Remapping Empire

A god in every stone

Author: Kamila Shamsie

Publisher: Bloomsbury,Rs 499

Several civilisations, including Greece, travelled through Peshawar before establishing themselves on their own. So what is an ‘East’, and what is the ‘West’? There is no absolute dichotomy in the perceptions of an East and a West, says author Kamila Shamsie in an interaction with  Ananya borgohain

Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie is not just a widely acknowledged and a multiple award winning novelist, but is also considered to be one of the finest writers of the 21st century. She is the daughter of the famous literary writer and editor Muneeza Shamsie, and niece of renowned feminist writer, Attia Hosain. Earlier this year, she attained British citizenship and was recently in India to release her newest novel which is set in Peshawar in pre-Independence India. It revolves around the themes of imperialism, orientalism and romance. Shamsie, an ardent admirer of Michael Ondaatje, talks about her fascination with archaeology, history and writing.

What is your earliest memory?

I grew up and studied in Karachi , though I turned a British citizen in the beginning of this year. I had a knack of writing since I was nine years old, that’s the first time I said that I wanted to be a writer. I have never wanted to be anything else. Even throughout school, I was always engaged in creating fiction, imagining. Then I went to university in America and published my first novel while still in the university. Since I hail from a literary background, I could communicate about my artistic inclinations at home. It always helps to have a family inclined towards literature and to grow up around books. When we read something that we find interesting, my mother and I discuss and exchange our opinions on the same. I always had a flair for writing and developed it over time .

What is A God In Every Stone about?

This novel is set in 1915 and 1930, most of it in Peshawar. There are two tracks running parallel to each other (but eventually they join), one about a British archaeologist Vivian Spencer who has come to Peshawar to find an ancient artifact. She is troubled by issues of loyalty and betrayal that surface in the background. The other story is about a Pathan, Qayyam Gul, a passionate soldier fighting in the First World War, but then he starts questioning his loyalty towards the British and then becomes involved in the Indian struggle for Independence. These two stories come together to reflect both the past and present of Peshawar.

Why have you chosen ancient history as your theme for the novel?

I was fascinated by Peshawar, which is a very ancient culture as a city. A few years ago, UNESCO named it South-Asia’s oldest city, older than even Benares. The Chinese, Alexander, the Sikhs, the great Buddhist centres, all came through Peshawar. There are these layers and layers of history and influences. This is where you find the Indo-Greek empire, the Ptolemy of the Punjab, a Gandhara statue Athena. Greece is very much a part of our heritage. So I used that, I was always fascinated by archaeology and gradually became interested in the freedom struggle or the massacre of 1930.

How did you research for the novel and how objective has that been?

I don’t try to be objective; what I try to do is to create characters with different perceptions of history and see it equally from their respective viewpoints. I see how a young British woman would perceive empire and how a Pathan soldier would see the same. Other than that, there are the usual research techniques. I went to the British library and museums, read a lot of records, went through many photographs, and so on. I also walked through Peshawar, going to places my characters would have passed through, say, the carpet-seller’s place to see what it would architecturally look like.

What does History mean to you? How do you look at an Empire built on the foundations of imperialism? More so, because your protagonist is a British orientalist. Is she an apologetic British romanticising the glorious Asian past?

History has always intrigued me. I grew up in Pakistan under the military rule when the official versions of ‘history’ and the un-discussed same were overlapping. I suppose I grew up with a feeling that we live in a space where a lot of history was ongoing but not told. The present is always trying to find ways to the past and use the history of its land and people. Depending on ideological preferences of the people, the historical accounts also vary. For instance, in Pakistan, the extremists are more interested in the history of ancient Gandhara history, the history of Buddhism. So histories develop according to ideological suitability.

The structures of Empire insisted on difference. What we think is romanticisation, in the context of the whole East-West encounter is actually racist. Empire was built on racism, with the idea that ‘we’ are better than these ‘other’ people. But because I was writing about it, what was important for me was to embody it and be uncritical about it.

As for imperialism, I am the colonised and not the colonial so I would not manifest an apology. I think what is interesting about Vivian’s journey is that she starts very much as an orientalist, and sees India as a place she has a right to. She has a sense of ownership but is both unaware and uncritical of it. However by the end, she shifts; she realises how violent and damaging it is and she moves away. So to me that journey is much more important. And in that last part where Najeeb writes that letter to her, one realises that she has become an anti-colonialist, an anti-Empire person. I wanted very much to have both the coloniser and the colonised in the narrative; I also wanted a female protagonist in a patriarchal world. Qayyum has a privilege over her because he is a man in a patriarchal world but she enjoys the privilege over him because she is the coloniser, so I was interested in that interplay.

As far as the narrative technique you have employed is concerned, was it a conscious decision to not have a solo narrator? Particularly in the sequence where Vivian and Qayyum meet, there are two narratives interplaying each other. Did you intend to distance yourself personally from the character which is why you chose to unfold it that way?

Not really, I write fiction and what interests me is that fiction invents characters. Some people do write fiction that is autobiographical but that has never appealed to me. Fiction to me is a way of dissociating your autobiographical details but examining your interests. This is where my interest in archaeology, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his Khuda-Khidmatgar come in together. My own character and life are not in the pages, but my interests are. It is mostly about imagination, we all make up stories and characters as children, and maybe writers never really grow up so that continues with them.

Has there been a change in the way you see the East-West dichotomy after having finished writing the book?

I don’t believe the East-West dichotomy exists. I think what exists are people with political interest and prejudices who pretend that the East and West are separate categories. But the more you look at history, the more you see that there have been interactions and transactions between different parts of the world, there has always been an overlapping. Like I mentioned, so many civilisations came through Peshawar. Greece in itself is a part of our heritage, so what is East and what is the West? I don’t subscribe to this dramatic notion that the world can be divided into the East and the West. I am not saying that differences don’t exist but they are very much political constructions.

How has the English language novel from the East changed in a global context?

I think in the last 30 years or so, the English language novel has changed enormously. It was earlier something that people associated with the Americans and British and mainly from the 1980s, there has been a significant change in that. It has also made possible to get multiple histories and viewpoints. You are not confined to Empires written by the British.Remapping Empire