Pakistan author tells of ordinary in strange times

RAHIMYAR KHAN DISTRICT, Pakistan -- When Daniyal Mueenuddin's father asked him to return to Pakistan and retrieve family farmland siphoned off by unscrupulous managers, the aspiring poet had a romantic take on the challenge.

"I had this sort of 'Doctor Zhivago' view of myself -- these deathless poems that I would write while the Bolsheviks were closing in upon me. So it was easy to convince me," the Pakistani-American says two decades later.

As Mueenuddin slowly wrested back control of much of the property, he learned the ins and outs of farming and eventually came to accept that perhaps he would not be the World's Next Great Poet. But in the fertile fields that surround his quiet home in southern Punjab province, he has found something that helped greatly when he later turned to fiction writing: story ideas.

With the debut of his short-story collection, "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders," the 45-year-old Mueenuddin joins a small but growing crop of writers from Pakistan whose English-language works are causing a stir in the literary world -- even stealing some of the spotlight from Indian writers who have long dominated the South Asian writing scene.

His peers include Mohsin Hamid, whose novel "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize; Mohammed Hanif, author of the critically adored "A Case of Exploding Mangoes"; and Kamila Shamsie, the pen behind the forthcoming "Burnt Shadows."

The growth in literary attention is refreshing for a politically turbulent country far more likely to make news for al-Qaida and Taliban violence. And to some degree the two phenomena are probably linked.

Although Pakistan has had English-language writers gain attention in the past, such as Bapsi Sidhwa, today's writers are reaching a larger public in part because the country is in the international spotlight, said Asif Farrukhi, a well-known Pakistani writer and editor whose usual medium is the Urdu language.

"There are better works, and there is more emphasis on it," said Farrukhi, who called Mueenuddin's writing "very exciting."

He and others said a snowball effect is in the works: One person's success leads another to try. There's also relatively more freedom and less self-censorship than under past, more repressive governments, and Pakistani media in general is growing.

Like Mueenuddin, several of the other Pakistani novelists gaining attention have connections to the West, usually Britain and the United States. Shamsie, whose novel "Burnt Shadows" is her fifth, grew up in Pakistan, studied in the U.S. and lives in Britain. She said one benefit of seeing more Pakistanis get published is -- perhaps ironically -- sharing the spotlight.

"No writer needs to feel anymore that burden of 'I am the only voice telling the outside world of Pakistan,'" Shamsie said.

In Mueenuddin's opinion, "These little renaissances happen."

He said he prefers to keep his political opinions out of his stories but acknowledges that the international focus on terrorism in Pakistan is helping his career. "It's given me an audience," he said, adding that the violence is "horrible."

His stories, some already published in The New Yorker, describe the lives of servants, friends, and relatives linked to K.K. Harouni, a wealthy, aging Pakistani landowner. The stories are meticulously crafted and infused with color and detail. They are not, however, particularly uplifting, a reflection of the futility so many feel in a country marred by poverty, corruption and cronyism.

Lower-class women sleep to get ahead, land managers scheme, steal and run for office, and the rich question why they feel so empty. But little seems to change despite the constant class struggle.

In "A Spoiled Man," an old servant reflects on his impoverished life and his simple-minded wife, and how the police tortured him to try to make him confess that he was behind her disappearance: "Why should I complain? The policemen did as they always do. The fault is mine, who married in old age, with one foot in the grave. God gave me so much more than I deserved, when I expected nothing at all."

Harouni is a composite character partly based on Mueenuddin's father, a Pakistani civil servant who was 27 years older than his American mother. The couple split, and when Daniyal was 13, he and his brother moved with their mom to the U.S., where the family also owns farmland in Wisconsin. American-Pakistani romantic liaisons are among the themes in his stories.

Mueenuddin attended boarding school, then Dartmouth College and earned a degree from Yale Law School. He worked in the human rights field, lived in Norway as a Fulbright scholar, and studied the craft of writing.

He lives with his wife, Cecilie, whom he met in Norway, in Rahimyar Khan district. On the acres that surround them, the couple grow mangoes and a variety of other crops. Within their residence walls, they have a large lawn with gardens, banyan trees, horses and even peacocks -- to keep out the snakes.

A talkative fellow with a salt-and-pepper beard and hair, he tends to rise early to write letters and deal with farm business, then works on his stories until around 2 p.m. Fluent in Urdu, English and the local Punjabi dialect, the U.S.-born Mueenuddin regularly surveys the property and often helps local residents with their problems.

The privileged landowning class in Pakistan dominates the main political parties, sitting atop a patronage system that many say gets in the way of addressing societal ills such as poverty and religious extremism. Although to some degree a part of that system, Mueenuddin tries to avoid the political scene.

"I can't help it -- I was born, fortunately in a very small-scale, into a landowning family. Guilt by association," he said. "I'm trying to do what I can. In my farm, I pay very high salaries. We give them free health care. We have a school. I run (the farm) as a business and I run it as a very humane business."

Although he often bases his stories on people around him, he hasn't explained his book to his neighbors or workers.

"Often what happens is I hear somebody saying some throwaway line ... and I'm like, 'Oh my God, that would make such a good story.' I note it down," he said.

"I think I've probably told them I wrote a story about you and they're like, 'Oh, Good.' They don't understand what that means. They've never heard of The New Yorker."

A fan of Tolstoy and Chekhov, Mueenuddin said he writes because it's his passion, not to get across some greater message. If his stories happen to humanize a battle-scarred country, it's a happy side effect.