{"id":3104,"date":"2017-04-29T16:30:30","date_gmt":"2017-04-29T11:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/?p=3104"},"modified":"2017-04-29T23:11:25","modified_gmt":"2017-04-29T18:11:25","slug":"ilf-2017-hm-naqvi-abdullah-cossack-karachi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/2017\/04\/ilf-2017-hm-naqvi-abdullah-cossack-karachi\/","title":{"rendered":"ILF 2017: Will HM Naqvi&#8217;s &#8216;The Selected Works of Abdullah (the Cossack)&#8217; be the Big Karachi Novel?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New York City\u2019s Bomb Magazine, which publishes new literature, has HM Naqvi <a href=\"http:\/\/bombmagazine.org\/article\/705214\/from-em-the-selected-works-of-abdullah-the-cossack-em\" target=\"_blank\">tagged<\/a> as an \u201cexperimental\u201d writer*.<\/p>\n<p>Naqvi\u2019s panel at the 2017 Islamabad Literature Festival (ILF) wasn\u2019t the most well-attended of the lot, probably because he had Syed Nusrat Ali\u2019s one-man mimicry\u00a0mushaira and Arfa Sayeda Zehra\u2019s panel on Pakistan&#8217;s history to compete with. I went, however: one, because <em>Home Boy <\/em>was great, and I\u2019d wondered where he had disappeared to for the past\u00a0eight years, and two, because his session was titled \u201cThe Big Karachi Novel\u201d. I\u2019m a Karachi expat. The name draws me like a moth to a flame.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/118795316\" target=\"_blank\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 67.003367% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/118795316?et=DPD5MsJEQwRGckWBjZRyuA&amp;tld=com&amp;viewMoreLink=on&amp;sig=kQpv_SilqVqbm1cx9JCmpEAv361ZmINbpnwBn5BOdeI=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"398\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nUp on stage with Fasi Zaka as moderator, Naqvi truly did give off the sort of vibe of someone who would be tagged \u201cexperimental\u201d by Bomb Magazine. For starters, his shirt buttons were undone half way\u2014which, contextualized in Islamabad, with daarhi-waalas in the audience, seemed like a comical parody of the writer trope than something more intentional. Secondly, when he spoke, he said things like \u201cI work at night. I work from midnight till about 6 am. At night, the noises in the city and the noises in my head are quiet.\u201d Thirdly, when he began reading, he did so with a specific\u00a0cadence, half growl, half poetry, slow, methodic, but musical. You could tell he would be the sort of writer to narrate ordinary things in strange, novel ways.<\/p>\n<p>For example, this description of Ramadan from his forthcoming novel <em>The Selected Works of Abdullah (the Cossack)<\/em> as it appears in an excerpt on the <a href=\"http:\/\/bombmagazine.org\/article\/705214\/from-em-the-selected-works-of-abdullah-the-cossack-em\" target=\"_blank\">Bomb magazine website<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201c&#8230;I feel unstable, unhinged, and in good company: everyone turns lunatic in the Holy Month. We become mean, testy, preachy, sanctimonious. The only time one feels the presence of God during this disconsolate period is when one happens to find oneself on the empty streets at the break of fast. The city seems uninhabited then, and in the resonant silence, there are Intimations of Divine Order.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t read the book yet, but I already know this book will put me in a dream, take me to\u00a0a different sort of Karachi, where poverty is jostled aside (roughly, in true Karachi style) for poetry.<\/p>\n<p>[socialpoll id=&#8221;2437811&#8243;]<\/p>\n<p>The session was to promote Naqvi&#8217;s\u00a0upcoming novel (an audience member asked: \u201cSo when do we get to read it?\u201d He answered: \u201cThink of it like nihari. It takes some time to cook. Have some patience.\u201d). <em>Cossack<\/em> will be an epic that spans the history of the city through the protagonist Abdullah, a 300lb man who, much like all of us, is weaving his way through love, life, and his place in the world\u2014and is characterized as a metaphor for Karachi itself.<\/p>\n<p>Naqvi explained how he has spent the past few years researching the city\u2019s intricacies and depth in meticulous detail, painting Karachi in light of the modern predicament that plagues all sprawling cities such as\u00a0Lagos, Jakarta, or Bombay. As a native Karachiite, this is all very exciting: I personally cannot wait for this book.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<blockquote>\n<h5><strong>An audience member asked: \u201cSo when do we get to read it?\u201d Naqvi\u00a0answered: \u201cThink of it like nihari. It takes some time to cook. Have some patience.\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n<hr \/>\n<p>It\u2019s fantastic that this relatively nascent culture of literary festivals has spread across the major cities of Pakistan. How else would one be hyped up about something that\u2019s not even published yet? This, in addition to the myriad sessions the ILF presented on the history of Pakistan, the sociopolitics of gender and the media, literature both in English and Urdu, jam-packed mushairas, and performances on Ismat Chughtai amongst others, made for a wonderful bubble of activity in Islamabad.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s to many more!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*They also have him tagged under \u201cIndian literature\u201d. Let\u2019s calm the quivering rage: They meant well, I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong><em>Ifra Asad is a poetry editor at Papercuts magazine.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HM Naqvi gave a sneak peek of his forthcoming book at the Islamabad Literature Festival in April. Ifra Asad writes about Naqvi&#8217;s session, his style, and the anticipation for a novel set in Karachi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":3113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[365,91],"tags":[55,746,747,207,749,748],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3104"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3104"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3121,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3104\/revisions\/3121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}