{"id":129,"date":"2006-05-21T10:54:16","date_gmt":"2006-05-21T17:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/?p=129"},"modified":"2007-05-19T09:58:48","modified_gmt":"2007-05-19T16:58:48","slug":"maps-for-lost-lovers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2006\/05\/maps-for-lost-lovers\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201c<\/span>Maps for Lost Lovers\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a change, I\u2019m going to review a book that has\u00adn\u2019t been read by the book\u00adclub I go to, the only reas\u00adon being that it\u2019s a rel\u00adat\u00adively slow read. \u201cMaps for Lost Lov\u00aders\u201d<\/a> by Nadeem Aslam is the story of events and people in a Pakistani com\u00admunity in Eng\u00adland. But it\u2019s a much deep\u00ader, multi-faceted, and lyr\u00adic\u00adal work than a curs\u00adory read\u00ading of the back cov\u00ader would indicate. <\/p>\n

The first chapter of the book details a murder, and who\u2019s been arres\u00adted for that murder. This murder is the start\u00ading point for an exam\u00adin\u00ada\u00adtion of the life that people in the com\u00admunity lead, and what drives many of the chil\u00addren to leave the com\u00admunity. The ties to Pakistan, the influ\u00adence of the cler\u00adics, the inhu\u00adman\u00adity of many of the cus\u00adtoms, are all examined in a sens\u00adit\u00adive but unflinch\u00ading man\u00adner. This makes the descrip\u00adtions of these cus\u00adtoms and laws and what they lead to even more hor\u00adri\u00adfy\u00ading; this nov\u00adel shows the effects on people who are try\u00ading to do their best to cope with the effects of a sys\u00adtem that val\u00adues men greatly and women very little, that has extremely strict rules on beha\u00adviour, and that encour\u00adages \u201chon\u00adour\u201d killings. The main char\u00adac\u00adter, Shamas, is well-mean\u00ading but weak, his wife Kaukab so pious and naive she wreaks hav\u00adoc on the fam\u00adily She is a sym\u00adpath\u00adet\u00adic char\u00adac\u00adter des\u00adpite her actions, her thoughts and hopes and fears pic\u00adtured as she slowly comes to the real\u00adisa\u00adtion that not all the cler\u00adic advises her to do is neces\u00adsar\u00adily cor\u00adrect. When read\u00ading about Kaukab, I could\u00adn\u2019t help but think of the women in Palestine who are inter\u00adviewed on tele\u00advi\u00adsion and say how happy they are their sons have become sui\u00adcide bombers and how they wish they had more sons to become sui\u00adcide bombers. It gave me a little more idea how someone could go down that path.<\/p>\n

The reviews on Amazon vary wildly from those who highly recom\u00admend it to those who find the por\u00adtray\u00adal of the cul\u00adture and people racist and ste\u00adreo\u00adtyp\u00adic\u00adalb. I don\u2019t know enough about Pakistani cul\u00adture to know how truth\u00adful the por\u00adtray\u00adal of much of it is. One item struck me as odd so I did a bit of research \u2014 one of the char\u00adac\u00adters, Suraya, was divorced by her hus\u00adband, who later regret\u00adted it and wished to remarry, but they could\u00adn\u2019t remarry until she had mar\u00adried and divorced someone else. This turns out to be true, although the inform\u00ada\u00adtion I found made it sound like the divorce pro\u00adced\u00adure itself isn\u2019t quite as easy as por\u00adtrayed in the book, and that recon\u00adcili\u00adation is encour\u00adaged. So, a little exag\u00adger\u00ada\u00adtion there for the pur\u00adposes of the story, and it\u2019s likely that such exag\u00adger\u00ada\u00adtion hap\u00adpens in oth\u00ader places in the book as well. That being said, \u201chon\u00adour\u201d killings do take place, and women who are depressed over arranged mar\u00adriages are some\u00adtimes sub\u00adjec\u00adted to exor\u00adcisms to get rid of the djinni the cler\u00adics claim have pos\u00adsessed them.<\/p>\n

I have seen a little of Pakistani cul\u00adture \u2014 I knew a woman in Aus\u00adtralia who was mar\u00adried to a Pakistani. She came from Afgh\u00adanistan and it was an arranged mar\u00adriage that her par\u00adents wanted to get her out of Afgh\u00adanistan (this was dur\u00ading the Taliban regime). The pre\u00advi\u00adous wife had been divorced as she bore the hus\u00adband no chil\u00addren. I watched the video of the mar\u00adriage \u2014 I have sel\u00addom seen any\u00adone look as scared as this poor woman did, being told to marry someone she first met on the day of the wed\u00adding and move to a coun\u00adtry she knew noth\u00ading of, where she knew no-one and did\u00adn\u2019t speak the lan\u00adguage. For her it worked out well (apart from hav\u00ading the moth\u00ader-in-law liv\u00ading with them) since the hus\u00adband was kind, she was lucky enough to bear him sons quickly enough (after hav\u00ading four chil\u00addren in not very many years the doc\u00adtors for\u00adbade any more), and even\u00adtu\u00adally her sis\u00adter mar\u00adried her hus\u00adband\u2019s broth\u00ader and they also moved to the same dis\u00adtrict in Sydney. She got lucky; I doubt that the first wife found life as good.<\/p>\n

Although the main interest of the book is the por\u00adtray\u00adal of an unfor\u00adgiv\u00ading cul\u00adture and the clashes it has with West\u00adern styles of liv\u00ading, it does speak to prob\u00adlems that any immig\u00adrant faces when in a new coun\u00adtry, that of try\u00ading to save what is pre\u00adcious and worth\u00adwhile from the cul\u00adture and beliefs you were brought up in, and fold\u00ading that into the cul\u00adture you live in. This book is full of regrets, people who thought they were only going to live in Eng\u00adland for a short time and miss the flowers and trees of Pakistan, people who bring their pre\u00adju\u00addices with them and hate that they can\u00ad\u2019t force oth\u00ader people to do what they want them to, people who no longer have any\u00adwhere to live where they truly feel \u201cat home\u201d. And the gen\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtion clash (exacer\u00adbated by the cul\u00adture clash) of par\u00adents doing what they think is best for their chil\u00addren, where the chil\u00addren dis\u00adagree. Don\u2019t read it when you\u2019re feel\u00ading down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review of Nadeem Aslam\u2019s \u201cMaps for Lost Lovers\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}