1 00:00:07,140 --> 00:00:16,860 It's with great pleasure that we welcome Kamila Shamsie to this to this second half hour of our conversation on writing and reading, 2 00:00:16,860 --> 00:00:29,910 just a short introduction. Camilla is the author of six novels in the City by the Sea Cartography, Salt and Saffron, Broken versus Burnt Shadows. 3 00:00:29,910 --> 00:00:34,980 And most recently, the book that some of us have been reading and we've been reading in the last hour 4 00:00:34,980 --> 00:00:42,030 together a God in Every Stone Burnt Shadows was shortlisted for the Orange Prise for 5 00:00:42,030 --> 00:00:46,920 fiction and a God in every stone was shortlisted for the Bailies Prise the Walter 6 00:00:46,920 --> 00:00:52,620 Scott Prise for historical fiction and also the DSC Prise for South Asian Literature. 7 00:00:52,620 --> 00:01:01,050 Three of her novels have been have received awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters, and she is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 8 00:01:01,050 --> 00:01:07,290 And in 2013, very excited. She was named Granta, a Granta best of young British novelist. 9 00:01:07,290 --> 00:01:12,240 She grew up in Karachi and she is now based in London and lives in London. 10 00:01:12,240 --> 00:01:17,120 So you're very, very welcome and thank you. 11 00:01:17,120 --> 00:01:24,090 You have kindly agreed to give some readings at one at the beginning, one at the end, and they will have discussion in in the middle. 12 00:01:24,090 --> 00:01:27,240 And I think you all enjoy this. 13 00:01:27,240 --> 00:01:37,240 One of the readings that Camilla had thought to give is from the second book, a scene that we were touching on earlier. 14 00:01:37,240 --> 00:01:48,030 All right, so this is 25th April 1930, we have the Englishwomen Vivien Spencer in Bishar, 15 00:01:48,030 --> 00:01:55,520 she's discovered something the night before that makes her really not want to be with the other. 16 00:01:55,520 --> 00:01:59,570 Well, her compatriots really, and all the women and children, 17 00:01:59,570 --> 00:02:06,820 English women and children have been ordered to leave Bashour because it's there's a lot of trouble in the city. 18 00:02:06,820 --> 00:02:13,450 So here we are and there's a man called REMIC who appears he's a political agent, 19 00:02:13,450 --> 00:02:19,150 rather unpleasant one that walking through the train station and across the railway bridge, 20 00:02:19,150 --> 00:02:22,450 VIFF was able to consider the burqa as the invisibility cape. 21 00:02:22,450 --> 00:02:28,600 She had longed for the child beneath the white, and she moved in an entirely private sphere, 22 00:02:28,600 --> 00:02:35,860 unknown and seen the policeman standing near the station lavatory who had taken note of Miss Spencer as she entered, 23 00:02:35,860 --> 00:02:39,160 paid no attention to the woman in the burqa who emerged. 24 00:02:39,160 --> 00:02:45,760 The English women and children who waited on the platform for the train to evacuate them from Peshawar looked straight through her. 25 00:02:45,760 --> 00:02:47,740 REMIC, who had personally accompanied her. 26 00:02:47,740 --> 00:02:54,830 Her hair from Deane's was too busy sneezing loudly into the handkerchief to pay attention to a local woman who steps didn't falter. 27 00:02:54,830 --> 00:03:02,830 As she walked past him, though, she ducked her head so that the shimmer of her blue eyes wouldn't be visible beneath the face mesh beyond the bridge. 28 00:03:02,830 --> 00:03:10,690 At the end of the metal road, Kabuli gate was open a doorway into a world entirely unlike the one she was leaving behind. 29 00:03:10,690 --> 00:03:16,480 Viv steadied herself against the railing of the bridge, looked over her shoulder towards a train station, 30 00:03:16,480 --> 00:03:21,060 she might just have enough time to return before anyone noticed she disappeared. 31 00:03:21,060 --> 00:03:24,360 Another few minutes, though, and someone would raise an alarm. 32 00:03:24,360 --> 00:03:32,430 The woman in the white burqa would be mentioned, REMIC would understand that you'd set out to betray him, to betray the empire itself. 33 00:03:32,430 --> 00:03:37,680 She tried to see if she could recognise REMIC amongst all the Englishmen gathered on the station with their wives. 34 00:03:37,680 --> 00:03:41,390 But her latest vision made it impossible. She pulled the face. 35 00:03:41,390 --> 00:03:50,190 Meshad was a few inches away from her eyes. Squinted, Gerstmann dropped her hand and continued onto Kabuli gate. 36 00:03:50,190 --> 00:03:55,740 It was true all the troops had withdrawn from the world city, but the cry of the shower has fallen, 37 00:03:55,740 --> 00:04:00,030 which had sent everyone at the club into such a panic the previous night seemed ridiculous 38 00:04:00,030 --> 00:04:05,130 as she walked to the wide open gates and into the bustle of the street of storytellers, 39 00:04:05,130 --> 00:04:09,030 the smells of cooking meat, the calls of traders, the variety of turbans. 40 00:04:09,030 --> 00:04:14,220 It was all as before. But even so, something was off kilter. 41 00:04:14,220 --> 00:04:19,920 It took a little while to decide that the difference was in her in making her just another local woman. 42 00:04:19,920 --> 00:04:28,590 The burka took away her very English right to be a centrist. Now she couldn't stop and stare point to things that struck her as unusual. 43 00:04:28,590 --> 00:04:34,320 Ask questions and to all male domains expect to be treated with a certain deference. 44 00:04:34,320 --> 00:04:38,820 She'd never known she'd expected this simply by virtue of her race. 45 00:04:38,820 --> 00:04:45,810 So it's me, she told herself. All that's different is me. But she knew this wasn't true. 46 00:04:45,810 --> 00:04:50,700 She had left the Bashour club as soon as she was able to slip away from Remick the previous night, 47 00:04:50,700 --> 00:04:53,820 returning to Deane's to sit on the ledge of her bedroom window, 48 00:04:53,820 --> 00:04:59,130 smoking cigarettes and drinking gin from a bottle, listening to crickets and night birds. 49 00:04:59,130 --> 00:05:02,640 If she closed her eyes, she saw corpses laid on corpses, 50 00:05:02,640 --> 00:05:09,160 pale hands lifting the dead out of their own blood and throwing them like broken into the back of a lorry. 51 00:05:09,160 --> 00:05:16,830 But what could she do about it? She was just a woman with no authority on either side of the city walls. 52 00:05:16,830 --> 00:05:20,010 It was well after midnight when REMIC knocked on her door, 53 00:05:20,010 --> 00:05:26,580 he'd come to remind her all women and children were being evacuated the next morning and she must be ready to leave first thing. 54 00:05:26,580 --> 00:05:27,360 As he spoke, 55 00:05:27,360 --> 00:05:35,880 he looked around her room in the manner of a man practised at finding anything out of place and noticing the burqa slung over the back of a chair, 56 00:05:35,880 --> 00:05:40,560 walked up to it and stroked the whitecotton. Put this on, he said. 57 00:05:40,560 --> 00:05:44,310 Why put it on and take your dress off. Get out. 58 00:05:44,310 --> 00:05:46,170 I'll scream the roof down. 59 00:05:46,170 --> 00:05:54,870 He left, shrugging, but when he had gone with the burka off the chair and the fabric between her fingers felt like an answer. 60 00:05:54,870 --> 00:06:00,270 But now she approached the carpet seller's house in the Old City and the voice in her head grew louder. 61 00:06:00,270 --> 00:06:06,410 Stay out of it. And then this thought, these people are not your people. 62 00:06:06,410 --> 00:06:10,370 She looked down the longest and saw only batons despite the burqa. 63 00:06:10,370 --> 00:06:17,540 She felt exposed and turned sharply into a street so narrow. The man walking in the other direction couldn't pass her without contact. 64 00:06:17,540 --> 00:06:20,630 He flapped his hands at her as if she were a flock of pigeons, 65 00:06:20,630 --> 00:06:27,020 and she found herself reversing in rapid but tiny steps so she wouldn't trip over the hem of a burqa. 66 00:06:27,020 --> 00:06:32,060 It was only when a doorway opened and she saw the woman standing there garishly made up 67 00:06:32,060 --> 00:06:37,130 that she realised what he feared was in the that wasn't the contamination of her Dutch, 68 00:06:37,130 --> 00:06:40,520 but a witness to what the men of the city did here. 69 00:06:40,520 --> 00:06:47,870 A street for everything in the world, city, no map, only desire to show you the street of storytellers, 70 00:06:47,870 --> 00:06:55,250 the street of courtesan's beneath the burqa, she was sweating and it was impossible to wipe the perspiration from her forehead. 71 00:06:55,250 --> 00:07:01,670 Back on the broad avenue, she saw a woman in the bright clothes of a nomad girl out to a man with a wide brimmed basket 72 00:07:01,670 --> 00:07:06,770 on his head who squatted down and allowed her to pluck out the most appealing melons. 73 00:07:06,770 --> 00:07:13,040 A man walked along the pavement with a large cone of cloth beneath his arm from the tapered base of the cone. 74 00:07:13,040 --> 00:07:17,030 Green and blue iridescence emerged from the wide mouth. 75 00:07:17,030 --> 00:07:20,630 Three beaked heads pulled out a hat or melons. 76 00:07:20,630 --> 00:07:26,780 A bouquet of peacocks in another time should have viewed these sites with delight light of the Oriental colour. 77 00:07:26,780 --> 00:07:31,460 But the melon seller was standing beneath the burnt, burnt remnants of a Union Jack. 78 00:07:31,460 --> 00:07:37,550 The peacock area was walking towards Kabuli gate, through which the armoured cars and troops had rushed in. 79 00:07:37,550 --> 00:07:45,240 This was the world she was now in. Or perhaps she'd been here all along unseen. 80 00:07:45,240 --> 00:07:54,930 Thank you. Thank you. Um, I have a number of questions I could ask just about that passage, but but just to sort of as we're warming up and start. 81 00:07:54,930 --> 00:08:03,810 Start us out. Could you tell us a little bit about the sort of for you the background to God in every stone? 82 00:08:03,810 --> 00:08:12,780 Just I know I've heard you speak very interestingly about how you came to that, that lost history, that period history. 83 00:08:12,780 --> 00:08:17,460 Just a little bit about that or what what sort of what inspired or motivated you in? 84 00:08:17,460 --> 00:08:20,460 In the beginning, there were two different points. 85 00:08:20,460 --> 00:08:29,160 One was was the much earlier point, which was I was reading a book called The Pattana Unarmed by Mollica Bannerjee, 86 00:08:29,160 --> 00:08:37,320 which is about the sort of movement, the non-violent movement of resistance to colonial rule in Peshawar. 87 00:08:37,320 --> 00:08:45,060 And it struck me as very odd that when I was growing up in Pakistan, it was not a history I knew. 88 00:08:45,060 --> 00:08:52,980 And of course, because the that movement was not a pro Pakistan movement, they were anti British rule, 89 00:08:52,980 --> 00:08:59,760 but they didn't support the state of Pakistan, so they didn't fit into to the Pakistani official narrative. 90 00:08:59,760 --> 00:09:04,020 And of course, you weren't going to hear about them much in the British narrative of things either. 91 00:09:04,020 --> 00:09:09,390 So it had sort of become that had become a sort of history that Pakistan had pushed aside and I didn't know much of. 92 00:09:09,390 --> 00:09:12,630 And it struck me as particularly interesting because, you know, 93 00:09:12,630 --> 00:09:17,070 when you hear of the Pashtuns are the Pashtuns, it's always how did this Marschall race? 94 00:09:17,070 --> 00:09:19,860 And they'll never put down their guns and then move towards violence. 95 00:09:19,860 --> 00:09:27,030 And it's still a narrative you hear, particularly around Afghanistan and the Taliban, that this is the Pashtun people and what they're like. 96 00:09:27,030 --> 00:09:36,840 And to that, the fact that the most powerful political movement there through the 1930s and 40s was one of non-violent resistance, 97 00:09:36,840 --> 00:09:42,060 very much rooted in the Pashtun good structure is very interesting. So that was one bit of it. 98 00:09:42,060 --> 00:09:49,140 But that was sort of a, you know, abstract historical interest and not really a sort of novelistic one. 99 00:09:49,140 --> 00:09:56,790 And then some years later, in 2009, I was in Pakistan and I was doing the rounds of TV studios and things, 100 00:09:56,790 --> 00:10:03,540 promoting my previous novel called Burn Shadows, which starts with the bombing of Nagasaki and sort of moves on. 101 00:10:03,540 --> 00:10:10,770 And in 2009, the Taliban in Pakistan had taken over quite a lot of territory and were very near the city of Peshawar. 102 00:10:10,770 --> 00:10:15,570 And there was almost daily, certainly weekly bombs going off in Peshawar. 103 00:10:15,570 --> 00:10:20,550 And I was on a sort of talk show and I was then the next was a sort of political 104 00:10:20,550 --> 00:10:28,860 commentator who was going to talk about all these bombs going off everywhere. And there was a break in filming for a commercial break. 105 00:10:28,860 --> 00:10:32,760 And the TV host had been talking me about my novel, said said, oh, look, you know, 106 00:10:32,760 --> 00:10:37,920 you've written this book about bombs in Nagasaki and they're bombs going off in Peshawar and was just a throwaway remark. 107 00:10:37,920 --> 00:10:42,810 But as he said it, I realised that because of all the research I had done for Burnt Shadows, 108 00:10:42,810 --> 00:10:47,070 I actually knew a lot more about Nagasaki than I did about Bishar, 109 00:10:47,070 --> 00:10:50,760 which is sort of an odd thing to explain to someone who hasn't grown up in Pakistan. 110 00:10:50,760 --> 00:10:57,330 But there's a way in which Bashour sort of exists at the border of the imagination, even of most Pakistanis, you know, 111 00:10:57,330 --> 00:11:05,040 sort of the city right before Afghanistan, where the history becomes very tangled up with Afghanistan's history. 112 00:11:05,040 --> 00:11:12,360 And it's sort of almost seen. I'm the same kind of language that the British used to joke about it as a sort of frontier place. 113 00:11:12,360 --> 00:11:17,770 This wild place is how the Pakistanis will still talk about in many parts. 114 00:11:17,770 --> 00:11:26,940 So you grew up in Karachi or Lahore, and it's not really part of your imagination, even though it's one of the bigger cities there. 115 00:11:26,940 --> 00:11:34,110 So as a matter of interest, I just thought, well, it sort of felt ethically wrong somehow to not know more about this place. 116 00:11:34,110 --> 00:11:40,440 So I just started doing some research. And also I was thinking, you know. Partly about McClellan's book and how when I read that, 117 00:11:40,440 --> 00:11:46,710 that was a bit of history of Bashour or the areas around it that I didn't know and as soon as I started researching, 118 00:11:46,710 --> 00:11:50,930 what I came to, of course, was the deep historical archaeological past. 119 00:11:50,930 --> 00:12:00,030 So this is a city that has been continually inhabited since at least the sixth century B.C., possibly much earlier, 120 00:12:00,030 --> 00:12:07,590 and every sort of practically every empire that other than the Brits that have come into India have come through Bishar, 121 00:12:07,590 --> 00:12:13,620 because it's at the foot of the Khyber Pass and it's how you're going to come in if you're heading in that direction. 122 00:12:13,620 --> 00:12:19,260 And it has all these histories from the sort of Alexander Buddhist and the kingdoms and 123 00:12:19,260 --> 00:12:23,970 the Muslims and everything and the bit of me that has always loved ancient history, 124 00:12:23,970 --> 00:12:27,910 just sort of. Oh. Something's going to happen. 125 00:12:27,910 --> 00:12:36,790 Yes, that was really, really interesting and and eye opening, actually, 126 00:12:36,790 --> 00:12:47,350 I think for for someone who's who's read the novel, when you were when you were giving that response, 127 00:12:47,350 --> 00:12:57,520 you were very much positioning yourself, if I may say so, as as a Pakistani writer, you were telling a story that was unknown. 128 00:12:57,520 --> 00:13:07,900 You were also addressing yourself to a context that you felt was on the limits of what was the known world for for the Pakistani reader. 129 00:13:07,900 --> 00:13:14,380 You also spoke, however, in a sort of in a very sort of familiar almost with a term of endearment, 130 00:13:14,380 --> 00:13:22,780 the Brits when the Brits, apart from the Brits, you know, so there was a familiarity there with that history. 131 00:13:22,780 --> 00:13:31,120 I wondered how you as a writer were positioning your readers when you were when 132 00:13:31,120 --> 00:13:37,900 when you began to write this this fiction that with its historical embedding, 133 00:13:37,900 --> 00:13:45,970 if you like, I think any novelist who positions the readers is fundamentally failing to understand the novel. 134 00:13:45,970 --> 00:13:49,780 The novel does not work because it has a readership. 135 00:13:49,780 --> 00:14:00,740 The novel works precisely because it can accommodate a multiplicity of readings so it can work from a position of familiarity. 136 00:14:00,740 --> 00:14:11,650 It can work from a position of unfamiliarity. You know, in Pakistan in the 80s when Midnight's Children and Shame came out and I remember as a very, 137 00:14:11,650 --> 00:14:17,020 very young people reading this and just sort of laughing and loving these books and saying, 138 00:14:17,020 --> 00:14:21,670 but how on earth people in England reading them, they won't understand anything because, 139 00:14:21,670 --> 00:14:25,260 of course, there was so much in there that was very, very familiar. 140 00:14:25,260 --> 00:14:32,810 And I remember at one point some Pakistani I know talking to this wonderful Kashmiri political okasha Heatherly, 141 00:14:32,810 --> 00:14:40,180 who'd been my teacher and saying, you're making this point that, you know, how do these people in in Britain understand these books? 142 00:14:40,180 --> 00:14:44,620 And try to give me an example and suspense as well, for instance, in the novel Shame, 143 00:14:44,620 --> 00:14:53,640 there's this he refers to this place called the Valley of Needles, which is where the sort of gas reserves come from. 144 00:14:53,640 --> 00:15:00,940 He said, well, everyone in Pakistan knows that, that the gas reserves come from a place called SUI, which is literally translated as needles. 145 00:15:00,940 --> 00:15:05,650 And she said, well, I wish I didn't know that because, you know, just said it's a place called Souley is not interesting. 146 00:15:05,650 --> 00:15:08,380 But but the Valley, as soon as you say the Valley of Needles, 147 00:15:08,380 --> 00:15:13,150 I sort of have an image of a valley full of these needles and gas coming off the eye of every needle. 148 00:15:13,150 --> 00:15:20,430 And it's sort of really fantastic and brilliant. And so, in fact, it's a ritual reading if you don't know it's a direct translation. 149 00:15:20,430 --> 00:15:25,030 So we're just one of those moments in which you can read it in these different ways. 150 00:15:25,030 --> 00:15:29,680 Is it familiar or is it unfamiliar? I knew when I was writing this, 151 00:15:29,680 --> 00:15:33,760 I certainly hoped when I was writing it that there would be people who knew Bashour 152 00:15:33,760 --> 00:15:39,010 intimately as I didn't and knew the history intimately as I didn't and were part of it. 153 00:15:39,010 --> 00:15:44,200 I knew there'd be people from Karachi like me who were Pakistanis but didn't know the history. 154 00:15:44,200 --> 00:15:52,540 I knew there would be British folk who were coming at it from knowing the history of empire from a different way. 155 00:15:52,540 --> 00:16:00,260 I didn't particularly think, you know, what the thing you know is as a writer, as, of course, you. 156 00:16:00,260 --> 00:16:07,370 Need people to have a certain facility with language that they understand such things as irony being used. 157 00:16:07,370 --> 00:16:12,470 I mean, that's the kind of thing you you are thinking about. 158 00:16:12,470 --> 00:16:19,040 But if someone does not use it, you just say, well, some some readers you lose along the way. 159 00:16:19,040 --> 00:16:27,180 But I was I suppose I put it this way, what I aim for. 160 00:16:27,180 --> 00:16:35,640 Is for the book to be satisfying to someone who knows more than I do about everything I'm writing about. 161 00:16:35,640 --> 00:16:39,450 That's a reader who I want to say, you're right, you did OK. 162 00:16:39,450 --> 00:16:48,900 And so one of the greatest pleasures of writing this book is there's someone I know in Karachi who came up to me and said, I grew up in Peshawar. 163 00:16:48,900 --> 00:16:51,480 How did you write that book? 164 00:16:51,480 --> 00:16:58,350 Because she said she's the new I met your sister when I said I never knew your family spent time in Peshawar and that we didn't. 165 00:16:58,350 --> 00:17:03,180 And she said, but it's all there. All my childhood memories of that tree we used to climb. 166 00:17:03,180 --> 00:17:08,640 And I don't know what she's talking about, but she found some tree shoes to climb that I'd written about, apparently. 167 00:17:08,640 --> 00:17:15,060 And she said everything is a puzzle that's now gone, but still was lingering when I was growing up. 168 00:17:15,060 --> 00:17:20,160 So that makes me feel very lively, you know. So, yeah, it is always it's never, I think, 169 00:17:20,160 --> 00:17:24,810 to start over with the assumption that I'm going to teach people or I have to 170 00:17:24,810 --> 00:17:29,160 talk down or I have to assume that my readers know less about the subject. 171 00:17:29,160 --> 00:17:32,520 I think there's a real failure in a novel when that happens, 172 00:17:32,520 --> 00:17:41,280 because why would you ever want to write a novel with people who know the subject, feeling bored and talk down to me? 173 00:17:41,280 --> 00:17:48,990 Can you say a little bit more about the remarkable story that you weave? 174 00:17:48,990 --> 00:17:58,800 You can take this question in any way you like, because it's a story that is I mean, it's incredibly moving it towards the end. 175 00:17:58,800 --> 00:18:05,250 It gathers pace so that, you know, what is a historical fiction becomes a page turner. 176 00:18:05,250 --> 00:18:10,000 I, I couldn't put it down. And it's a cliche, but it's true. 177 00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:24,720 Um, how can you just talk a little bit from your perspective as a as a craftsperson, as a maker of stories, how that worked for you? 178 00:18:24,720 --> 00:18:34,920 It's a big question very badly for a long time. What is now the end of the book, which is the scenes around you, that particular instance, 179 00:18:34,920 --> 00:18:39,770 the street, a storyteller, even the young girl was actually the first thing I wrote. 180 00:18:39,770 --> 00:18:43,460 So that is going to be the beginning of the novel in the novel is going to move forward from it, 181 00:18:43,460 --> 00:18:47,270 except as I was writing, that I thought, no, actually I'm really interested in. 182 00:18:47,270 --> 00:18:56,240 So there was this figure of this older brother who was just, you know, he was sort of one sentence in there or three sentences. 183 00:18:56,240 --> 00:19:00,050 And I thought, I am really interested in him because one of the sentences was here was this man. 184 00:19:00,050 --> 00:19:04,660 He used to be in the British Indian army and was now in this sort of unarmed army. 185 00:19:04,660 --> 00:19:06,650 I I'm interested in him. 186 00:19:06,650 --> 00:19:13,280 So it became this weird thing where I thought I was going to start in nineteen thirty and move forward actually to the present day. 187 00:19:13,280 --> 00:19:21,230 But I said stop 1930 and then I thought, no, no, I want to go back to how these characters got here. 188 00:19:21,230 --> 00:19:26,030 So it was sort of very upside down, but I still had the idea that I would keep going forward. 189 00:19:26,030 --> 00:19:33,770 So in fact, the first draught of it, I had this whole three chapter sections. 190 00:19:33,770 --> 00:19:41,860 There was one three chapter section 1915, one in nineteen thirty one in 1947, one in nineteen sixty. 191 00:19:41,860 --> 00:19:51,520 Six or so one in 1983, and I was writing my way through them and getting more and more stock and realising something had gone very, 192 00:19:51,520 --> 00:19:56,560 very badly wrong, and then I realised that actually for me, the novel was in the 1950s, in the 1930s section. 193 00:19:56,560 --> 00:20:05,560 And everything I'd done since then wasn't working. So I deleted 10 months of work and then went back to what was really at that point, about 60 pages. 194 00:20:05,560 --> 00:20:12,310 And then the 60 pages became the novel. And what now happens, at least for this reader, 195 00:20:12,310 --> 00:20:18,910 is that everything as a work converges on that point where once you've read the novel and think back over it, 196 00:20:18,910 --> 00:20:27,180 it all sort of homes in to to that point. 197 00:20:27,180 --> 00:20:35,040 What can you say about controlling those narrative threads once, 198 00:20:35,040 --> 00:20:40,260 as were the 10 months had been taken away, controlling the narrative threads of the of the 19, 199 00:20:40,260 --> 00:20:53,030 14, 15, which also in the light of the past, you know, that archaeological history and then and then that's that back and forth with with with 19. 200 00:20:53,030 --> 00:21:03,120 The 1930s. Yeah. Well, I suppose it is that I knew there were these different strands in it. 201 00:21:03,120 --> 00:21:08,940 One was the ancient history, the deep history of Bashar that I want to tell, 202 00:21:08,940 --> 00:21:16,290 which is going to be done via this artefact that was going to come in search of. 203 00:21:16,290 --> 00:21:20,520 And the other was the story of the non-violent path, 204 00:21:20,520 --> 00:21:31,840 which starts actually in the First World War and sort of how in the way that war can make someone turn against violence and. 205 00:21:31,840 --> 00:21:41,110 But actually, what in some odd way, what really was the centring thing was a story from the sixth century B.C. of a man called Skylarks, 206 00:21:41,110 --> 00:21:46,770 which was sort of a story that is the very few details in history, lovers making up. 207 00:21:46,770 --> 00:21:56,380 But what we do sort of know what is Herodotus tells, as we kind of know, actually, other people say this is what in the sixth century B.C., 208 00:21:56,380 --> 00:22:06,580 the Emperor Durai sends a man called Skylarks to chart the course of the Indus River, which is then at the border of the Persian Empire. 209 00:22:06,580 --> 00:22:14,050 And he wants him to chart it so that the U.S. can then send his fleet and conquer much of India. 210 00:22:14,050 --> 00:22:17,350 So that was the first thing. And I just like the idea of this man called Skylarks. 211 00:22:17,350 --> 00:22:20,320 But the more I read into these little snippets you find here and there. 212 00:22:20,320 --> 00:22:30,310 So, for instance, Skylarks was from a place called Korea and Korea was part of the Persian Empire, but it was sort of at the furthest point. 213 00:22:30,310 --> 00:22:41,170 So it was you know, it was to the absolute west of the Persian Empire in the way that Bashar was to the absolute west of the British Indian Empire. 214 00:22:41,170 --> 00:22:48,070 And the people of Korea at some point revolted against the Bush Persian overlords and 215 00:22:48,070 --> 00:22:54,130 a man called Skylarks about 30 years after our explorer Skylarks made his journey. 216 00:22:54,130 --> 00:23:00,190 And and we we're told he sort of greatly trusted by the king, by the emperor to rise, to be given this role. 217 00:23:00,190 --> 00:23:08,410 He sort of honoured by the emperor Darius. And about 30 years later, there's a revolt in Korea against the Persians. 218 00:23:08,410 --> 00:23:17,440 And a man called Skylarks writes a very sort of glorifying history of one of the princes who leads that revolt. 219 00:23:17,440 --> 00:23:23,470 We don't know if it's the same skylarks, but we do know that First Skylarks the navigator was a writer. 220 00:23:23,470 --> 00:23:26,170 He wrote great tales of his travels. And it just struck me. 221 00:23:26,170 --> 00:23:36,850 Wouldn't that be really interesting if if the skylarks who was so honoured and trusted by the King and helped him conquer further parts of the empire, 222 00:23:36,850 --> 00:23:45,370 that 30 or so years later, that man actually his loyalties are with the place of his birth and he sees his people as 223 00:23:45,370 --> 00:23:50,320 essentially colonised and wants to be on the side of those who are fighting the king. 224 00:23:50,320 --> 00:23:55,900 And that story, as it revealed itself that became a huge story. 225 00:23:55,900 --> 00:24:07,330 So that became the story of the 1950 1930 soldier. And because Skylarks was the man who this woman, Lviv, was interested in, I belong to him. 226 00:24:07,330 --> 00:24:11,230 So it also, even though he's he's not in there that much, 227 00:24:11,230 --> 00:24:19,930 but his story sort of became the grounding and centring thing from which everything else in in the novel really radiated. 228 00:24:19,930 --> 00:24:27,370 Yes. There's about convergence onto that point through the narrative and then a radiation out with the accent on radiation out. 229 00:24:27,370 --> 00:24:37,930 I'd like to open out now to to the audience, to the other readers in the room. 230 00:24:37,930 --> 00:24:47,190 And yeah, there are many people actually who've read who've read the novel and others who've just started dipping into it. 231 00:24:47,190 --> 00:24:55,270 So everybody is very welcome, whatever, whichever way in you you want to go. 232 00:24:55,270 --> 00:25:04,100 So is there anyone who'd like to. To start out, Ed. 233 00:25:04,100 --> 00:25:09,200 There was an interesting comment at the start where you were saying sort of when you're 234 00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:13,820 talking about different audiences and the kind of Pakistani view or views of empire, 235 00:25:13,820 --> 00:25:21,290 and then almost as a throwaway comment and you said something like the Brits and their view of empire, I was wondering, you know, what is that? 236 00:25:21,290 --> 00:25:27,530 And is there one or what's how do you think that and how does your novel kind of add to 237 00:25:27,530 --> 00:25:32,630 push against is it interested in kind of shifting that or how do you think of that? 238 00:25:32,630 --> 00:25:37,850 Well, obviously, I mean, it's there's no singular view of empire either in Pakistan and India or Britain. 239 00:25:37,850 --> 00:25:42,090 But I suppose what I meant was the angle at which you approach it. 240 00:25:42,090 --> 00:25:48,400 So if you're in Pakistan or India, the Anglet which you're approaching, it is from the position of the colonised. 241 00:25:48,400 --> 00:25:54,530 You know, that's sort of the history. You're much more interested in the characters who were part of the anticolonial resistance. 242 00:25:54,530 --> 00:25:57,750 Whereas over here, you know, even if. 243 00:25:57,750 --> 00:26:06,990 It's often more critical viewpoint, it's still sort of the story of the British in India, so it's just where the the weight falls. 244 00:26:06,990 --> 00:26:14,810 I do think there's been. You rather depressingly, in the last 10 or 15 years, I think 20 years ago, 245 00:26:14,810 --> 00:26:21,270 you could have made the assumption that the whole sort of, you know, the empire was a force for good. 246 00:26:21,270 --> 00:26:26,180 That whole narrative seemed to be sort of disappearing and there was some embarrassment around it. 247 00:26:26,180 --> 00:26:33,320 But we seem to be coming back to it in a rather disquieting fashion. 248 00:26:33,320 --> 00:26:44,270 I mean, of course, I'm pushing back against that and pushing back against that via video character who started the English woman in it, 249 00:26:44,270 --> 00:26:47,540 who starts very much believing an empire. 250 00:26:47,540 --> 00:26:55,520 And it's interesting to me to have a woman who, because she was a man of that character, was originally a man. 251 00:26:55,520 --> 00:27:01,010 And one of the things that happened when I decided to make the woman was it just became this sort of really interesting thing that, 252 00:27:01,010 --> 00:27:03,530 of course, in 19, 15 or so, 253 00:27:03,530 --> 00:27:14,900 you have or just before that you have the suffragette movement and you have sort of a sort of stirrings of sort of even the US for independence, 254 00:27:14,900 --> 00:27:22,010 but of anticolonial feeling. And Gandhi was one of the people to actually make a connexion, although he did in rather sexist language. 255 00:27:22,010 --> 00:27:31,070 It was sort of like, look, even these women are standing up against the might of the British government and we should do that. 256 00:27:31,070 --> 00:27:38,630 But then there's an interesting juxtaposition there that the Englishmen were running 257 00:27:38,630 --> 00:27:44,870 the world and not allowing certain rights to either English women or the colonised. 258 00:27:44,870 --> 00:27:55,460 And so it became sort of an interesting way to look at it for me was to start with the woman who's an anti suffragette and pro empire, 259 00:27:55,460 --> 00:28:04,520 and then to sort of follow her as she begins to change her views, first on one and then on the other. 260 00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:18,000 OK. Um, I just wanted to first say that this is my favourite of everything you've written, really, really enjoyed reading this. 261 00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:25,230 I have a big question, little one. The big question is, you know, I really like the way in which you portrayed the sort of clashing imperatives, 262 00:28:25,230 --> 00:28:30,570 you know, of identity, you know, where, you know, she is, of course, working for God and the country. 263 00:28:30,570 --> 00:28:37,290 But she's also an outlier, you know. You know, she is she feels very estranged from the sort of circuits of power. 264 00:28:37,290 --> 00:28:41,070 And she's happiest when she can actually sort of relate power to someone like Nageeb, you know? 265 00:28:41,070 --> 00:28:48,450 So, I mean, I really liked the way in which that sort of Aldean sort of nexus of knowledge and power circulated 266 00:28:48,450 --> 00:28:57,060 in the novel between beg and Beg and Vibs Father and Viv and Nageeb and your really unsettling, 267 00:28:57,060 --> 00:29:01,410 sort of fixed sort of binaries about, you know, coloniser and coloniser. 268 00:29:01,410 --> 00:29:06,840 You were kind of saying it's much more messy, you know, and it's there is sort of great sort of epistemological sort of, you know, 269 00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:13,420 promiscuity in the way knowledge is produced, you know, and and I wondered if you could say a little more about how the novel is, too. 270 00:29:13,420 --> 00:29:16,500 I mean, we've had the historian sort of version of this. 271 00:29:16,500 --> 00:29:20,550 We've had sort of, you know, an anthropologist like Maglica challenges, you know, version of this. 272 00:29:20,550 --> 00:29:24,090 I mean, how does a novelist look at, you know, all tangled histories? 273 00:29:24,090 --> 00:29:28,320 You know, I mean, the tangled histories of, you know, India and Pakistan, the tangled history of the colony, 274 00:29:28,320 --> 00:29:33,180 and and, you know, kind of, you know, what was India before the kind of partition? 275 00:29:33,180 --> 00:29:39,180 That's kind of the big question. The little question is about, you know, the burqa, you know, the bit that you read about. 276 00:29:39,180 --> 00:29:43,980 And one of the very powerful moments of the novel for me was the bit where cames 277 00:29:43,980 --> 00:29:47,580 little sister feels suffocated in the burqa when she's put it the wrong way round, 278 00:29:47,580 --> 00:29:55,650 you know? And so the sense that, you know, it's that the workers there for people to see it's emancipatory force is kind of a kind of a bogus one. 279 00:29:55,650 --> 00:29:57,480 And you expose that. You know that. You know that. 280 00:29:57,480 --> 00:30:04,860 You know that Muslim women have all kinds of responses to this thing that's imposed on them physically and, you know, metaphysically, you know. 281 00:30:04,860 --> 00:30:08,730 And so these are my two little questions. What was the question? 282 00:30:08,730 --> 00:30:12,790 The second one, the second question was, what do you what you know, what do you. 283 00:30:12,790 --> 00:30:17,250 Is that a correct reading? That in a way, the burqa is not just you know, you're not simply saying that, 284 00:30:17,250 --> 00:30:21,840 you know, you want Spenser's of the world to come and go incognito in a burka, 285 00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:27,540 but that it is a very problematic, you know, sort of in a way a kind of instrument of identity. 286 00:30:27,540 --> 00:30:39,020 Right. I think the second one first. It does there are points in the novel where it does give not only them, but also Tsarina gets you, 287 00:30:39,020 --> 00:30:45,440 the anonymity becomes very crucial as a way of allowing them to do certain things. 288 00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:54,470 So I'm not denying that part of it, that there are certain things they're are able to do because they do use it as it is then using it. 289 00:30:54,470 --> 00:30:58,310 And it's Vivi's less interesting in that then than the women of Bashour, 290 00:30:58,310 --> 00:31:05,180 who at times will will put on a burka and go and go in a place they're not supposed to be and go and do something they're not. 291 00:31:05,180 --> 00:31:15,550 But of course, it is a confining patriarchal thing that so even when they're going out and you know. 292 00:31:15,550 --> 00:31:22,150 Sort of being allowed a certain power because they're able to go in a certain place unseen, 293 00:31:22,150 --> 00:31:27,100 that's still very much within the confines of patriarchy, which wouldn't otherwise it let them go there. 294 00:31:27,100 --> 00:31:34,130 So, yes, of course, it's not anyone's great force for emancipation of the. 295 00:31:34,130 --> 00:31:37,460 Question of how a novelist takes on these things? 296 00:31:37,460 --> 00:31:40,820 Well, I think the novelist has a certain luxury that you can say, look, 297 00:31:40,820 --> 00:31:52,280 I'm just telling these stories and you can choose which stories to tell and you might smash up five different stories into one sort of thing. 298 00:31:52,280 --> 00:32:04,040 But it is, I suppose, you. You look at I mean, what you're trying to do is. 299 00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:13,220 To bring up the human cost of things, I think is what a novelist does with history is to look at human cost and to do that in. 300 00:32:13,220 --> 00:32:23,100 But it was dramatically more interesting than showing where stuff went wrong and stuff and, um, but it is to. 301 00:32:23,100 --> 00:32:30,750 To say that actually, you know, when we do through the big categories, when you see the British, but within the British, 302 00:32:30,750 --> 00:32:37,260 there was men and women and then there was class and then there was sexuality and then there was you. 303 00:32:37,260 --> 00:32:43,260 There are all these other things within that which are going to complicate it in all kinds of ways. 304 00:32:43,260 --> 00:32:49,110 And then there's just, you know, human desire and personality and what you're fighting against. 305 00:32:49,110 --> 00:32:55,200 And so what the novelist can do, I think, is to say you were let's take some of these elements in and mix them together in a 306 00:32:55,200 --> 00:33:03,060 character and place them next to another character and see what that interaction creates, 307 00:33:03,060 --> 00:33:07,650 which is not to deny that there are certain overall structures of power, you know, 308 00:33:07,650 --> 00:33:13,740 for all that interacts in a very human way with Nageeb, it's on her terms. 309 00:33:13,740 --> 00:33:17,340 She gets to define the term because she is. And it's not just an because she's older. 310 00:33:17,340 --> 00:33:27,750 So age is also part of it. But so, I mean, her Englishness is very much a part of it, that she can go to, places he can go and all that sort of thing. 311 00:33:27,750 --> 00:33:30,870 So there are you know, it's not to deny the power structures that exist, 312 00:33:30,870 --> 00:33:47,330 but to say that within that it it gets messy because there are so many other power structures within the big one of empire. 313 00:33:47,330 --> 00:33:52,460 I also wanted to say that this is probably one of my favourite books of the past year, 314 00:33:52,460 --> 00:33:58,070 and I was wondering if you could say a bit more about Kalume and his role. 315 00:33:58,070 --> 00:34:02,870 I hope I pronounce his name correctly, but, um. Yeah. 316 00:34:02,870 --> 00:34:08,570 And his role as a as someone who returns. Someone who goes on because you mentioned Empire. 317 00:34:08,570 --> 00:34:13,790 So we have this what I was so struck by when I read the novel was we have this 318 00:34:13,790 --> 00:34:20,430 young man and it's never said why he actually goes away and fights in the war. 319 00:34:20,430 --> 00:34:25,550 And this is what I find so interesting that you come back to this question and write and leave the reader. 320 00:34:25,550 --> 00:34:35,010 Was that in a way for us to to think about it and to imagine and he goes away and he identifies with this construct of empire and this. 321 00:34:35,010 --> 00:34:43,470 The Britain that is so far away and he fights in a war in Europe against the Germans and against 322 00:34:43,470 --> 00:34:50,550 some construct of races that are and then he and then he has to return because he is wounded. 323 00:34:50,550 --> 00:34:56,670 He comes back and I'm interested in this character as an agent of change in a way. 324 00:34:56,670 --> 00:35:06,460 So he goes somewhere and he comes back and he has changed and he changes the community he returns to and then gets involved in this. 325 00:35:06,460 --> 00:35:14,020 This non-violent drug one before he was so proudly representing being a soldier and wearing a uniform 326 00:35:14,020 --> 00:35:20,260 and and I find this so much entangled in this character and it's so brilliantly woven together. 327 00:35:20,260 --> 00:35:24,790 And you can can you tell us a bit more about that and how you. 328 00:35:24,790 --> 00:35:30,250 Because earlier you said it was only a three sentence person or character. 329 00:35:30,250 --> 00:35:38,980 And, um, yeah. I'm just interested in how you how you created this character and what what was the background 330 00:35:38,980 --> 00:35:45,610 of one of the interesting things to me in when I first read that that molecular biology book, 331 00:35:45,610 --> 00:35:50,020 the paternal numbers on the cover, there's a man in what looks like a uniform. 332 00:35:50,020 --> 00:35:58,580 He's wearing sort of a brownish red shalwar kameez and he has a red belt and he's holding a stick and he looks very masculine. 333 00:35:58,580 --> 00:36:03,820 And one of the things that I think was really brilliant in the way that Abdul Khan, 334 00:36:03,820 --> 00:36:08,620 who started this non-violent movement that he did was to was to create an unarmed army. 335 00:36:08,620 --> 00:36:14,500 I mean, his the through non-violence, it was a non-violent struggle. But he said we will be we will be an army. 336 00:36:14,500 --> 00:36:17,680 And there were battalions and there were leaders of the battalions. 337 00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:24,730 And there was it was sort of taking that militaristic ethos and saying we will still be, 338 00:36:24,730 --> 00:36:30,010 you know, stand by a sort of militaristic ethos, but it'll be a non-violent one. 339 00:36:30,010 --> 00:36:37,840 And this was about the world, about British India, from which the British used to recruit for the army. 340 00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:41,080 The British Indian army was the largest volunteer army of its time. 341 00:36:41,080 --> 00:36:49,930 And there were, as many of you know, despite how large and is, there were very few regions from which the British used to recruit. 342 00:36:49,930 --> 00:36:54,610 And one of them was this area, which then became the centre of non-violent struggle. 343 00:36:54,610 --> 00:37:03,340 I just it just struck me visually when I was thinking about a novel that was going to have this unarmed army in it. 344 00:37:03,340 --> 00:37:10,390 You know, this there was just this line in my head about how he'd sort of, you know, exchanged one army for another, one uniform for another. 345 00:37:10,390 --> 00:37:13,450 Just now. He was an army without guns. 346 00:37:13,450 --> 00:37:21,290 And I thought, oh, so in 1930, because, as I said, the original material was in nineteen thirty when there's a massacre. 347 00:37:21,290 --> 00:37:27,070 So if in nineteen thirty he's, you know, already off this unarmed army. 348 00:37:27,070 --> 00:37:33,040 But he'd been in the British army before the Indian army before or 15 years earlier was the First World War. 349 00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:42,070 So what was the British Indian Army getting up to then. So I went and, and then was reading a lot of the letters that soldiers wrote home. 350 00:37:42,070 --> 00:37:45,970 And to answer the question of why they signed up in a lot of cases, 351 00:37:45,970 --> 00:37:51,880 because their families had done enough cases, because it was an income and you didn't expect it. 352 00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:56,270 If you signed up, as he did in 1910, you never expected to be sent off. 353 00:37:56,270 --> 00:38:01,570 You you were sort of keeping the peace in British India largely. 354 00:38:01,570 --> 00:38:09,520 So it was a career move, really. And also a lot of boys like guns and military things, you know, I don't know. 355 00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:15,700 And but if you read the letters that soldiers wrote, there's a real mix because there are those who, 356 00:38:15,700 --> 00:38:22,000 you know, are sort of very impressed by the the empire that those who just say, 357 00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:32,380 you know, clearly just horrified by the the kind of killing they've seen in the First World War, which they've never imagined before. 358 00:38:32,380 --> 00:38:39,250 And the fact that this is how Europeans fight is a real eye opener to them and make some sort of really, 359 00:38:39,250 --> 00:38:42,940 you know, all kinds of questions come up because of that. 360 00:38:42,940 --> 00:38:48,340 And so it just struck me and that those who are just saying to writing back, saying whatever happens, 361 00:38:48,340 --> 00:38:52,180 do not sign up for the army to write their brothers, don't sign up, don't sign up, don't sign up. 362 00:38:52,180 --> 00:39:00,970 And, you know, you do also find a terrible disgust towards violence and warfare in some of those letters. 363 00:39:00,970 --> 00:39:06,430 And I thought, of course, would make sense that someone who would come out of somewhere like EHP would say, 364 00:39:06,430 --> 00:39:10,900 I don't want to touch a gun, I don't want to see war anymore. 365 00:39:10,900 --> 00:39:14,380 And I did ask Merklinger because I spoke to about the book and I said, when you did your research, 366 00:39:14,380 --> 00:39:21,190 did you find anyone who had been a soldier in the British Indian Army in the First World War and then joined up and she said she said, 367 00:39:21,190 --> 00:39:28,240 look, I didn't, but but I'm sure it happened. It's inevitable, given the geography geographically where all this happened. 368 00:39:28,240 --> 00:39:33,760 She's just by the time I went and did interviews, you know, hardly any of them were still alive. 369 00:39:33,760 --> 00:39:43,180 But she said it's almost certain that there would have been people from the army who then became part of the unarmed army. 370 00:39:43,180 --> 00:39:47,830 That's my guy that I can do the thing again. It's part of your question. 371 00:39:47,830 --> 00:39:52,640 It's the historian can say, you know, I don't have evidence for it, but, of course, must have happened. 372 00:39:52,640 --> 00:40:02,080 And I say, that's good enough for me. I'll make it happen. Thank you so much for coming here. 373 00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:13,390 As someone who hasn't read your novel, and I certainly will after hearing all of this, I'm interested in part in how you came up with the title. 374 00:40:13,390 --> 00:40:23,920 I think what struck me about it was that it sounds very similar to the God of Small Things, which is a novel that stuck with me a lot. 375 00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:30,730 And I was wondering if there were any connexions or or what what the thought process was as you were creating that. 376 00:40:30,730 --> 00:40:34,510 And then secondly is, as the author, 377 00:40:34,510 --> 00:40:45,370 how much of your own experiences and personality in history were projected onto any of the characters in the book? 378 00:40:45,370 --> 00:40:49,270 So how did I get involved with my editor said it's Friday. 379 00:40:49,270 --> 00:40:55,060 I'm on Monday. I'm going into an editorial meeting. We need a title. 380 00:40:55,060 --> 00:41:00,670 I'm terrible that I can never do them. So this went through a million different titles and then I had sort of a list of possible titles. 381 00:41:00,670 --> 00:41:05,710 And one of them was there's a there's a line in the book when the character sort of 382 00:41:05,710 --> 00:41:13,690 looks around this area of Bishar with the remnants of these ancient statues of both her. 383 00:41:13,690 --> 00:41:15,370 And she thought things rather dismissively. 384 00:41:15,370 --> 00:41:20,590 There was a time when the people of this area knew how to find the God in every stone, which is just a sentence I like. 385 00:41:20,590 --> 00:41:28,570 So I had the God in every stone is one of sort of, you know, 20 titles, which I said to a friend of mine who said, 386 00:41:28,570 --> 00:41:32,230 I quite like the gardener sitting on something not quite right about it. 387 00:41:32,230 --> 00:41:35,740 And he said, Oh, rather than the. And I said, Oh yeah, OK. 388 00:41:35,740 --> 00:41:44,110 I like the sound of that publishers. Here we go. So no, the God of small things wasn't in my head at all when I when I did. 389 00:41:44,110 --> 00:41:49,210 And she was an act of desperation, which is usually the case with my titles. 390 00:41:49,210 --> 00:41:57,100 As for projections of myself, their projections of the things I'm interested in, um, 391 00:41:57,100 --> 00:42:04,690 but I'm going through my own life and not so the least interesting thing to me when I'm writing. 392 00:42:04,690 --> 00:42:10,420 So it's it it's it is the things that I'm interested in is the historical periods and points of view. 393 00:42:10,420 --> 00:42:15,430 And all of that obviously is going to come to nothing but. 394 00:42:15,430 --> 00:42:20,530 I don't think I'm in the particularly and then you look at rexes. 395 00:42:20,530 --> 00:42:28,480 I suppose Nageeb, the 11 year old boy, maybe the Klauss, just because, you know, he loves those things of history that I love when I was 11. 396 00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:35,830 You've spoken about the relationship between the ending of the novel and and everything that comes before it. 397 00:42:35,830 --> 00:42:46,280 What I wondered about was the there is at the end a very strong sense of dislocation or disorientation from everything that has come before. 398 00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:53,170 In a sense, when everything starts speeding up and on that day and an almost. 399 00:42:53,170 --> 00:42:57,400 I suppose I felt almost a sense that there was almost a deliberate attempt to 400 00:42:57,400 --> 00:43:02,860 frustrate a kind of Eurocentric ending to the to the narrative in a sense, 401 00:43:02,860 --> 00:43:10,450 because the veev kind of disappears and the and we get much more of the perspective of demand and so on and so forth. 402 00:43:10,450 --> 00:43:13,720 And I wondered if you could say anything about that. 403 00:43:13,720 --> 00:43:23,950 Um, it was I wouldn't say deliberate, but it because this novel was written so many different stages. 404 00:43:23,950 --> 00:43:30,370 And so the end where we've hardly figures was one of the first things I wrote. 405 00:43:30,370 --> 00:43:38,560 And because in some ways the hardest thing I had or the bit of it I had the most trouble with was getting her early story. 406 00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:42,400 You know, I knew what he was doing. He was fighting off in the First World War. 407 00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:47,410 So he was very easy to write. I had a much harder time working out quite what she was doing. 408 00:43:47,410 --> 00:43:52,120 So in fact, she was the last her early story was the last thing I wrote. 409 00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:57,250 But it's the beginning of the novel. So the novel really starts. And it was, again, a question of structuring. 410 00:43:57,250 --> 00:44:02,630 Originally, there was going to be a little bit of her and a little bit of humility before you and instead. 411 00:44:02,630 --> 00:44:10,970 Because of just looking and thinking of how I need to restructure it to make it work, so I didn't jump all over once I had finished, 412 00:44:10,970 --> 00:44:16,220 I realised that what happened is that the first 70 pages or so up, just almost all of it. 413 00:44:16,220 --> 00:44:21,990 And then at the end of which is pretty much disappeared. It wasn't. 414 00:44:21,990 --> 00:44:27,660 A consciously done thing and partly was because, you know, to go back to Erika's first question, 415 00:44:27,660 --> 00:44:35,070 because I didn't think of my I didn't think of the Eurocentric reader as being the one particularly. 416 00:44:35,070 --> 00:44:39,330 But once I got to the end and saw that that's how it happened, I thought actually that makes sense, 417 00:44:39,330 --> 00:44:43,440 that some kind of deep logic to the way in which that happens. 418 00:44:43,440 --> 00:44:53,730 And I was what I certainly conscious of was that I wanted those two women of Bishar to be who you hardly see before to really and again, 419 00:44:53,730 --> 00:44:58,470 in that original idea where the novel is going to move forward, they were both going to be well, 420 00:44:58,470 --> 00:45:01,590 certainly Tsarina was going to be much more powerful force moving forward. 421 00:45:01,590 --> 00:45:06,660 And it's the only sadness I have about the fact that I didn't do that was because 422 00:45:06,660 --> 00:45:12,270 I'd written all these sections when she's older and when I reconstitutes the novel, 423 00:45:12,270 --> 00:45:21,530 that had to go. So, yeah. 424 00:45:21,530 --> 00:45:29,420 I just want to say that Nageeb is a really appealing character to me, and he's the person I liked most of the characters in the book, 425 00:45:29,420 --> 00:45:37,550 but one of the sections that interested me was when his relationship with Viv and how she kind of introduces the idea of the museum to him. 426 00:45:37,550 --> 00:45:42,230 And she's like, oh, have you ever been there? And he's like, oh, no, it's for British people. 427 00:45:42,230 --> 00:45:47,090 And I just wondered if you could say a little bit more about that. Is that something you think people did feel at that time? 428 00:45:47,090 --> 00:45:50,090 Do you think it's maybe still the case or anything like that? 429 00:45:50,090 --> 00:45:55,880 We're not still the case just because there aren't very many British people in parks and museums. 430 00:45:55,880 --> 00:46:00,980 But the museum actually, I went to the Bashour Museum and because of all the research I've done, 431 00:46:00,980 --> 00:46:10,700 I knew the figures for what the attendance was at the Bashour Museum in the 1920s when Bashar was a city of, 432 00:46:10,700 --> 00:46:16,760 I don't know, twenty thousand, thirty thousand, fifty thousand, maybe now it's a few million. 433 00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:22,830 It had more visitors in 1928 than it does today. 434 00:46:22,830 --> 00:46:30,450 Yeah, but it was and was an extraordinary thing that the museum and, you know, still is. 435 00:46:30,450 --> 00:46:35,880 So they did have at a certain point, you know, they made an attempt to get people in. 436 00:46:35,880 --> 00:46:48,420 But the archaeologists at the top level were English, although you did start to see more Indians getting involved in it. 437 00:46:48,420 --> 00:46:52,080 But there was a sense that this was sort of an English project and the English very much made it an English 438 00:46:52,080 --> 00:46:59,640 project that they were in the line of these great rulers who had come here and who they were excavating. 439 00:46:59,640 --> 00:47:04,530 And that that was sort of part of this narrative that was being created, that all these great rulers came. 440 00:47:04,530 --> 00:47:11,340 And we are the new new great rulers. And for someone like Nageeb, again, they would be in sort of a class element. 441 00:47:11,340 --> 00:47:18,240 And but someone like Nageeb, his schooling wouldn't have included all of this. 442 00:47:18,240 --> 00:47:25,590 So while it isn't true that only the English went there, there would certainly have been a lot of Bashary boys like Nageeb, 443 00:47:25,590 --> 00:47:29,550 for whom the museum, which, you know, sort of was outside the world city. 444 00:47:29,550 --> 00:47:35,910 I mean, that was part of the geography job, Bashar al-Assad that you had the world city and then you had the cantonment. 445 00:47:35,910 --> 00:47:40,350 And in between you had the railway and then the museum very near it. 446 00:47:40,350 --> 00:47:42,780 But the museum wasn't within the walled city. 447 00:47:42,780 --> 00:47:49,350 And if you were a boy like Nageeb, you probably almost never left that because the Wall City was pretty much your domain. 448 00:47:49,350 --> 00:47:57,420 So the geography of it was was also sort of fairly crucial. 449 00:47:57,420 --> 00:48:10,560 Kenny. So my question is, why take Pakistan I mean, to what extent would you think the novel is informed by, you know, contemporary politics? 450 00:48:10,560 --> 00:48:20,490 Because I think to me, the, um, the novel is a kind of you know, that's the kind of work by deconstructing a Pakistan, as you know, 451 00:48:20,490 --> 00:48:27,240 in in global or contemporary imaginary like, you know, its affiliation with, you know, questions of terror or terrorism. 452 00:48:27,240 --> 00:48:31,260 But then you go back to all these, as you said, deep history of Pakistan. 453 00:48:31,260 --> 00:48:35,880 I mean, is that does that have anything to do with contemporary politics? 454 00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:46,110 And the second question is your your identity as a writer writing about Pakistan from, you know, outside Pakistan, either in Pakistan or in Pakistan? 455 00:48:46,110 --> 00:48:56,480 Well, no. No, that's not true. I was I wasn't I wasn't a British citizen when I wrote it, but I wrote it, most of it in Pakistan. 456 00:48:56,480 --> 00:49:04,030 Right. OK, then it might not be a good question to ask because I was interested in how, you know, whether distance matters, 457 00:49:04,030 --> 00:49:11,380 like whether it matters, you know, when writing about Pakistan, the geographical distance or geographical proximity. 458 00:49:11,380 --> 00:49:19,240 Yeah. When definitely bought that line. I know lots of writers use it. I've never had any validity, actually, 459 00:49:19,240 --> 00:49:26,650 this question of whether your father or your your first of your Rightmove fish are you sitting in Karachi or London, doesn't matter very much. 460 00:49:26,650 --> 00:49:32,890 And if you recall, in 1930 and 1915 really doesn't matter where you are. 461 00:49:32,890 --> 00:49:41,740 But also it seems that it seems almost odd when people say, oh, you know, writers have to be away from Pliska distance, I think really, really. 462 00:49:41,740 --> 00:49:49,150 Does a writer not always have distance? I don't know a writer who would sit in London but not write about London with distance. 463 00:49:49,150 --> 00:49:55,780 I think part of being a writer means you have that bird's eye view regardless of location. 464 00:49:55,780 --> 00:50:01,750 So, I mean, again, I'm not saying it isn't true for other writers, just that it's never for me made sense. 465 00:50:01,750 --> 00:50:09,370 And partly because I write, you know, I I spend my winters in Karachi and I write very well, 466 00:50:09,370 --> 00:50:13,420 you know, because I'm sort of I mean, it's not for any deep psychic reason. 467 00:50:13,420 --> 00:50:23,090 It's I'm living in my parents house and someone else is doing the stuff of buying the milk and making lunch and all that kind of thing. 468 00:50:23,090 --> 00:50:30,200 But because my books are sort of a lot written, a lot the mayor of London, all of them are written in a writing retreat in Tuscany, 469 00:50:30,200 --> 00:50:34,100 I go to and I could look at it and say, well, this chapter was written here. 470 00:50:34,100 --> 00:50:40,790 You know, it just it doesn't I just move around. So that doesn't particularly make a difference. 471 00:50:40,790 --> 00:50:46,010 What was the first part of your question? Whether the novel was informed by. Oh, yeah. 472 00:50:46,010 --> 00:50:50,240 I mean, my interest is very much in contemporary politics. 473 00:50:50,240 --> 00:50:58,820 And I do think a lot of you know, I mean, this is not a book that would have been written in 1930, even if it's about events of 1915 and 1930. 474 00:50:58,820 --> 00:51:08,210 It's not a book that had been written in 1947, which, you know, I mean, I hope that I'm that is historical fidelity in there. 475 00:51:08,210 --> 00:51:09,830 But the things I'm interested in, 476 00:51:09,830 --> 00:51:17,720 the stories I want to tell and my entire way in which I became interested in the subject was very much grounded in the contemporary. 477 00:51:17,720 --> 00:51:26,030 And I think that, as is there in the book, as a result, well, time is running on. 478 00:51:26,030 --> 00:51:30,050 Did I see a hand just inching up there? Shall we take that as the last question? 479 00:51:30,050 --> 00:51:34,160 And then I'm going to invite you to close with a reading, please. 480 00:51:34,160 --> 00:51:37,010 Thank you so much for being here, for talking to us. 481 00:51:37,010 --> 00:51:44,930 Um, I'm actually an anthropologist, so I'm really interested that the basis of this is an anthropological book, which I haven't read, unfortunately. 482 00:51:44,930 --> 00:51:49,070 Um, but so in anthropology a long time, um, an accusation has been. 483 00:51:49,070 --> 00:51:57,920 I'm just. I'm just just. It's a it's a justifiable accusation that anthropologist's whites, 484 00:51:57,920 --> 00:52:03,370 right about the words they write about it is omnipresent and omniscient kind of you. 485 00:52:03,370 --> 00:52:07,300 And, um, I'm just interested in many of your books. 486 00:52:07,300 --> 00:52:13,570 You have this, um, quite omniscient view of crisscrossing time and places and distance, 487 00:52:13,570 --> 00:52:19,120 whether in this particular one, it was actually a kind of an intervention almost against us. 488 00:52:19,120 --> 00:52:25,150 Um. And anthropological. View, does that make sense? 489 00:52:25,150 --> 00:52:31,510 I think that is something that that actually could be in a better position to say it wasn't. 490 00:52:31,510 --> 00:52:39,370 Again, so the honest truth about writing is that when you're writing, you're not asking the questions, why am I writing this? 491 00:52:39,370 --> 00:52:44,260 What am I responding to? Which doesn't mean you aren't responding to and against all kinds of things. 492 00:52:44,260 --> 00:52:53,050 It just means the writing comes out of a different place. And it's only if I sit in a room like this and someone asks a question, I think. 493 00:52:53,050 --> 00:52:56,680 Well, sure, of course, in some ways I must be responding against a certain kind of answer, 494 00:52:56,680 --> 00:53:02,380 but that's sort of anthropological way of looking at things. 495 00:53:02,380 --> 00:53:09,970 Was it the forefront of my mind? No. And I don't know enough about anthropology, actually, to be able to comment on that, 496 00:53:09,970 --> 00:53:14,980 because I'm sure there are lots of different ways and schools of of doing it. 497 00:53:14,980 --> 00:53:20,530 So but I don't think of the I don't think of my novels actually as being that much what the omniscient view, 498 00:53:20,530 --> 00:53:24,960 because even though they they go from one place to the other. 499 00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:35,640 It's usually through the eyes of particular characters, and I make it very clear that this is the world as experienced by this person. 500 00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:42,810 You know, I suppose the line that for so many writers is sort of a sort of Montereau that which comes up. 501 00:53:42,810 --> 00:53:49,500 You hear writers from Geoff Dyer to Michael darted around writing the Muslim say it all the time. 502 00:53:49,500 --> 00:53:54,570 It's John Bourges. Never again will a story be told as if it were the only one. 503 00:53:54,570 --> 00:54:03,750 And that's, I think, what's at the centre of it. Of everything I do is the idea of the single story, the UBA narrative. 504 00:54:03,750 --> 00:54:12,250 This is the version of history is I think what the novels want to do is to constantly push back against that over and over. 505 00:54:12,250 --> 00:54:14,530 And then if you don't mind my saying, 506 00:54:14,530 --> 00:54:26,020 then those lovely George details like the words of the peacocks in the basket to the Skane coming in with you right there in inside the detail, 507 00:54:26,020 --> 00:54:33,640 almost so. So there's at those points, no omniscient view at all that, um. 508 00:54:33,640 --> 00:54:40,960 But on that note, could we ask you to close with a reading and then we'll simply sort of break for some more refreshment. 509 00:54:40,960 --> 00:54:49,960 And you are very welcome, I'm sure, to come and ask questions, individual questions of Kamila Shamsie. 510 00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:58,250 Um. So this is I almost never get to read this because it's near the end of the book, but it was, as I said, one of the first things I wrote. 511 00:54:58,250 --> 00:55:04,490 So this is the young man, Nageeb girl. He's it's a day of protests against the British, his brother. 512 00:55:04,490 --> 00:55:07,820 Consumers deeply involved these protests. He's not interested. 513 00:55:07,820 --> 00:55:17,120 He wants to go outside the world city and meet with Andrew Spencer, who's arrived back in Peshawar after years, his old teacher. 514 00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:22,290 But as he's going, he realises the trouble has broken out and that his brother is at the centre of it. 515 00:55:22,290 --> 00:55:28,370 So he goes up to the roof of what really is called the street of storytellers or suffer. 516 00:55:28,370 --> 00:55:29,750 And he was out. 517 00:55:29,750 --> 00:55:35,870 So he goes up to the roof to try and look down and see his brother and see what's happening, because, you know, it's sort of the street. 518 00:55:35,870 --> 00:55:44,210 And at one end you've got the British and the other and you've got these men of Peshawar protesting and there are houses on either side lining it. 519 00:55:44,210 --> 00:55:49,370 So he's managed to get this house and go up the roof to look down at what's happening. 520 00:55:49,370 --> 00:55:54,290 And everyone else on the roof is a woman. So it's all the women and children because the men have gone out to join this. 521 00:55:54,290 --> 00:55:58,910 So he is where he should not be as a young man of Shah, which is up there amongst the women. 522 00:55:58,910 --> 00:56:15,950 But there's so much going on, no one is really paying much attention because they're all looking down at what's happening on the street below. 523 00:56:15,950 --> 00:56:22,400 They ask, are you near the front of the action, of course, a soldier with a bayonet rushes him. 524 00:56:22,400 --> 00:56:26,720 Najib takes his own heart. Gayoom holds up a plank of wood. 525 00:56:26,720 --> 00:56:32,450 The bayonet catches in it, Kalume tugs and the bayonet leaps off the soldier's grip. 526 00:56:32,450 --> 00:56:39,260 It's dipped firmly embedded in the plank. Kalume strong arms can rip the bayonet from would turn it round to Pierce. 527 00:56:39,260 --> 00:56:45,230 The soldier's back in a second, but he merely tosses it at the soldier's feet, wood and bayonet, 528 00:56:45,230 --> 00:56:51,170 and moves back into the unarmed platoon which closes around him and cut him off from Nageeb site. 529 00:56:51,170 --> 00:56:55,910 Nageeb understand that in his brother's mind, he has just made defeat impossible. 530 00:56:55,910 --> 00:57:03,980 He doesn't care about victory or defeat. He wants Kalume alive. One of the girls on the roof throws a stone down onto the street. 531 00:57:03,980 --> 00:57:10,360 The concentration on her face is tremendous, but the stone makes it no further than the shop awning beneath. 532 00:57:10,360 --> 00:57:16,960 One of the women battered with pride, but points out that she's more likely to hit a Pashtoon than an Englishman at this distance, 533 00:57:16,960 --> 00:57:25,780 taking another stone, the older woman slings it low and fast towards the troops on the street in front of the soldiers is now littered with stones. 534 00:57:25,780 --> 00:57:32,660 The nageeb sees only one English soldier being kept away, blood pouring from the side of his face. 535 00:57:32,660 --> 00:57:39,680 The beautiful young girl with the long braid leaves the cluster of spectators and walks past the clothesline up on the roof, 536 00:57:39,680 --> 00:57:44,390 there's a clothesline on the roof as she walks past the clothesline. 537 00:57:44,390 --> 00:57:50,300 Her hand trailing along the hanging clothes as though they are entirely in an entirely different moment, 538 00:57:50,300 --> 00:57:58,430 one which allows for a woman to run her fingers along a man's trousers without either disturbing her modesty or hiding her intentions. 539 00:57:58,430 --> 00:58:04,250 She answered a khamees which tumbles off the line, and then she is walking towards him, her gaze distant. 540 00:58:04,250 --> 00:58:08,660 As she passes by him, she slings the Khamees over his shoulder. 541 00:58:08,660 --> 00:58:15,200 She's trying to shame him into joining the men who face down benitz, of course, in the in their red brown Kamisese. 542 00:58:15,200 --> 00:58:23,040 But he's just grateful to be able to read himself of the heavy black frock coat which has trapped the late morning sun. 543 00:58:23,040 --> 00:58:29,430 The Khamees is much too large for him, which is useful for pulling pulling it over his neck without disturbing his turban, 544 00:58:29,430 --> 00:58:32,370 it's cool dampness pleasing to his skin. 545 00:58:32,370 --> 00:58:40,590 He knows exactly the area of fabric near the shoulder which was bunched in her fist, stepping away from the discarded frock coat ball at his feet. 546 00:58:40,590 --> 00:58:47,580 He knows it will give him a reason to return. Knows also that while everyone else was looking down the street of storytellers, 547 00:58:47,580 --> 00:58:53,850 the woman whose handprint is on his shoulder watched him unbutton and shrug off the couch. 548 00:58:53,850 --> 00:58:59,320 What did she make of him picking up the razor to cut the undershirt away from his slim body? 549 00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:03,640 He allows himself to imagine the banter early married life. 550 00:59:03,640 --> 00:59:07,990 I did it because I didn't want to disturb my turban. He'd [INAUDIBLE] see and she'll reply. 551 00:59:07,990 --> 00:59:18,270 Oh yes. O'Reilly Then why arch your back and rotate your shoulder blades in that way, which made every muscle surge here and here and here. 552 00:59:18,270 --> 00:59:26,210 All this is a few seconds of diversion, a few seconds to imagine a future in which today is remembered for the start of love. 553 00:59:26,210 --> 00:59:32,310 And then gunfire again. Thank you very much. 554 00:59:32,310 --> 00:59:36,853 Let's join in thanking Camilla.