After World War I, the world’s major powers redrew the planet’s political maps at Versailles in 1919[1] with a grotesque ‘winners take all’ result. As we all know, this project failed spectacularly by 1939.
But with the end of World War II – following a worldwide Depression – the massive weakening of the British Empire became more apparent along with the ascendency of the United States and the Soviet Union on the world stage. At both Bretton Woods and at Yalta[2], there was little appetite to repeat the singular mistake of artificially and hastily redrawing national boundaries.
But that did not mean that there would be none of it.
Redrawing borders in 1945
In August 1945, the mistake was repeated on behalf of the US government by two US Colonels[3] (Rusk and Bonesteel) who recommended the division of Korea into north and south zones at the 38th parallel following a few days of study. It happened again in August 1947 when a British Lawyer[4] (Sir Cyril Radcliffe) who had never been east of Paris in his lifetime, was given 5 weeks to redraw the borders of India.
Over 75 years later, it is ultimately unclear what the important commonalities may be between the breakup of Korea and the partitioning of India – but what we do know is that in both cases:
- the redrawn borders still exist to this day despite monumental attempts to change them
- they have become perennial hot spots resulting in massive wars and wanton loss of life
- each has experienced extensive buildup in outlandish military power characterized by colossal mistakes, assassinations, genocide, indescribable cruelty, and breakdown of civil order; and finally
- ample evidence over generations of extreme buffoonery and nepotism on the part of each of their military and civil leaderships.
Policy analyst as novelist
It is with this backdrop that Munir Sheikh has penned his first novel: Islamabad[5] – A tale of war and love. It follows the lives of two extended families and their friends in Pakistan, Kashmir and finally Canada over 60 years and 3 generations from 1947 to 2007.
Changing vocations from senior civil servant, policy analyst and economist to novelist is no mean feat but the reader’s unique reward is how this opus benefits from Sheikh’s previous careers.
Throughout the tragedy of the often chaotic and crazy choices forced upon the two families along with the infliction of senseless violence on thoughtful, honourable and pious men women and children, the dry humour of the public servant who is constantly asked to manage ambiguity steers the story through its inevitably painful twists and turns.
The logic of the economist grounds the tale of war and love through long but very human discussions of the costs of various items and exchange rates from rupees to dollars in everyday discussions of parking availability in – of all places – Toronto. In this and other examples, relentless tragedy is made more real and perhaps more tolerable through the discussion of mundanities.
But it is the policy analyst in Mr. Sheikh that permeates the novel as the pros and cons of options are constantly entertained, discarded, and weighed expertly in the dialogue of the two families and especially, their principal protagonist, the ever-thoughtful Khaled.
I have no intention of reprising the plot of the novel in this review. It stands on its own and is not just aided by the richness of previous professional experience as it is by its economy in storytelling.
In a word, the story ‘moves’ and does not lose its effect as it could when it often hurtles through complex events. In the end, it becomes what even a distracted reader would want in an example of a genre that competes with its fellow time travellers in historical fiction grounded in real day to day occurrences: it’s a ‘page turner’.
For ‘western’ readers’, at the point that they finish the novel, they ought to realize that their own family histories in the post war period, regardless of events of migration, love, war, loss and even family tragedy, they were likely not marred by the mistaken results of poorly thought out, hastily drawn national boundaries superimposed upon unsuspecting populations.
Those momentary decisions of single men or small groups on behalf of their governments – often meant to be temporary – but with catastrophic and enduring effect, caused generations of ordinary people to weather hardships unknown to almost all of us.
The gift of Sheikh’s novel is that he is able to introduce us and instruct us in those realities in a highly understandable, worthwhile and readable way.
[1] Paris 1919: Sixteen months that changed the world https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/105821/paris-1919-by-margaret-macmillan/9780375760525
[2] Office of the Historian: Wartime conferences 1941-1945 https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/war-time-conferences#:~:text=In%201944%2C%20conferences%20at%20Bretton,controversial%20of%20the%20wartime%20meetings.
[3] How two colonels and a National Geographic map divided Korea https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/how-2-colonels-national-geographic-map-divided-korea-24734
[4] Wikipedia: Cyril Radcliffe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Radcliffe,_1st_Viscount_Radcliffe
[5] Amazon: Islamabad https://www.amazon.ca/Islamabad-Tale-Love-Munir-Sheikh/dp/B0D94YZYY5