by

LLF 2017: “Reminder of an Open Future”

The Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) has become one of the best cultural events to take place in Lahore each year.

Inaugurated five years ago, the only thing stopping people from attending in the past was pouring rain. This year, it was a security threat. A series of bomb blasts around the country in February, including one not far from the proposed LLF venue, had brought uncertainty to the festival’s plans. An explosion in Lahore a day before the LLF weekend made matters worse. In what has sadly become a familiar scene, organisers scrambled to put on a good show despite circumstances that threatened against it. Almost overnight, the entire program was truncated to a single day event, and the venue shifted from the Alhamra Art Center to a luxury hotel.

Alhamra is a space that was designed to host and promote cultural activities, lectures, exhibitions, and recitals. For a great part of its history, the ancient city of Lahore has been famous for its reputation as a centre of culture. “A city of the arts, activism and big ideas,” as the LLF website proudly states. Alhamra is the embodiment of this celebration of the arts, and it was really a no-brainer to choose as a venue for LLF, which hopes to revive and celebrate the same.

At its best, the LLF gives us a chance to re-engage with our history, our place in the broader world… To examine the present and imagine the future.

Shifting the venue from Alhamra to a hotel, forced as it was, necessary as it might have been, had a profound impact on the experience of the festival. First, in terms of access. There were armed guards on the road that led to the hotel, halting and peeking into cars before letting them pass. I wondered on what basis they were letting people through, or not. To be sure, there have always been armed guards at both venues, but Alhamra imbued a certain “everyone is welcome” feel that a luxury hotel, which is inherently privileged, cannot.

The atmosphere and spirit of the festival suffered too. In the past, we have seen packed halls, long queues outside food stalls in the grounds, a camaraderie of sorts between everyone in attendance. The atmosphere outside the halls—spring in the air, the recent memory of a new year, new beginnings, new ideas, new books, new food stalls—has always been as much a part of the LLF experience as the scheduled events taking place inside.

At its best, the LLF gives us a chance to re-engage with our history, our place in the broader world, to frame our responses to varying issues – art, politics, literature, food. To examine the present and imagine the future. And every year, the LLF organisers bring us a fantastic showing.

This year would have been no different had the festival program not been reduced by more than half. Fifty scheduled sessions were reduced to 21. Instead of a choice of five panels at any given time, there were now three. Looking at the original program, it’s hard not to ache for what might have been. Almost a dozen book launches were scheduled to take place—including one I was most looking forward to, Love in Chakiwara and Other Misadventures, translated from Urdu by Bilal Tanweer (author of The Scatter Here is Too Great)—but also a great many others. Also cancelled were numerous sessions in Urdu and Punjabi, including a discussion of the late Urdu poet Parveen Shakir. Talks on climate change, protest art, Pakistani cinema, conservation, cities, theatre, all, sadly, never happened. It was inevitable, I suppose, that foreign speakers who had travelled thousands of miles were given preference.

 “Our meeting was mediated by the West, but now we can remove the mediator,” said Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole to Pakistani-British writer Mohsin Hamid. “I see cities like Lahore, Lagos, Jakarta, as where we’re headed. Something marvellous is happening.”

Still, there were highlights. I could not attend every session, so my opinion is limited by my attendance. For me, two sessions stood out in particular.

Michael Palin’s presence brought all sorts of fanboys and fangirls out to see him. But not being a Monty Python fan, Nigerian writer Teju Cole was the biggest draw for me. His conversation with Mohsin Hamid turned out to be one that I continued to think about days later. Conversations like these, the ones that keep tugging at one’s mind and end up shaping one’s worldview, are what all good talks, seminars, discussions (and, also, songs, plays, films, and works of art) have the power to do, and it is what these literary festivals (and, also, music meets, concerts, recitals, and film festivals) are all about.

Literary festivals bring together writers and artists from all over the world, giving observers the chance to listen to ideas and perspectives from far off places. But as these two writers argued, we are closer to one another than we think. The session, titled “Who Belongs Where”, discussed the implications of the shifting locus of literary life.

“Our meeting was mediated by the West, but now we can remove the mediator,” said Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole to Pakistani-British writer Mohsin Hamid. “I see cities like Lahore, Lagos, Jakarta, as where we’re headed. Something marvellous is happening.”

According to Cole, we no longer need to look to the West for mediation or validation.

Cole mentioned a question all Pakistani writers, especially those writing in English, have been or will be asked at one time or another – he is often asked, he shared, whether he writes for people at home or for foreigners? The answer is not so simple any longer, as the world has become more complex and cosmopolitan. Speaking about his readers, he said, “Anyone who wants to be part of my tribe is my tribe.”

And that is what ultimately leads to kinship.

Teju Cole spoke about writing (a topic which ironically often takes a backseat to other subjects, such as politics.) This will serve as good advice to all writers, aspiring and established: the best writing does not claim to have perfect knowledge.

Cole said: “Writing is registering sensation and observation. There is value in close observation that leads to writing that is fresh, writing with ‘subjective individual detail’ that unpeels the layers of cliché… Writing that makes the blood sing, is one person saying, here I am and this is what I’m experiencing now.”

“We must sing songs and write books and paint colours. Art will exist and be a reminder of an open future”: Molly Crabapple

Inevitably, the conversation took several political turns, and Trump was mentioned more times than I would have preferred. Teju Cole rounded it off with a discussion on colonisation and history by saying, “The neutral voice, the voice from nowhere, is the most sophisticated tool of the oppressor’s arsenal.”

Which brings me to Molly Crabapple’s talk, which was anything but neutral.

I had not heard of Molly Crabapple, but boredom had ejected me from another talk, and I wandered past samosa stalls into Hall 3 (which, I feel I should mention, was constructed in a parking lot.) Crabapple is an American artist and illustrator who has sketched in Syria, Gaza, Guantanamo Bay and in Abu Dhabi’s labour camps.

Crabapple spoke passionately about the responsibility of art in her talk, blurring the line between art and activism. She urged that art needs to break out of “guilded galleries” and “wealthy enclaves” and must come out to the (more egalitarian) streets, so to speak.

“Art is for everyone. Everyone wants beauty, regardless of their class,” Crabapple said. “Art must be everywhere and for everyone. Art must be braver. Art must be both a refuge and a weapon.”

She could not have known how relevant her remarks were, the irony almost comical, for here we were sitting in behind barricades in an armoured, wealthy enclave. Though it was not wilful, the heightened security made the LLF less accessible for the public. The usual scenes of diversity (though always rather moderately diverse) in the crowd were, sadly, absent.

The question is, how much can we expect of a literary festival?

We cannot expect them to right all wrongs, nor is it their job to do so. The most we can do is celebrate what they aspired to do in 2017, and what they will continue to aspire to every year. As Molly Crabapple said, “We must sing songs and write books and paint colours. Art will exist and be a reminder of an open future.”

Perhaps the organisers will get the chance to open it up a bit more in 2018.

Mariam Tareen is a prose editor at Papercuts magazine.