I agree it’s a bit late in the day to write a review of this book. Aatish Taseer’s ‘Stranger to history’ was published in 2009. While waiting for my flight to arrive at the small Aurangabad airport, I strolled into this bookshop. Between layers and layers of nonsensical paperback thrillers, this seemed to be the only book worth reading. Maybe it was lying there on the shelf since 2009.
But after reading this book I felt that this is a book that I should review. One from a selfish motive of trying to put in words my understanding of this phenomenal part travelogue, part memoir, and complex book and second to urge the people who have not read this book not to miss it.
Aatish Taseer is the ‘love child’, of a Pakistani Muslim politician and businessman Salman Taseer (assassinated in 2011 for opposing to the anti blasphemy law in Pakistan) and the famous Indian Sikh journalist Tavleen singh. His parents’ relationship ends soon after his birth and he has never seen his father till the age of 21, though there are some tense, uneasy intermediate correspondences between them.
Though brought up without any religion in India, he is constantly made aware of the fact that he is a Muslim. A couple of instances being, his cousins noticing his circumcision or a neighboring Kuwaiti family stating that he is a Muslim because his father is a Muslim.
While working on a journalistic assignment in England Aatish covers the London bombings done by Islamic fundamentalists. He goes to Beeston, a predominantly Pakistani British neighborhood where the bombers come from. What he sees there shocks him: The second generation Pakistani immigrants have completely rejected the migration. With beards and Muslim clothing it is a generation of rootless young people who end up finding solace in radical Islam. Aatish interviews Hassan Butt, activist and spokesperson of this neo Islamic movement.
He sends a copy of this interview to his father who reacts very strongly. He accuses his son of ‘prejudice and of lacking even the superficial knowledge of Pakistani ethos’. Suddenly seeing the religious side of his scotch drinking, pork eating, never praying father, the author is intrigued by what he calls ‘cultural Isalm’ focused more on the ethos than the tenets and the practice.
After experiencing the newly energized Islam in Beeston and sudden realization of the religiosity of his father ‘Caught between the feeling provoked and needing to act’ the author decides to make an Islamic journey. He starts his journey from the fiercely secular Turkey, moving to the Arab nationalist Syria, the religious Mecca, to the land of Islamic revolution Iran ending in Pakistan. Wherever the author goes he meets people representing different viewpoints, tries to understand the influence of religion on social life & politics and tries to absorb the culture.
In Istanbul he experiences liberal culture of Istiklal, visits gay bars and the same time visits fathi Carsamba, the radical Muslim pocket right in the heart of Istanbul. The feeling of persecution of religious Muslims (staying in Carsamba) in a predominantly Muslim country is something interesting. He meets Abdullah a student of Islam who tells him the need to Islamic resurgence. According to him the ‘world system’ which means the western culture is the cause of all the problems in the world. The opposing system to this world system is the Islam system and the Islam system needs to dominate the world system.
From Turkey he goes to Syria, the most important destination for modern radical Islam. What he sees there is ‘political Islam’. Islam is used to promote nationalism through public pronouncements equating threat to country with threat to religion, politicians addressing religious students and mosques promoting the Islamic order. He visits Abu Nour the modern global Islamic learning center. The most interesting character in his journey through Syria is the converted Norwegian Islamic student Even. When unrest erupts over cartoons of the Prophet in a Norwegian newspaper, Even faces the crowd attacking the Norwegian embassy and patiently explains to them the ignorance of the western world in understanding the Islamic values. What touches the heart is that his courage comes from his faith.
From Syria the author goes to Mecca and experiences the Wahabi influence. One amusing sight is the Muslim only McDonalds in Mecca. The most adventurous part of the journey is the Islamic republic of Iran. A country which almost accidentally landed itself into an Islamic revolution where almost unknowingly opposition to the Shah became establishing an Islamic republic, ending into a police state. The most diverse and colorful characters are found in this part of the book. The film star couple who claims that artistic choices are influenced by the police state, Violet the journalist who is consumed by the self destructive intensity of her own writing and Nargis a Hare Krishna practitioner in Iran. He gets a first hand experience of police state where he is spied upon and interrogated and extension of his Visa is denied.
The last and the most intense part of this travelogue is Pakistan where he travels across the country from Islamabad, Hyderabad and Karachi. Some interesting encounters include a ’Mango King’ explaining the existence of feudal system while ruing the exit of the Hindu middle class after partition, Laxman the journalist and his publisher explaining the discrimination of the Muhajirs (Muslims who have migrated from India) and a young political who is saddened by the failure of the ‘idea’ of Pakistan, not of Islamic collective consciousness but an idea of many.
The author meets his father though the relationship continues to be uneasy and mostly cold.
The book beautifully intersperses btween the author’s relationship (or lack of it) with his father during his growing years and the travelogue. What is really fascinating about the book is the author’s keen sense of observation and assimilation without taking sides or passing judgments. The way he builds each of the characters and the way, in which their point of view is presented, it seems to be fairly coherent from their perspective. He avoids taking sides and we see the natural evolution from a secular Turkey which yearns for Islamic identity, the politics of religion in Syria, the authoritative state created under the guise of religion in Iran to a failed “idea” of a state in Pakistan. It also examines the interplay and interdependencies of faith, religion, culture and politics. For someone so young (he must have been 26 / 27 when this book was written) to show such clarity of thought, maturity and intellectual integrity is simply amazing. As a last point throughout the book we see the father as cold, indifferent almost ashamed of his son. So what drives the author again and again to try to reach and discover him? The answer is beautifully articulated by Aatish himself “I had sought my Father because I couldn’t live with the darkness of not knowing him. If I hadn’t, all my life I would have had to cover it up with some idea of him taken from my mother on faith. I felt it would have limited me. History should never be taken on faith”