Out of place

Fatima Bhutto’s latest novel — The Runaways — has garnered warm praise from readers and critics alike since its release last year. A novel about Muslim identity in such volatile times warrants immediate attention, but the cover design (on the Indian version of the book) and the title don’t quite add up on first glance. As the face of a monochrome lion stares at you, you wonder what this symbol of courage and raw power is doing on the cover of a book that has a title suggesting the opposite.

Lions are not runaways; runaways are not lions. Not usually. You google what lions might be afraid of. Rhinos and elephants, you find. Large beasts of brute strength. Like state machineries, like media-driven perception, like prejudice, like hate and bigotry. A lion-heart may take on all of these, but it is unlikely to emerge unhurt. Or a lion-heart may choose to run away, because what good is courage without life?

Violence and love, fear and courage, despair and faith all roll into each other in The Runaways . Based in Karachi, Bhutto’s own life has verily been a landscape of all these emotions, coming as she does from Pakistan’s first political family. As the daughter of politician Murtaza Bhutto, niece of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and granddaughter of former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the author has had a ringside view of politics in Pakistan.

The Runaways; Fatima Bhutto; Penguin Viking; Rs 599; Fiction

The mire of political machinations, however, seems not to have tainted her spirit. Violence seems not to have become the mere by product of politics for her. Her tender take on the human condition was evident in a Twitter chat with journalist Barkha Dutt, when she said, “I think violence is born of pain. Certainly anger and hate, but we have to understand that for those emotions to arise and be acted upon, the person carrying them must be in a tremendous amount of pain.”

Bhutto laid bare her very public-personal life in her acclaimed 2010 book Songs of Blood and Sword . For The Runaways , she resorts to fiction, but continues to explore familiar themes, and landscapes. That the political is personal for her is reflected in her choice of setting for this story — Pakistan, Syria and a little of the United Kingdom. Her three protagonists are planted in the nations she has grown up and lived in. In a time she lives in.

Through the young lives of Salman, Monty and Anita Rose, one sees pecking orders of different kinds, and things that compel one to choose fight or flight. In the urban jungle, these wildlings are placed very differently at the beginning of their lives, with only their Muslim identities in common.

Monty is the child of elitism, born into a rich business family from Karachi. Anita Rose belongs to the fringes — a have-not both in her religious and economic status — a Christian and a destitute in Pakistan. Salman is an Indian-origin resident in the UK, with an unshakeable, undisguised scent of immigration trailing him. Each is chased by a different predator — Sunny by a deep sense of displacement, Anita Rose by rejection and discontentment, and Monty by purposelessness and a life too easy.

Each must respond to their respective catalysts and twist fate. These catalysts and foils form another interesting set of characters, representing alternate universes and thereby, possibilities. Sunny’s indeterminism is caused by his father, his life finds purpose when he meets his radical cousin Oz, even as his heart is softened by an enigmatic DJ named Aloush. Anita Rose (un)christens herself Layla and sometimes ‘the lioness’, to fit into new social orders imagined first by her eccentric neighbour, Osama, and then her brother, Ezra. Monty’s reckoning comes through love — an eager, ardent, forever kind of love for Layla.

Unhinged, they must somehow find somewhere to fit in again. That somewhere becomes the radical Ummah Movement for liberation in Syria.

Bhutto dives deep into the world of radical Islam through these characters. However, she reminds her reader repeatedly that one size does not fit all. The path of radicalism is trod for very different reasons, as her protagonists demonstrate. She says, “If a state doesn’t give its people — all its people — a vision, if it doesn’t create a belonging for them, they will search for one elsewhere. They will be vulnerable to any other force that offers them a vision of a future where they belong.”

The narrative of our ‘hyper connected’ existence is thickly punctuated by casual sexism, elitism and racism. The result is a hyper-sensitive people — easily offended and ready to pick a fight — especially in third world countries. They have precious little to hold on to except their cultural identities, and can be driven to passion by religious and political rhetoric. Bhutto’s understanding of these processes seems to come as much as from experience as from instinct, and make for a deeply empathetic rendition of human striving and failure. The Runaways challenges a reader’s heart to find in itself tolerance, acceptance and finally, compassion, especially for those we disagree with. Bhutto’s protagonists cannot be saved, but her readers certainly can.

Urmi Chanda-Vaz is a writer and researcher who writes on Indian cultural history

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