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From
Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 19, Dated 12 May 2012 |
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Doing discourse doggy style
Tabish Khair’s new novel is a sneaky, backdoor entry into dominant tropes about Islamist terror, says Mohsin Siddiqui
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Tracking terror Tabish Khair
Photo: Chirodeep Chaudhary |
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A PROFESSOR in the Department of English at Aarhus University in Denmark, Tabish Khair is by turns charming, satirical and brash as he tells the story of three men whose lives intersect in Denmark. This is not the Denmark of cheerful Legoland, the happiest country in the world that shoots to the top of all global economic indicator lists. Instead, as Khair introduces readers to the handsome and preternaturally likeable Ravi, an unnamed narrator who tells his story as a series of flashback and their mutual landlord, a devout Muslim cabdriver, Karim, he teases out a sort of shadow Denmark, a country that seems to be at odds with everything publicly perceived.
In How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position, a sudden lack of housing leads to the Hindu Ravi, the atheist Narrator and the devoutly Muslim Karim becoming roommates. The story of this unlikely trio’s cohabitation is told in medias res, with the Narrator flashing back to key moments in their tale, all of which ultimately coalesce into a strange — and oddly troubling — moment of betrayal and brutal honesty.
In an article with The Guardian in 2005, Khair snapped at critics accusing him of being “diasporic” (apparently, this is a bad thing) with a fairly simple statement. “I write for South Asians who read English and for the significant minority of western readers interested in going beyond the West’s dominant discourses,” he wrote, a sentiment that clearly comes out in How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position. The book echoes his sentiments, throwing the trope of racial profiling and prejudice mildly out of whack. As Ravi and the Narrator bar-hop through a microcosm of Denmark, Khair peppers his novel with sharp bon mots about Danish society; while Karim speaks of his faith, Khair comments on and tears down religion and faith with casual disregard.
There are several individual narratives that run through the novel in parallel. The most interesting one is probably that of the entitled and privileged Ravi, scion of a wealthy family who is desperately looking for love despite his protestations to the contrary. There is Karim, who holds weekly meetings with fellow Muslims — some of whom are stereotypes of the worst possible kind — and who receives mysterious telephone calls at odd times. There are the Klauses, two Danish men whose relationship with the occupants of Karim’s flat takes an odd turn, and, of course, the Narrator, who seems to be content with living in the shadows of everyone else’s lives, emerging only towards the end.
The Narrator is something of a nonentity, holding what weight he does by virtue of the fact that he is, in fact, telling a story that involves two characters who are more interesting by far than he could hope to be. Caught up in the slipstream of Ravi and Karim, his only contribution to forwarding the story comes towards the end of the novel; apparently a Pakistani academic, he is casually referred to (affectionately) as “bastard” by Ravi, who finds it necessary to embellish the details of the narrator’s life (stealing money from his father to go a-whoring, for example) in order to make him even mildly attractive to Danish women.
MINOR QUIBBLES aside, the only real “flaw”, if one can call it that, is the brevity of Khair’s novel. The quick pace and “resolution” lead to a strong sense of unresolved endings. One cannot help but wish that Khair had spent a little more time wrapping up his plotlines; like balsamic vinegar and olive oil, they taste fantastic, but don’t really come together. To be quite honest, it’s a little difficult to understand the “point”, if indeed there is one, of Khair’s novel. It is fun to read, but much like an isolated episode of a serialised television show, it leaves more questions unanswered than one would ideally like. This is not necessarily a bad thing; as a quick read with some incisive, fun commentary on self-perception and projection, How to Fight Islamist Terror... justifies the investment of time.
mohsin.siddiqui@gmail.com
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