A&L Nov_2018

10 questions for Ahsan Akbar
Ahsan Akbar is a poet and a director of Dhaka Lit Fest. His poetry collection,
The Devil’s Thumbprint, was published by Bengal Lights Books in 2013.
What are you reading right now?
Red Birds by Mohammed Hanif. And I just finished reading Last and First Men
by Johann Jóhannsson, which is magnificent.
Who did you nearly confirm for this year›s festival?
Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Ismail Kadare.
Who would be your five dream writers for a future edition of DLF?
Mario Vargas Llosa, Milan Kundera, Kazuo Ishiguro, Toni Morrison, Martin
Amis.
Describe this year’s festival in three words.
Fun. Inspiring. Provocative.
How, if at all, is DLF changing the perception of Bangladesh around the
world?
Bangladesh is now a positive topic of discussion in various international circles
where we were largely non-existent in the past, except maybe for natural
calamities. Along with the other festivals, we are not only connecting with our
deep roots in art, literature and music, we are definitely changing the way we
are viewed as a nation around the world.
Share a memorable event from a past edition of DLF.
Birdwatching with VS Naipaul at Jahangirnagar University.
Share a nerve-wracking moment from a past edition of DLF.
19 writers from the UK and US cancelling their participation during the run up
to our 2015 edition because of the blogger killings in Bangladesh.
What excites you most about the festival?
• The energy and enthusiasm of the youth who
attend our festival in large numbers, and last
year we exceeded 25,000 over three days.
• The occasional possibility of a relatively unknown
or “non-marquee” panel becoming a
much talked-about session in the programme.
Is there anything that makes DLF distinct from all
other festivals?
I attend festivals in the UK and the average price we
pay per session is between 15 and 25 pounds, which
can add up to a lot—i.e., 4-5 sessions per day over 3
days can rack up a ticket bill of approximately 30,000
takas.
Last month I had the opportunity to attend the
New Yorker Festival, where the tickets were priced at
79 dollars per session. Most literary festivals charge
per session, and it’s only a few that keep it free. We believe in the latter model
and in spite of budgetary constraints, we have been adamant to keep it free
and open for all.
We are unique in having an equally large presence of our own language in
the programme. Our efforts to promote translations and tackle difficult topics
head-on have gained us a certain credibility which also makes our programming
easier now than it was 6 or 7 years ago.
What advice would you give to anyone wishing to curate literary festivals of
this calibre?
To have a large appetite for everything, except sleep.•
PHOTO: COURTESY
A caustic look at US military interventions in ME
• Rifat Munim
Mohammed Hanif’s third novel, Red Birds, is set in a refugee camp
surrounded on all sides by a vast desert; both the place and the
desert are unnamed, and quite strangely so. But it doesn’t strain
a reader to gauge that it is a Middle Eastern country, war-torn,
and inhabited by Muslims. Maybe this sea of sandy expanse is in some part of
Afghanistan, or Iraq. One thing is certain, though, that this place is battered by
a blitz, routinely bombarded by the US air force, leaving entire neighborhoods
in a jumble of rubble, killing civilians, whether under-aged or old.
So unlike Khaled Hossaini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns in which we are certain
that it is set in Afghanistan, mostly in Kabul. But the difference goes much
deeper than that.
Hossaini writes a story that in more ways than one validates the official
narrative of US military interventions in Afghanistan. With a prose zinged sufficiently
with lyrical grace, he sketches his characters—Mariam, Laila—whose
mission to escape from their abusive husband is disrupted by the rise of the
Taliban. What follows is pretty much predictable for readers already familiar
with The Kite Runner: women beaten, abused, and when it comes to the
crunch, executed publicly by the Taliban. Yes, of course, they are finally saved
by US air raids that oust the Taliban and give the Afghans back their city where
now peace reigns. Taking my cue from Salman Rushdie’s acerbic critique of
David Attenborough’s biopic Gandhi (in Imaginary Homelands), I call it the
sins of omission at the expense of truth and political depth.
Hanif, on the other hand, gives us a story that looks at the saga of US military
interventions from an entirely opposite angle. The tone is scathingly sarcastic.
Stripped of rhetorical tinge, his narrative is thoroughly caustic; it burns
and scalds, just like the heat that arises constantly out of the desert as well
as the bombs falling from US fighter jets. But an apt combination of wit, irony,
and absurdity, diluted carefully with dabs of philosophical queries, turns
it into an impeccable satire that brings out the darker side of US-sponsored
wars and the commercial ventures associated with war-time
economy.
The narrative is divided between Major Ellie, an American
bombardier who finds himself lost in a desert upon a crash;
Momo, a 14-year old boy who drives a jeep Cheroke 3600 CC;
and Mutt, Momo’s dog who blindly loves his master. There is
no third person narrator; in each chapter, coming in the order
indicated above, either Ellie or Momo or Mutt talks about
their own crises and obsessions. Yes, Mutt is a character with
a consciousness and of all the characters introduced, he’s the
wittiest and most sensitive whose thoughts wax philosophical
every now and then. It is through these speeches that the
story progresses and other important characters grow. This
cycle of narration is kept up for the most part.
The central tension is about the disappearance of Momo’s
elder brother, Bro Ali, who, after working with the American
soldiers at the Hangar (an American re-fuelling base for US
forces) for several months, has disappeared mysteriously like many others of
his age.
When Ellie is found out almost dying out of starvation, Momo drives him
back to the very camp that he was assigned to bomb. Then there is the US-
AID consultant, always referred to as the “do-gooder”, who’s working on her
book about post-war or war-time “teenaged Muslim mind”. On top of ludicrously
ironic moments like these, the book is peppered abundantly with
thoughts, emotions, queries and observations that made me frequently roar
out in laughter just the way I did while reading Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha
of Suburbia, or Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint; at the same time, they’ve
also made me think deeply about all possible aspects of any US-imposed war,
from an Arab or Afghan mother or brother’s sense of loss to the absurdity of
international aid agencies to the humane sides of American soldiers and aid
workers.•
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DHAKA TRIBUNE | TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018
ARTS & LETTERS