Daily Times

It is a ‘Malala’ of a book, in the sense that it has won and been nominated for several international awards! It won the Bharat Shakti Award, and was shortlisted for the Mann Asia Award and FDR Award. It is probably the most celebrated English book of Pakistan. For me to praise it further will be like gilding gold.

What is so special about this book?

Nowadays, publishers have a penchant to publish topical books. However, the problem with such books is that they lose their relevance when the issue dies down and most of all, usually they are written without passion.

The moment you start reading The Wandering Falcon you realise the author knows and understands Balochistan and the Baloch, and feels for them. The format of the book is unique. It is a series of ostensibly fictional short stories, each one a masterpiece in itself (the first story was selected by Granta quarterly for their opening tale in their issue on Pakistan), and they are all about the same character, Tor Baz (except for one story), from his birth to manhood. During the course of these tales, the reader gets a deep insight into the Baloch character, their nomadic life with necessary migrations, their values and sense of honour, their need to follow a sardar (tribal chief), their tribal traditions and customs, and how these sometimes come into conflict with the authorities, and their struggle to survive in this very hostile, arid terrain. Also we find the ‘Baloch problem’ has existed for centuries.

“We Baluch are used to the silence of the desert,” he (Roza Khan, an aged Baluch accused of insurgency) apologised…and are not as clever as you” (Page 32).

This way of life had endured for centuries, but it would not last forever. It continued defiance to certain concepts that the world was beginning to associate with civilisation itself. Concepts such as statehood, citizenship, undivided loyalty to the state, settled as opposed to nomadic life, and the writ of the state as opposed to tribal discipline (Page 38). (In many cases, it was necessary for tribes to cross borders without permission to find new grazing land for their herds.)

Moreover, the Baloch is a very independent minded tribesman with a deep connection with the harsh land that is his. Unlike a farmer who loves his soil (dharti), a nomad loves the vast distances.

We must remember that the Baloch of Balochistan never opted for Pakistan, like the other provinces. In fact, the Khan of Kalat and Marri tribes revolted immediately after the partition. Thereafter, we have never been able, or bothered much, to amalgamate them into our mainstream or develop some kind of economic interdependence with them. In fact, the economic relationship has been one way and we have exploited them atrociously. Thus, there is a strong feeling of alienation in this province, and now there is a definite insurgency there, which, uncharacteristically, does not primarily stem from the tribesmen, but from the growing neo-middle class. Most of us here do not realise this aspect of the current Baloch ‘terrorism’, and blame it on the tribes, which further illustrates our lack of understanding of the Baloch. The tribes mostly continue to plod their primal ways with a stoic disregard for our legal code. This book gives us the opportunity to try to understand the Baloch tribal background.

Whatever economic, political or sociological analyses of this situation might assess, the crux of the problem is that we have never really understood the Baloch, and though too late, this is still most needed. The author is not apologetic about the Baloch; he is not defensive and he remains completely apolitical, as he just tries to show us what he has seen, and thereby we may broaden our outlook towards this perspective, and ipso facto admire the Baloch tribesmen for what they are.

The very first story leads the reader into the harsh land. It is about the birth of Tor Baaz, the child of a couple who has eloped to live together. The woman is the daughter of the sardar of her tribe and is married to one of the chiefs. But it is an unhappy marriage due to the physical incapacity of her husband; she falls in love with a camel driver and runs away with him. The couple lives a hard but happy life for over five years. Eventually, the tribe discovers the errant couple. The man shoots his woman to protect her from the wrath of the tribe, and the tribesmen stone him to death to avenge their honour. They leave their five-year-old child to die in the desert. The ending of the story is devastating. We see the little child, with his parents slain in front of him, with no hope for survival whatsoever, and a desert storm starts to blow. Still, with a hopeless, primal survival instinct the child seeks the shelter of a dead camel to protect himself from the simoom. This is the whole raison d’être of the story of the hero and correlates with the story of these tribes: to somehow survive!

In the second story, we find that the poor waif has survived. A wandering group of Brohi tribesmen find him and take him along with them. They have been driven to insurgency because of government interference in a neighbouring tribe, and they could not act against their tribal code. They are misled into thinking the government will pardon them, and they surrender to the authorities. The group and their leader are given a travesty of a trial and peremptorily hanged. The story is based on an actual occurrence about an old Baloch leader called Nauroz Khan, who was accused of insurgency. He was invited for talks, but instead the government arrested him and hanged nine of his sons and nephews. The old man died in prison. Such incidents show the flagrant, unjust way the government has often treated these tribesmen.

Thereafter, the child is adopted by a subaltern in the fort where the Brohi group surrendered. Thus the stories continue, with the child being adopted by one person after another, and how he continues to survive. In these tales, we see the Baloch code of honour to avenge deaths. Their vendetta is not necessarily personal, it is just something that has to be done.

To both tribes survival is the ultimate virtue. In neither community is any stigma attached to a hired assassin, a kidnapper or an informer (Page 86).

We realise that many things that outrage us are just part of their way of life. For instance, kidnapping people for ransom is merely an accepted technique to earn money. Regarding schools and education: “Some feel this is a violation of our freedom” (Page 132). We get an insight into their hard life and age-old customs. Most of all, we realise how proud they are of their tribal code and least bothered by any nationalism or idealism. We also see their stoic acceptance of death as something that happens.

The sixth story, “The Guide”, is not about Tor Baaz. It is about the son of a Baloch who migrated to Bavaria after WWII. He has never seen his homeland, still his longing for it is so deep inside him (I think we can refer to Jung’s collective subconscious here) that as soon as he can make enough money he undertakes a journey back to his father’s village. He suffers many hardships on the way, but he is determined to continue and eventually these travails kill him. This is how strong the link of these tribesmen with their land is.

Thereafter, the last two stories that again feature Tor Baaz, move further north to Chitral, Waziristan and upper Swat, with the author’s infatuation for the tribes in our country. We can notice a difference in the tribal system here, but the writer does not dwell on this since the book is a narrative not a sociological study. These last stories deal with the notorious custom of kidnapping and selling women. Our hero has now adopted this practice to survive and earn a living. However, the book ends on a note that he is not entirely devoid of sympathy and sensibility.

The primary factor that gives these tales greater veracity and evokes a deeper response in us is that the author has seen and dealt with all these matters, and he writes about them with passion. This undertone of feeling for these tribes is what is so special about the book and it opens a new world for us of the people on the periphery of civilisation who inhabit the vast mountains and deserts of this land.

The reviewer is a published author and he can be reached at ikureshi@hotmail.com