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Trespassing
Uzma Aslam Khan
Henry Holt & Co.
ISBN Number: 0-312-42355-1
Reviewer: Susan Muaddi Darraj
One would not imagine enjoying a novel that offered a detailed education on the lifecycle of silkworms. The pupae “would eat their way out to enter the fourth and final stage of their life as mature imagoes," writes Uzma Aslam Khan. “Their eggs would begin the cycle again." And yet the image of the silkworm steadily unraveling its thread of silk is an apt metaphor for the slowly unwinding events in Khan’s absorbing tale of modern Pakistan.
Set in the city of Karachi, teeming with poverty, corruption, and revolutionary fervor in the early 1990s, Trespassing opens (and closes) with the perspective of Dia, a young woman searching for her future while still dwelling on the past—specifically on the question of who murdered her father years ago and why.
Meanwhile, Daanish, a young Pakistani who has been studying in the United States, is heading home to Karachi to mourn the recent death of his own father, Doctor Shafqat. The father and son shared a very special relationship which often made Daanish’s mother, Anu, feel excluded. Now that her husband is gone, Anu is determined to “reclaim," as she sees it, the affection and attention of her only child. One of her plans is to get him to stay in Pakistan, and she hopes to accomplish this by arranging his marriage. The girl she picks out is Nissrine, the best friend of Dia.
Not surprisingly, Daanish is more enamored of the charismatic, thoughtful Dia than her more conventional friend. He is attracted to Dia’s disdain for Pakistan’s strict social mores, which three years in the United States have also taught him to question. However, the couple does not realize that society—especially their mothers, who are hiding a destructive secret—will work tirelessly to abort their romance.
As the plot unravels, pulling in the various subplots of the illicit romance, Dia’s father’s murder, and Anu’s unhappy marriage to Doctor Shafqat, it also addresses the political turmoil of Pakistan through the character of Salamaat (whose name, ironically, means “peace"). Rendered partially deaf after being assaulted and beaten as a young boy, Salamaat wanders through life trying to find an attachment to something definitive and fulfilling. His family, employed at the silk factory owned by Dia’s family, does not command his loyalty, and as a young boy he sets off to find work.
In the big city of Karachi, he becomes entangled in a radical, revolutionary gang determined to overthrow the government. In its training camps, Salamaat initially finds happiness, thinking he will help restore Pakistan’s integrity. However, as he becomes more immersed in the organization’s activities, he witnesses events that disillusion him—and he returns to his former state of personal isolationism. Indeed, he is nicknamed the “ajnabi," or “foreigner," by several characters, illustrating his loneliness and outsider status in his own land.
Salamaat, the novel’s most compelling character, serves as the plot’s linchpin—when it unravels, it is because of events he sets in motion. Furthermore, his disillusionment with Pakistani politics can be viewed as a representation of the social and political chaos that currently plagues the nation.
Daanish and Dia, as the novel’s Romeo and Juliet, are also compelling—Daanish, a journalism student, is disillusioned by life in the United States, especially due to the Persian Gulf War and the American media coverage of the event. “I’m asking if the media is presenting us with facts or … or mere labels," he tells his American journalism professor, who accuses him of being biased due to his own Muslim faith. “My journal has nothing to do with my religion," Daanish protests.
By the end of the novel, however, his idealism has wavered. He tells Dia: “I have to support my mom … and the best way is to work in a country that bombs others but lets me in. They could just as easily let them in and bomb me. I have to find a place in that puzzle."
Dia, however, is unflinching. Born to a mother who herself flouted social norms, Dia refuses to allow society and religion to dictate her actions. Before meeting Daanish, she lectures her friend Nissrine, who has been “selected" for him: “What if marrying this stranger makes your life worse? ... Think of all the women who’ve gambled and lost." Even with Daanish, she retains a practical view of and cautionary approach towards marriage despite allowing herself to fall deeply in love. Her greatest disappointment is realizing that Daanish has finally succumbed to what is expected of him.
Another rewarding aspect of the novel is the manner in which Khan paints a graphic, realistic, and disturbing portrait of Pakistan: details of disease, poverty, social chaos, crime, and repression are not skimpy. When the water supply runs out and Daanish and his mother, along with most of their neighborhood, spend days without bathing or fresh water to drink, Daanish decides to apply to the administration for a water tanker. He takes a taxi to the administration headquarters and is shocked by the sight that greets him:
“[I]t was not a building but a wide expanse of dirt, on each side of which stood a desk. Both desks were surrounded by a mob .... As soon as two people tried to stand in a series, the one at the back stuck his head forward, which led to the first nudging the second back in line by popping out himself. While the two danced sideways, newcomers simply cut ahead .... [A] full-blown stampede seemed imminent."
The administrators’ indifference to the plight of people, desperate for fresh water, underscores the corruption in the government and the stagnating national situation in general.
Khan’s novel is an illuminating inside glimpse into a country that is often in the news but about which very little is really understood.
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