Muhammad Asif Nawaz has varied interests. Besides writing for various magazines, he also, at times, engages in filmmaking and photography. He studied to be a doctor before joining the Pakistan Administrative Service and has served in Punjab, Balochistan, and Gilgit Baltistan. Nawaz also has a penchant for travelling and history.
His debut novel, The Pilgrims, is a captivating book that delves into the complexities of friendship, identity, and belonging. The story revolves around four friends: Feroze, a feudal scion from Sukkur: Bina a strong-headed Sindhi doctor; Aariz, a poignant thinker; and Mehar, who is passionate about monuments and old buildings of old Lahore. They all belong to different backgrounds, and have different ways of thinking, personality traits, and how they take decisions of life matters, yet they are bound together by their shared experiences.
Initially, there is some mystery about the characters, their relationship with each other, and why they are what they are. However, as we keep reading, the story moves back and forth between the past and present-day reality revealing their connection and secrets about each of the characters’ life stories. We also get to know why Aariz is struggling with existential questions, the reason behind Bina's fierce activism, transformation of Mehar — a child of exceptional capabilities — into what she was as an adult, and why Feroze is trapped within the tentacles of his patriarchal lineage.
At the beginning of the book, Feroze is confused about his own role after his father’s demise and is terrified that he might become like his father. As he reminisces about his childhood, we learn that he was passionate about cricket and dreamt about becoming a cricketer but his father did not approve of it and forced him to abandon his dream. After his father’s death the rules and laws with which he was brought up started relaxing their grip on Feroze; he wasn’t really interested in politics anyways but couldn’t tell his father. Now he tries to make up for the lost time and re-establish contact with Bina.
Feroze and Bina have been brought up in Sukkur, playing together and developed feelings for each other. But they are not meant to be together. They had a falling in their friendship over a personal matter that had political overtones, as Bina thinks Feroze didn’t help her when the young daughter of a distant relative is presumably kidnapped as a forced conversion case because of his father, Hashmatullah’s views and lack of will in that respect.
Bina, a defiant and rebellious person yet a capable doctor, “had convinced herself that she was made to always be in motion, regardless of what came her way”. She has moved to Islamabad though she often visits Lahore where she studied and her native city Sukkur. Haunted by the ghosts of the past even after more than a decade, and even though she still has a soft corner for Feroze and agrees to meet him, Bina does not accept his proposal.
Aariz, a mutual friend, had been close to his father, whom he fondly remembers as Old Papa, while growing up. He had lost his mother at birth; his stepmother remarried after his father’s death but, unfortunately, he is abused by his stepfather. These traumatic experiences have left deep psychological scars on Aariz. After studying abroad, he moves to Dubai and frequently travelled around the world, but neither travel nor money could make up for the lack of love in his life; his main refuge were memories of Old Papa. He comes back to Pakistan after many years and is unsure about what awaits him. Aariz’s memories of a deeply touching relationship with his father are in stark contrast with Feroze’s relationship with his feudal father.
Aariz and Feroze had become best friends at the school in Lahore, though there was not “much in common between them, they were rather different as people, but commonality has never been a beacon of friendship.” However, they were brought up in entirely different ways. While Aariz had a very cordial relationship with his father, whom he remembers fondly as Old Papa, and as a child used to ask him a lot of questions about universe and cosmos, Feroze’s father had taught him a few rules to “survive in this country”: 1) Might is right, 2) Who knows whom, 3) Give and take, 4) Push and pull; to add to these he learnt from him that “You have got to do what you have got to do”, and Feroze used them to his advantage.
At medical college Bina had befriended Mehar who came from a low-income family. Midway through medical college she got married to a cruelly abusive husband; however, she was able to get out of the relationship when her husband, Ahmad, suddenly divorced her after seven years. She turned resilient after divorce. The reason for divorce is only revealed towards the end and in passing.
She comes back to Old Lahore to live at her parental house with her brother. As happens, she had to face the stigma attached with a divorced woman in our society, people avoided her as if “she was vermin”, a bad influence.
Mehar, who was born and brought up in Lahore, was obsessed with the old buildings and was considered an expert on them. She always believed that of the 13 gates of Lahore “one gate would open for her to leave these narrow alleyways and cluttered lanes one day.
Though basically a story of these four friends whose lives connect and disconnect, the book has myriad historical and mythological allusions and references, which gives depth and flavour to the book. Nawaz does not just make a reference to the historical events that affect the characters’ lives he also explains the events such as the horrors of Partition, the Kashmir conflict. The dispute of Kashmir, Babri Masjid riots, discourse on minority rights, Sufi ideals, the shadows of colonialism, religious beliefs, and folk legends, all conspire to design the journeys or the ‘pilgrimages’, of the characters.
The end is somewhat unpredictable; as the characters begin to settle — after rejecting Feroze, Bina married someone from her faith, and Aariz and Mehar married each other — I wondered whether the book would end like most love stories on a happy note. But then, unexpectedly, things changed. I would not reveal more so as to retain the interest.
While most of the story is set in Old Lahore, a lot of action takes place in Sindh, where Feroze and Bina grew up. The old city is discussed through Mehar’s eyes and the charm of the once-elite Mall Road is presented as seen by Aariz. The reader gets the feel of life in Sukkur in early chapters as well but its various landmarks are described in vivid details along with their history through Bina when she takes her friends on a tour of the city.
There is an interplay of theme as the story moves with the book touching upon religious discord, class difference, partition, forced conversion, and cheating and dishonesty — some in detail and some in passing. In the aftermath of Partition, the destinies of many people changed; those who had everything lost all and those who came to this country empty handed became super rich, some though unfair means. Feroze’s grandfather came to Pakistan as a destitute having lost all he had and barely able to save their lives and was given shelter by Shreeshant’s father, but through deceit his son and Feroze’s father, Hashmatullah, acquired all of Shreeshant’s property and became a feudal lord with immense wealth and power.
When the young daughter of Bina’s relative disappears, and then declares that she married of her free will — a classic case of forced conversion and marriage which is rampant in Sindh — Bina asks Feroze to ask his father to use his influence to have her recovered, he toed the official and convenient line that two adults married of their will and there is nothing wrong in it, refusing to accept that the girl was a minor.
In Hashmatullah’s character (we are introduced to him after his death through Feroze) one can see a glimpse of our politicians. “Hashmatullah’s posture changed with the hour. While denouncing democracy landed him in the good books of the dictator, Hashmat was also the first to jump the ship as the dictatorship’s hold thinned out. He would then retreat to canvassing for votes on the lone conviction that democracy was the only thing the country needed, … He would one day be affirming the faith in the secular character of Sindh, while opting to be in bed with the extremist forces on another.”
Nawaz’s interest in travelling and history and his depth of knowledge is evident as he makes references such as the Hinglaj pilgrimage in Balochistan, Bhullan — the blind dolphin of Indus that makes an appearance in the childhood memory of Bina and Feroze, the two characters from Sindh—and the ancient archaeological site of Lakhanjodaro (in Sukkur district).
Nawaz is equally well-versed in Western mythology the rich heritage of the East. This is witnessed best through Aariz, who in an article he is writing, in a stream of thought he creates an interconnected web of references, moving from Zeus to Ravana to Helen of Troy to Persiphone to Moses to Krishna to Achilles to Mansoor Al-Hallaj to Guru Nanak to Buddha, and many others. At the same time, it also signifies the depth and complexity of Aariz’s thinking; “after a certain while he realised that most places, like most places, are just the same. It’s an eternal camouflage everything has shrouded itself in.”
The book is a light read except for a few chapters, which delve into mysticism and history. Along with the main story, the interplay of a wide variety of themes and references to history, mythology, geography, culture, religions, and philosophy makes the book a treat for people who have multi-disciplinary interests.
Rizwana Naqvi is a freelance journalist and tweets @naqviriz; she can be reached at naqvi59rizwana@gmail.com
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