'Red Birds' marks the award-winning British-Pakistani author’s return to fiction after seven years, and is a potential instant classic
“We used to have art for art’s sake; now we have war for the sake of war” reads a line from Mohammed Hanif’s latest novel, Red Birds. Writers have relentlessly written about war, and Hanif’s latest will probably go on to join the best in this canon. His is a satire of our age—of money-making schemes in forgotten camps, electrocuted mongrels, lost men, and the women left behind in asymmetrical wars. It’s specific, relevant to the violence we know in headlines and hashtags, but generously buttressed in the universal absurdity of life and death. Witty, eviscerating in its irony and sneeringly insightful, this novel is packed with what we’ve come to recognise as Hanifian trademarks. A recommended read of the season, the writer and journalist shares his experience of writing this novel, battling censorship and understanding his feminist gaze.
It’s been seven years since your last novel. What made you return to fiction?
I returned to it every single day of those seven years. Sometimes it was there and sometimes it just disappeared. It’s like going to the same spot every day of your life in the hope of catching a glimpse of your beloved, and sometimes they are there as you remember them and sometimes there’s just an empty spot.
Your first novel, A Case Of Exploding Mangoes, began with your obsession to unravel the assassination of General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. Your second, Our Lady Of Alice Bhatti, began when you imagined a female superhero vindicating her rights. What sparked Red Birds?
I lost two of my closest friends within a few months of each other, while I was still trying to get used to the fact that although I have their names on my phone, there is nobody at the other end to pick up the phone and resume the conversation we had the previous night. During these years, I was also doing some reporting about missing people in Pakistan, specially in Balochistan, spending some time with their families. I was getting to know the fragility of their hope and the horror that awaited them if their struggle was to end. And all this while, if I turned on the TV to distract myself, I saw horrible wars going on in Yemen, Aleppo, Kabul, Quetta. I think we all got used to these wars as we watched them in our living rooms. But you were still safe, taking your child to the park and walking the dog, so all these horrifying things pickled in my head and somehow turned into a story that I kept writing in bits and pieces. It was a way of talking to friends who were not on the other end of the phone. And since our conversations were always full of laughter, gossip and impossible things, it turned into a funny book about sad things. More of myself has gone into this book than any other.
Of all the characters in Red Birds, a large chunk of the narrative is by Mutt. What made you light up the narrative from the point of view of a dog?
Like most people who spend a lot of time around dogs, I tend to talk to them occasionally. And then sometimes they talk back, if not through words, through their gestures, humps and licks. Municipalities around many places in the world carry out a cull of stray dogs for public safety. It’s a bit like powerful countries always having the need to have a war at a distant place that makes them feel safer in their suburban homes. I often think that if dogs ran our cities we might be better off. I was really reluctant to give Mutt a voice, but he insisted. In the end, Mutt gets what he wants or dies trying.
With your last novel, you went into that rare space that few male writers occupy—of writing a feminist novel. How do you understand your feminist agenda as a writer?
I think when your central character is a woman, whatever your agenda, it becomes a feminist project and that was probably true about Alice Bhatti. While I was working on missing people’s stories, I realised that almost 99 per cent of the missing were men. Those protesting for their return were often women, some as young as 11, some university students, some who had never spoken up in a public space. But in the last few years, as more men have disappeared or are threatened with abductions, more women have spoken up. So, I guess the novel mirrors that reality, that for a long time it’s just boys talking, even though they might be talking about the women around them, and then the women get hold of the mic—they get to say the last word.
How do you stay true to your voice in these troubling times?
In journalism I am quite aware of what I can get away with and increasingly my inner censor has become quite heavy-handed. I don’t know if that works in fiction, I try and listen to my characters and stay true to them, and that process is usually the opposite of censorship, where you are seeking to say things that can’t be said at a dinner table, in an op-ed or a street corner.
With the freedom of expression constantly under threat, how does a writers’ community defend itself?
Writers can’t have unity, we can’t put our differences aside and speak in one voice. All the writers in the world can sign all the petitions they want, and it wouldn’t diffuse a single bomb. My late editor Razia Bhatti used to say, media can never be free but journalists can at least try. So, we should speak up and speak louder for those who have been silenced. We should also be wise and occasionally shut up so that we can live to speak another day.
(Source: Vogue)
“We used to have art for art’s sake; now we have war for the sake of war” reads a line from Mohammed Hanif’s latest novel, Red Birds. Writers have relentlessly written about war, and Hanif’s latest will probably go on to join the best in this canon. His is a satire of our age—of money-making schemes in forgotten camps, electrocuted mongrels, lost men, and the women left behind in asymmetrical wars. It’s specific, relevant to the violence we know in headlines and hashtags, but generously buttressed in the universal absurdity of life and death. Witty, eviscerating in its irony and sneeringly insightful, this novel is packed with what we’ve come to recognise as Hanifian trademarks. A recommended read of the season, the writer and journalist shares his experience of writing this novel, battling censorship and understanding his feminist gaze.
It’s been seven years since your last novel. What made you return to fiction?
I returned to it every single day of those seven years. Sometimes it was there and sometimes it just disappeared. It’s like going to the same spot every day of your life in the hope of catching a glimpse of your beloved, and sometimes they are there as you remember them and sometimes there’s just an empty spot.
Your first novel, A Case Of Exploding Mangoes, began with your obsession to unravel the assassination of General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. Your second, Our Lady Of Alice Bhatti, began when you imagined a female superhero vindicating her rights. What sparked Red Birds?
I lost two of my closest friends within a few months of each other, while I was still trying to get used to the fact that although I have their names on my phone, there is nobody at the other end to pick up the phone and resume the conversation we had the previous night. During these years, I was also doing some reporting about missing people in Pakistan, specially in Balochistan, spending some time with their families. I was getting to know the fragility of their hope and the horror that awaited them if their struggle was to end. And all this while, if I turned on the TV to distract myself, I saw horrible wars going on in Yemen, Aleppo, Kabul, Quetta. I think we all got used to these wars as we watched them in our living rooms. But you were still safe, taking your child to the park and walking the dog, so all these horrifying things pickled in my head and somehow turned into a story that I kept writing in bits and pieces. It was a way of talking to friends who were not on the other end of the phone. And since our conversations were always full of laughter, gossip and impossible things, it turned into a funny book about sad things. More of myself has gone into this book than any other.
Of all the characters in Red Birds, a large chunk of the narrative is by Mutt. What made you light up the narrative from the point of view of a dog?
Like most people who spend a lot of time around dogs, I tend to talk to them occasionally. And then sometimes they talk back, if not through words, through their gestures, humps and licks. Municipalities around many places in the world carry out a cull of stray dogs for public safety. It’s a bit like powerful countries always having the need to have a war at a distant place that makes them feel safer in their suburban homes. I often think that if dogs ran our cities we might be better off. I was really reluctant to give Mutt a voice, but he insisted. In the end, Mutt gets what he wants or dies trying.
With your last novel, you went into that rare space that few male writers occupy—of writing a feminist novel. How do you understand your feminist agenda as a writer?
I think when your central character is a woman, whatever your agenda, it becomes a feminist project and that was probably true about Alice Bhatti. While I was working on missing people’s stories, I realised that almost 99 per cent of the missing were men. Those protesting for their return were often women, some as young as 11, some university students, some who had never spoken up in a public space. But in the last few years, as more men have disappeared or are threatened with abductions, more women have spoken up. So, I guess the novel mirrors that reality, that for a long time it’s just boys talking, even though they might be talking about the women around them, and then the women get hold of the mic—they get to say the last word.
How do you stay true to your voice in these troubling times?
In journalism I am quite aware of what I can get away with and increasingly my inner censor has become quite heavy-handed. I don’t know if that works in fiction, I try and listen to my characters and stay true to them, and that process is usually the opposite of censorship, where you are seeking to say things that can’t be said at a dinner table, in an op-ed or a street corner.
With the freedom of expression constantly under threat, how does a writers’ community defend itself?
Writers can’t have unity, we can’t put our differences aside and speak in one voice. All the writers in the world can sign all the petitions they want, and it wouldn’t diffuse a single bomb. My late editor Razia Bhatti used to say, media can never be free but journalists can at least try. So, we should speak up and speak louder for those who have been silenced. We should also be wise and occasionally shut up so that we can live to speak another day.
(Source: Vogue)
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