Anum Yousaf
The aureate earthiness of the beautiful image on the cover sets the tone perfectly for “Between Clay and Dust”, Musharraf Ali Farooqi’s second novel. Because earthiness is what provides the cohesion for this creative enterprise. From the title which evokes it, to the narrative which is defined by it. The characters are all very earthy as is their sketching and the overall writing of the book. As well, because the novel at heart is about the characters’ struggle to preserve the ideal from the forces of the material.
It is a story about Ustad Ramzi, a pahalwan from an akhara, whose life is defined by his devotion to his art and how he wants to defend what he considers consecrated from ‘time’s proclivity for change’. He has a younger brother Tamami, who is the foil to his old-world ideals, an eager young upstart who wants all the glory but is thought of as unworthy of inheriting the sacrosanct trust that is not just the title of Ustad-e-Zaman won by Ramzi but the way of life held so dear by him. The gap of understanding between Tamami and Ramzi is the driving force behind their story; Tamami does everything with the intention of pleasing Ramzi but it always falls wayward of the strict standards of Ramzi who wants to preserve the code and way of the akhara. Not because Tamami is disrespectful but simply because he is unable to understand where his brother is coming from.
It is also the story of Gohar Jan, a beautiful courtesan similarly devoted to her art and the code of life it entails. But she is in many ways more cognisant of the forces of change than Ustad Ramzi. They have a connection in music and that is all that ties them perfunctorily for a major chunk of the story till the very end when their fates are inextricably entangled by the very forces of change they were resistant to. It’s a story simply told that speaks of how people deal with decay and degeneration and how change is difficult but inevitable.
Many aspects of the novel straddle the liminal space between the almost good and almost bad. Allow me to explain. What can be labelled as strengths of the novel in some places are precisely its weaknesses in others. For instance, the novel has a pervasive sense of familiarity which is a complement to its ambient folkloric tenor but this familiarity borders on humdrum predictability in places (such as the reason for Gohar Jan’s aloofness with Malka – an orphan girl left in her care, some altercations between Ustad Ramzi and Tamami). Similarly, the novel’s leisurely telling often degenerates into indolence and the glacial monotony of the narration often takes away from rather than adds value to the charm of the simplistic storytelling technique. Also, what could be euphemistically called subtlety in the novel is merely banality (e.g. sewerage water flooding a cemetery in a novel about decay and degeneration is as far from subtle as it gets!).
Also, the construction of the narrative is a bit haphazard. One feels odd saying this about a bite-sized narrative told in a straightforward, linear manner with a cast of less than ten characters. Because how could a deft writer go wrong with such a simple canvas? What could possibly be haphazard about such an uncomplicated narrative structure? Allow me to explain. Well, as one read through the novel, the flitting between the stories of Ustad Ramzi and Gohar Jan felt really random. The parallelism between their stories is laboriously obvious (both are guardians of dying art forms trying to save them from the ravages of time; both of them discover something about themselves and change as people while trying to perforce block change around them), The narrative, for a major part, draws nothing from the juxtaposition of their stories. This, thus, gives the narrative a rough-hewn edge rather than making it feel like an organic whole.
Having said that, one must appreciate that the writer has left the narrative unfettered from a lot of the trappings that writers from the subcontinent are susceptible to (e.g. tedious attempts to encapsulate the subcontinental ethos and the like). Even though the story is set in the immediate post-Partition era, the effects of Partition are not allowed to overshadow the story itself. Similarly, even though the story is set in an inner city much like Lahore’s, the inner city doesn’t become an over-romanticised character in the narrative; it remains merely a setting. The writer doesn’t employ Heera Mandi tropes that creep into stories set in such red light areas. The pahalwan akhara that he sketches could be as easily the back alleys of Delhi as it could be Lahore or Gujranwala.
The narrative is also unfettered by a lot of other things: back stories, extra characters, exoticised descriptions, melodrama. There’s none of that. The narrative landscape is desolate almost. And this forlornness adds to the atmospherics of the novel (one of its strong points). The fact that the narrative is bare-bones makes it ideal to foreground the emotional and the atmospherics only add to that. The emotional setpiece of the novel, the relation between Ustad Ramzi and Tamami, was very poignant.
Gohar Jan and Ustad Ramzi’s interaction felt superfluous and contrived for almost two-thirds of the novel but its resolution at the end packed a great emotional punch. The way Gohar Jan, despite her careful planning, was cheated by upholders of faith and morality and how Ustad Ramzi offered her space in what he considered hallowed ground was moving.
But the novel while emotionally articulate fell short of being emotionally nuanced. This is not nitpicking on one’s part. Allow me to explain, again. The emotional is written well in the novel. But the characters are never allowed to progress beyond archetypes. Ustad Ramzi, a stoic relic of the past adjusting to changing times. Gohar Jan, the prostitute with the heart of gold. Tamami, the arriviste, who gains status and power but not respect. Kabira, the sidekick who is often the ignored voice of reason. Gulab Deen, the unctuous wily operator. The fact that these characters are so archetypal means that their emotional interaction is archetypal too. Had the characters been sketched with a little more detail, it would have given their emotional interactions more nuance too. Not only emotional interactions with each other, but the character’s individual emotional journeys (Ramzi’s negotiation with his own physical power and self-control and how it affects him, Gohar Jan’s dedication to her craft and how it affects her) are also archetypal and not adequately explored.
Farooqi’s collection of stories for children and his op-ed columns for an English daily had a delightful sense of the absurd and it was very Dahl-esque writing with a sense of muted wonder at its heart. But while Dahl could transpose his quirk to writing for adults, Farooqi has unfortunately not been as successful. At the end of reading this novel, one gets the feeling that it would’ve made an awesome short story. As a novel, it isn’t bad per se. But it isn’t that good either. It’s just okay.
