Maniza Naqvi: Writing for a Cause

‘I can’t write a pretty novel,’ Maniza Naqvi says. This coming from an accomplished writer, who considers writing to be a form of rebellion and protest, is hardly surprising.

The author of three provocative novels, Naqvi says, “I can’t think of novel writing as being anything but political so comes to me as a shock when people talk about novels as being entertainment. I’ve read wonderful novels that are entertaining but for myself I’ve always thought of novels as something about rebellion or change and that’s what I wrote for. Fiction is written to be able to tell the truth and it the only genuine way or the acceptable way of actually being honest”.

Although for the past ten years Ms. Naqvi has been living in Washington, D. C. where she is a micro-finance and social policy specialist at the World Bank, she considers Pakistan to be her point of reference for everything. “I can’t explain it, justify it or analyze it but I have not been able to break away from Pakistan. I’m physically here but mentally there. I wake up here, but in a way I wake up there too. So after all these years that I’ve been out of Pakistan, I feel totally connected to it”.

It is Pakistan, which provides the inspiration for much of her writing and compels her to write about predominantly socio-political themes. “We the people of Pakistan have been through so much like the ‘65 and ‘71 wars, the execution of the Prime Minister, General Zia’s dictatorship, one cannot possibly stay uninvolved with politics. I hesitate to say that I somehow always felt these things a little bit more than others because that is to sit in judgement but I felt it enough to want to write about. That’s why my novels have the themes that they do”. Her first novel Mass Transit, which is based in Karachi focuses on the themes of immigrant dislocation, rapid urbanization, the military rule in the country and the Partition. ‘In a microcosm Karachi signifies and symbolizes Pakistan. Whatever happens in Karachi is very symptomatic of whatever else is happening in the rest of the country’, she says. Her second novel, On Air, explores the underlying state of crisis in the society through the perspective of a personal crisis, as the main character hosts a radio talk show over a six-hour period. Naqvi uses the metaphor of a late night radio talk show as a symbol for modernity, isolation, repression and community among other things.

‘Stay with Me’ the third novel, which she describes as the ‘most hard hitting one’, focuses on a disturbing story of a victim who moves in and out of consciousness, representing the struggle of human spirit over tyranny while exploring memory as a ‘burden of choices’. “I wanted to write of remembrance and about love as a tribute to all those who took a stand, stayed the course, they stay with me. I wanted to write about how imagination saves, how love endures, saves and triumphs, the geography of relationships, about human will and the supremacy of the mind. All these themes came together for me in the context of a secret incarceration, interrogation and torture and so the novel is set in the context of a jail cell and the spaces that occupy memory’, Naqvi says. ‘I wanted to write about a life interrogated, a region’s history interrogated and the history of Pakistan, the region and the world in its context. I wanted to write about the ISI, the military and about the endless abrogation of rights. I wanted to be able to express my sense of outrage and my protest. I wanted that to register”.

Although Naqvi is not vague in the least bit about the significant role that the Pakistan military plays in this novel, she does not take names. ‘It would take away from the book. I wanted the novel to mean as much to us as it would mean to two strangers sitting over there’, she says, as we sit at a café on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. ‘They would understand it differently and giving specific names would prevent them from it. I wanted to make it even more ambiguous, but people who read the book before it was published felt it was disorienting and painful. So I decided to give Hamza the main character a name, which was very deliberate on my part, because I firmly believe that the younger officers in the military have a very different mindset. They have a genuine love for country and they live decent lives, I was hoping that the character of Hamza would almost be a call to arms since he basically anesthetizes Pakistan’.

Writing a political novel in Pakistan being such a risk, Naqvi commends her publishers for taking this risk and is full of praise for Yasmeen Quraishi and Tayyaba Habib of the recently founded Sama Editorial and Publishing Services. “The amazing thing is that they picked this novel, which is so political, as their first novel. It really took a lot of courage to print this novel in Pakistan. I would have expected them to take on something that would not be a risk or would fly under the radar”, she says. As for Naqvi herself, formidable subjects obviously do not seem to intimidate her nor does she seem impelled to write for the sake of pleasing others. “I write for myself. If I start thinking about what the reader would think, I would be dishonest. I would not even resonate with the reader. If I’m honest and writing for myself, people will recognize me for what I am’.

In her writing, Naqvi says she takes on subjects close to her heart. She chose to write about torture, violence, oppression and persecution, because she felt that for her it was the most logical thing to write about. “Doesn’t it happen every day in the US, in Pakistan and everywhere? Repression and military governments have a logical other side and that is torture. Politically every time there is an occupation or colonization, military dictatorship it cannot be that there will not be harm and secret violence. The tragedy of our society is that we don’t ask questions”, she says. “Violence, its organization and place in our societies; its place within us; its control and rule over us; and our own stakes in its enterprise demands that no one speak the truth without consequences. Whether, truths about an individual, a family, a community or a country the only way left to speak it, write about it and be heard is to call it fiction. Violence requires a lack of narrative of the other. It requires that the other remain silent or be articulated through a single voice”.

“A multitude of narratives, all versions of reality prevent the rise and tyranny of a singular narrative. And in this way, through a multitude of stories, a balance is maintained and truth whether it exists or not is safeguarded by not being singled out”, she says. ‘In receiving these narratives we are able to reason that all versions matter; all must be given consideration; that all opinions must be questioned and that all perceptions have validity. In the absence of a multitude of narratives, reason remains ruined. I see reason ruined every day in newspapers, in images on TV channels and in the stacks of books, the so called literature of experts on all things Muslim, Pakistani and Middle eastern’, Naqvi says

“Look at what the US journalists did to Pakistan over the last three years, portraying the people as though there is something genetically and religiously wrong with us”, she says. She finds the writing by upcoming new English writer in Pakistan to be very encouraging. “Writing in English and English novels can only be a good thing no matter how they’re being written. I think its such a positive sign because Pakistani’s may not need it but we certainly need a body of work that defines who we are for the outside world. It’s important because it helps articulate, shape and give flesh and blood for outsider. We get to define Pakistan in our own words, rather than some foreign writers come in to do that for us”.

Although she seems very appreciative of English fiction coming from Pakistan, she feels that it is somewhat elitist and says, “ Somehow English seems to have become a badge of honor. Authors do not have to belong to a certain group, class or region to be right. They have to empathize. Writing is about being able to read yourself in others and be able to look at something totally different than yourself and embody that. That is what humanity is got to be about and what being human is about otherwise all writing becomes autobiographical. A novel has to be something beyond yourself. As human beings we are not different from each other at all. We may have different experiences but pain and joy we all feel and at some basic level we have the same stories to tell.”