Boom Basera
By Zafar Qureshi
Farid Publishers, Karachi
ISBN: 978-9697827329
514pp.

Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa was so appalled by the stories of suppression during Gen Rafael Trujillo’s regime in the Dominican Republic that he wrote the novel The Feast of the Goat to depict the control the dictator had over society. In Pakistan, Mohammed Hanif wrote his magnum opus, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, on the times and eventual killing of Gen Ziaul Haq, in his unique, humorous way.

Now, journalist and translator Zafar Qureshi has made Gen Zia’s regime and fluffed campaign of the Islamicisation of Pakistan the subject of his debut novel Boom Basera. However, it is far more than just a tale of the repercussions of military dictatorship that force its protagonist to flee.

Half the story describes American life as Syed Qalab Ali Zaidi, aka Dilawar Hussain, has migrated to the United States but, in spite of Dilawar living in ‘the land of the free’, the focus remains ‘the land of the pure’, riddled as it is by the radicalisation project of the military dictator.

It is pertinent to mention here that we don’t really know why one man has two names; perhaps they are meant to symbolise the differing avatars of the same person in different countries.

A debut novel follows a disillusioned journalist who escapes from the suffocation of his homeland, only to find himself unable to truly leave the past behind

The social transformation in Dilawar’s homeland is spearheaded by a religio-political party, the Jamaatul Munafiqeen [The Party of Hypocrites]. It is obvious which real-life political outfit this is based on, one that had a major influence during Gen Zia’s regime. Meanwhile, the dictator proves to be the foundation on which Qureshi’s character Gen Zulmat-i-Zia is built. Taking the symbolic nomenclature further, the country is called Boom Basera, or ‘the land of the fools’ as the novelist describes it.

Qureshi weaves three layers together into one narrative. These are: the hero’s life in Pakistan and the launch of his journalistic career, his migration to the US and life as experienced there and, finally, American society which is reflected through the individual stories of various characters.

The novel begins with a flashback as Dilawar, working at a strip club, reminisces about his early days. He had become greatly disillusioned in Boom Basera as the business of journalism — his profession of choice — became infested with members of the Jamaatul Munafiqeen who, under the guise of journalists, were determinedly propagating their own agenda.

Depressed at this state of affairs, Dilawar emigrates and we follow his attempts to acclimatise to his new life, his travails no different from those of the countless economic migrants who struggle with resettlement in less than ideal living conditions.

At the time during which this thread of the narrative is set, American society was going through its own transformations under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who was greatly influenced by scriptwriter, novelist and so-called philosopher Ayn Rand. The writer had famously pronounced that ‘greed is not bad’, and in the process destroyed any chances of social service or building a society based on welfare.

The rest of the book traces the struggles of Dilawar and the people around him as they try to move up the ladder in pursuit of the ‘American dream’. But in every chapter, through flashbacks or otherwise, the writer shifts the narrative back to ‘Pakistan’ to describe the appalling social and political situations there, or draw comparisons.

At such moments, the characters are left as mere spectators and the writer stands up on the pedestal to start his ‘sermons’. The reader begins to question if Dilawar is just a mouthpiece for Qureshi, or his punching bag. Such passages can be so long that one wonders if this is meant to be a non-fiction book of Pakistan’s socio-political history. That being said, we could consider this a positive, as it shows how not to write a novel, especially one steeped in history.

Qureshi takes upon the Pakistani diaspora in search of the American dream as Dilawar scrambles to put down roots in an alien land. The economic migrant has run away from the suffocation of his own country and wants to find success in a new, cutthroat capitalist world. But memory steeped in nostalgia becomes the mainstay of the story, as Dilawar remains hooked to the home he can’t leave behind.

The narrative gets stuck after the initial chapters and this goes on until perhaps the 40th chapter. From a reader’s perspective, this portion could have been truncated by at least half. Sometimes, two characters engage in conversation to basically repeat what the readers already know, or have read. This is an unfortunate flaw, as it shows the writer as being more interested in addressing readers through his mouthpieces than he is in the story, its movement or intricacies.

Certainly there’s no harm in a slow-moving tale, but for that one needs the kind of mastery that shaped Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red, a murder mystery about a miniaturist. Another example would be British Irish novelist Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea. This story — of a retired theatre actor who chooses to live in seclusion, away from the hullaballoo of a metropolitan showbiz life — is more than 500 pages long and yet, completely readable.

When the narrative in Boom Basera moves forward in the novel’s last chapters, it is so quick that 20 years pass in a jiffy, without any rationalisation. At some point, it does appear that the author has taken back control of his book, but by then it is too late.

The tragic flaw of the novel is the repetition of some specific things, especially matters related to Pakistan’s political history and the involvement of the Jamaatul Munafiqeen, at whose mention the writer gets emotional.

Qureshi also appears preoccupied with didacticism with over-emphasis on Gen Zia’s dictatorial regime and his support of the real-life Jamaat-i-Islami. Whenever the narrative shifts to the more objective socio-political conditions, the author appears to be directly addressing the audience and the characters become non-entities, mere tools for him to vent his own emotions.

Ayn Rand’s socio-economic influence in the US, which unleashed the curse of capitalism on the world, is an important sub-theme and Qureshi’s juxtaposing of Pakistani and American societies is interesting, especially regarding the state of journalism in the former during the 1980s, when the military-led establishment infiltrated Pakistan’s independent media with Jamaat workers camouflaged as journalists whose sole intent was to serve their party and the establishment, and lead Pakistani society in certain directions.

It’s true that Gen Zia’s dictatorship has had lasting effects. Decades have passed, yet Pakistan is still reeling from them. The Jamaat and the religion card were the tools the general exploited to the maximum to suppress sane voices, but the author does not quite properly incorporate them in the fabric of Boom Basera. Instead of having the intended effect, they become digressions.

The reviewer is a member of staff. He tweets @IrfaanAslam

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, March 20th, 2022