It was a period of silence in Pakistan?s political history. And Shehryar Fazli, breaking away from the recent crop of Pakistani fiction writers, attempts to capture those dark and unnerving times of Pakistan?s first democratic transition in the early Seventies. His debut novel Invitation is a period piece, grappling with an era that has faded into history books. Its setting of 1970 Karachi is a heady concoction of power, politics, personalities, and has at its heart a tragedy that changed the course of Pakistan?s future, leading up to the Bangladesh liberation war. With these elements thrown in the pot together, Fazli ran the risk of ending up with a cheap political thriller, but he sure knew better than that. For, Invitation fares quite well on most accounts.
The narrator, a young Pakistani man Shahbaz, returning after 19 years from Paris after his father was sent into exile for allegedly being a part of a communist conspiracy against the regime, is as much a part of the narrative as he is an observer. The novel is Shahbaz?s personal story, narrating his quest for a sense of citizenship, which he has lacked forever.
Fazli says, ?One of the descriptions that I like hearing is that it is a period piece. But in addition to it taking place in a very fascinating time in Pakistan?s history, but I do see it as a very personal story at the end of the day. It keeps referring to whatever is happening in the domain of the public, but it is his personal and sort of unsuccessful journey.?
For Fazli, who himself has resided in Paris, the book is ?not in the autobiographical league?, although he confesses that he wouldn?t have been able to recreate Paris in the story had he not lived there, as he borrows quite a bit from real life. One then wonder how did Fazli manage to recreate a Pakistan of the 1970s, an era that was lost before he was born? ?I certainly had to have my facts right because I?m writing on a period that had actually vanished by the time I was born. It did require a good amount of research. So the background to capture this period both in terms of life everyday and also what is happening in the political scene is very much factual,? he says. However, it is quite interesting the way he uses real people as characters, like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Fazli says, ?I used them in whichever way I felt like using them in the story.?
The narrative has mildly cynical and conspicuously dark undertones to it. The mannerisms, the characters, the situations, the environs, have a sort of a darkly unnerving energy hanging over. And Fazli says it was deliberate of him to weave the story with these elements, owing to the background of the novel.
The other stark attribute that can?t be missed about the story is the high level of visual description that has gone into the writing. While it seduces and engages you further, in certain parts, it becomes too focused on finer details and slightly goes off track, but overall it works well. Fazli believes the heavy descriptive nature of the book was a necessity. ?I am a very visual writer. And since I had to capture a lost world in this book, I had to put myself in it. The energy I put into description is in trying to capture this city that was no longer there. Had it been set in modern times, I?m not sure I would have described things as much in detail,? he says.
And what does Fazli, himself an analyst on conflict resolution, feel about the current state of conflict that Pakistan is embroiled in, vis-?-vis t 1970-71? ?In one sense, a lot of the same things are happening; we just made another transition to democracy in 2008, and again popular protest led to the ouster of another military regime. But I still feel that the lessons of that time haven?t quite been learnt even today. There is still this tendency to centralise power, the same actors?the military, the bureaucracy?are dominant and are still trying to crush democratic politics. We have plural culture and society, but for some people at the top that seems to be a threat and so the tendency is to suppress it. Surprisingly and unfortunately, the challenges seem all the same and the manifestations of power remain the same despite the fact that this is two democratic transitions later,? he says.
This is a book that dwells as much in the mind of Shahbaz as much as it explores the little geographies of Karachi, and of Paris to an extent. It?s very visual, extremely descriptive, dark and crude in parts, if one may say so. But it also is a binding and an interesting read with a nice blend of the lives of a person, a city and a nation. Though it is a complex book set in extremely complex times, scratching the surface leads you to quite a simple story. Fazli calls himself a keen observer of people and their idiosyncrasies, and his writing substantiates that.