Islamabad Literature Festival: Tete-a-tete with Hanif

The multi-faceted writer, journalist in his element; readings and discussion.

ISLAMABAD:

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce. Though the words of Voltaire, they resonate with the kind of fascination Muhammad Hanif, author, playwright, filmmaker and journalist, garners. Something of a one-hit wonder since his wildly popular satire “A Case of Exploding Mangoes”, published in 2008, Hanif is as animated in laidback, live conversation.

Ardent fans, critics, students and people who had only heard of this larger-than-life literary figure gathered to hear him speak at the Islamabad Literature Festival on Wednesday.

Hanif is the sardonic, irreverent and matter-of-fact voice we have known for a brief period of time but have come to love, as the moderator Navid Shehzad put it.

She read out a passage about the metaphorical failed marriage of Pakistan and the US which aptly described the climatic relationship in a ludicrous vein.

“Look at yourself, more than 60 years into marriage and you two still get on each other’s nerves,” the excerpt read.

“You’ve been on record as having said that fiction writers have no social responsibilities and yet your first book mocks a dictator and your second empathises with a Christian woman. What do you have to say about?” asked Shehzad.

Hanif said there was no social responsibility behind the books, explaining that he mocked the dictator just for fun. “Which other author do you know who can mock Zia in a book without naming him once?” he quipped. Fiction writers have a responsibility to the page, if it makes sense on the page, it works, he added.

About his second book, Hanif said he was inspired by the nurse tending to his sick mother at a hospital in Karachi in 1989. He was inspired by the honesty of the nurse doing her job at 3am when there was potentially no one to look over her.

He imagined and immortalised her into the super-woman character that is Alice Bhatti.

About journalists, he said they have a bigger responsibility than they realise. Quoting his editor Razia Bhatti, he said journalists should care about and tell a story nobody else is willing to tell. “Being brave is not enough, you have to be good and avoid sloppiness,” he added.

Shehzad also read out an excerpt from “Our Lady of Alice Bhatti,” following which a discussion centred on women at the alter of honour killings, land disputes and suspicious husbands kicked off.

Hanif noted that such crimes were an everyday affair on the city pages of local newspapers and nothing has been done about it.

Talking about his recently-published booklet “The Missing Baloch”, Hanif shared his interactions with the families of the boys who, having gone missing from Balochistan for years, ended up on streets, brutally tortured in most cases.

The book compiles six case studies, narrating true stories. While reviewers dubbed the writing as heart breaking, Hanif said the sad part was that nobody seemed to care.

“Our media, as independent as it is, has ignored them,” he lamented.

The session concluded with questions and comments for the acclaimed writer.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 2^nd, 2013.