of the filmmaker is turned into an American hotel heir.
Though to be sure, the immigrants are never absent: the eminently suitable London boy Balraj,
whose arrival is much awaited by mothers with ‘marriageable’ daughters, and whose family has
Lalita (Aishwarya Rai) and Darcy (Martin Henderson) get hooked. A still from Bride and Prejudice
‘made’ it and moved out of Southall (“oh so first generation”, as his sister puts it); the mildly
Chadha who is known to cock a snook at defined genres to produce her own version of fusion
the ubiquitous signboards advertising visa and
films pays a tribute to all her influences: Bollywood, and the English and American musicals. Austen’s
immigration services in the narrow alleys of Amritsar. For
tale in which balls and dances served to move the story forward lends itself easily to the Bollywood
this is a land where dreams are coloured green, the green
format of song and dance. It even includes the mandatory ‘item dance’ number—only this time it is
of a green card, where the favourite sport happens to
not one of the Bollywood starlets but the Black singer, Ashanti, grooving on a Goa beach. A deliberate
be kabootarbaazi (literally, pigeon flying—a euphemism
strategy on the filmmaker’s part because Black faces are otherwise absent in Hindi cinema. And
for illegal human trafficking) and ‘training’ centres for
when the heroic Darcy pursues the villainous Johnny into a dark film theatre, guess which film is
prospective NRI brides is one of the most lucrative
playing?: Chadha’s personal favourite Hindi film, the 1970s hit, Purab Pashchim (East West). As if on
businesses. The title of the Hindi version of the film, From
cue Darcy and Johnny replicate the scene on the screen behind them: cut for cut, hook for hook,
Amritsar to L.A anticipates the imminent departure of
the heroine from her natal home to the marital one and
celebrates it with the hearty Punjabi cry of “Balle Balle”.
IANS PHOTOS
obscene and grunting, but loaded, Mr. Kohli, who comes bride hunting to the motherland; or even
kick for kick.
While Bride and Prejudice may well be the first Hindi film in English, it is as British as the
uniquely British Balti cuisine. ●
89
ESSAY
During my early teens and late 20s, when the extent of the exclusions I faced simply because of
skin colour became clear, my ‘Indian descent’ heritage became more of an obstruction to me than
a resource. I identified with the struggle for change and saw myself as a radically-minded African.
However, a series of events from 1992 to the present forced me to reflect on my own biography
and I began to engage with and examine notions of South Asian identity issues from a ‘diasporic
perspective’. In 1995, immediately post change in South Africa, I was in the United Kingdom on a
cultural exchange project and saw a band called Fun_da_mental whose performance would spark
a set of contradictory feelings in me about being a person of South Asian descent living in Africa.
Making Place:
the art of moving
While this engagement started initially around music, it was bolstered by a series of meetings I had
with other artists of Caribbean, African, South Asian descent, now living in countries other than
their own. Over the course of four years as I continued working in the field of culture I created
space to work on a number of projects around race, ethnicity and identity. This subsumed work on
a set of projects about ‘being black’ in the still transforming country, which included a contemporary
art exhibition titled A Place called Home, with a range of artists of South Asian descent participating.
As A Place Called Home opens, I find myself reflecting both on the efficacy of my enquiry and
BY ZAYD MINTY
on the nature of migration and journeys. I realise, that in my own personal journey of discovery I
have come full circle from where I began—though more self aware, more comfortable with myself
M
y father was once an amateur photographer with a passion for travelling the world, and
and a great deal more committed to my own version of radicalism which has enhanced my work as
has a large collection of images from the late 1960s into the late ’70s. When I was five he
a cultural worker and activist. Migration, and what it can signify in respect to radical engagement,
took my sisters and I to Dahbel in Gujarat, India to visit the “village where all my
transformation and redemption is intricately linked to memory and identity. We have the agency
blood comes from”. Whenever I see the images I always connect it to some notion of ‘roots’. I
to re-orientate our memories to support whatever notion of identity we hope to assume at any
haven’t travelled to India since then, even though I have been curious about what I would see in
point in time and place. While I
the faces of my now distant family and interested in what their lives would be like.
acknowledge
my
African
My great-grandfather left India in the 1890s to come to South Africa as a ‘Passenger Indian’
experience has been shaped by
following many others less fortunate, who arrived as indentured labourers a few decades earlier.
that of my great-grandparents
While he was also from peasant class, the lack of restrictions on his movement and ability to earn
who
an income as a free agent, together with the support of his kin network, several of who came with
bequeathed to me in various
the same aspirations as he, enabled him to chart a course of relative prosperity. This would later
ways through my family, I am able
translate into securing the possibility of a middle-class lifestyle for his children and their offspring.
to accept without feelings of
I also have a range of photos of my growing-up years when my father decided to travel around
contradiction that I am simul-
the world on his way to migrating to Canada. By the time we returned to South Africa less than a
taneously an African, a person
year later—after my father had decided Canada wasn’t going to be the place for his children to
with a set of cultural markers
grow up in—I was already a seasoned traveller. While the recollections of my ‘global young self’ are
which are South Asian, as well as
infused with fun and adventure, my travels later in life were sharply marked with the awareness of
and more importantly—a global
my otherness. Like in South Africa, I was not black enough to be considered African nor was I really
citizen.
an ‘Indian’. In South Africa the colour of my skin marked me for exclusion, while my ‘ethnic identity’
was an opportunity for use as part of a ‘social buffer’ between black and white.
were
Indian,
and
Manipulated photograph by Roshni Kempadoo,Virtual Exiles
Series, part of the A Place called Home exhibition, 2000
79
My great-grandfather’s rationale for migrating from India, while precipitated by economic
necessity—as a result of draconian British taxation in India at the time—was as much inspired by
adventure and boundary breaking as it was to earn a living, and I see the same sense of adventure
and desire to break boundaries evident in the lives of subsequent generations—my grandfather,
my father and myself. The sense that migration can be a positive notion—that as much as there is
loss—allows for the possibility of growth and positive transformation both for the individual and
for the place where she arrives and begins to make home. The migrant inevitably brings a range of
resources, new and potentially redemptive, to the place s/he settles in—these resources include the
migrant’s future generations, who will invariably leave marks, imprinted in part through family
socialisation, on the place that is now home.
Migration is certainly not a new global phenomenon though the increased pace of globalisation
has made the movements of people, whether on small or mass scales, more apparent and sharper.
At the same time, colonialism and the development of the notion of the nation-states have
contributed to the conditions under which much migration has become increasingly more
transparent and difficult in the current age. The erection of an increasing number of boundaries—
virtual, psychic and actual—is a symptom of these changes, and has provided the materials in recent
also speaking about violence and loss, the works produce another narrative—of awareness and
years for academic and artistic engagements which are paradoxically, exciting and rich in the inherent
renewal.
possibilities they have to break down these boundaries.
Bhimjee is part of a growing group of artists whose genealogy is not western but who live in
the West and have become significant in the contemporary art world. Many of these artists engage
T
he artists described below are examples of creative boundary-breaking initiatives: the genres
in story telling inspired by personal biographies, finding new narratives in what could be called
they employ are visual, sonic and performance based, but at the heart of each of their
‘diaspora space’. “Diaspora arts” emanating from such spaces, in the words of art critic Kobena
engagement is the response to movement or migration. All of them are of South Asian
Mercer, tell stories “which reactivate ideas of syncretism, creolite and metisage which are all
descent, but all have developed practices deeply rooted in universalism. For all of them migration
conceptually hybrid”.
from the South Asian peninsula was not a choice at any point, but was one their parents or
grandparents had made; their response is to turn it into opportunities for redemption.
Recent works by Zarina Bhimjee, an artist born in Mbarara, Uganda in 1963, expose a set of
narratives around displacement, loss, second arrival, remembrance and of renewal. Bhimjee and
her family were forced in 1974 to migrate to the UK after Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians from
F
rom the early ’90s, bands such as Fun_da_Mental and Asian Dub Foundation (ADF) began to
engage a variety of sonic experiments fusing the more militant edge of sounds such as punk,
hip hop, reggae and raga with samples from Bollywood soundtracks, political speeches, radio
announcements and prayers, amongst others. The dominant influence of ‘Black music’ and style,
Uganda two years earlier. The extreme pain of this experience led Bhimjee to explore the psychology
both in sound production as well as in fashion and design is apparent. This had as much to do with
of identity. Her images show an empty plot, the foundations of a building barely visible in the lush
living in harmony with so many Caribbean descent people and the influence of Black-American
greenery; a dilapidated house with young black children sitting on the walls and porches, gazing
music and style on UK in the mid to later 20th century. From the late ’90s into the 2000s the massive
directly at the viewer; a room with a number of fans removed from the ceiling stacked in the centre
interest in all things South Asian in the UK would see bands such as these—which speak to the local
of a large room, the amputated wires against the large windows. The narrative is made all the
experiences of young people—receive worldwide acclaim. Asian youth in the UK, had come into
more poignant when the viewer is informed that the house and the plot were places where Asians
their own, and music formed a key point of identification.
lived and the room with the fans, the prayer room of a mosque. These evocative representations
The now already ‘classic’ release by ADF Community Music was one of the top albums of 2000
are as much about “feeling and memory as about survival. While standing for the history of the
for critics and public in UK alike and probably one of ADFs most militantly provocative and positive
recent past, they also outlive it, conjuring old relations as they produce new juxtapositions.” While
albums to date. It is a highly creolised mix of sounds and imagery and at the same time a homage
81
profit music training centre—a key place where many of the band had gained their early musical
Dancers in ‘From Before’, an excerpt
from Jay Pather’s Cityscapes, Nelson
Mandela Square, Johannesburg, 2003
▼
to migrant culture and community empowerment in the United Kingdom. The title refers to a nonexperience—but it also connotes community action, memory and empowerment.
In the album the ADF attack the edifices of racism in the West, berate those who control the
In recent years, “fusion dancing” has become a
means of production and the means of communication, pay homage to those who have ‘stayed and
fashionable way for South African businesses to engage
fought’, and call for people to organise together and take charge of their lives with their songs:
in back slapping, team building exercises at conferences
“Who controls the past controls the present and who controls the present controls the future.”
and to demonstrate their patriotism by affirming a notion
(Memory War)
of nationhood. Often male Zulu dancers and female Indian
“There is no such thing as illegal immigrants,
“And we’re supposed to be cool
dancers are choreographed in a patchwork of fused
only illegal governments
inna de dance our riddims rule
movements where the two groups dance their traditional
Today. The colour line
but we knew it all along
moves, then mirror and interact with each other at various
is the power line
cos our parents made us strong
times. The work of Siwela Sonke predates this nationalistic
is the poverty line.”
never abandoned our culture
new wave, and though itself rooted in the discourse of
(Colour Line featuring Ambalvaner Sivanandan)
just moving it along
nation building—with the company having represented
technology our tradition
the country at a range of festivals locally and
“Turn dis disconnection into interconnection
innovation inna song.”
internationally and performed at the World Summit in
and get into de collective mode.”
(New Way, New Life)
India—Siwela Sonke by breaking stereotypes around
gender, class, race and difference, have sought to push
(Collective Mode)
(All song titles and lyrics from
“I’m here to teach you a lesson
Asian Dub Foundation: Community
I’m here to question your soul.”
Music, London Records 90 Ltd. 2000)
(Rebel Warrior)
the very boundaries of dance.
Much of the success of the company has come from Pather himself. Pather, employed as the art
director in 1997, initially worked with the Jazzart Dance Theatre Company which was driven by the
radical, groundbreaking work of Alfred Hinkel. Jazzart has a reputation for having ‘hothoused’
Hybridity conjuring up botanical notions of roots, rootedness and rootlessness also references
many of the key young choreographers and dancers in the country. Part of its approach, which was
the radical. In face of the numerous boundaries they countenance, it is not surprising that radicalism
rooted in the anti-Apartheid struggle, was to tackle the heart of
as a form of rooting and making a place home is so widespread a strategy with ‘diasporic artists’.
discrimination through engagement with the body—addressing
While ADF’s strategy in this respect is stridently militant, confrontationist, and calls for transformation
gender inequality, for example, by having females lift men—radical
in the western world, loudly using every means necessary, the work of artistic director Jay Pather
concepts for South Africa in the ’80s. When Pather took over Siwela
and the Siwela Sonke Dance company from Durban, South Africa is a far more subtle but no less
Sonke, it was perceived as a ‘development dance company’ of a
transgressive.
State-managed theatre. Pather’s directorship, however, was to take
it to a different plane. Bringing his eclectic interests to the company
S
iwela Sonke meaning ‘to cross over to a new place together’ is a highly regarded contemporary
and actively drawing on the musical and dance forms of the region,
dance company which has been nurturing emerging new South African dancers and
Pather choreographed a range of highly acclaimed works, including
choreographers. Their groundbreaking work is the result of their search for a South African
the award-winning choreography for his Africanisation of Herman
dance language which mirrors the cultural heritage of the region they are in (KwaZulu-Natal).
Hesse’s Siddhartha, and the production Cityscapes. The latter
They draw on the “rich variety of indigenous and contemporary dance styles of South Africa, such
employing a number of dancers from different companies including
as the indhlamu (traditional Zulu dance) gumboot, isicathamiya, bharata natyam, ballet,
Siwela Sonke, and presented in Durban and Johannesburg, included
contemporary European and contemporary African dance.” (www.culturalradius.co.za).
83
ESSAY
four sections performed at different times in different parts of the city.
“The pieces shifted in mood from spiritual spectacle, to carnival to intimacy”—colourful and
evocative. Pansula dancers on escalators in shopping malls, “dressed as businessmen in pinstriped
suits, enact a mugging. But this violent idiom is offset by colourfully dressed minstrels moving up
and down the escalators, holding red balloons with a contemporary remix of Carl Orff’s Oh Fortuna
from Carmina Burana.” (Heather Robertson: www.artsmart.co.za) A piece set in a tiny hotel room
allows only a few viewers at a time and is “Pather’s most personal statement related to the madness
we experience when we deal with loss. ”This piece is about secrets,” says Pather, ”and the difficulty
we have in dealing with transitions and breakdowns.” Another piece has traditional Shembe dancers,
The things we do not
see
classical Indian kathak dancers and classical ballet dancers performing in Durban on the beach and
in Johannesburg at the Sandton Square (a famous eating square within a large mall complex) the
performance evokes vast epic spaces, using the space as the ‘meeting ground for ancient cultures’”.
In making space (and place) ‘diasporic subjects’ and employing artistic means to inscribe the
artists’ own selves and others into a new imaginary, also include in it aspects of their migrant
origins. Through strategies for transformation, this making of place negotiates space/s more varied
BY ACHAL R PRABHALA
and more complex than the one/s which existed before. Making of place is not without its difficulties,
but as the examples above show, these negotiations, done with some level of radicalised
A look at the portrayal of migrants in cinema
consciousness create hybridised spaces which are filled with possibilities and exhilaration. ●
T
he refugee, writes Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, “must be considered for what
he is: nothing less than a limit concept that radically calls into question the fundamental
categories of nation-state.” Agamben’s critique of citizenship follows Hannah Arendt,
herself a refugee, who thought that the popular conception of human rights “broke down at the
very moment when those who professed to believe in it were first confronted with people who
had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships—except that they were still human.”
Thirty years after Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism, an Englishman in a sharp
suit steps out of an expensive car. The scene: a dimly lit parking lot in London. “How come I’ve
never seen you people before?” he says. Okwe, a central protagonist of Stephen Frears’ Dirty
Pretty Things (2002) replies, “Because we are the people you do not see. We are the ones who drive
your cabs. We clean your homes. And...”
Okwe is a taxi driver with a degree in surgery, expelled from home by political circumstances
beyond his control—thus, the poster boy of the international human rights set. But what is unusual
about the film is the easy camaraderie between four ostensibly different Londoners: Guo Yi (East
Asian, possibly legal), Okwe (Nigerian, definitely illegal), Senay (Turkish, seeking asylum) and Juliette
(Black, British, sex worker). Their native tormentors are equally contemporary: a Spanish organ
trader and an Indian sweatshop boss—subjects turned citizens, victims turned exploiters.
From Cityscapes. Photograph by Suzy Bernstein
In Brian de Palma’s Scarface (1983), Tony Montana leaves the criminal life in Cuba to begin one
85
again in the USA, fuelled by (what Hollywood propaganda suggests is) a devious Castro plot to
export convicts. But you can be sure that Tony isn’t losing sleep over fellow refugees trapped in the
creases of warring ideology. “I kill a communist for fun,” he says, in fetching guttural tones, “but
for a green card, I gonna carve him up real nice.”
In the Hindi film, the refugee has been importantly absent, or present only as a tangential
possibility in off beat films like Garam Hawa(1973). Granted, the partition of India formed the basis
of Deepa Mehta’s Earth (1998), but one hesitates to think of it as popular. The ‘Kashmir’ of the
Hindi film was a persistently snowy backdrop. Now, it is merely a double entendre that signifies
‘Pakistan,’ the raw material for a growing factory of xenophobia that produces forgettable—if
exceedingly popular—films.
In Brian de Palma’s Scarface,
Tony Montana leaves the
The things we do not see on screen are the unresolved
tangles that threaten our fundamental faith in the
nation-state. Though there are some exceptions to this,
criminal life in Cuba to begin
such as Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen (1953) poverty is
one again in the USA, fuelled
largely turned into a personal problem in the Hindi film,
by (what Hollywood
and the structural violence that constructed it is safely
propaganda suggests is) a
obscured. But there are other ways of liberating the
figure of the refugee. Pankaj Butalia’s Karvaan was a
devious Castro plot to export
dark, brooding tale of sexuality and illegitimacy, told in
convicts. But you can be sure
the context of Partition. Butalia’s gloomy, ochre-red Delhi
that Tony isn’t losing sleep
is reminiscent of Wong Kar-Wai’s Buenos Aires. Ostensibly,
over fellow refugees trapped
boys reinventing their lives in Latin America, one as a
hustler on the street and the other, as a doorman at a
ideology. “I kill a communist
tango bar. In reality, it is a delicately beautiful film of
for fun,” he says, in fetching
anxiety and alienation, of love and loss. Both films
guttural tones, “but for a
green card, I gonna carve him
up real nice.”
▼
in the creases of warring
Happy Together (1997) is the story of two Hong Kong
Film poster of
Scarface, 1983
Universal Studios
acknowledge the politics of migration but imaginatively
But there’s hope yet. To make it onto screen, all you have to do is look internally and do a little
escape the pigeonholes that were waiting for them—
displacement yourself. Step 1: Love thy nation. Step 2: Invoke charity. Then, you can be reinvented
two in particular called ‘Oppression’ and ‘Repression.’
as the Poor Man, down on your luck through acts of God, and therefore, the subject of a substantial
One recent popular film worth noting is Mani
chunk of Hindi cinema.
Rathnam’s Kannathil Muthu Mittal, which drew explicit
In 1955, a penniless drifter—a character inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s migrant tramp—with a
lines between the Tamil Nadu and the Sri Lankan conflict. On the refugee scale, our ‘own’ repressed
heart of gold finds himself on the mean streets of Bombay. Though he quickly learns the ropes,
abroad get high points (e.g. Tamils in Sri Lanka), as do the colourfully ‘irrepressible’ as in the alleged
his success is marred by a nagging emptiness. Raj Kapoor’s Shree 420 is about a young man who
sub-genre of ‘non-resident Indian’ films, such as Bend it Like Beckham. However, foreigners repressed
wakes up one day to find that he has become the “limit concept.” Outside was cold and miserable,
at home get very few points (Bangladeshis, Afghans). Our ‘own’ repressed at home get even less
so he went inside, where beautiful ladies fussed over him at upscale soirees. But then he looked
(e.g. Assamese, Muslims in Gujarat). There’s a name for the least lucky in this last category: the UN
out, and saw his former love, the principled Vidya—much like the citizen may see the refugee.
calls them “internally displaced persons.”
And suddenly, the inside was beautiful no more. ●
87
REVIEW
We travel much of the time in order to see others who stay at home. (This might be termed
voyageurism.) Our freedom of mobility is not theirs. Capitalism has arranged that money can flow
while workers stay put. Those who are prevented from moving will be paid less than those who are
mobile, who can move to find more lucrative employment, and so (as with wages) the caged and
the uncaged become increasingly divided.
In a recent issue of the Guardian Weekly (23-29 July 2004, p. 29), a newspaper of the travelling
classes, the economics commentator, Larry Elliott, writes: “In globalization, capitalism dictates that
Travellers and the
Travelling Classes
firms will always be under pressure to ‘up sticks and move’.” The idea is familiar, hardly worth
rehearsing, but the idiom is startling. For money does not ‘up sticks and move’: only people do
that, and only those rare people, nomads and travellers, who have in their journeyings no home,
no fixed address, no return-ticket. Thus by a careless idiom one can confuse the issue, and make
exotic nomads of airborne executives.
The return-ticket is the decisive marker of middle-class travel. The one-way traveller is a refugee,
or an economic migrant, one who is trying to break through the wall that separates and protects
BY CHARLES LOCK
Gypsies: from the Ganges to the Thames
the travellers from the rest. (Hence the minor paradox of air travel, that a return-ticket costs no
more—and sometimes even less—than a one-way ticket.) Because the fixed abode has been so
instrumental in the development of western society, in the administration of commerce, and in the
By Donald Kenrick
keeping of law and order, those who are or, worse, choose to be of no fixed abode must be regarded
University of Hertfordshire Press, 2004, 130 pp., £9.99, ISBN 1-902806-23-9
with suspicion, and are often presumed, at least in the popular view, to have criminal intent. The
only reason for being homeless is—so the armchair philosophises—that one doesn’t want to be
O
urs is an age of unprecedented freedom of personal mobility. Not only are we politically
caught, and one has reasons not to be found. The entire notion of contract, whether social,
free to visit almost every nation in the world: we are subject to few economic constraints.
commercial or personal, may be said to depend
For just a few thousand dollars one can put a girdle round the earth. The ‘we’ of which
on the fixity of abode of all parties.
and for whom I speak is of course privileged, not necessarily living in ‘the West’, but enjoying status
Yet nomads are exotic because we find it
and leisure: not only to fly, but to purchase and find time to read journals, even book-reviews. And
enviable to imagine living without a home, and
this massive indulgence, this collective urge to be elsewhere, this quite exceptional middle-class
without feeling the need of permanence, or
unease with home, largely escapes all but humorous, anecdotal notice.
indeed of contractual securities. There has always
A perplexing feature of current debates about global warming and the limited resources of
been some form of coexistence between the
fossil-fuels is that we are urged to use less energy, and to develop alternative, renewable sources of
housed and the wayfaring. As Donald Kenrick
power. Are we being advised or encouraged to fly less? No, because those who do the talking also
writes: “The sedentary’s fear of the nomad goes
do the travelling. The oddest economic fact is this. Every developed nation derives a significant
back to the beginning of civilization.” He then
portion of its revenues from the sale of automobile fuel, car-owners being considered, like those
adds, almost routinely, “(for example, the story
who smoke and drink, a fair target for extra taxation. How much wealth would be generated if
of Cain and Abel in the Bible.)” The only trouble
airlines were taxed on fuel? Quite enough, surely, to forgive all third-world debt, and to begin to
with this example is that Abel was the pastoralist,
provide fresh water for some part of the global population. Yet at present, by international
the one who followed his flock, while Cain, the
agreement, there is no tax on airline fuel. The issue of taxing airline fuel is seldom raised: it would
murderer, was the first to cultivate the soil and
hurt only the middle-classes, and the middle-classes at their most addictively, helplessly passive.
settle in one spot until the time of harvest. The
69
quarrel began because the Lord was pleased by the offering made by Abel, and displeased by that
hardly going to be granted by any court or any established or ‘settled’ legal system. In such disputes
of Cain: the Lord was already on the side of the shepherds. This story is so counter-intuitive that,
no weight is to be carried by the assurance that these travellers will, sooner or later, be moving on.
serving the cause of the pastoralists, it must have been told by shepherds, perhaps in justification
To the law of property, that seems as absurd as a thief promising to return the diamonds as long as
of a wandering existence. Gypsies, it should be said, have not been shepherds: though nomads,
he can keep them for a few weeks. And if the land-owner can be persuaded that the travellers,
they have traditionally practised as craftsmen, notably in the tinker’s trade and, as workers in
being travellers, really will not remain in perpetuity, this is not likely to help, for it only renders
metal, have drawn their legendary descent from Tubalcain, “instructor of every artificer in brass
more stark their absolute difference from us.
and iron” (Gen. 4:22).
We are witnessing today something that suggests an impending crisis for the Roma, and for
Yet, the story in favour of nomadic life was written down, in the book of Genesis. Texts would
nomadic living in general. The Roma Holocaust is commemorated on the 2nd August in honour of
in their very nature seem disposed to favour home-owners; it is above all our libraries that keep us
the four thousand gassed in one night—Zigeunernacht—at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. Despite
at home. Libraries, records, archives: these are the repositories of our identity, of our claims to
the fact that between one half-million and one million Roma
competence and our evidence of ancestry. Indeed, they are fundamental to the constitution and
died in Nazi camps (perhaps even more), there can be no
Capitalism needs its
maintenance of personal identity. Nomadic peoples tend to the plural: their identity is in the cohesion
assurance that the Roma today are protected by the rubric
workers to be sedentary
of the group, in that which moves together. If the names of one or two Gypsies have become well-
‘Never again’. In resisting assimilation, the Roma do little to
known—try naming five (Django Reinhardt, Carmen Amaya, Yul Brynner ....)—usually as performers,
solicit support or find advocates among the sedentary. Donald
it is only because these individuals have ceased to be nomadic: they must make themselves available,
Kenrick is one such, who has devoted many years to the Roma
move freely. And the
be party to a contract. (The mobile phone, however, enables performers to remain wanderers, with
cause, and has made distinctive contributions to the study of
administrative systems
considerable implications for the cultural life to be found on city streets.)
their languages. But there is no general body of opinion in
of the developed world
favour of the Roma, and we might say that, where the Gypsies
T
so that its money can
cannot tolerate subjects
he reputation of Gypsies, or Roma, or ‘travellers’, as they are now commonly named in the
are concerned, there has been an almost universal case of
United Kingdom, has always been bifurcated. As the woman has been stereotyped as either
Holocaust denial. The sheer vagueness of the estimates of
without addresses. Since
virgin or whore, so the gypsy is either exotic and romantic, as is familiar from George Borrow’s
Roma victims is indicative of the general indifference.
1945 Gypsies in Denmark
The Romany Rye (1857) and exemplified by Maggie Tulliver’s thwarted desire to run away with the
Capitalism needs its workers to be sedentary so that its
gypsies (in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860)), or they are criminal, sinister, quasi-diabolical
money can move freely. And the administrative systems of
figures. And this bifurcation separates the dead from the living. Live Gypsies are no better than
the developed world cannot tolerate subjects without
undead Indians: they represent a threat to society. In Central and Eastern Europe today it is clear
addresses. Since 1945 Gypsies in Denmark have been given
even if they choose to live
that the Roma have a far lower status than did the Jews in Germany during the rise of Nazism. The
flats, so that they have an address, even if they choose to live
elsewhere.
comparison is often made, but is hardly justifiable: there is a great difference between nomadism
elsewhere. Northern Europe has been exceptionally hostile
and diaspora; and there is no such thing as an assimilated Gypsy. That the comparison between
to the nomadic life; climate is not the issue, as the Sami people of the circumpolar regions have
Jews and Gypsies is anomalous was made clear to me (‘brought home to me’?) in the anecdote of
learnt to their grief. Happily, the Roma are offering some form of resistance to the global
a local magistrate protesting his unprejudiced state of mind in settling a case involving trespass. He
homogenisation of the way of living. The European Roma Rights Centre has a most impressive
began on the idiomatic auto-pilot: “No, no, I have nothing against gypsies, nothing at all. Why,
internet site (www.errc.org), and it may be hoped that the internet offers a way out of the age-old
some of my best friends...” That moment of dumb-striking realization has stayed with me. Even a
dilemma of nomadism and textual authority. For these are texts that do not occupy space, nor fill
Nazi could allow that some of his best friends, or even a girlfriend, might be Jewish, but the Gypsies
the shelves, nor keep us at home. In a distinguished essay, “The Roma: Between a Myth and the
allow no such pseudo-redemption by individual exception.
Future”, Dimitrina Petrova specifically ascribes blame to Protestantism:
have been given flats, so
that they have an address,
Just as books tend to favour those who can possess them, so the law understands property and
“The root causes for the negative turn in European hospitality and the growth of repression
possession. Magistrates tend to be landowners, and thus sensitive to trespass, and it is at that local
against the Roma are not so much the harm caused by Romani crime ... as the general change in
level of the judiciary that disputes are heard. The right to occupy a patch of land not one’s own is
the European cultural climate, driven by the rise of Protestantism.”
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REVIEW
The centralising administrations of the emerging Protestant nations insisted on fixed addresses,
and of course fixed names. And the Protestant work-ethic cannot tolerate idleness, or unproductive
living. As Max Weber and then RH Tawney explained long ago, that work ethic of Protestantism, in
which idleness is sin, gave rise to capitalism, with its terrifying notion that earned wealth is, in itself
and regardless of the uses to which it is put, a mark of virtue. As Petrova points out, there is no
space in Protestant societies for the wilfully poor, the indigent, the mendicant: the Franciscan Order
was to cause as much offence as the Gypsies or any other wanderers, no matter how principled
their vagrancy.
A Roomy House
Kenrick tells a story from earlier, happier times, when in the early 5th century CE, the Shah of
Persia, Bahram Gur, decreed that enough work had been carried out, enough wealth had been
produced: his exchequer was full, and he ordered the people “to spend less time working and
BY AIDAN DAY
more time in recreation”. The workers sat around, doing nothing, “sitting on the grass, drinking”;
seeing them thus, the Shah ordered them to find some musicians, “for music charms the spirits”.
Wasafiri, No. 42, Summer 2004, the 20th Anniversary Issue
None was available, he was told, and so he wrote to Shankalat the Indian asking for four thousand
of his best musicians and finest singers to be sent to the Persian court. From there they were
dispersed throughout the kingdom, to charm the spirits and make holiday. So runs one version of
how the Gypsies came from India to the Middle East and thence to Europe. It is, in itself, a story to
be considered among all the other stories, for of the origins of the Gypsies there are as many
accounts as of the origins of language.
We will not return to the nomadic ways of our ancestor Abel, nor would it necessarily be a wise
T
he literary magazine Wasafiri celebrates its 20th anniversary with this issue. The name Wasafiri
is derived from the East African language Swahili and suggests the notion of travelling, of
cultural journeying. Founded and edited from London by Susheila Nasta, the magazine is a
major forum for literature and debate by writers who are either of ‘mixed or diasporic backgrounds’
or who simply have an interest in writing produced from such backgrounds.
move ecologically. But, oh, how one longs for a prophet to arise in the West and to speak as
This anniversary issue confirms the rich variety and range of the magazine over the last two
Bahram Gur: “You have worked enough, you have produced enough, the stores are full, the tables
decades. It embraces a galaxy of names, some already famous, some on their way up. There is an
are laden, the banks are groaning, the people are obese, the very libraries are saturated; moreover,
interview with Anita Desai by novelist Maggie Gee. The Trinidadian novelist Earl Lovelace (a
the earth is tired, the mineral resources are depleted: let us therefore relax and do nothing for, let
contributor to the very first issue of Wasafiri in Autumn 1984) shares space with the cultural historian
us say, according to once-revered precedent, one year in seven. And let us be entertained by those
and novelist, Marina Warner. The St. Lucian born Nobel Prize-winning poet, Derek Walcott, speaks
musicians who not only have the gift of charming the spirits, but who have always, in spite of every
with Guyanese-born novelist and poet (domiciled in Britain) David Dabydeen. The Booker Prize-
obstacle, managed to live idle wasteful lives: let them be not only our entertainers, but also our
winning novelist Michael Ondaatje, born in Ceylon, living in Canada, is juxtaposed with the Indian
teachers.” It may not have been primarily their nomadism that has caused such offence, but rather
poet, novelist and critic, Tabish Khair, who lives in Denmark. And so on (there are some 35
the lack of productivity of the gypsy life. This is also to explain the maintenance of their traditional
contributors).
ways and customs: it is only if one lives at subsistence levels that traditional means and measures
Each of the submissions engages, in its own way, with the perspectives of the cosmopolitan (the
may continue to suffice. Instead of admiring the Gypsies, and striving to learn (selectively) from
dis-placed, psychologically and/or physically, is a less glamorous way of putting it). In a prose piece,
their example, we are driven by the psychosis of capitalism (which infects its critics as much as its
‘On the Train from Leuven’, Chika Unigwe, recently shortlisted for the 2004 Caine Prize for African
advocates) to travel the world, in a sick parody of the nomadic life: who, truly, is avoiding taxes,
Writing, records the shock of the new. The movement from one cultural context to another involves
evading due payment on the planet’s resources? Rather than enjoy the gifts of time, the
a challenge to the very grounds of personal identity. “Everything” in Belgium, she writes, ”is
unprecedented abundances of our own time, we remain stubborn Protestants, restlessly and
different“: “I feel like I am invisible. An unseen vapour floating odourlessly by. It is as if I don’t
ceaselessly working, producing, writing. Waste not a moment, say our leaders, and will ever say
exist!” There is no intellectual reflection about the contingency of individual identity upon culture.
(lest you notice anything amiss). ●
The writing gains its integrity through enacting the naive immediacy of early impressions:
73
“There is a couple opposite me...I guess their ages to be twenty and twenty one, the boy being
younger. This is still something that constantly numbs me with shock here; how an older woman
can parade a younger man. Back home, a man with an older woman is called...a disgrace to the
exclusive cult of malehood...here, love is allowed to cut across boundaries. All boundaries. Age
becomes nothing more than a number. It does not carry the weight of an importance attached
to it back home. I am not allowed to call my older brothers by name.”
Earl Lovelace offers an extract from a forthcoming novel, Just a Movie, which deals with an
American film being made in Trinidad. The protagonist, a calypso singer, taken on as an extra in the
film, tells us: “The role they give me, the same one they give the locals, is a role to die. Local talent.
Our role is to die. The rest of the people, they bring from America.” But the extras, dressed up in
grass skirts and nose rings, are not even allowed to play their dying with dignity. Some of them
protest. Others just keep saying “Is just a movie.” The extract offers an allegory. Firstly of nineteenth
century imperial attitudes (the nose rings) and secondly of America’s commercial reinvention of
those attitudes. Most interestingly, Lovelace has his protagonist at one point echo V.S. Naipaul’s
anxiety in The Mimic Men about the second-handedness of Caribbean identities. When the
protagonist’s complaint about not being allowed to fill his acted death with his own meaning is
rejected by one of the locals, he reflects: “If it was just a movie, had he considered then that I was...
we were just actors.” The point extends beyond the literal scene to become an image of the nature
of Caribbean communities themselves. One view has it that cultures which fall within the orbit of
Western power but which do not share at a primary level in Western reality are doomed to be
simulacra.
Derek Walcott, in interview with David Dabydeen, is much more upbeat about the substance of
identities that are generated out of estrangement and disconnection. The measure of the substance
is the literature that this condition has generated. Of the remarkable literary output of Caribbean
cultures, he observes:
“It’s too rich a situation not to have happened; there are too many races, too many complications
involving any one race in exile and dispossession — it’s inevitable that Caribbean literature
came out of a ferment. What is genuinely astonishing though is that it is a quality that is
continuing.”
Quality and the substance of quality are important to Walcott. He critiques the notion of mimicry
by asserting the sheer reality of literary productivity:
“It is very easy to laugh at, say, a black man on a horse with a sword and fifteen policemen
behind him and say, ‘Oh that’s your independence’. What are you saying—you don’t have an
aircraft carrier, you don’t have a bomb, so how can you be independent? We can’t go by those
measures because the contradiction would be that every reward for Caribbean achievements
would be something given cynically—‘well, OK we’ll give you a Nobel prize or a Booker prize
because you all have worked very hard and here is a little something for you’. If you have that
No single heading is ever
going to be adequate to
capturing the truly
astonishing global range
attitude, you can’t accept a prize as charity. If you accept it,
canonical story of ‘English’ literature”. She looks forward to a day when the magazine will be “a
you are— you are not the one being recognised so much as
part of the’cultural heritage’ of Britain”. At the same time, Wasafiri is now subtitled The Magazine
your origins. We must at least be capable of producing things
of International Contemporary Writing. What is meant in these instances by ‘canon’, “’English’
and that is what the Caribbean continues to do.”
literature”, “‘cultural heritage’ of Britain”, and “International”? The words, even with ‘English’ in
In her editorial for the issue Susheila Nasta observes that
inverted commas, jostle uneasily with each other. To arrive at the matter from a different, though
and depth of writing in
Wasafiri “has always aimed to place” literary work “by writers
related, perspective, one might ask whether T.S. Eliot is part of the ‘English’ tradition or the
English. But that is no
of mixed or diasporic backgrounds” at centre stage, as part
‘American’? The recent Norton anthologies solve the problem by including his work both in their
reason not to celebrate—
of the mainstream, as a crucial but often missing part of the
English and their American volumes (Ezra Pound, living and writing in Britain and influencing T.S.
canonical story of “English” literature’. In an interview within
Eliot, for some reason appears only in the American volume). Then again, the seventh edition of
as, with its own emphasis,
the body of the magazine she repeats the point, noting at
the Norton Anthology of English Literature includes Nadine Gordimer, Derek Walcott, Chinua
Wasafiri has gloriously
the same time the “shift in cultural perceptions both in Britain
Achebe, V.S. Naipaul, Anita Desai, Seamus Heaney and J.M. Coetzee. ‘English’ English literature
been celebrating these
and abroad” which indicates the measure of success that
should be very pleased indeed suddenly to be able to claim these great authors. ‘English Literature’
last twenty years—a very
Wasafiri has had in helping (together with many other
here means England (which includes, of course, Scotland and Ireland!) and a highly selected handful
agencies) to achieve recognition of the literature it has
of writers associated with parts of the world once in the British Empire. This is obviously not
championed. Writers of ‘mixed or diasporic backgrounds’ are
satisfactory. But it is a very difficult problem which is not solved, incidentally, by the use of the term
now taught on school syllabi and universities are flush with
‘postcolonial’, which is an inadequate, perhaps even demeaning, term under which to lump writers
courses on them. Contributors to Wasafiri have been winners
who have significant connection with national and cultural backgrounds as rich and diverse as, say,
of the Nobel Prize, the Booker Prize, the American National
India, South Africa, Trinidad and Nigeria. And is contemporary Irish literature a postcolonial
Academy of Letters Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize, to
literature? Or Australian? Is Hanif Kureishi a postcolonial writer? Wasafiri has very wisely avoided
name but a few. They have been recipients of Guggenheim
categorising itself under the term postcolonial. But neither is ‘international’ entirely adequate to
Fellowships, Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature, and
the case. English may be the first truly global language but it is not globally international.
have given the BBC’s Reith Lectures; again, to name but a
Overwhelmingly, the contributors to Wasafiri write in English, the language which, precisely because
few. There are, of course, conservative redoubts:
of British history, no longer belongs solely to Britain.
special literary language.
As Abdulrazak Gurnah,
born in Zanzibar, writes:
“English came to me to
“We have had our critics though, who have sniped at the
The one thing shared by contributors to Wasafiri is the language. Perhaps, when talking of the
fact that the Arts Council are funding us not for reasons of
national and cultural traditions of Anglophone literatures or of diasporic Anglophone writers, it
aesthetic merit but political correctess! This as you can
would be more useful to speak, neither of “‘English‘ literature” nor of ”International Contemporary
imagine makes one fume, particularly when such comments
Writing”, but of something like contemporary literatures in English. Under such neutral heading
come out in places like the Times Literary Supplement which
all literatures written in English might be included without granting any God-given privilege to
then rather unfortunately perpetuates the myth thatWasafiri
those with ancestries going back a bit further than others. The individual, national and linguistic
is a kind ofliterary ghetto for second-rate writers!”
varieties and inflexions, in all their individual, cultural and historical difference as well as
But the shift in cultural perceptions means that today such a
interconnection, could be given whatever emphasis is desired, after the initial identification of
seem like a spacious and
myth is as likely to rebound negatively upon the perpetrators as
what they hold in common. No single heading is ever going to be adequate in capturing the truly
roomy house,
to control taste in the mass.
astonishing global range and depth of writing in English. But that is no reason not to celebrate—
accommodating writing
and knowledge with
heedless hospitality.”
76
There remains, however, a slight lack of clarity about who
as, with its own emphasis, Wasafiri has gloriously been celebrating these last twenty years—a very
or what Wasafiri is representing and addressing. Susheila Nasta
special literary language. As Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in Zanzibar, writes in this issue of Wasafiri:
speaks on the one hand of the magazine always having sought
“English came to me to seem a spacious and roomy house, accommodating writing and knowledge
to place its literature “as a crucial but often missing part of the
with heedless hospitality.” ●
P R I N C E C L A U S F U N D J O U R N A L # 1 1 / A S Y L U M & M I G R AT I O N
77
REVIEW
Jumping Ship
BY
KAISER HAQ
PHOTOGRAPHS BY PRADIP SAHA
A critique of three diasporic Bangladeshi novels in English, including Monica Ali’s
best-selling Brick Lane
O
n the map of South Asian anglophone literature, Bangladesh is very much on the fringe,
more so than Pakistan or Sri Lanka. All the readable homegrown Bangladeshi poetry,
fiction and non-fictional prose in English could be accommodated between two covers.
There are good socio-political reasons for this. Though Bangladesh used to be the larger part of
Greater Bengal, the most westernised and cosmopolitan region under the Raj, the cross-border
emigration of the predominantly Hindu zamindar and professional classes following the 1947
Partition soon turned it into the more provincial of the two wings of Pakistan. East Pakistan’s
agitation against what was perceived as an unequal partnership in the newly formed Islamic Republic
was reinforced by lingual nationalism, which, after the bloody Independence War of 1971, produced
a nearly monoglot State proud of the thousand year-old Bengali literary tradition that it shares
with West Bengal, Tripura and parts of Assam and Meghalaya in India. The country’s self-appointed
cultural commissars ritually inveigh against apasanskriti—“perverse culture”—by which they mean
popular western and Bollywood culture, and disapprove of attempts to produce an anglophone
Bangladeshi literature. Individual Bangladeshis still trying to write in English—they could be counted
on one’s fingertips—work in isolation.
And yet this is not the whole story. English-medium schools flourish, offering pricey education
leading to the British “O” and “A” levels. Their students, who belong to the upper-middle and
wealthy classes, either go abroad for higher studies or to a private university at home. Some of
them have literary interests and are aspiring anglophone writers. Among readers of English-language
17
books there is a longing to see Bangladeshi English writers attain the kind of success that so many
Indians have achieved. And so when Monica Ali gained instant celebrityhood with Brick Lane,
many in the land of her birth were thrilled; soon pirated editions of the novel as well as a Bengali
translation were being peddled on pavements and at traffic lights. But while most were obviously
fascinated by Ali’s representation of Bangladeshis, there were a few bitter dissenters, once again
highlighting the perils of literary mimesis.
Monica Ali is the lone ‘celeb’ of diasporic
The portrayal of Bangladesh in the
three novels is compatible with
anglophone Bangladeshi literature, which is even
less in volume than homegrown Bangladeshi
English literature. There are in fact only two other
Time magazine’s recent
diasporic Bangladeshi fiction writers we can
characterization of it as Asia’s
consider significant: Adib Khan, whose debut novel
“most dysfunctional state”. But, as
Seasonal
Aristotle would have pointed out,
the article describes a contingent
Adjustments
(1994),
won
the
Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book
(his two later novels are imitative magic realist
fantasies and may be safely ignored), and Syed
historical situation, whereas the
Manzurul (Manzu) Islam, who has followed up his
novels make an essentialist
collection of stories, The Mapmakers of Spitalfields
statement. Brick Lane just about
(1997) with a novel, Burrow (2004). But these three
writers demarcate a fairly extensive fictional terrain
of Gloucester. His first book was The Ethics of Travel: from Marco Polo to Kafka (1996), which
and highlight both the general traits it shares with
critically examines the responses to alterity in western travel writing. Both Adib Khan and Manzu
egregious Seasonal Adjustments
the rest of the subcontinental literary diaspora as
Islam, then, belong to a category that has become quite common on the global—and not just the
nor Burrow. Both condemn
well as its peculiarly Bangladeshi qualities. Of
subcontinental/postcolonial—literary scene, the writer-academic. Monica Ali stands apart in more
Bangladesh to perennial solitude
particular interest is the picture of Bangladesh that
ways than one. Born in 1967 in Dhaka to a Bangladeshi father and an English mother, she and her
emerges in the works of these writers.
brother were taken by their mother to England during the 1971 War. Her father joined them a few
avoids the pitfall, but not the
in a remote corner of the banana
Our three writers conform neatly to the upper-
months later, and after the unavoidable difficulties of a transitional period, the family settled into
republic of postcolonial letters.
middle class, English-educated type described by
a middle-class existence. Though Monica Ali and her brother spoke only Bangla when they left
The writerly freedom to do so
Tabish Khair in Babu Fictions (2001), a useful
Dhaka, they soon completely lost their first language; this curious fact distinguishes her not only
cannot be denied, but it is the
reference point to the study of English-language
from other Bangladeshi writers but from most subcontinental writers as well. After school at Bolton,
literature from the subcontinent. Adib Khan took
near Manchester, she read Modern Greats (PPE) at Oxford, then worked in publishing. The idea for
a degree in English from Dhaka University in 1973
Brick Lane occurred to her when she came across the MS of The Power to Choose (2000), a study of
before emigrating to Australia, where he studied
garment workers in Bangladesh and Banglatown, London, by Naila Kabeer, a Bangladeshi sociologist
at Monash University and then went into teaching.
teaching at Sussex University.
critic’s task to point out the
implications of the choice
Manzu Islam is the son of the late Syed Nazrul Islam, Acting President of Bangladesh during the
Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments exhibits “the dual alienation” that Khair identifies in the
1971 Independence War and subsequently a cabinet minister, who was assassinated by the
“returned natives in Indian English fiction.” In the case of Iqbal Chaudhary, Khan’s protagonist,
perpetrators of a coup in 1975. Manzu Islam went to England the same year, studied Philosophy
one could speak of triple alienation: first from his native land, next from his adopted homeland,
and Sociology and then Literature at the University of Essex; he is currently lecturer at the University
and finally from what the former has become during the years he has been away.
61
Tapan Ali has been sent by
Eighteen years after he had emigrated, he
his anglophile grandfather
visits Bangladesh with his daughter Nadine at the
to England for higher
of that country; it is the outcome of the unavoidable anxiety of a secular, rational, consumerist
l’homme moyen sensuel.
urging of a New Age faddist: “Go home . . . where
But vis-à-vis Bangladesh the alienation is absolute. Bangladesh is a hideous background against
you really belong.... Heal yourself in your spiritual
which he can admire himself. The country’s embarrassing poverty, described with a fanfare of clichés,
studies. When he is
womb.” In the book’s very first paragraph
becomes a source of moral satisfaction as he looks beyond himself “at the bleeding rawness of
halfway through his final
Chaudhary arrives without warning at his
bare existence. It is an expansive experience, a forced act of selflessness to be able to reach out and
year at university his
ancestral village. He muses that if he had sent a
feel a pulse of suffering not my own.”
message to his cousin Mateen, there would have
From the village Chaudhary moves on with tourist brochure thoroughness to deal with well-
been “dancing girls sprinkling me with rose-
known varieties of Third World iniquity and grotesquerie: a charlatan of a Pir, guests at a feast
him with the prospect of
scented water and scattering flowers at my feet”.
gorging themselves with Yahoo-like abandon, the oppression of military rule, the hideousness of
returning to Bangladesh as
This is pure Orientalist fantasy: things might have
lepers who are said to infest Dhaka in their hundreds (actually there are hardly any), aggressive
soon as he gets his degree.
been different when Chaudhary’s ancestors were
beggars who promptly mug Chaudhary.
grandfather dies, leaving
He realizes that
decadent zamindars, but nautch girls in a
The Bangladesh Independence War plays a crucial role. While it raged Chaudhary was carrying
conservative Bangladeshi village circa 1990?
on with the girl friend of a friend who had gone to fight against the Pakistanis. The end of the War,
Really!
sadly, did not bring immediate peace. There were sporadic reprisals against post-Partition Bihari
Chaudhary’s portrayal of his village is in line
settlers who had collaborated with the Pakistan Army, and Chaudhary’s decision to emigrate was
with Orientalist stereotyping: “I can discern no
prompted by outrage at such barbarity. The mention of the reprisals is in itself commendable, since
changes in the years I have been away.” No
there is a tendency among Bangladeshis to elide them, as if they were negated by the fact that the
changes in a Bangladesh village in two decades
Pakistan Army and its collaborators had perpetrated much greater atrocities.
following the Independence War? Bangladeshi
Chaudhary’s laudable moral outrage, however, is not only aimed at a particular phase of history,
villages have probably undergone more changes
one that lasted a few weeks; it links up with the other negative observations to justify his decision
during this period than in the previous two
to be a migrant: “Do you know what it means to be a migrant? . . . You can never call anything your
centuries! For the first time in history, villagers
own. But out of this deprivation emerges an understanding of humanity unstifled by genetic barriers.
throughout Bangladesh (and not just in particular
No, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I have had my prejudices trimmed to manageable proportions
districts like Sylhet or Noakhali) began to look
. . .. Difficult for you understand (sic), isn’t it? You, who allow yourselves to be blinded by your pride
and nothing in Bangladesh
for opportunities for emigration or jobs as
in a singularly blinkered tradition which fertilises the grounds of bigotry.”
to go back to. Here he had
migrant labour. Chaudhary, however, can only see
The Mapmakers of Spitalfields, as Sukhdev Sandhu points out in his review of Brick Lane, was
Bangladesh in terms of prefabricated generalisa-
the first work of fiction about Banglatown (London Review of Books, 9 October 2003). The stories
tions, stereotypes, caricatures. The sole purpose
set in Banglatown give a sense of its milieu, despite their curious use of language: “avoided each
of his narrative is self-aggrandisement. He has
other’s shadows and haunts”; “Have you eaten your head or what?” (Bangla idiom literally
live was only possible in
evolved from an English-medium educated
translated). Problems of language use remain in Burrow, which is otherwise a more ambitious and
England. He wanted
Bangladeshi alienated from the masses to a
sustained performance. The protagonist Tapan Ali has been sent by his anglophile grandfather to
economic independence,
foreign citizen alienated from the whole world.
England for higher studies. When he is halfway through his final year at university his grandfather
But there is a crucial difference between the two
dies, leaving him with the prospect of returning to Bangladesh as soon as he gets his degree. He
forms of alienation. The alienation he feels in
realizes that “he wanted to stay in England. He had nobody and nothing in Bangladesh to go back
responsibility for anybody
Australia, apart from the complication added by
to. Here he had his friends. Besides, the kind of life he wanted to live was only possible in England.
or anything.”
race, is something he shares with other citizens
He wanted economic independence, anonymity and no responsibility for anybody or anything.”
“he wanted to stay in
England. He had nobody
his friends. Besides, the
kind of life he wanted to
anonymity and no
63
put his life back on an even keel. But Adela meanwhile has given birth to his son (unknown to him
she was pregnant when they broke up); suspended in an emotional limbo, he cannot bring himself
to ask her for a divorce so that he can marry Nilufar. He becomes increasingly spacey, prompting
Nilufar to betray him to the immigration Police; she feels that it’s best if he is sent back to Bangladesh
before he goes completely round the bend.
But for Tapan the entire experience has a very different complexion. He feels a sense of
community in Banglatown, which at this juncture has been galvanised into resistance against racist
thugs. Alone in his hideout he relives memories of his Bangladeshi village—central to them is the
diminutive, skinny Vatya Das, a barber who had been a terrorist in the anti-colonial struggle and
for 20 years a fugitive from the colonial Police. Tapan looks back on him as a kindred spirit: both he
and the Vatya are moles who have hidden in burrows. Unlike Vatya, Tapan’s late grandfather has
collaborated with the colonial rulers and has opprobrium duly heaped on him: “An arse-licker of
the British Raj.” The account of colonialism never rises above the tritely simplistic: “they went
around naming our things like they invented them . . . their greed is almost as boundless as Allah’s
bounty? . . . after naming, they pocketed our things like they were inheritances from their
forefathers.”
The portrayal of Vatya Das introduces magic realism, but only half-heartedly, so that the reader
is discomfited rather than transported. Just as Tapan identifies himself with the communist Vatya
Das, the latter feels a kinship with the martyred sufi Hajjaj Al-Mansur. Since in mysticism the way up
and the way down are one and the same, one shouldn’t be surprised that Tapan wants to burrow
till he reaches “the airy depths of things,” when he will be able to overcome gravity and fly. Tapan
steadily becomes delusional about flying—and is in a state of elation when finally nabbed.
There are other burrowers: the colonial “Bombay Bill,” who is at home in the maze of London’s
sewers, and the anti-colonial Masuk Ali et al, who quixotically tunnel towards the Tower of London
in order to get back the Kohinoor diamond, a symbol of India’s pre-colonial glory.
Despite the novelistic investment in the subjective drama of Tapan Ali, the book’s core remains
the portrait of the Bangladeshi immigrant community of ship-jumpers, Bauls, spiritualists and
streetwise spivs. They claim to have come to Britain to escape hunger, a point made by both Tapan
and Nilufar in a peculiar idiom literally translated from Bangla: “I suppose we wanted to better
This self-regarding avowal is the premise for the narrative that unfolds.
ourselves. Improve our life chances. Some of us simply wanted to eat. I don’t have to remind you
Adela, a fellow student with whom Tapan has had a casual affair, suggests a marriage of
how things are back in Bangladesh” (Tapan). In childhood Nilufar heard a madman shouting, “Go
convenience that should eventually get him British citizenship. (Her name alludes to A Passage to
England. Good eating. Plenty, plenty rice. Plenty, plenty meat. England, good eating.” The
India; the connection is made explicit at one point.) Marriage alters the relationship, first sweetening
delineation of Banglatown is ultimately premised on the assumption that in Bangladesh things are
it into a mellow romance, then suddenly souring it, precipitating a separation. The Home Office
too bad to permit one to lead a normal life; the pressures of life in a hostile environment are
turns down Tapan’s application for immigrant status and he becomes a fugitive moving from one
preferable to the problems in the mother country. Even in the fey state in which Tapan is nabbed,
hideout to another in Banglatown, helped by a tightly-knit group of friends. With one of them,
he affirms, “Here, right here, in the belly of London, is my home too.” Unlike the other two novels,
Nilufar Mia, a university educated social activist, he has an intense relationship that could very well
however, Burrow does not provide details about contemporary Bangladesh.
65
that demands of the reader an effort to willingly suspend disbelief.
The technical failure becomes more glaring if one peeps into Naila Kabeer’s The Power to Choose,
which makes extensive use of interviews with garments workers, conducted in Bangla and translated
into simple English. They are more convincing than Hasina’s letters largely because the bland English
used does not draw attention to itself, whereas the odd idiom of the latter makes the reader
stumble. By way of illustration let me juxtapose a few lines from an interview in The Power to
Choose with Monica Ali’s pidgin adaptation:
The best purdah is the burkah within oneself, the burkah of the mind.... You see, if I keep my
fingers closed into a fist, you cannot open my hands, can you? Even if you try, it will take you
such a long time, it will not be worth your while. Similarly, if I maintain my purdah, no one can
take it away from me.
(The Power to Choose)
Pure is in the mind. Keep yourself pure in mind and God will protect. I close my fingers and
make fist. I keep my fingers shut like this you cannot open my hands can you? I say like this to
her. Even you try it take such long time it not worth it for you. Same thing my modesty. I keep
purdah in the mind no one can take it.
(Brick Lane)
Hasina’s letters perform the critical role of delineating the condition of Bangladesh; what comes
across painfully is a state of anomie. And yet, unlike the other two novels, Brick Lane does not
quite write off the country, and till its open-ended finale depicts resolute attempts to cope with
M
onica Ali‘sBrick Lane is essentially the story of Nazneen, born in 1967 in a village in
the chaos. Besides Hasina, there is Chanu, back in Bangladesh, while Nazneen stays back in
Mymensingh (she shares her birth year and ancestral village, Gouripur, with her creator),
Banglatown with their daughters. The girls are sure that their father will soon tire of Bangladesh
and married off at 18 to a much older man, Chanu, who transplants her to a dismal
and return, but meanwhile there is talk of a family holiday in the old country. In the last scene
housing estate in Tower Hamlets in London’s East End, where she slowly and painfully acquires
Nazneens’s daughters take her ice-skating. When she protests that one can’t skate in a sari, her
confidence in her own selfhood. Though in an altogether different class than the other two novels,
friend Razia quips: “This is England. You can do whatever you like.” This might seem like as a
it is not without its problematic side. I am not referring to the virulent protest by certain Banglatown
slogan for what the Tories notoriously described as the Race Relations Industry. But it reveals a
leaders who alleged that the novel besmeared the image of their community (the protesters confused
significant fact about expatriate Bangladeshis: the men dream of return, but not the women, who
realism with lack of sympathy) but the presentation of Nazneen’s ill-starred younger sister Hasina.
even as second-class citizens enjoy rights denied them in the mother country.
Strikingly good-looking and wilful, she elopes with her beau. But the romance fades rapidly, the
The portrayal of Bangladesh in our three novels is compatible with Time Magazine’s recent
husband turns out to be a wife-beater, and Hasina runs away to Dhaka to join the vast army of
characterization of it as Asia’s “most dysfunctional state”. But, as Aristotle would have pointed
garment workers. The perils of a pretty sweatshop worker are graphically illustrated: Hasina is
out, the article describes a contingent historical situation, whereas the novels make an essentialist
slandered, sacked, sexually exploited. She eventually becomes a domestic and the last we hear of
statement. Brick Lane just about avoids the pitfall, but not the egregious Seasonal Adjustments nor
her is that she has eloped with the cook. She is a natural-born survivor. As Nazneen sums up, “She
Burrow. Both condemn Bangladesh to perennial solitude in a remote corner of the banana republic
isn’t going to give up.” It’s an all-too-common tale but in presenting it through Hasina’s letters to
of postcolonial letters. The writerly freedom to do so cannot be denied, but it is the critic’s task to
Nazneen, the author runs up against a technical problem. As Hasina has even less education than
point out the implications of the choice. If one may end with a metaphor, in these novels Bangladesh
her sister, she is supposed to write imperfect Bengali, which is impossible for Monica Ali to imagine
is a ship beset with all sorts of problems—sea-sick passengers, disaffected crew, plague-carrying
and translate. At her editor’s suggestion she circumvented the problem by devising a bizarre pidgin
rodents, what have you. A few crew members jump ship, but they are no Lord Jims.●
67
ESSAY
I come from a long line of displacements. My great-grandfather was a pilot on a boat which
sailed up and down the Nile. My grandfather was a cook on a dhabiyya, one of the old paddle
steamers that travelled from Khartoum to Kosti. My father got himself a job with the British
administration and was sent to England, a country he knew nothing about, at the age of 24. He
worked as liason officer in the cultural wing of Sudan House in the days before independence. It
was not easy. It was in London that he met my mother: the daughter of a German man born in the
Black Forest. Her mother’s side came from Bradford in the north of England. On my mother’s side
there was also a restless gene: her uncle John left England after the war and eventually settled in
Displacing the Centre
BY JAMAL MAHJOUB
T
Chile, where he remained until his dying day.
The experience of my family might once have been
unusual, but no longer. People move all the time. They
This process of hyphenation
move out of necessity, out of love, out of a desire for
seems to have followed me
change, and they have survived, made a life for themselves.
through life as a persistent
he question I probably dread most of all is: what do you write about? It is almost as bad as:
When I first went to England, on a scholarship, it was not
where do you come from? A simple response seems inadequate and both questions are
to leave Sudan forever, but in the hope of seeing something
more like invitations to lengthy dissertations on geography and history. Perhaps this is the
of the world before settling down. Home would always
belonging, of being not
dull pedant in me, but the fact is that there is no simple answer to either. Being Sudanese is only
be there to come back to. It was an extravagant
quite one thing and not
one half of the equation. I don’t mean that my British half demands to be heard, but rather that
assumption. Also, I was curious about my mother’s side.
quite another. There is a
after 20 years of living outside Sudan I also feel a responsibility to take that experience into account.
Arriving in Britain, I found myself a foreigner, barely able
Who we are these days is more a matter of evaluation than a given fact, which means that we have
to understand the language I thought I could speak. In
to try to be specific.
the early 1980s England was less multicultural than it is
which I see not as a
The question of what I write about, usually raised by someone I have just met for the first time,
now. There was less diversity evident among people in the
weakness, but as a form of
and usually meant in the nicest possible way, always makes me feel an absurd sense of guilt and
streets, even in London. Englishness existed in a way that
exposure which allows the
incompetence. Why don’t I have a subject, a theme that is simple and concise and would convey
is hard to see today.
trait; of belonging and not
vulnerability in this position
writer to inhabit other lives,
who I am and what I do? Do all writers have this kind of problem? I imagine that many of them do.
I remember those years as being terribly lonely. A
What do we write about? We write about the world, I suppose, the world as we see it. But that is
succession of unfriendly lodgings, living in strange houses,
not enough, it requires a definition of perspective, of how we look at the world. The question also
among people I did not know and who knew nothing
because they are like us, but
seems to imply that we have a particular knowledge of whatever it is we write about. In my case I
about me. I was treated as an alien, which was difficult to
because they are not. I think
can say that nothing could be further from the truth. The subjects which appeal to me often strike
understand as I viewed myself as being pretty normal. I
me as intriguing precisely because I do not know anything, or enough, about them. To me, writing
missed the familiarity of the world I had come from and I
is more about exploring a given subject, than delivering ready made solutions and appeals.
missed, although I don’t think I consciously identified this
In the first place, I suppose we are searching for a new centre to our world, the old one having
to identify with people not
we become writers in order
to become other people.
as the problem, the diversity of that world. Back home my
been lost to us; not only through departure, but also the passage of time. The withering and
friends had come from a wide range of the spectrum: Aside from Sudanese of every shade and
ultimate disappearance of our references, family members, friends, people whom we know and
shape there were Egyptians, Greeks, Coptics, Indians, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Yugoslavs, Hungarians.
who know us in that context, and the changing face of a country all ensure that we all become
Everything was more diverse, from the food we ate to the films we saw; Italian, Chinese, Hindi,
strangers in our own land at some point. What remains is the rather unreliable log of memory, and
Egyptian, as well as British and American. In Britain everything was narrow, dull, dreary, terribly
the imagination.
small, and usually came in tins.
55
What interested me was not
simply explaining myself, where
I came from, but trying to
understand myself within this
I found this Englishness very hard to deal with. It
wasn’t what I had expected and I longed to get away
social forces and the interaction with external forces including the interests of Britain and Egypt as
well as the decline of the Ottoman Empire.
from the climate of conservatism and conformism which
After several years of living in Denmark I found myself at a loss for a means to tackle the
I found so stifling. I wasn’t ready to go home just yet,
country until I came across the story of the great Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. In his day, Brahe
having achieved nothing. I envisaged home as being
was a reference point on the map of world astronomy, but few Danes knew much about him. What
new landscape. To do this,
somewhere I would eventually wind up, when youth
intrigued me was the obvious link with the world beyond the borders of that little country, more
however, I needed to
was over and I had found my station in life. I longed to
specifically with the world of Islam and Arabic science. This link seemed to suggest a conversation
understand the West, Europe, as
a reciprocal part of the whole.
travel, to learn other languages, to circumvent that
that included me and prompted me to write, The Carrier (1998). This dynamic engagement with
polarity which had sprung up between Britain and
Europe as a source of inspiration has surfaced more recently in Travelling With Djinns (2003) which
Sudan. I had also picked up some romantic ideas about
tells the story of a man trying to understand who he is while driving across Europe with his son.
living in Paris, and it was to this that I likened the small
All of my novels
deal with this inter-relatedness.
town in Denmark where I actually ended up moving.
Sudan was never actually a British colony. Under the condominium agreement it was ruled
The long summer evenings, the open cafes, it all felt,
jointly, in theory, from London and Cairo—itself ruled by the British. It was known as the Anglo-
well, very European. I loved the idea of living in a
Egyptian Sudan. This process of hyphenation seems to have followed me through life as a persistent
language that I could not understand. I learnt Danish,
trait; of belonging and not belonging, of being not quite one thing and not quite another. There is
you might say, against my own will. I certainly never
a vulnerability in this position which I see not as a weakness, but as a form of exposure which
planned to stay for as long as I did.
allows the writer to inhabit other lives, to identify with people not because they are like us, but
The stories I began to write emerged from the
because they are not. I think we become writers in order to become other people. With each book
awareness of a need to span the gap between the world
I feel I am expanding the nature of the space that I occupy, that somehow this is essential, that each
I came from and the world I had managed to find a
book represents one side of me, but there are others, as there are with most people that need to be
way in. The physical adjustment is what comes first;
elucidated. It is only through a continued engagement with the here and now of the world we live
finding a job, a place to live, etc. But beyond that there
in—interrogating the past to understand the present and looking at the present to understand the
are all manner of issues to be addressed. To ignore these
past, that we begin to see. In this way we are, by our presence, engaged with the world, displacing
questions, of belonging, identity, compromise, is to risk
the old ways and premises. There can be no better way of explaining what it is the writer does.
the cohesion that holds a person together, keeps them
whole. It is to risk madness, destruction.
The more you look, the more you see this hyphenation everywhere. Perhaps it is just the passing
of time, but identity in Europe has become a matter of greater complexity and diversity than it
I was aware of a need to be true to the present.
used to be. The same applies to literature. Literary agents no longer sit in New York or London and
What interested me was not simply explaining myself,
wait for things to come to them; nowadays they have offices in New Delhi. Unpublished authors
where I came from, but trying to understand myself
can submit their work on internet sites. Writers no longer divide their time between town and
within this new landscape. There seems to me to be a
country, but between continents, determined not to lose contact with their diversity. The idea of
of an equation which involved
dynamic in this stance, as opposed to the alternative
displacement has become central to our sense of belonging, of location. And although at times it
both internal social forces and
which I see as rather static. To do this, however, I needed
appears as though the guardians of the literary bastions are too centralised in Europe, and too
the interaction with external
to understand the West, Europe, as a reciprocal part of
reluctant to concede their authority, change is inevitable and unavoidable.
In The Hour of Signs (1996)
looked at the creation of the
modern Sudan as the outcome
the whole. All of my novels, I think it is fair to say, deal
The best writing ignores the passing of phases, and creates instead an imaginary city through
with this inter-relatedness. In The Hour of Signs (1996)
which the writer leads us, regardless of the buildings that others might be busy trying to entice us
Britain and Egypt as well as the
looked at the creation of the modern Sudan as the
into. All writers are now a minority and I seem to belong to a diaspora of writers whose lives mirror
decline of the Ottoman Empire
outcome of an equation which involved both internal
my own; who have a multiple heritage of incompleteness from which to draw on. ●
forces including the interests of
57
ESSAY
▼
Photograph by Sebastiao Salgado / Amazonas Images
Tanzania. 1994
Rwandans walking to the refugee camp in the region of
Ngara just outside Rwanda.
In late 2003, I was commissioned by Penguin to write a book about refugees. The debate about
asylum in the UK has become so vicious, so prejudiced, that a book addressing some simple questions
—what makes someone a refugee, and what is it like?—would be almost revolutionary. The book
would focus on Liberia. Partly, because during 14 years of war, a quarter of its 3 million people have
been displaced by a succession of men, children and women fighting behind a string of acronyms—
ULIMO-J, ULIMO-K, NPFL, LPC, MODEL, LURD—that would be forgettable if it weren’t for the horrors
committed in their name. In three weeks in West Africa, I met only two Liberians who had never
been refugees. Even the Archbishop of THE COUNTRY’S CAPITAL Monrovia, Michael Francis, one of
those priests who restores your faith in Catholicism, was a refugee for six months in Sierra Leone.
Darfur is in the headlines now, but for years, Liberia was, proportionately, Refugee Central.
Another factor was closer to home: The British government was rumoured to be starting a
resettlement programme for 500 people, who would be fast-tracked into legal refugee status in
the UK. This is an astonishing concept, to anyone who knows anything about the ungenerous,
unwelcoming nature of public debate on asylum in Britain, where “asylum-seeker” is now a
playground insult. In a recent poll, 58% of 15-24 year-olds disagreed with the statement “asylum
Writing about Asylum
BY
ROSE GEORGE
seekers and refugees make a positive contribution to this country.” In a 2002 survey, 85% associated
negative expressions with refugees or asylum seekers, such as “bogus,” “scroungers,” and
“foreigners.” Words that weren’t associated with them were “skilled,” “hardworking” and
“welcome.”
Most of the 500 were supposedly going to be Liberians. Rumoured and supposed, because the
Home Office, terrified of the vitriol of the tabloid press finding out that even 500 people would be
I
n a living room in Northampton, a woman is looking at me with contempt. “You want to know
coming into the country—refused to comment, even to the IRC, who would be running some of
about Liberians?” she says. “People tell so many lies about Africa, why should we talk to you?”
the programme. It was an illuminating beginning.
And with a ‘pah!’ of contempt, she turns her back.
I went to Liberia in January 2004. I would spend ten days in Liberia, travelling as far as possible
This is a shock. I’ve been meeting Liberians for weeks now, in houses and displaced camps in
—in the event, this meant 60km from the capital Monrovia, because the 15,000 strong UN
Monrovia and Cote d’Ivoire, in Sheffield and Cricklewood. This is only the second time I’ve been
peacekeeper force was not at full deployment—then move to Cote d’Ivoire, where the region of
treated with rudeness. Most of the time, the word on Liberian lips has been “welcome,” a concept
Tabou still hosts 45,000 Liberian refugees. In those three weeks, I had plenty of education into
long since lost in the political discourse of modern day Britain.
what British newspapers, according to one survey, only bother to mention in 13% of articles about
In Northampton, I explain that I’m writing a book about refugees. The woman calms down.
refugees: how they are made. I had a lot to learn, and it was an intensive course. I nearly got used
She mutters a “sorry,” and talks about her situation. She laughs about her phone bill, because it’s
to awful details being dropped into conversation in passing. At a women’s health organisation run
typically refugee in size (large) and content (Monrovia, Accra, Harare). Her manner is conciliatory.
by Mary, Grace and Joanne, three classy Liberian women, bejewelled and cheery, the conversation
But her initial rudeness says more about her life as a refugee than anything else she could say.
was about their projects, about getting Liberian woman to talk about what the war had done to
47
At a women’s health organisation run by Mary, Grace and Joanne, three classy
Then Grace added that she still sometimes went to bed dressed in her jeans, and
Liberian women, bejewelled and cheery, the conversation was about their
about the night that soldiers knocked on her door when she had six young girls
projects, about getting Liberian woman to talk about what the war had done to
staying in the house. Soldier fodder. And Joanne, the quietest of the three, told
them (one in three were strip-searched; a higher proportion were raped). Only
me, laughing, that the best place to carry a mobile phone is in your backside. I
after 20 minutes did Mary mention that she’d been forced to run away 11 times
checked: She meant “in,” not “next to.”
in 14 years. “Runnin’, runnin’” she says, because that’s what it was.
them (one in three were strip-searched; a higher proportion were raped). Only after 20 minutes did
refugee is, “When war is going on, it’s confusing. You feel hopeless, helpless. You are reduced to
Mary mention that she’d been forced to run away 11 times in 14 years. “Runnin’, runnin’” she says,
nothing.” But she has to tap the table for emphasis. Nut-tin. Tap tap.
because that’s what it was. Then Grace added that she still sometimes went to bed dressed in her
In Cote d’Ivoire, I meet a man called Augustin, who lives 20 metres from the Liberian border, on
jeans, and about the night that soldiers knocked on her door when she had six young girls staying
the far side of the river that separates the two countries, in a pretty village where he has taken
in the house. Soldier fodder. And Joanne, the quietest of the three, told me, laughing, that the best
refuge, and which he dare not leave. He can’t go back to Liberia, because he’s too scared. He can’t
place to carry a mobile phone is in your backside. I checked: She meant “in,” not “next to.”
go further into Cote d’Ivoire, because they’re at war too, and they’re sick of Liberian refugees,
It was a steep learning curve. Almost perpendicular. Like most of my peers, my knowledge of
because they’re sick of Liberian rebels crossing the border and causing havoc. For decades, Cote
Liberia was restricted to several violent weeks of telegenic fighting in the summer of 2003. Young
d’Ivoire was a shining example of good refugee practice. Over a quarter of a million were welcomed
men with crazy wigs and guns, destroying a city. I remembered pictures of bodies piled up outside
by the late president Felix Houphouet Boigny. They were given land and places to live. But now
the gates of the American Embassy, by Liberians appalled that the country they considered their
they say only that “Liberians bring war.” They say they are not welcome. By the time I meet Augustin,
big brother—a reasonable assumption, as Liberia was founded by freed American slaves in 1847,
I had spent three weeks listening to stories. I had been offered counselling by my hosts, the IRC,
and the US had long used the country for CIA listening stations and the like—still refused to intervene.
who were concerned at the horror I might be ingesting. I didn’t think it had affected me, until
A note stuck on a rusting oil can read “America!” What else do you want to SEE?” Someone must
Augustin told me, his hands shaking, that he had seen his sister cut up by rebel fighters into pieces,
finally have seen something, though, because a UN peacekeeping force was promised, and Liberia’s
and I nearly, so nearly, said “how many?”
president Charles Taylor, a former rebel leader whose campaign slogan in 1997 was “he killed my
ma, he killed my pa, I’ll vote for him”—was sent into exile in Nigeria in August.
◆
Six months on, Taylor’s legacy was everywhere: Monrovia, once a graceful city, was blackened
and burned. The colonnades and facades were grimy, the buildings lacked roofs. But the streets
It’s an irony of current asylum policy that in Cote d’Ivoire, Augustin is a refugee. If he came to
were bustling. “Don’t be fooled by how busy Monrovia is,” said someone. “It’s because the whole
the UK, he would be demoted to “asylum-seeker,” in search of the refugee status he had so easily
country has moved into the city.” A million people have sought refuge in one large town, and it
20 minutes over the river. He would become a stereotype; the lone foreign male, threatening and
can’t support them. But they won’t go home until the peacekeepers take them. “We want to go
fraudulent, who populates the pages of the press. He would be unwelcome, and his sister wouldn’t
back to our homes,” women tell me in IDP (internally displaced people) camps around Monrovia.
matter, because no-one would believe that he had one.
“There is nothing there, but we will build. But we walked here, and we won’t walk back.”
I met a lot of these supposedly threatening young men. In a concrete building in Abidjan, there
I was often baffled in Liberia, because I come from a country where the concept of “safety” is
are hundreds, waiting to be removed to the US as part of a massive 9000-strong resettlement
something I am entitled to have. No Liberian, no refugee would think such a thing. So many times,
programme. In a small office in the building, after meeting several families, Barnett K. Barford
Liberians looked at me and saw I could not understand. Women who had to feed small children in
walks in. I hold the door open for the rest of his family, but there isn’t any. He’s been alone since he
the bush, with nothing to eat but leaves, say “we had nothing!”. But they see that I can’t understand
was 10, when his father and brother were killed by a rocket. He’s bouncy, almost cocky, but he
how much nothing that is. Mary Kamara says, when I ask her what the worst thing about being a
holds himself like a person used to solitude. Like the other lucky resettlement refugees, Barnett has
49
Alfred’s story is familiar: Rockets, rebels, fear and running. He came to the UK in
workmates say to me, why are you sending money home? Is that the only reason
2002, and now he works 14 hours a day at the Cadbury factory, on the machine
you’re here? It is, isn’t it? You’re just here to earn money and send it out of the
that rolls sweet wrappers. He spends his time watching African films and sending
country.” Daniel shakes his head. “I say, but what’s wrong with that? I pay taxes.
his earnings to 22 dependents in Liberia. Daniel Draper, who lives in Northampton
I have people who are living off what I earn.” So he’s at fault if he earns money,
and talks wistfully of his career with the YMCA in Liberia where “I had TWELVE
and he’d be at fault if he was on benefits. Scrounger or exploiter, in the eyes of
people under me!” sends money home every month to his family. “But my
the British public. He can’t win.
done an orientation course to prepare himself for the US. He is excited about the prospect of going
month to his family. “But my workmates say to me, why are you sending money home? Is that the
to school, of getting a job, of paying his own utility bills. But when he says “I know that if I am in
only reason you’re here? It is, isn’t it? You’re just here to earn money and send it out of the country.”
trouble, I can call 911,” he seems to savour it particularly. A number to call when you’re in trouble:
Daniel shakes his head. “I say, but what’s wrong with that? I pay taxes. I have people who are living
to us, it’s nothing. To them, it’s safety, a notion long since abandoned. An impossible concept. I tell
off what I earn.” So he’s at fault if he earns money, and he’d be at fault if he was on benefits.
Barnett that there are people in the US and the UK who might not believe his story. I explain to him
Scrounger or exploiter, in the eyes of the British public. He can’t win.
the notion of the fraudulent asylum seeker. He is astonished. “Some people will disbelieve. But any
Like Daniel, Alfred is, by the usual terms of reference, a successfully-integrated, productive
American can believe me, because the fact that I stayed 13 years in exile—something must be the
refugee. He works hard, bothers no-one, won’t fight back against a media obsessed with the
cause of that, right?”
threatening stereotype. In this, he is typical, according to a report by Article 19. “Not least of the
Such a plainly logical concept. But one that has long been blurred by prejudice, a small portion
findings reported here is the reluctance of newly-arrived asylum seekers and refugees to challenge
of it reasonable, because there are of course “economic” migrants guilty of wanting a better life.
the way they find themselves misrepresented in the press and broadcast news. Characteristically,
There are traffickers and criminals. There are Ghanaians pretending to be Liberian, and plenty of
they want to keep a low profile, they don’t want to make a fuss, they simply want to get on with
people hijacking the nationalities of more troubled places. But there are Barnetts and Alfred Nagbes
their new lives. It sounds very much like living in fear.” It also means they’re the perfect victims:
too, who get drowned out in the shouts of indignation against the bogus ones.
pick on asylum seekers and refugees, and they’ll rarely answer back. They are the trash can for all
politically-motivated xenophobia. This is why the leader of the British National Party has said that
I was given the number of Alfred Nagbe by his half-sister in Cote d’Ivoire. He lived in the UK,
the asylum issue legitimises his party. Every bigoted headline might yield another membership.
she said, so I tried to call him. But it didn’t work. It took a while before I thought of checking the
In 2002, the British government commissioned research into why asylum seekers choose to
phone book. None of my friends are in the phone book. It’s considered risky. It makes you vulnerable
come to the UK. They found several reasons: Because family members were here; because it’s an
to crank callers, abuse. But if you’re from Liberia, where landlines died out in 2002, and phone
English-speaking country; because it is perceived to be a tolerant and democratic place. In this
books are a hilarious notion, perhaps a phone book represents safety. Perhaps it means you do
tolerant and democratic place, people cross the road when they see Mohamed Sonie, a young
exist, somewhere. You are less invisible. This may be fanciful, but Alfred is listed. Alfred says it’s fine
good-looking Liberian man who I meet in Daniel Draper’s living room. Sometimes they spit, too.
to visit, and will I be staying the night? What would I like to eat? Should he come and meet me at
Mohamed thought that was a cultural quirk that he wasn’t aware of, until someone told him
the station?
otherwise. “When I was at the accommodation hostel in Kent,” he says, in a calm voice, “we used
Alfred’s story is familiar: Rockets, rebels, fear and running. He came to the UK in 2002, intending
to play football every night. Every night, local kids would fill up bags of stones, go up to their flats
to be a Carmelite priest, but it didn’t work out, and now he works 14 hours a day at the Cadbury
and throw them at us. The police would come, stay for a while and leave, and then they’d start
factory, on the machine that rolls sweet wrappers. He spends his time watching African films and
throwing stones at us again.” He looks at me, shakes his head, smiles at the thought. “Crazy.” As is
sending his earnings to 22 dependents in Liberia. In this, he is like every other refugee or asylum-
the almost heretical thought that we can recover the notion of “sanctuary,” beyond the tainted
seeker I meet in the UK. Daniel Draper, who lives in Northampton and talks wistfully of his career
words of “asylum” and “seeker” and “refugee”, and that we can easily afford to give it, and that
with the YMCA in Liberia where “I had TWELVE people under me!” sends money home every
it is shameful not to. Crazy.●
51
▼
Photograph by
Sebastiao Salgado /
Amazonas Images
Tanzania. 1994
An overview of the
refugee camp of
Benako, where
thousands of people
are crowded
together, trying to
protect themselves
from rain and wind,
some with tents,
some with sheets of
plastic.
PHOTO-ESSAY
of the way each person responds to questioning at the checkpoint. I accentuate the issues of
repetition and the distinctions of each separate encounter by the recurrence in this series of the
large slab of worn stone that marks the site of exchange. In many of the photographs it is given
particular prominence and takes on a symbolic quality marking nearness and distance at the same
time. It becomes the fixed element or prop in this absurd theatre. Imposed on the landscape it
demarcates the place where the ritual of authority is performed and the site of contact with the
‘other’. The particular perspective I took in my photographs presents us with the experience and
Intimacy
phenomena of the checkpoint in all its mundane and chilling detail and documents how power in
the modern day is exercised and inscribed on individuals. ●
BY
RULA HALAWANI
T
his series of photographs taken at the Qalandia checkpoint examines and captures the
experience of ‘the checkpoint’ which has become a hallmark of the current Israeli occupation.
There are very few faces among the collection of images; rather we are invited to view a
multitude of close-ups of encounters between soldiers and Palestinians wanting to cross this border.
One of the characteristics of the Israeli occupation is its highly personalized quality and the
particular way in which it invades and penetrates the space of the individual. At ‘the checkpoint’
there are no privileges: everyone reduced to an ID number waits in line, and everyone is searched
and questioned. It is these qualities and aspects that are conveyed in my photographs, in particular,
the repetition of inspections of papers and personal belongings. The photographs document the
nuances of the encounter between the two anonymous parties—different gestures of waiting and
the postures of the human bodies as they are positioned in an unequal power relation. Via the
close-ups we get a sense of the different moods of the individuals, tiredness, anxiety and the nuances
45
TRIBUTE
“they can’t break or occupy my words!”
Who Am I, without Exile?
Stranger on the river bank,
like the river, water binds me to your name.
Mahmoud Darwish
Nothing brings me back from this distance
to the oasis: neither war nor peace.
Nothing grants me entry into the gospels.
Nothing. Nothing shines from the shores
Hope as Home in the Eye of the Storm
of ebb and flow between the Tigris and the Nile.
BY
ASHWANI SAITH
Nothing lifts me down from the Pharaoh’s chariots.
Nothing carries me, or loads me with an idea:
Mahmoud Darwish is a poet.
Neither nostalgia, nor promise.
He is Palestinian.
What shall I do? What shall I do without exile
He lives in Ramallah.
and a long night of gazing at the water?
He is the voice of a silenced people.
Water binds me to your name.
◆
Nothing takes me away from the butterflies of dream.
“We do not seek to be victims, nor do we seek to be heroes all that we want is to be ordinary.”
Nothing gives me reality: neither dust, nor fire.
What shall I do without the roses of Samarkand?
What shall I do in a square, where singers are
worn smooth by moonstones?
M
ahmoud Darwish is a poet, the national poet of the non-existent state of Palestine, and
the voice of a silenced people who are homeless at home and refugees in their own
country. But he also has the unquestioned stature of an Arab poet of the first rank.
“Many people in the Arab world feel their language is in crisis; and it is no exaggeration to say that
We have become weightless,
Mahmoud is considered a saviour of the Arab language” says Subhi Hadidi, the Syrian poetry critic.
As light as our dwellings in distant winds.
In Cairo or in Damascus, at his readings Darwish draws people in the thousands. This, for a person
who says “I like being in the shadows, not in the light.” At one recent reading in Beirut, over 25,000
turned up in a football stadium for his recitation. Inevitably, these included doctors and workers,
housewives and professionals, taxi drivers and academics. This wide appeal and intense bond
between the poet and his peoples goes beyond ephemeral politics or literary fashion, and is rooted
37
in the ongoing upheavals, exclusions and oppressions that are being so widely experienced in
memory, to excavating emotions put away and buried in long-locked caskets. It is a poetry of loss,
contemporary times in the region, but above all in occupied Palestine.
of desolation, of doomed efforts, but significantly also of truth, hope, reconciliation. On an open
Fiercely independent, Darwish has continually struggled for the Palestinian homeland. He remains
palm, Darwish offers a key.
an implacable opponent of the Israeli occupation. But he, like Edward Said, is also scathingly critical
In his lifetime, Edward Said contributed profoundly to this attritional process through which
of an Arab continent “fast asleep under repressive regimes”, where soccer seems to have replaced
Palestinians have been painfully reassembling a national identity in exile. “This need to reassemble
Palestine as the Arab passion.1
an identity out of the refractions and discontinuities of exile is found in the earlier poems of
As a poet, he is acknowledged critically for the sheer beauty and technical virtuosity of his
Mahmoud Darwish, whose considerable work amounts to an epic effort to transform the lyrics of
work. Its power lies in its lyrical simplicity, its musicality, its beauty, its literary quality. Recognised as
loss into the indefinitely postponed drama of return”6 It is a poetry that reconstructs and keeps
2
he is , he does not wish to gain praise arising from any motive of solidarity; even in the late 1960s
alive, that remembers and reminds, that criticises and challenges, but also one that seeks pathways
he wrote saying, “we want you to judge us as poets, not as resistance poets”.
and spaces for sharing, for reconciling, based on the open recognition and acceptance of the burden
◆
of the incontrovertible historical truths of Palestinian existence. The dehumanising of the other in
the imagination can perhaps be all too easily explained or condoned in the context of the lives that
His identity as a poet, however, is inextricably entwined with that of the struggles of the
are being sucked into the vicious vortex of violence. But even while Darwish recognises the long
Palestinian people. Living as a poet in a state of human bondage, his creativity, his imagination,
roots of anger, irrigated red by each new cycle of suppression, he also transcends these barricades,
the images and the meanings that his words carry, are all mortgaged to the reality of Palestinian
without denying them or making them invisible, through a simultaneous recognition of the mutuality
unfreedom. His poetry, with its inseparably interwoven themes of love and struggle, is itself
of traumas, confusions, as also of mutual aspirations of coexistence and peace.
manifestly a hostage to this incarceration.
3
When I first read his justly famous gentle lines to his mother3, I must confess that each thought,
phrase, each string of words, came to me as a yearning for the caressing embrace of Home.4 And so
it surely must have spoken to every Palestinian, or any other of a mother born. But ironically, in
contrast to the feelings of the reader, Darwish laments: “Sometimes I feel as if I am read before I
write. When I write a poem about my mother, Palestinians think my mother is a symbol for Palestine.
But I write as a poet, and my mother is my mother. She’s not a symbol. “Mother” was a poet writing
a simple confession that he loves his mother, but it became a collective song. All my work is like
that. I don’t decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.”
For Darwish, the search is for freedom from this handcuffing of the poetic imagination as much as
his life: “The subject of occupation itself becomes a burden” he says in anger. “I want, both as a
poet and as a human being, to free myself from Palestine. But I can’t. When my country is liberated,
so shall I be.”5
His poetry gives power to the tired and forlorn, to revive, restore and relive the imagined
mobile space called home; to feeling the pain of being cut to the quick by the jagged mirrors of
1
Maya Jaggi, “Poet of the Arab World: Mahmoud Darwish”, The Guardian, 8 June 2002. See, though, Darwish’s extensive
musings on the theme and the use of soccer as a metaphor in his Memory for Forgetfulness, August, Beirut, 1982,
University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995.
“I long for my mother’s bread
My mother’s coffee
Her touch
...
And if I come back one day
Take me as a veil to your eyelashes
Cover my bones with the grass
Blessed by your footsteps
Bind us together
With a lock of your hair
With a thread that trails from the back of your dress
...
I am old
Give me back the star maps of childhood
So that I
Along with the swallows
Can chart the path
Back to your waiting nest.”
(extracts)
4
Elsewhere, about his grandfather he writes thus: “My grandfather died counting sunsets, seasons, and heartbeats on
the fingers of his withered hands. He dropped like a fruit forbidden a branch to lean its age against. They destroyed his
heart. He wearied of waiting... He said goodbye to friends, the water pipe, and children, took me and went back to find
what was no longer his to find there...”
2
Over the past 35 years, Mahmoud Darwish has received up to half a dozen awards and prizes but only one in a major
European country. For a poet of his stature, global recognition has been miserly and step-motherly; perhaps, one might
speculate, due to an avoidance of his Palestinian identity.
5
Spoken to William Dalrymple, seeThe Guardian, G2, October 2, 2002.
6
Edward Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays, Penguin Books, 2001: 178-9.
39
In bidding farewell to Edward Said, his age-long friend, fellow traveller and visionary, Darwish
dead child in front of a military checkpoint; hope that our poets will see the beauty of the
returns to the early days: “time was less wild then...We both said: if the past is only an experience,
colour red in roses rather than in blood; hope that this land will take up its original name: the
make of the future a meaning and a vision...Let us go into tomorrow trusting the candour of
land of love and peace...”
7
imagination...” The idealism persists. Darwish takes a brave stand for dialogue – for standing up,
◆
facing, engaging, embracing the understandings, perceptions, perspectives of the other – for the
such an osmosis. Not many have walked this difficult path, but there have been some stalwarts.
T
Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim embraced this cause through their joint enterprise of bringing
desire to draw public attention and reflection to the positive contributions of migrants and migration.
youth together across the border through music; another significant example is provided by Amira
Underlying this, perhaps, is the latent motivation to challenge the negative labels and images that
Hass, the Israeli journalist who has fearlessly crossed the great divide to honestly represent and
sections of media and politics have recently implanted on migrant communities in Europe, including
interpret for her own people, the lived realities of the “other” people by living amongst them.
the Netherlands where, at present, xenophobic and islamophobic prejudices are increasingly being
washing away of the gruesome grime of violence and the now-blackened congealed stains of hurt
through a mutual recognition of truths in the full glare of the denied rights and recent history of
the Palestinians. The case for the Palestinian homeland must be comprehended and accepted through
he Prince Claus Fund in the Netherlands has just announced that it has bestowed their
Principal Award for 2004 on Mahmoud Darwish. That this happens at this tragic conjuncture
for his immediate people can only make this both more poignant, and more apposite.
In selecting Asylum and Migration as the theme for this year, the Prince Claus Fund expresses its
Several of Mahmoud Darwish’s books have been translated into Hebrew, and he has written
purveyed as pseudo political comment; where girls wearing headscarves can with impunity be
several tender nuanced portraits of his Jewish friends and lovers. In March 2000, the Israeli education
denied entry into a restaurant, where shameful targets are being set by government for the annual
minister proposed that some of his works be included as an optional part of the multi-cultural
capture and deporting of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants whose cheap labour is openly
school curriculum—but Israeli polity was adamantly hostile and apparently not ready to open Israeli
exploited in the economy in full public gaze, where politicians who declare Islam to be an intrinsically
youth to the words of the other. Clearly the time will come, especially with the efforts of such
retarded faith are lionized and have their statues put up in city centres.
bridge builders and others to follow.
The local interface of the Award could be of considerable significance. The conferral of the
When Israeli occupation forces ransacked the Sakakini Cultural Centre, from where he edits the
main prize on Mahmoud Darwish could stimulate a deeper awareness, catalyse informed discussion
highly regarded quarterly literary review Al-Karmel, his and his fellow poets’ manuscripts were
and debate, and so open up spaces and opportunities to challenge these petty prejudices and
trampled under foot.8. “I know they are strong and can invade and kill anyone. But they can’t
stereotypes with regard to migrants and Islam. At the same time, it will surely throw the spotlight,
break or occupy my words.” This is the defiant voice of the silenced that can be heard above the
howsoever temporarily, on the desperate situation of the Palestinian people through the recognition
chatter of politicians and the clatter of gunfire.
of a poet who advocates peace and co-existence. The award could thus constitute a doubly potent
Recently, Mahmoud Darwish organised a delegation of eminent writers, including some Nobel
laureates including Wole Soyinka, to visit Palestine to see for themselves the realities of the
occupation. This is how he ended his welcome address to them in Ramallah:
intervention that makes an impact within the country, within the Middle East, and indeed even
more widely at an international level.
In its own words, which could well reflect the sentiments of Prince Claus himself, “the Prince
“we have an incurable malady: hope. Hope in liberation and independence. Hope in a normal
Claus Fund sees its task as drawing attention to the difficult situation in which artists and intellectuals
life where we are neither heroes nor victims. Hope that our children will go safely to their
find themselves... under the present circumstances, it is particularly important to stand up for those
schools. Hope that a pregnant woman will give birth to a living baby, at the hospital, and not a
who struggle peacefully for freedom of speech and for free cultural expression.” More generally,
the Prince Claus Fund declares that in making its awards, “special attention is paid to what are
7
In one of their conversations, Said exhorts Darwish: “Now, don’t forget: If I die before you, my will is the impossible!”
Mahmoud Darwish: “Edward Said: A Contrapuntal Reading”, English translation by Mona Anis in Al-Ahram Weekly;
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/print/2004/710/cu4.htm
8
In an exchange with the celebrated Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif, Hassan Khader who presently runs Al Karmel,
recounts “the papers were all over the floor, and I still keep the draft of a poem with the print of a muddy boot on it.
Maybe the soldier who trod on it didn’t even notice, but he left his signature on that poem”(Ahdaf Soueif, “Palestinian
Writers”, 2004).
called zones of silence, areas where people are deprived by political or economic circumstances of
the opportunity for free cultural expression.”
The hapless Palestinian people are trapped in such a zone of silence; a silence broken only by
the spiteful spitting of guns that kill, by the snarling of tanks that crush, by vengeful slogans for
mutual retribution, and by the refrain of mourning mothers and the wailing of fresh widows. In
this deafening, despairing zone of silence, to what does one turn for recovering the self and reA S Y L U M & M I G R AT I O N / P R I N C E C L A U S F U N D J O U R N A L # 1 1
41
humanising the other? To poetry, says Mahmoud Darwish: “Poetry and beauty are always making
peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.”9
◆
Who am I thus to address Mahmoud Darwish, this poet of the first rank? What temerity, what
presumptuousness from one who has not published a single line of verse. Well that might be, but
I speak with the soul of one about whom Darwish writes, to whom his words come alive as if he
were whispering in my ear, notwithstanding that irrelevant geographical detail that I am an Indian,
not Muslim, and illiterate in Arabic. The Palestinian camps are as old as me, and I wonder how, and
how long, I might have survived there.10 Since that time, the countries and peoples of the subcontinent have not been kind to each other, and whole populations have been wrenched from
their roots and thrown one way or another, and the upheavals continue apace. The African continent,
alas, illustrates a parallel experience on a panoramic scale. New places become, or must become,
home; and old homes become, or must be made to become, memories like fading, cherished
Addresses for the Soul, outside This Place
I love to travel...
to a village that never hangs my last evening on its cypresses. I love the trees
that witnessed how two birds suffered at our hands, how we raised the stones.
Wouldn’t it be better if we raised our days
to grow slowly and embrace this greenness? I love the rainfall
on the women of distant meadows. I love the glittering water and the scent
of stone.
Wouldn’t it be better if we defied our ages
and gazed much longer at the last sky before moonset?
Addresses for the Soul, outside this place. I love to travel
to any wind...But I don’t love to arrive.
photographs. But few of these transformations have been voluntary. Violence, homelessness, the
loss of identity, the struggle for survival where life is demolished and has to be reconstructed each
day, the eternal quest for the holy grail that is dignity: unfortunately but unquestionably, this
condition of denial afflicts large swathes of populations. Darwish speaks of, to, and for, this fourth
I Talk Too Much
estate of humanity. “Exile is more than a geographical concept. You can be an exile in your homeland,
in your own house, in a room. It’s not simply a Palestinian question.”
Mahmoud Darwish, you are right! Eternal exile, who ticketless travels the worlds, your
imagination your wings, invisibly defying fortified borders, with no identity card, no gleaming
polymerised passport, with little more than your scribbled verse as your visa—Mahmoud Darwish,
you are so right!
I come from There and remember...
I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one: Home
◆
9
Says Darwish, who advocates dialogue with Israelis, “I always humanise the other. I even humanised the Israeli soldier.
I will continue to humanise even the enemy” Cf. “A Soldier Who Dreams of White Lilies”, written just after the 1967
war.
10
This was the thought my wife confessed she constantly had when she visited the camps two years ago. My parents
were themselves refugees, subjects of an early episode of ethnic cleansing, so I was conceived in Lahore in Pakistan but
born in Delhi, one of midnight’s children. They were in the prime of their youth then. Now they are fragile octogenarians,
but still hankering,moist-eyed after that Lahore that they love and remember, that was and remains home to this day.
Likewise, nearly half a century later, my Kashmiri wife, her elderly parents and family have all been cleansed out of their
home and homeland, the valley of Kashmir, that heaven on earth that daily endures earthly but unearthly forms of hell.
I talk too much about the slightest nuance between women and trees,
about the earth’s enchantment, about a country with no passport stamp.
I ask: Is it true, good ladies and gentlemen, that the earth of Man is for all
human beings
as you say? In that case, where is my little cottage, and where am I?
The conference audience applaud me for another three minutes,
three minutes of freedom and recognition.
The conference approves our right of return,
like the chickens and horses, to a dream made of stone.
I shake hands with them, one by one. I bow to them. Then I continue my journey
to another country and talk about the difference between a mirage and the rain.
I ask: Is it true, good ladies and gentlemen, that the earth of Man is for all
human beings?
Extracts from the book Unfortunately, it was Paradise: Selected Poems by Mahmoud Darwish; translated and edited
by by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forche with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein; published by University of California
Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 2003.© 2003 by the Regents of the University of California
43
ESSAY
fortress were confidently pointed seaward, as the Japanese came quietly over land on bicycles and
on foot to conquer the island with embarrassing ease. This analogy is particularly apt because one
of the most serious challenges that will confront the West in the new era will also arrive on bicycles
and on foot, or their equivalents: the challenge posed by mass immigration from Third World
countries. Superior Western military technology will be useless against these invading armies because
they will arrive as poor and defenceless individuals and families, moving without commanders or
The West and the Rest
BY KISHORE MAHBUBANI
orders, and seeping slowly through porous borders.
If and when this happens, it will be only one dimension of a multiple crisis, a crisis resulting
from the combination of a fundamentally changed Western attitude towards the Third World, and
some well-known but inadequately understood secular trends.
THE RETREAT OF THE WEST
This essay, written in 1992, had predicted the massive flow of populations from the poor
to the affluent countries and counselled for a renewed engagement between the West
and the Rest. Over a decade later, its arguments remain as compelling and the
conclusions as valid.
F
or the four decades of the Cold War, both sides attached great importance to the Third World.
Seeing themselves as engaged in a global struggle for the highest stakes, neither felt able to
treat any country, however small, poor or distant, as unimportant. Everything counted; nothing
was irrelevant. Even as the West shed its colonial empires, the Third World successor states became
T
he West won the Cold War, conventional wisdom holds, not because of its military superiority
but because of the strength of its social, economic and political institutions. Hence, it is not
surprising that a new consensus has quickly developed that the West merely has to hold a
steady course in the post-Cold War era. Francis Fukuyama, with his celebration of the triumph of
Western values, captured the spirit of the moment. The rest of the world, if it is to free itself from
the “mire” of history, will have to adjust and accommodate to the ways of the West. Having already
got things basically right and facing no imminent threat, the West has no need to make major
adjustments of its own.
This essay will challenge these widely held assumptions. It will argue that “steady as she goes” is
not a viable option for the West; that while it may not face any immediate military threat, the West
CHITRANGAD KUMAR / INDIA PICTURES
faces serious and growing dangers of other kinds; that it cannot afford to turn its back on the Third
World because the Cold War is over; that in a shrinking and increasingly overcrowded world, in
which the population of the West constitutes an ever smaller percentage, a comprehensive new
strategy is needed; and that an aggressive effort to export Western values to the non-West does not
constitute such a strategy, but will only serve to aggravate already serious problems.
Arriving at a sound strategy, a difficult enough task in the best of circumstances, will be harder
because of the deeply ingrained habits acquired during the long years of the Cold War. There is a
real danger that problems will be wrongly identified and defined, and that consequently the West’s
strategic sights will be pointed the wrong way. For someone of my background, this danger recalls
the famous British guns of Singapore in December 1941. The guns of that supposedly impregnable
Outside Victoria Terminus, now called Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai, India
25
more rather than less strategically relevant, especially for the United States. Because everyone else
THE SHRINKING GLOBE
was already committed to one camp or the other, these countries constituted the main arena of
competition, the contested hearts and minds and territories of the Cold War.
been left exposed, without protection or subsidies, at the end of a long limb. The West, too, has
I
reordered its priorities. No longer is there the same compulsion to prop up unsavoury allies in the
destroying the insulation provided by distance and time.
With the end of the Cold War, this state of affairs no longer pertains. Following the
disappearance of the Soviet Union, Soviet proxies have either already fallen (like Mengistu) or
n short, the reversal of centuries-old Western processes of intervention in the Third World is
probably going to lead to the emergence of a cauldron of instability in most of the Third World.
In previous centuries geographic distance would have insulated the West from this cauldron.
Ironically, it was during the Cold War that Western technology shrank the world into a global village,
name of national security. More stringent tests of human rights and democratic rectitude can be
The simple practical effect of all this is that a single mental universe and a single global society
applied, and the inability of such allies to transform themselves at short notice to comply with
are in the process of being created. All through the early and middle decades of the 20th century,
these higher standards has been used as justification for abandoning some of them without feeling
Western societies had to struggle hard to remove from themselves the gross inequalities resulting
much in the way of guilt.
from the early years of industrialisation. This they essentially did. Now they are faced with a much,
Whatever the ethical merits of thus using and the
In 1960, the combined
ditching allies, this sudden joint Soviet and Western
much larger proletariat on their doorsteps—one drawn irresistibly by awareness of Western affluence
and opportunity.
abandonment of their erstwhile Third World friends
Western Europeans are beginning to understand this. If something goes wrong in, say, Algeria
has sent a powerful message through most of the
or Tunisia, the problems will impact on France. In the eyes of the North African population, the
Third World. The rules of the game have changed;
Mediterranean, which once divided civilisation, has become a mere pond. What human being would
of France; today it is about
indeed, the game itself has changed. Third World
not cross a pond if thereby he could improve his livelihood? Through all previous centuries, men
equal; in another 30 years it
regimes have begun to realise that their previous
and women have crossed oceans and mountains to seek a better life, often suffering terrible hardship
“usefulness” has ended and the West now sees little
in the process. Indeed, it is this drive that explains the wide geographic span of “Western” societies
value in taking any real interest in their fate. The
outside their origins in continental Europe, stretching from North America through South Africa to
results of this are not all bad. The end of superpower
Australia and New Zealand. Today, many more people feel that they can make similar journeys. So
When there are extreme
competition has created the conditions for the ending
far, Western Europeans have only seen the beginnings of such mass movements, and already they
differences, they create the sort
of many conflicts that were kept well-stoked by the
are deeply troubled.
population of Morocco and
Algeria amounted to half that
will be double that of France.
Population numbers matter.
Cold War, ranging from El Salvador through Namibia
In 1990, the ratio of Europe’s population to that of Africa was 498 million to 642 million; according
and Afghanistan to Cambodia. Many dictatorial
to UN projections, by 2050, based on medium fertility extension, the ratio will be 486 million (a
regimes have disappeared. This is to be welcomed.
decrease, be it noted) to 2.265 billion—that is, a ratio akin to the white-black ratio in today’s South
such as Israel, Mongolia, Nepal
But the removal of Cold War pressures also means
Africa. Two nations, currently of the same population size, demonstrate the meaning of this trend.
and white South Africa face
that forces that have been bottled up in these societies
In the past few years, despite net immigration, Italy’s population has been declining. Egypt’s is
can now erupt.
growing by a million every eight months. Italy reacted very harshly to the Albanian boat people.
of security dilemmas that, in
their different ways, nations
To understand the epochal significance of this new Western tendency to withdraw and leave
How much more harshly would it react if the boat people were not fellow Europeans? Or consider
most Third World societies alone (observe, for example, how many Western embassies are closing
this: In 1960, the combined population of Morocco and Algeria amounted to half that of France;
down in Africa; the British have in recent years closed their missions in Burundi, Congo, Gabon,
today it is about equal; in another 30 years it will be double that of France.
Liberia and Somalia), consider that these societies have been subjected to heavy Western
To put it simply, within a few decades, when Western Europe will be confronted with teeming
involvement in their affairs since the colonial era started in the 16th century. The current Western
impoverished masses on its borders and when increasing numbers will be slipping in to join the
tendency to disentangle itself from the Third World should therefore be seen as the end not
millions already there, Europeans will find themselves in essentially the same strategic plight as the
merely of a four-decades-old involvement, but of one that is four centuries old.
affluent but vastly outnumbered white population of South Africa today.
27
The term “population explosion” is disarmingly familiar, a cliche. But like many cliches it expresses
a vital truth. From 1750 to 1950, the populations of the five main continents grew at about the
same rate. After 1950, there was a dramatic surge of population growth in the Third World, largely
resulting from the spread of Western methods of hygiene and basic health care. The population
balance between Europe and North America and the rest of the world has been irretrievably altered.
Population numbers matter. When there are extreme differences, they create the sort of security
dilemmas that, in their different ways, nations such as Israel, Mongolia, Nepal and white South
Africa face. Even in the absence of such conventional security threats, this population imbalance,
aggravated by the enormous disparity in living standards, will be the fundamental underlying
cause of the new sorts of threats facing the Western world, ranging from migrations of the poor
and dispossessed to environmental damage, drugs, disease and terrorism.
THE IMPACT OF EAST ASIA
T
he stark picture of an affluent West and a poor Third World is complicated and confused by
the increasing importance of the East Asians, the only non-Westerners already in, or poised
to enter, the world of developed nations. Though their economic success, especially that of
Japan, is seen as a serious problem by some in the West, in the larger context of relations between
the West and the Rest it should surely be seen as part of the solution. For Japan and the other East
Asian success stories are setting off ripples of development in the Third World in a way that no
Western society has ever succeeded in doing.
Consider this great historical oddity: Why is it that
decades of proximity to, and contact with, North America
and Western Europe did not inspire any of the
neighbouring societies in Latin America, the Middle East
the obvious economic benefits of doing so? Why is Japan
▼
MANU ANAND
or Africa to plunge into the free-market universe, despite
Modern
Shanghai,
China, 2004
the only developed nation to stimulate such emulation?
The answer will inevitably be complex, but one critical
factor, largely overlooked, has been the psychological.
by two mighty oceans, is not immune. As Ivan Head observes, “North America is home to one of
the fastest growing of all national populations. The population of Mexico in 1950 was 25 million.
Before this decade concludes, it will be 100 million.” Despite the magnetic power of US popular
culture (which once made even the French feel threatened), some of the southwestern states of
In 1905, when Japan, an Asian nation, defeated Russia,
a white power, it unintentionally provided a tremendous
psychological boost to anti-colonialism. If not the vast
majority, then at least the emerging educated elites of
non-European countries could, for the first time, conceive
south. At what point will the nature of US society and culture change irreversibly?
▼
the United States are effectively becoming bilingual societies, reflecting the great influx from the
Nanjing Road, Shanghai, China
MANU ANAND
Even the United States, separated from the fast-growing population centres of Asia and Africa
ECONOMIC HORSES, DEMOCRATIC CARTS
of the possibility that colonial subjugation was not necessarily a permanent condition, a state of
nature. The generation of Jawaharlal Nehru, a boy of 14 at the time of the war, was greatly stirred.
Today, Japan’s economic success is having a similar psychological impact on developing societies
all over the world, gradually convincing them that they too can make it into the developed universe.
It‘s success convinced its neighbours, ranging from Korea to Taiwan to Singapore, that they too
A
s the numbers mount and the prospect of ever-worsening poverty and massive immigration
looms, most of those Westerners who have not become entirely indifferent to the Third
World seem to be determined that first priority must be given to the promotion of human
rights and democracy. For the first time since decolonisation, many countries have been told that
could do it. Their success has, in turn, had a
development aid, even from multilateral institutions like the UN Development Program, will be
significant effect on China. The economic take-off
conditioned upon moves towards democratisation. This campaign for democracy and human rights
of China’s coastal provinces has reduced the ability
in the Third World could backfire badly and undermine Western Security in the post-Cold War era.
of Beijing to reverse course from economic
The collapse of communism in the face of challenges from democracies has given a powerful
development in the Third World
liberalisation and has also helped convince
new burst of confidence in democratic values. These values strengthen the social and political
in a way that no Western society
Indonesia, the world’s fifth most populous nation,
fabric of Western societies because they involve all citizens in national affairs and hence develop in
has ever succeeded in doing.
to deregulate even faster, suggesting that a new
the citizens a commitment to their society. In addition, democratic systems lead to constant circulation
economic synergy is-developing in East Asia.
within the ruling elites, thereby ensuring the infusion of new blood and new ideas into critical
East Asian success stories are
setting off ripples of
Turks and Mexicans, Iranians and
But the effect is not restricted to the region.
councils. As well as the moral strength of these values, their functional strengths will enhance the
Largely unnoticed, pilgrims from all other parts of
global trend towards democratisation and increasing respect for human rights. Those that fail to
Asia’s success. If the East Asians
the world have been coming to East Asia to observe
adapt to this trend are likely to suffer in the long-term Darwinian contest between societies. Japan,
can do it, why not they? So far
and learn. Turks and Mexicans, Iranians and Chileans
for example, could remain far ahead of China for centuries if China fails to create a system that will
are fascinated by East Asia’s success. If the East
enable it to extract and use its human talent as effectively as Japan.
Chileans are fascinated by East
no Islamic nation has successfully
modernised. But if Malaysia and
Asians can do it, why not they? So far no Islamic
The question remains, however: How does one successfully transplant democracies into societies
nation has successfully modernised. But if Malaysia
that historically have had very different social and political systems? The conventional wisdom in
Indonesia, two Muslim countries
and Indonesia, two Muslim countries far from the
some American political and intellectual circles today is that any society, including China, can make
far from the birthplace of Islam,
birthplace of Islam, can be swept along by the rising
this transition virtually immediately. Yet most Western societies (including the most recent cases,
Asia-Pacific economic tide—and the process is well
like Spain and Portugal) did not make the leap overnight from traditional or semi-feudal systems.
under way—the winds in the Islamic world will no
Economic development came first, creating both working and middle classes that had a vested
longer move from West to East Asia but in the
interest in stability and would therefore not be pulled apart by demagogic democratic politician
winds in the Islamic world will no
reverse direction, a major historic change. Over
trying to capitalise on ethnic and other sectional differences. That has also been the path taken by
longer move from West to East
time, countries like Algeria and Tunisia may also be
those who have made the successful transition to democracy in East Asia.
can be swept along by the rising
Asia-Pacific economic tide, the
Asia but in the reverse direction
drawn into this process.
Today, the West is encouraging, and sometimes demanding, the opposite approach in the Third
Looked at in this way, Europe and North
World. It is promoting democracy before economic development. It assumes that democracy can be
America, which are increasingly feeling threatened by Japan’s economic advance, may indeed have
successfully transplanted into societies that are at low levels of economic development, and that
a vested interest in its progress. If the belief and expectation of economic development can be
are deeply divided socially across many lines—tribal, ethnic and religious, among others. In a
planted in the minds of billions of people, massive migrations may be averted. Those Western
developed and industrialised society, a democratic system draws in the established middle class
Europeans who are already fearful of such migrations from North Africa should do some fundamental
that has a vested interest in stability. In many Asian and African cases, without such middle classes
strategic rethinking and begin viewing the challenge from East Asia in a different light. A short-
the national polity breaks down into ethnic and tribal loyalties. If this in turn leads to internecine
term challenge could bring long-term strategic redemption.
warfare, can one argue that democracy will always bring beneficial consequences?
31
humanitarian because there would be less starvation and suffering, the pragmatic because improving
The crucial variable in determining whether a Third World society will progress is not whether
conditions would mean less migration to the West.
its government is democratic but whether, to put it simply, it has “good government”.
“Good government” is hard to define, especially in the American context, where the term is
While human rights campaigns are often portrayed as an absolute moral good to be implemented
almost an oxymoron. In the United States, good government often means the least government. In
without any qualifications, in practice Western governments are prudent and selective. For example,
Third World societies, burdened with huge development demands, the common characteristics
given their powerful vested interest in secure and stable oil supplies from Saudi Arabia, Western
found in the successful East Asian societies may help to provide a useful definition of “good
governments have not tried to export their
government”. These would include: (1) political stability, (2) sound bureaucracies based on
standards of human rights or democracy to that
Today, the West is promoting
meritocracy, (3) economic growth with equity, (4) fiscal prudence and (5) relative lack of corruption.
country, for they know that any alternative to the
democracy before economic
With these criteria in mind, it should be possible for multilateral institutions like the World Bank to
stable rule of the Saudi government would very
work out an operational definition that would determine eligibility for foreign aid.
like be bad for the West.
The recent Algerian experience introduces
T
development. It assumes that
democracy can be successfully
he effect of such a reorientation of Western policies towards the Third World would be that
another complication for Western advocates of
transplanted into societies that are
less attention would be paid to the process by which Third World governments come into
immediate democratisation. Democracies work all
at low levels of economic
being and more attention would be paid to their performance. If their performance leads
too well in bringing out the true social and cultural
to serious and consistent improvement in the living conditions of the population, both the
face of a society. In Algeria the centuries-old
humanitarian and pragmatic considerations that underlie Western policies would be satisfied: the
Islamic heritage had been suppressed by the
divided socially across many lines—
secular and modern values introduced by the post-
tribal, ethnic and religious, among
colonial elite. That Islamic heritage is now
others. In a developed and
surfacing, and it will probably surface in other
Islamic societies that hold democratic elections. If
development, and that are deeply
industrialised society, a democratic
these governments elected by popular mandate
system draws in the established
impose strict Islamic laws that restrict some human
middle class that has a vested
rights (as Iran has), should we respect their right
interest in stability. In many Asian
to decide their values and practices? There are no
easy answers.
The reaction of the West to the military coup
and African cases, without such
middle classes the national polity
in Algeria illustrates the moral and political
breaks down into ethnic and tribal
ambiguities.
loyalties. If this in turn leads to
Nominally,
most
Western
governments have condemned the coup.
internecine warfare, can one argue
VIDURA JANG BAHADUR
However, in reaction to the question posed by the
Two women at a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Kaifeng, a small city in Shandong province, China
citizens of France, Italy and Spain as to whether
democracy in Algeria is good for their own
that democracy will always bring
beneficial consequences?
countries, most Western governments have
quietly welcomed the coup, a sensible pragmatic decision based on Western interests. In the eyes
of many Third World observer this pragmatic application of moral values leads to a cynical belief
that the West will only advance democracy when it suits its own interests. The same cynicism can
develop—is almost certain to develop—over human rights campaigns. Would the West be as tough
33
▼
Slogan on a punk rocker’s jacket, Midi Music
Festival, Beijing, China, 2003
right to speak, they board the ship to intervene, protecting the passengers from the captain. But
those passengers remain hungry and diseased. As soon as they try to swim to the banks into the
on the Chinese regime in Beijing if China were
arms of their benefactors, they are firmly returned to the boat, their primary sufferings unabated.
located where either Turkey or Mexico is today?
This is no abstract analogy. It is exactly how the Haitians feel.
Would the West then be as sanguine about the
WESTERN DEMOCRACY VS. WESTERN INTERESTS
prospect of millions of boat people emerging from
China if the regime broke down and chaos
prevailed?
No Western government has publicly confessed
that in determining its particular human rights and
democracy policies, it weighs them against other
vital national interests. Yet every government does
VIDURA JANG BAHADUR
so: The Germans take a strong stand on Kurdish
rights, the United States does not. The United States
and the United Kingdom come down hard on
Qaddafi, Italy does not. This pattern of inconsistencies in turn undervalues the merit of these
human rights policies in the eyes of the ostensible
In the eyes of many Third World
observers this pragmatic
beneficiaries, the Third World societies, because
instead of being impressed by the moral courage
of Western governments, they notice the pragmatic
application of moral values leads
and calculated application of moral principles. The
to a cynical belief that the West
human rights campaigns launched by Western
will only advance democracy when
governments and non-governmental organisations
it suits its own interests. The same
cynicism can develop over human
rights campaigns.
have done much good. They have, for example,
created a new global consensus that militates
against the return of gross and egregious violators
of human rights like Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Boukassa.
The victims of such regimes can breathe a sigh of
relief. Similarly, the strong global consensus against the gross forms of torture that prevailed in
many parts of the world is a great advance in human history.
But from the viewpoint of many Third World citizens, human rights campaigns often have a
bizarre quality. For many of them it looks something like this: They are like hungry and diseased
passengers on a leaky, overcrowded boat that is about to drift into treacherous waters, in which
many of them will perish. The captain of the boat is often harsh, sometimes fairly and sometimes
T
o prevent massive migrations from the poor to the affluent societies, a significant burst of
economic development would be needed around the globe. One crucial global instrument
that is needed to trigger such widespread economic development is GATT. If all societies
abide by its rules, it creates a single and massive global marketplace that all societies, rich and poor,
can plug into. GATT has already demonstrated its power by carrying a significant portion of mankind
—those living in the West—to the highest levels of comfort and affluence enjoyed in the history of
man. It does this quite simply by creating a “level playing field” in which each society can exploit its
comparative economic advantage. The impact on global productivity has been enormous.
There were few protests when the Uruguay Round was crippled in December 1990. Perhaps it
was seen as merely a “trade” issue. The Brussels meeting failed because the European Community
wanted to protect certain industries from global competition. This will eventually prove futile because
capitalism is fundamentally a dynamic process. In trying to protect their industries from new
competition, the West is trying to freeze an unfreezable process.
Given the historical impact it has already had and its relevance to the central problems of the
immediate future, it is puzzling that more strategic thinkers have not focused on the GATT. It is a
mistake not to do so. By denying the vast masses an opportunity to improve their livelihood, a
retreat from the GATT to protectionism will force them to pound on the doors of the West.
Reorienting Western strategy in the post-Cold War era is a major task, requiring the sort of
leadership that the United States so handsomely provided after World War II. Unfortunately, at the
end of the Cold War, the leadership of the West has fractured between the United States, Europe
and Japan at the very moment when the need for leadership in the Western world has never been
greater. Unfortunately, too, Western societies are under strong pressure to turn inwards when they
should be looking outwards. Having created a technology that has brought the world, with all of
its attendant problems and promises, to its very doorstep, the West now has a strong impulse to
shut the doors, a futile impulse. Futile because it has created a universe in which “interconnectedness”
will be the order of the day.
The real danger is that the West will realise too late that—like the defenders of Singapore—it
has been preoccupied with old challenges while new ones have been assuming massive proportions.
not. On the river banks stand a group of affluent, well-fed and well-intentioned onlookers. As
Extracts from ‘Can Asians Think?’ by Kishore Mahbubani
soon as those onlookers witness a passenger being flogged or imprisoned or even deprived of his
Copyright © Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pvt. Ltd 2004.
35
Jakarta, Indonesia, 1996
Construction of the Rasuna complex of high-rise
apartment and office buildings in Jakarta‘s financial
and commercial district of Kuningan.
19
INTRODUCTION
Hungama hai kyon
Barpa?
(Why the Hue and Cry?)
BY
TABISH KHAIR
T
his is a supplement devoted to the cultural aspects of migration and asylum. Human history
begins with movement—the earliest text known to us, The Epic of Gilgamesh, narrates the
travails and travels of a man. It seems almost superfluous to document the cross-fertilisation
that forced or voluntary human movement has caused in the fields of literature, art, music, social
forms and rituals, religion, science, agriculture, food etc. But, as is evidenced by the shrill voices of
intolerance that seek to remove or bar some people from some regions, such documentation is by
no means superfluous. Our history of mobility and the richness of our mobile present need to be
reiterated again and again.
And yet, there is a danger in saying ‘asylum’ and ‘migrant’ in the same breath. Migrant is
related to ‘immigrant’ and, for us, an asylum-seeker is a ‘refugee’. But the two are not the same
today. To be an immigrant is not to be a refugee. For, by definition, the refugee seeks shelter for a
period—even if that period may stretch to infinity in actual fact—but the immigrant is, again by
definition, someone who “comes as a permanent resident to a country other than one’s native
land.” It must surely signify much about the world we live in that in popular and public discourse
the two are more often conjoined than seen as different concepts. In countries ranging from India
to Denmark we talk of the “problem of immigrants and refugees”. The volume of this talk appears
to be directly proportionate to the affluence of the circles in which it reverberates.
▼
Brick Lane, London - an area populated primarily by Bangladeshi immigrants.
Photograph by Pradip Saha
11
But if the multiple courses by which ordinary people like us become immigrants or refugees are
It is important to keep both the actual numbers and the percentage in mind. Because it is only
seen as threatening in relatively affluent societies, then there is also a counter-discourse that attempts
by bearing both in mind that we can see the current phenomenon of migration and asylum in a
to defend such ‘dislocated peoples’. If the refugee or the immigrant is seen as disrupting the course
historical context. Historically, these 150 million people mark a significant increase, but they also
of a natural progress of ‘national identity’ in places like Denmark and Holland, she is also defended
indicate a larger and longer connection. As has often been noted, people have moved around all
by some Danish and Dutch scholars who point out that people have moved across spaces throughout
through history. The earliest epics, ranging from Gilgamesh to the Odyssey to the Mahabharata,
history. If the refugee or immigrant is seen as diluting the purity of some cultural ethos, she is also
testify to this mobility of peoples. So does historical and anthropological evidence: as a matter of
celebrated in terms of multiculturalism and plurality by some artists and writers. If the refugee or
fact, it is doubtful that any human group is really indigenous to any region. It is always a question
immigrant is seen as bringing with herself the curse of penury, she is also justified by some economists
of who has been where longer.
as the only cure that will enable the ageing populations of First
But if we move to the second perspective—that of percentage—we are faced with two further
About 150 million
World countries to maintain a high level of production, welfare
complications. First, is three percent really such a high percentage? It could well be that almost a
people in the world live
and livelihood.It need hardly be pointed out that the immigrant
corresponding percentage of the world’s total population (which was much less in the past) has
and the refugee are the two most commonly employed
lived outside its regions of origin through much of history. Think of medieval Europe with its
scarecrows in contemporary political discourse. They serve to
many mobile peoples as well as its Jews and Gypsies, Moors and Turks. Think of India. As far as I
scare the voter in two major ways:
am aware no reliable quantitative analysis exists to settle this issue, but it might not be too far-
These include
1. by raising the spectre of a kind of gradual invasion that will
fetched to maintain that between one to three percent of the population of almost any large
immigrants and 18
lead to cultural, religious, linguistic, political and economic
society in the past might have been born outside that society.
outside the countries
they were born in.
million refugees (some
changes of an undesirable nature in the host country, and
Now, it is not true, as some commentators imply, that ‘foreigners’ were largely welcome by
2. by making the host voter conscious of an ‘outside world’ full
their ‘hosts’ in the past. But it is true that the indicators of identity and foreignness were much
of grave dangers—the refugee and the immigrant being proof
more malleable in the past, perhaps because all societies in the past contained largely illiterate
at 35 million by
of these dangers—if the host voter stops being the obedient
and semi-literate persons. Print—and other ways of recording and codifying—had not fixed
including ‘displaced
worker, citizen, consumer, soldier of his nation that s/he is. Both
cognitive borders to the extent to which they have been ossified over the past two centuries or
perceptions condition the voter—fix her relationship to the
so. Hence, while there was conflict as well as confluence, there was nothing like the sort of
nation and the world in definite and lopsided ways—and can
overwhelming discourse on abstract ‘immigrants’ and ‘refugees’ that exists internationally and
be generally used to protect the status quo.
nationally today.
estimates put the latter
persons‘ who are not
‘refugees‘). But 150
million is only about
This, then, is the broad discursive framework in which this
three percent of the
issue—in spite of its selective concentration on the cultural
world’s population, as
aspects of migration and asylum—intervenes. What, one may
Peter Stalker has noted
also wonder, are the hard facts? We know that immigrants and
T
his brings us to the second complication. Yes, people have moved around all through
history either to further their ‘careers’ or change their life quality (‘immigrants’) or because,
like Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, they were expelled from some
refugees are contentious and controversial, but what are the
other place (‘refugee’). Migration is nothing new. And yet, one has to maintain the conceptual
in The No-Nonsense
data, the numbers and graphs? In other words, as a popular
newness of both the ‘immigrant’ and the ‘refugee’: these terms, as we understand them today,
Guide to International
song puts it, though in a different context, hungama hai kyon
came into being only with the rise of modern nation states. And in that sense, they are not
Migration
barpa? What’s the fuss all about?
identical to the term ‘migrant’. One can even argue that ‘immigrant’ and ‘refugee’—unlike
Let us start with the facts then. About 150 million people in
‘migrant’—are post-imperial terms. They came into being in the present sense only after the
the world live outside the countries they were born in. These include immigrants and 18 million
British Raj and vestiges of other European empires dissolved under the impact of two world wars,
refugees (some estimates put the latter at 35 million by including ‘displaced persons‘ who are not
economic changes and political struggles for independence. Once again, the drawing of national
‘refugees‘). But 150 million is only about three percent of the world’s population, as Peter Stalker
borders across the globe was necessary for the appearance of the ‘immigrant’ and the political
has noted in The No-Nonsense Guide to International Migration.
‘refugee’: without those borders these ‘dislocated people’ would have been something else. In
13
fact, the word ‘refugee’— with its institutionalised privileging of the political over the economic—
appears to be some truth in this statement in the US, where new immigrants seem to make slightly
is an indicator of this development.
more use of welfare than natives. But this perception is faulty, for (new) immigrants are on average
If tomorrow a high capitalist empire, say, the USA, were to emerge, the terms ‘immigrant’ and
‘refugee’ will be transformed into something else. Not necessarily something better, but definitely
poorer than natives. If one compares immigrants to native families in the same income group,
immigrants actually claim welfare less often than natives!
something else. Though I do not wish to argue that such an empire is in formation: the US presence
There circulate many such myths about immigrants (and refugees), most of which can be largely
in Iraq is still gift-wrapped in the terminology of nation-statism. Anyway, tomorrow is another day,
dismantled with reference to hard facts. However, hard facts are not sufficient in all cases. One bit
and I am more concerned in this essay with immigration and political asylum as they exist today.
of hard fact that is often used to justify immigration relates to falling birth rates in rich nations. It
is argued—and quite logically— that immigration is necessary to sustain the current living standards
T
he institutional and international refusal, in practise or theory, to countenance economic
in such countries. Given a required replacement rate of 2.2 children per woman and an actual birth
asylum has created a situation in which some countries—and the majority of peoples from
rate of only 1.4 in the European Union as well as the (in)famous ‘greying’ of the population—
these countries – have been transformed into a new global proletariat. If there are sweatshops
complicated by the fact that older people cost almost double as much to ‘maintain’ as children do
on one side, there is people-smuggling on the other. Illegal immigrants continue to trickle into
—it has started making economic sense to champion immigration. Consequently, the latest bit of
West and North Europe. Most of these people cannot claim asylum, for they are fleeing poverty
irony: in places like Denmark, it appears to be the chambers of commerce and other assorted
and lack of opportunity (sometimes also allured by the hard sell of the capitalist West), not some
capitalist bodies that want more immigrants, while the traditional ‘socialist’ parties find various
tin pot dictator or monarch who refused to kowtow to Western democratic capitalist governments.
reasons to (implicitly or explicitly) barricade the gates!
This presence of illegal migrants complicates the general and dominant capitalist perception of
While this hard fact in favour of immigration is attractive, it is not foolproof. If the calculations
accredited migrants, who are usually contract workers, professionals, political refugees and, in
of the United Nations Population Division are to be relied upon, the UK will have to import one
some cases, marriage partners. These migrants are usually seen in terms of ‘human capital’—as
million labourers every year for the next 50 years to offset falling birth rates and ageing. South
individuals who rationally weigh and consider their options and then exercise something like a
Korea will have to take in almost 100 million per year, so that by 2055 its national population will
‘career decision.’ But migration is not simply an individual matter: illegal migrants move as families
be greater than the current global population! Evidently, such hard facts might get a bit hard to
or are heavily funded by the family that stays behind; they are motivated by various factors that go
stomach in the longer run.
beyond economic calculation; they follow and develop their own networks.
However, whether the labourer enters a relatively privileged socio-political space illegally or
legally, she raises—or rather the media raise—some standard issues in that space.
But there is, to my mind, a greater objection to such justifications of migration. If one justifies
immigration— or emigration, which has its own set of problems (mostly accreting around the debate
of the supposedly negative ‘brain drain’ and the supposedly positive ‘cashback’)—if one justifies
To begin with, there is a general tendency to question the economic wisdom of allowing the
migration by highlighting the benefits it brings to the native population, one has not escaped the
immigrant in. It is alleged that immigrants depress the wages of local workers or steal jobs, even
central problem. After all, people who oppose migration do so in the name of the native population
though a number of studies exist to show that immigrants, because they are also consumers, actually
too. Both the options privilege the native population, rendering the migrant into a mere tool. And
end up creating jobs in most cases. An eight-nation survey by the Organisation for Economic
that, to my mind, is the main problem.
Cooperation and Development (OECD) has shown that, over a decade, unemployment either went
down or remained unaffected in the countries with the most immigrants. Similarly, wages seem to
remain largely unaffected in most cases. It has also been reliably documented in the US that
Why is it that both defenders of migration and its opponents finally end up privileging the
native population?
immigrants – including illegal ones—actually contribute much more to the public coffers than they
draw upon. Even though some immigrants might start off by using government funds, particularly
To my mind, there is only one satisfactory answer, and it takes us back to my initial remarks
to educate their children, in a few years even these are actually paying more in taxes than they are
about capitalism and nation-states. The immigrant and the refugee are living embodiments of
consuming in services. The only group that actually loses—marginally—due to the arrival of new
what, once upon a time, would have been dubbed a contradiction of capitalism. This contradiction
immigrants is the previous wave of immigrants.
lies in the fact that Capitalism, by its own parameters of definition, depends on the ‘free flow’ of
In Europe and the US, it is often alleged that immigrants sponge off the welfare state. There
capital, commodities and labour. Of these, however, labour is far less free than capital. The problem
15
of the immigrant—and, often, the refugee—arises only when this labour breaches the borders of
the nation state to try and match the mobility of international capital. In this moment of penetration,
legal or illegal, the nation-state—which has mostly served as a regulatory device on the global
machinery of capitalism—is made to face its own secondary (but not powerless) status in the global
scenario as well as its delicate balance and tension with capitalism. It reacts with prohibitions and
permissions. Its populations react in a way that foregrounds their own (partly false) consciousness
of an independent national identity and a fecund national
The immigrant and the
machinery. The nation-state negotiates and renegotiates its
own relationship to capitalism. But, particularly in the rich
refugee are living
nations, it and its ‘native’ populations also refuse to clearly
embodiments of what, once
acknowledge the fact that the same Capitalism which has
upon a time, would have
obtained for them the comfort and commodities that they
been dubbed a contradiction
cherish is the engine that brings the immigrant (and even
the refugee) to their doorsteps. This failure is a signal failure
of capitalism. Particularly in
of our times. It is the material force behind the moral “failure
the rich nations, it and its
to empathise” with refugees that Rose George so powerfully
‘native’ populations refuse
documents in A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge in the
to clearly acknowledge the
Modern World.
And hence, again and again, there is an attempt to slam
fact that the same
the door on the newcomer, or to slot him as simply necessary
capitalism which has
to the many comforts of the ‘native’ inhabitants.
obtained for them the
comfort and commodities
that they cherish is the
It is in this context that a celebration of the cultural
richness brought into a nation by migrant populations, today
or in the past, can become a radical political act, and
sometimes a necessary one. It is one way of saying—in spite
engine that brings the
of the various structures that prevent us from making that
immigrant (and even the
statement in an economic or political sense—that all of us
refugee) to their doorsteps.
have made this world and that the world belongs to all of
us. It is one way of recognising that every dusted memento
of our supposedly separate ‘civilisational’ or ‘national’
identities – whether of science, religion, philosophy, art, literature, architecture, cuisine or complex
social practices—bears the fingerprints of people who travelled of necessity or choice.
While the contributions to this supplement are informed by a belief in the richness such mobility
has given rise to and its inevitability across time, they also recognise a central problem: that we live
in a world where many are not free to move from choice and many are forced to move against
their will. It is a strange contradiction. It is an immoral contradiction. It is a tragic and, to my mind,
unnecessary contradiction. ●
Every Door a Wall by Mona Hatoum, 2003, ink on fabric, 277 x200 cm
Courtesy Jay Jopling/White Cube, London and Alexander and Bonin, New York
From the exhibition Cordially Invited
A S Y L U M & M I G R AT I O N / P R I N C E C L A U S
FUND JOURNAL #11
EDITORIAL
A breath of fresh air
This year, the Prince Claus Fund is focusing its activities and awards on examples of the
advantages of migration and asylum: What do migrants contribute to their new
environment? What do they bring with them from their country of origin? Which new
perspectives have they acquired through their relocation?
M
igration and asylum are beginning to acquire unpleasant connotations and are
frequently associated with disintegration, unrest, criminality and other disturbing social
factors. Yet migration and asylum have existed throughout history and, by introducing
new elements, have often been the agents of positive social and cultural regeneration.
The Entarte Kunst exhibition, which was held in Nazi Germany in 1937, has become a symbol of
the oppression of modern artists. Many of them fled the Third Reich and some, including the
painters Marc Chagall and Piet Mondriaan, took refuge in the United States. In their new homeland,
these artists were presented with opportunities to develop their work in fresh directions that enabled
them to generate an innovative creative momentum.
The world is still much the same: Dictators drive out the brightest and most creative, and millions
are dispersed by war and poverty. Every continent experiences migration and asylum, and sometimes
on an enormous scale.
The West’s fear of unfamiliar cultural and religious influences is forcing it to close its borders so
that Fortress Europe may soon become an anxious reality. Its inhabitants are insufficiently aware of
the fact that most of the world’s refugees do not live in Europe but elsewhere, that Afghans live in
Iran, Sudanese in Uganda and Chad, Zimbabweans in South Africa, and Iraqis and Palestinians in
Jordan.
This year, the Prince Claus Fund is focusing its activities and awards on examples of the advantages
Time / space Definition of the Psychophysical Activity of Matter 1 (Anti-Happening) by Július
Koller, 1968, documentation of performance. Courtesy Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne
From the exhibition Cordially Invited, The Centraal Museum, Utrecht
6
of migration and asylum: What do migrants contribute to their new environment? What do they
bring with them from their country of origin? Which new perspectives have they acquired through
their relocation?
7
Migration leads to cultural diversity and transmission. Musicians meet and develop new styles,
Maria Hlavajova and the Cuban-based art historian Gerardo Mosquera.
filmmakers document their lives both old and new, and poets describe their experiences. Doors
The Palestinian photographer Rula Halawani’s pictures of the Qalandia checkpoint between
and windows are flung open and, although this may cause a considerable draught, it ultimately
Israel and Palestine are disturbingly beautiful. Her photographs bear witness to the experiences of
results in a breath of fresh air.
people who are confronted with desperate situations. Remarkably these images still maintain the
This issue of the Prince Claus Fund Journal highlights the positive results of migration and
ability to transcend and to reflect both beauty and hope. This quality needs to be cherished at this
asylum. It has been produced in co-operation with Biblio: A Review of Books that is published in
point in time, and is an ideal that the Prince Claus Fund has pursued by granting its Principal Award
New Delhi (India), and was edited by the writer, critic and poet Tabish Khair, who is an associate
to Mahmoud Darwish, by supporting Halawani’s work and by collaborating with the Cordially
professor at Aarhus University. He has succeeded in bringing together a remarkable group of first-
Invited exhibition. Moreover, this Journal also promotes the benefits of the beauty of prose and
rate writers and experts who describe their individual experiences and the issue of migration in
poetry. As Darwish says: ”Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something
general. The results are extraordinary and moving. Zayd Minty,
beautiful you find co-existence; it breaks walls down.”
Migration leads to
a South African journalist who works at Cape Town’s District
I sincerely hope that this issue of the Prince Claus Fund Journal will foster the benefits of co-
cultural diversity and
Six Museum, describes the fusion of cultures and art practices
existence while accepting the difficulties of nomadic life. “We travel like other people, but we
that are generated by migration; Charles Lock, a professor of
return to nowhere. We have a country of words”, writes Darwish. Let us live in that place.●
transmission. Musicians
English Literature, analyses the advantages and disadvantages
meet and develop new
of the nomadic lives of both businessmen and the Roma; writer
styles, filmmakers
Jamal Mahjoub focuses on the question that is always asked
document their lives both
when people first meet: ‘Where do you come from?’, a question
old and new, and poets
ELS VAN DER PLAS
Director, Prince Claus Fund
that can have many answers; Rose George, the author of A Life
Removed, Hunting for Refuge in the Modern World, provides
describe their
us with insight into the different and often paradoxical
experiences. Doors and
circumstances of asylum seekers in Monrovia, London and the
windows are flung open
Ivory Coast; finally Siddhartha Deb, the author of The Point of
and, although this may
Return, has written a beautiful short story about the
complexities of life and love in multicultural New York. In
cause a considerable
addition, Tabish Khair provides the theme with an eloquent
draught, it ultimately
and in-depth introduction that touches on its individual,
results in a breath of
national, international and multicultural aspects.
fresh air
The Prince Claus Fund and Biblio are delighted to be able
to publish poetry by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish,
who is this year’s Principal Prince Claus laureate. This poet of global significance, who grew up in
the crucible of migration and asylum, powerfully evokes his experiences in poetry and prose. His
voice simultaneously expresses despair and hope by drawing on collective memories of loss and
longing, and by describing the mutuality of trauma and the desire for peace.
Along with the poetry and prose you will encounter images by artists whose work is included in
Cordially Invited, an exhibition that also focuses on migration and asylum and is to be held at
Utrecht’s BAK, basis voor actuele kunst and The Centraal Museum, Post CM from October 31 to
December 31 2004. This show has been organised by BAK, and has been curated by its director
Toc-toc by Amalia Pica, 2004, documentation of performance. Photo: Sofia Garcia Vieyra
From the exhibition Cordially Invited, The Centraal Museum, Utrecht
9
CONTENTS
7
54
Editorial: A Breath of Fresh Air
Displacing the Centre
By Els van der Plas
The pros and cons of writing between worlds
By Jamal Mahjoub
10
Introduction: Hungama hai kyo Barpa? (Why the Hue and Cry?)
Putting the current debate about ‘migration and asylum’ in a historical and economic context,
noting both its ideological fallacies and its historical and cultural possibilities
58
Jumping Ship: Three Bangladeshi Diaspora novels in English
By Kaiser Haq
By Tabish Khair
68
18
Travellers and the Travelling Classes
People on the Move: Mapping the migration movement per country
Review of Gypsies: from the Ganges to the Thames by Donald Kenrick
People Adrift: A cartographic representation of Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Internally
By Charles Lock
Displaced Persons
By Mapping Worlds
73
A Roomy House: Review of Wasafiri No. 42, 20th Anniversary Issue
24
By Aidan Day
The West and the Rest
Why the West needs to reengage with the poor countries
78
By Kishore Mahbubani
Making Place: The Art of Moving
By Zayd Minty
34
Hope as Home in the Eye of the Storm
85
A Tribute to Mahmoud Darwish
The Things We Do Not See: A look at the portrayal of migrants in cinema
Recipient of the Prince Claus Fund’s Principal Award for 2004
By Achal R. Prabhala
By Ashwani Saith
88
41
Mix and Match
Poetry by Mahmoud Darwish
A Review of Bride and Prejudice directed by Gurinder Chadha
By Manisha Sethi
44
Intimacy: A Photo-essay on the Qalandia checkpoint
By Rula Halawani
90
Silence, Exile, Cunning
A short story that offers a subtle examination of the hopes and fissures of migration
46
By Siddhartha Deb
Writing about Asylum
Exploring the various human aspects of asylum
100
By Rose George
Guess what Ashraya Means?: The Art of Asylum
By Rukmini Bhaya Nair
Chimborazo, Equador. 1998
With their men away in the cities, women carry their goods
to the market of Chimbote. Most migrants head for the
country‘s mountain capital, Quito, or for the coastal city of
Guayaquil. Many Equadoreans have also left the country.
The Quito daily Diario del Comercio has estimated that one
million
reside
the
ASYLUM
& M I Gin
R AT
I O area
N / P Rof
I N CNew
E C L AYork,
U S F Uanother
N D J O U R 150,000
N A L # 1 1 in
Spain; many also in Canada.
“Exile is more than a geographical
concept.
You can be an exile in your homeland,
in your own house,
in a room.
It’s not simply a Palestinian question.”
— Mahmoud Darwish, Recipient of the
Prince Claus Fund’s Principal Award, 2004
Calendar of events related to the theme of
The Positive Results of Asylum and Migration
Cordially Invited
Episode 3 of ‘Who if not we should at least try to imagine the future of all this?’
7 episodes on (ex)changing Europe
31 October - 31 December 2004
BAK, basis voor actuele kunst
Cordially Invited is an exhibition as well as a series of performative and discursive events
around the themes of hospitality vis-à-vis a topic of major political and ethical consequence:
migration.
The exhibition Cordially Invited presents works by twenty-one international artists, artists’
collectives, and cultural producers: Francis Alÿs, Academic Training Group, Joze Barsi, Otto
Berchem, Monica Bonvicini, Mona Hatoum, Július Koller, Jirí Kovanda, Denisa Lehocká,
Mapping Worlds, Nomads & Residents, Roman Ondák, Boris Ondreicka, Amalia Pica, Wilfredo
Prieto Garicía, Marko Raat, Mindaugas Ratavicius/Giedrius Kumetaitis, Jeroen de Rijke/Willem
de Rooij, Ene-Liis Semper, Monika Sosnowska, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
Curated by: Gerardo Mosquera and Maria Hlavajova.
The exhibition is on view at two locations: BAK, Lange Nieuwstraat 4 and Centraal Museum,
Post CM, Agnietenstraat 2, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Visiting hours (both venues): Tuesday-Sunday, 11 am–5 pm; Wednesday 11am–9pm.
www.bak-utrecht.nl
The Prince Claus Fund, BAK (basis voor actuele kunst) NCDO (National Committee for
International Cooperation and Sustainable Development) and ISIM (International Institute for
the Study of Islam in the Modern World) have organised two events on
the theme of the Positive Results of Asylum and Migration
Poetry reading by Mahmoud Darwish
29 November 2004, 8pm – 9:30pm
De Aula, Amsterdam
2004 Prince Claus Principal Awardee Mahmoud Darwish reads from his poetry.
De Aula, Singel 411, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
www.princeclausfund.nl
2004 UNDP Human Development Report: A Positive Approach to Migration
2 December 2004, 8pm - 10:30pm
Ottone, Utrecht
A debate on the 2004 UNDP Human Development Report, a panel discussion with among
others Mona Hatoum, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr.
Ottone, Kromme Nieuwegracht 62, Utrecht, The Netherlands
www.princeclausfund.nl www.ncdo.nl www.undp.org

Untitled - Prince Claus Fund

Transcription

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