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Why The Brevity? Because I'd Rather People Read My Book Twice Than Only Half-way Through

-Mohsin Hamid

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Why The Brevity? Because

Mohsin Hamid

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Why The Brevity? Because I'd Rather People Read My Book Twice Than Only Half-way Through

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When Terrorism Strikes, Divisive Anger Is A Natural Response.

Sufi Poetry Is, In A Sense, Self-help Poetry About How To Live A Decent Life, How To Deal With Your Mortality.

When We Aren't Collectively Imagining Hopeful Futures, Then The Way Things Are Going Almost Invariably Seems Negative And Frightening.

Time Only Moves In One Direction. Remember That. Things Always Change.

What Did I Think Of Princeton? Well, The Answer To That Question Requires A Story. When I First Arrived, I Looked Around Me At The Gothic Buildings - Younger, I Later Learned, Than Many Of The Mosques Of This City, But Made Through Acid Treatment And Ingenious Stone-masonry To Look Older.

I Think I've Always Been Drawn To The Second Person. When I Was Growing Up And Playing With My Friends, The Usual Way We Interacted With Imaginary Worlds Was As Characters: A Bench Was 'your' Boat, Leaves On A Lawn Were The Fins Of Sharks Out To Get 'you.'

When I'm Really Plugged In I Find It Difficult To Write. It's Like Digging A Well. If You Make A Void, Something Moves In To Fill It. Writing Books Is Like That. It's Mostly About Freeing Up Time, Doing Nothing, And In That Time Some Writing Starts To Happen. We Need To Figure Out How To Maintain Those Voids.

For If There Were A List Of Cosmic Things That Unite Us, Reader And Writer, Visible As It Scrolled Up Into The Distance, Like The Introduction To Some Epic Science-fiction Film, Then Shining Brightly On That List Would Be The Fact That We Exist In A Financial Universe That Is Subject To Massive Gravitational Pulls From States. States Tug At Us. States Bend Us. And, Tirelessly, States Seek To Determine Our Orbits.

I Think That Right Now, The Global Political Crisis That We See All Over The Place Has To Do With Virulent Nostalgia. Everywhere, People Are Talking About Taking Us Back To The Good Old Days. Whether That's The "caliphate," Or Britain Before The Eu, Or "make America Great Again." But, We Can't Go Back And Many People Wouldn't Want To Go Back Even If We Could.

Think That The External Situation Has Also Changed Somewhat. The Reduction Of U.s. And Nato Forces In Afghanistan Has, In A Sense, Reduced How Inflamed The Situation On The Pakistani Border Regions Was And Is.

So Much Of Our Conversation About Love Is Possessive. "you Are Mine. And If You Stop Being Mine, I Will Hate You." And So Exploring Non-possessive Ideas Of Love And Friendship Is Important. Which Is Not To Say We Should Just Break Down Monogamy, I'm Not Taking A Simplistic Point Of View. But, In Addition To These Examples Of Possessive Love That We Already Have So Much Of, Let Us Also Explore What Examples Of Non-possessive Love And Affection Mean.

The Ethnocultural Connotations Of The Burkini Ban Are Very Strong. It's As Absurd As Mandating That Women Have To Go Topless On The Beach. If I Were A Woman, I Definitely Would Not Want To Wear A Burkini Or A Headscarf. But It's Not About What I Want.

Walking Is Very Good For Writers. There's Something Fundamentally Useful About Not Talking To Anybody, Not Looking At A Screen, And Being In Nature - Even If That Nature Is An Urban Environment.

Transience Is What Is Normal. The Problem Is That We Are Busily Trying To Create Political Structures And Cultural Expressions That Deny That And To Deny That Is To Deny The Basic Idea Of What Is Human.

Religion Is Not Something I Like To Talk About Publicly. One Reason Is The Politics, But Also I Think Spirituality Is Deeply Personal.

My Mother Has Been To Mecca To Perform Her Hajj; My Dad Hasn't. I Come From A Very Liberal Family, So Even The People Who Are Outwardly Religious Tend To Subscribe To Gender Equality, The Importance Of Open-mindedness, All That Stuff. My Family Is Generally Nonprescriptive.

I Am A Strong Believer In The Intertwined Nature Of The Personal And The Political; I Think They Move Together.

The Ruins Proclaim The Building Was Beautiful.

How Many Big Businesses Don't Resort To Underhand Means?

America's Strength Has Made It A Sort Of Gulliver In World Affairs: By Wiggling Its Toes It Can, Often Inadvertently, Break The Arm Of A Lilliputian.

I Don't Think The Function Of Writing, At Least For Me As A Fiction Writer, Is To Say To People, "here's The Answer." It's Not An Op-ed.

My Earliest Memories Are Of Watching Star Trek And Mash While My Parents Barbecued Chicken In The Back Yard. I Was An American Kid, Through And Through.

I Am Not Much Of A Researcher As A Novelist; I Write Mainly From Experience.

For Many People, There Is An Almost Power To Be Found In Prayer.

Pakistan Now Is Like A Horror Film Franchise. You Know, It's 'friday The 13th, Episode 63: The Terrorist From Pakistan.' And Each Time We Hear Of Pakistan It's In That Context.

When The Uncertain Future Becomes The Past, The Past In Turn Becomes Uncertain.

Uncertain Future

Well, One Thing That Has Changed Is The Number Of People Killed By Terrorists In Pakistan. Civilians Killed Has Gone Down Really Quite Dramatically. There Was A Newspaper Article Here About A Month Ago That Got Big Headlines Which Said That Civilian Deaths From Terrorism Were Down Something Like 80 Percent Or 90 Percent From Their Peak Of Two Or Three Years Ago.

If An American Teenager Were To Come To Lahore, They'd Have Wildly Different Experiences Depending On Whom They Met. They Could Party And Get Drunk And Smoke Hashish With Some, While Others Would Say, "let's Get Some Religious Instruction."

We Are All Refugees From Our Childhoods. And So We Turn, Among Other Things, To Stories. To Write A Story, To Read A Story, Is To Be A Refugee From The State Of Refugees. Writers And Readers Seek A Solution To The Problem That Time Passes, That Those Who Have Gone Are Gone And Those Who Will Go, Which Is To Say Every One Of Us, Will Go. For There Was A Moment When Anything Was Possible. And There Will Be A Moment When Nothing Is Possible. But In Between We Can Create.

Capitalism Is Like The Law Of The Jungle With A Few Rules. There Isn't Another System That Works For Our Society But Left Unchecked, Capitalism Can Have A Dehumanising Effect.

The Gun Of The Father Is Always The Undoing Of The Son.

Nyc Doesn't Have A Big Sign Saying "you Must Love Diversity And The Rights Of All People." And That's Not What Makes You Love Diversity In Nyc Or Anywhere. What Makes You Love Diversity Is Because You Live In It And You Experience It.

In Italian, The Word For Novel Is Romanzo, "the Romance." The English Is "novel" - Something New. Both Of Those Elements, Experimentation And Love, Are Fundamental To The Form.

The Animosity Between India And Pakistan Is Deeply Unfortunate And Dangerous, And It's Something I've Long Campaigned To Reduce. But Right Now, When There's Artillery Being Exchanged In Kashmir - Which Is Not For From Here, Either - And There Are 100-ish Nuclear Weapons On Each Side Of The Border, There's Never Really Been A Case Like This Where Two Nuclear Armed Countries Are Happily Shelling Each Other.

India And Pakistan

Certainly, Historically, There Has Been More Attention Given In The International Media To Indian English-language Writers Than To Pakistani English-language Writers. But That, In My Opinion, Was Justified By The Sheer Number Of Excellent Writers Coming From India And The Indian Diaspora.

My Aunt Used To Say, "it's Between Me And My God; It's Got Nothing To Do With You." It Was A Good Enough Answer For Me As A Snot-nosed College Kid Angling For A Religious Debate, And I Still Think It's A Good Way Of Putting It.

It Is Remarkable Indeed How We Human Beings Are Capable Of Delighting In The Mating Call Of A Flower While We Are Surrounded By The Charred Carcasses Of Our Fellow Animals.

The Paralysis That We Have Right Now When We Think About Migration Is Partly Because We Can't Imagine What The World Would Look Like In The Future. So I Think It's Important For Writers And Artists To Try To Imagine That.

Pakistan Hasn't Been Cast In The Role Of... Interesting Cultural Place Or, You Know, Land Of Great Comedians.

I'm Often Surprised That, You Know, You Encounter All Types Of Humanity. And Very Often, There Are Some Very Decent People Who Don't Stereotype Even When You Might, In Your Own Mind, Have Stereotyped Them To Think That They Will.

You Know, You Get A Bad Review As A Writer, You Remember It For 10 Years. You Get A Hundred Good Reviews, You Forget Them All. You Say Hello To A Hundred People In The City And It Doesn't Mean Anything To You. One Racist Comment Passes By, And It Sticks With You A Decade.

I Think That We Live In A World - And This Is Something Which Living In Pakistan, Perhaps, Has Taught Me - And, You Know, We Live In A World Where There Is A Constant Feed From Social Media, The News, Etc., Of Things That Can Scare Us. And We Become So Anxious Because Human Beings Are Meant - Are Designed To Be Sensitized To Dangerous Stuff.

She Was Struggling Against A Current That Brought Her Inside Herself.

I'd Rather Create A Miniature Painting Than A Taj Mahal Of A Book.

I Think There's A Natural Link Between The Fact That Our Self Is A Story That We Make Up And That We're Drawn To Stories. It Resonates, In A Way.

The Anger Is Useful Too Because When Things About The World Upset You, That Is Really A Fertile Feeling To Channel Into Fiction And To Put Out Into Books.

I Was 30 When 9/11 Happened And I Had Lived Exactly 15 Years Of Life In America, So I Was Half American. I Was A Full-fledged New Yorker.

I Took A Couple Of Creative Writing Classes With Joyce Carol Oates At Princeton University, And In My Senior Year There, I Took A Long Fiction Workshop With Toni Morrison. I Fell In Love With It.

And I Ask Myself What It Is About Me That Makes This Wonderful, Beautiful Woman Return. Is It Because I'm Pathetic, Helpless In My Current State, Completely Dependent On Her? Or Is It My Sense Of Humour, My Willingness To Tease Her, To Joke My Way Into Painful, Secret Places? Do I Help Her Understand Herself? Do I Make Her Happy? Do I Do Something For Her That Her Husband And Son Can't Do? Has She Fallen In Love With Me? As The Days Pass And I Continue To Heal, My Body Knitting Itself Back Together, I Begin To Allow Myself To Think That She Has.

If The Dominant Political Expression That We're Seeing Right Now Is Of Nostalgia And We Know That Nostalgia Won't Really Work Out, What Happens Is, We Become Depressed As Individuals And Societies - When We're Depressed, We're Much More Vulnerable To Be Taken Advantage Of By Demagogues And Xenophobes.

Which Is Stronger, Politics Or Love? Is Like Asking, Which Is Stronger, Exhaling Or Inhaling? They Are Two Sides Of The Same Thing.

For Me, Language Is About The Impossibility Of Communicating What We Precisely Wish To Communicate And This Gorgeous Attempt That We Make To Do That Anyway. I Love That We Will Never Say Exactly What We Mean, But We Will Forever Keep Trying.

In America There Are People Advocating For Trans Rights And People Like Vice President Pence, Who Is Vehemently Opposed. In Pakistan, Too, You Have All Kinds Of Folks - From Flamboyant Gay Fashion Designers And Female Air Force Pilots To The Taliban. A Cross-dressed Man Used To Be The Top Tv Talk Show Host. It Was Actually Quite Radical. So The Diversity Of These Societies Is Often Lost On People.

Lived Religion Is A Very Different Thing From Strict Textual Analysis. Very Few People Of Any Faith Live Their Lives As Literalist Interpretations Of Scripture.

As A Child I Read All Kinds Of Stuff, Whether It Was 'asterix And Obelix' And 'tin Tin' Comic Books, Or 'lord Of The Rings,' Or Frank Herbert's Sci-fi. Or 'the Wind In The Willows.' Or 'charlotte's Web.'

You're A Watchful Guy. You Know Where That Comes From?" I Shook My Head. "it Comes From Feeling Out Of Place," He Said. "believe Me. I Know.

I Think That Things Were Getting Really Very Bad A Couple Of Years Ago, And There's Been A Very Significant Change In Response To That On The Part Of The Security Forces And The Government, But Particularly The Army. And You See Pakistan Actually Fighting Terrorism And Terrorists In A Much More Wholehearted Way Than Had Been Occurring Previously. It's Not Anywhere Close To Over Yet, But You've Seen A Big Change In The Antiterrorism Campaign Here.

Artists Are In The Imagining/ Prototyping Business. Society Needs People To Be Out There Thinking Of What Might Be. That Cannot Be Something We Just Delegate To Politicians Or Technologists.

Sometimes We Are Looking For Somebody We Can Connect With On The Basis Of A Shared Past Or A Tradition Or Experience. And So Finding That You're Sitting Next To Someone Very Much Like You In Terms Of Where They Come From Is Enormously Reassuring.

I Would Have Bet Money That Britain Would Not Vote To Leave The Eu, And I Would Have Been Wrong. I Would Have Bet Money That Trump Would Not Have Been The Republican Nominee, And I Would Have Been Wrong And I Certainly Would Have Bet Money That He Wouldn't Win The Election.

One Ought Not To Encourage Beggars, And Yes, You Are Right, It Is Far Better To Donate To Charities That Address The Causes Of Poverty Rather Than To Him, A Creature Who Is Merely Its Symptom.

I Think There's Really Strong Social Stratification In South Asia.

A Reader Should Encounter Themselves In A Novel, I Think.

Our Countries Are Weaker: They Cannot Protect Us From Imported Goods, They Can't Protect Us From Climate Change, They Cannot Protect Us From Epidemics. These Things Cross Borders. But The Kind Of Cooperation That Would Protect Us From Those Things Was Completely Lacking And Because Of This There's Been A Backlash. People Feel Vulnerable.

As A Society, You Were Unwilling To Reflect Upon The Shared Pain That United You With Those Who Attacked You. You Retreated Into Myths Of Your Own Difference, Assumptions Of Your Own Superiority. And You Acted Out These Beliefs On The Stage Of The World, So That The Entire Planet Was Rocked By The Repercussions Of Your Tantrums, Not Least My Family, Now Facing War Thousands Of Miles Away.

I Felt Suddenly Very Young - Or Perhaps I Felt My Age.

It Is The Effect Of Scarcity; One’s Rules Of Propriety Make One Thirst For The Improper.

Oftentimes I Deliberately Put Ambiguity Into My Books So That... The Reader Is Left With An Echo Of: 'how Much Of This Was From Me?'

We Can Open Up Our Computers And Skype With Someone, And We See Them. It's Like Looking Through A Window. And We Can Surf The Internet Through Our Phones, And It's Like Our Consciousness Is Far Away. Or We Can Step Through A Airplane Door And Be In Another Continent A Few Hours Away. So Technology Feels, To Me, Like The Doors Sort Of Already Exist, At Least Emotionally.

I Really Do Believe That People Surprise You. And One Of The Powerful Things About Novels Is That They're About Characters, And Those Characters Live Their Lives.

For A Combination Of Reasons, And Despite Evident Fondness For American Products And Individuals, My Impression Is That Most Pakistanis Have Extremely Negative Views Of The Us As A Geopolitical Player.

My Dad Had This Outlook: It Doesn't Matter What I Want To Read - Reading Was A Good Thing. So Whatever I Was Curious About They'd Get For Me From The Library. Books Were A Kind Of A Resistance To Reality. I Liked To Imagine Worlds That Were Different. I Still Do.

It Is Not Surprising That Most Pakistanis Do Not Support America's Bombardment Of Afghanistan. The Afghans Are Neighbours On The Brink Of Starvation And Devastated By War. America Has Shown Itself To Be Untrustworthy, A Superpower That Uses Its Values As A Scabbard For Its Sword.

Time Is Our Most Precious Currency. So It's Significant That We Are Being Encouraged, Wherever Possible, To Think Of Our Attention Not As Expenditure But As Consumption. This Blurring Of Labor And Entertainment Forms The Basis, For Example, Of The Financial Alchemy That Conjures Deca-billion-dollar Valuations For Social-networking Companies.

You Know, Very Often, If You Look At The Kinds Of Communications That They're Getting In An Isis Recruiting Video, The Videos That, You Know, That One Hears Of As Radicalizing Them, These Are Like Action Movies. And So In The Sense, It's That By Closing Off The Idea That Young Muslims And Particularly Young Muslim Men Can Be American Heroes, It Increases The Chance That They'll Try To Be Some Other Kind Of Hero. And That, I Think, Is Entirely Counterproductive.

The Mobile Phone Is Very Dangerous. If You're Walking And Looking At Your Phone, You're Not Walking - You're Surfing The Internet.

India To Someone Who Lives In Lahore Is Like Queens To Someone Who Lives In Lower Manhattan - It's Not Far Away, And Yet It Doesn't Exist.

Lahore, The Second Largest City Of Pakistan, Ancient Capital Of The Punjab, Home To Nearly As Many People As New York, Layered Like A Sedimentary Plain With The Accreted History Of Invaders From The Aryans To The Mongols To The British.

Some Of My Relatives Held On To Imagined Memories The Way Homeless People Hold Onto Lottery Tickets. Nostalgia Was Their Crack Cocaine, If You Will, And My Childhood Was Littered With The Consequences Of Their Addiction : Unserviceable Debts, Squabbles Over Inheritances, The Odd Alcoholic Or Suicide.

The Mountain Trembled Like An Earthquake. Dust Flew Into The Sky. And The Rock Turned Dark Red, Like The Color Of Blood'. 'how Would You Know?' Asks Sindhi Cap. 'you Only Have A Black And White Television'. 'but It's A Very Good One. You Can Almost See Colours.

Black And White

When The Machine Of A Human Being Is Turned On, It Seems To Produce A Protagonist, Just As A Television Produces An Image.

There Really Still Is A Deep Wound, You Know, In The Collective Psyche Of Pakistan. And The Violence Has Left Enormous Human And Emotional And Psychic Damage. That's Not Going To Go Away. But That Said, I Think I'm Cautiously Optimistic That We're Looking At A Better Future.

The Monolithic View That Many Americans Have Of Pakistani Culture Is As Inaccurate As The Monolithic View That Many Pakistanis Have Of American Culture.

American Culture

And With A Last Stardrop, A Last Circle, I Arrive, And She's There, Chemical Wonder In Her Eyes.

I Don't Want To Be A Michael Moore-style Artist, Which Is Not To Disparage Michael Moore. But He Seems Rather Unsuccessful At Winning People Over Who Don't Already Agree With Him.

But When You Read A Book, What You See Are Black Squiggles On Pulped Wood Or, Increasingly, Dark Pixels On A Pale Screen. To Transform These Icons Into Characters And Events, You Must Imagine. And When You Imagine, You Create.

When People Talk About The Death Of The Novel, They Are Speaking Of The Need For The Birth Of Something Different.

Islam Is Not A Race, Yet Islamophobia Partakes Of Racist Characteristics.

If You Have Ever, Sir, Been Through A Breakup Of A Romantic Relationship That Involved Great Love, You Will Perhaps Understand What I Experienced. There Is In Such Situations Usually A Moment Of Passion During Which The Unthinkable Is Said; This Is Followed By A Sense Of Euphoria At Finally Being Liberated; The World Seems Fresh As If Seen For The First Time Then Comes The Inevitable Period Of Doubt, The Desperate And Doomed Backpedaling Of Regret; And Only Later, Once Emotions Have Receded, Is One Able To View With Equanimity The Journey Through Which One Has Passed.

Many Boys, Probably Most Boys, Have A First Love Before They Fall In Love With A Woman. It Begins The Moment Two Boys Realize They'd Die For One Another, That Each Cares More For The Other Than He Does For Himself, And It Lasts Usually Until A Second Love Comes On The Scene, Because Most Hearts Aren't Big Enough To Love More Than One Person Like That.

Falling In Love

In A Subway Car, My Skin Would Typically Fall In The Middle Of The Color Spectrum. On Street Corners, Tourists Would Ask Me For Directions. I Was, In Four And A Half Years, Never An American; I Was Immediately A New Yorker.

It's In Being Read That A Book Becomes A Book, And In Each Of A Million Different Readings A Book Become One Of A Million Different Books . . .

I Don't Know If I'm Truly At Home In Any Language.

Yes, Manila Had Its Slums; One Saw Them On The Drive From The Airport: Vast Districts Of Men In Dirty White Undershirts Lounging Idly In Front Of Auto-repair Shops - Like A Poorer Version Of The 1950s America Depicted In Such Films As Grease.

I Think Sometimes Feeling That You've Been Marginalized Opens You Up To The Realization That, In Their Own Lives, Almost Everyone Experiences Marginalization, A Kind Of Foreigner Sense.

Novels Function And The Power Of Novels Function Because Of Their Stories.

I Believe One Can Gauge A Book's Impact Only After About 10 Years.

If Your Sense Of Self Is Destabilised, To Imagine Being Another Becomes Pretty Easy.

We're All United In This, That Every Human Being Migrates Through Time, That The Place We Grew Up In In Our Childhood Is Gone When We're In Our 50s And 60s And 70s.

What Else Is Belief But Direction?

I Come From An Enormous And Very Close Family. I Have Over A Dozen Aunts And Uncles In Pakistan, Dozens Of Cousins. I Have Many Close Friends. I Have Received So Much Love In Lahore That The City Always Pulls Me.

I Take Six Or Seven Years To Write Really Small Books. There Is A Kind Of Aesthetic Of Leanness, Of Brevity.

As A Writer, I Am Constantly Aware That I Take My Life In My Hands With Everything I Do And Say. It's Just A Fact Of Life. For Me It Always Has Been.

What Used To Help Us To Cope With Transience Was Stuff Like, Extended Families All Living In One Place, Or Very Strong Religious Beliefs, Or A Tribe That Would Outlive You. That Stuff Is Getting Weaker.

There's A Reason Prophets Perform Miracles; Language Lacks The Power To Describe Faith.

The World Seems Concerned With Pakistan Primarily As An Actor In Global Attempts To Combat Terrorism.

If It Takes You Seven Years To Write Each Novel, You Need A Patron. And I Would Rather Have My Corporate Self As My Patron Than Any Arts Council Or Bestower Of Grants.

Childbirth Changed My Perception Of My Wife. She Was Now The Bloodied Special Forces Soldier Who Had Fought And Risked Everything For Our Family.

You Can Live In The Same City Your Entire Life And Still Be Completely A Foreigner When You Step Out, In Your Old Age, Onto The Street.

I Don't Want To Be Anxious On My Day-to-day Life. I Want To Try To Imagine A Future I'd Like To Live In And Then Write Books And Do Things That, In My Own Small Way, Make It More Likely That That Future Will Come To Exist.

We Keep The Negative Stuff Because It's The Negative Stuff That's Going To, You Know, Potentially Kill Us. That Fin In The Water - Maybe It Is A Shark. That Yellow Thing Behind The Tree - Maybe It Is A Lion. You Need To Be Scared.

I Actually Feel That Personal Matters, Like Religion And Spirituality, Are Things That I Really Discuss Only With Intimates. I Think It's, In A Way, Like Sexuality, Something Where It Touches Upon Something Very Private.

The Notion Of Love As A Potentially Destructive And Potentially Redemptive Human Force Is Something That Comes Across In All My Books.

I Think The Most Effective Forms Of Critique Are Ones That Establish A Common Ground For People To Occupy, And Then Appeal To The Best Nature Of People On That Common Ground.

When I Travel, I Feel More Like A Nomad Than A Tourist.

In A World Of Intrusive Technology, We Must Engage In A Kind Of Struggle If We Wish To Sustain Moments Of Solitude. E-reading Opens The Door To Distraction. It Invites Connectivity And Clicking And Purchasing. The Closed Network Of A Printed Book, On The Other Hand, Seems To Offer Greater Serenity. It Harks Back To A Pre-jacked-in Age. Cloth, Paper, Ink: For These Read Helmet, Cuirass, Shield. They Afford A Degree Of Protection And Make Possible A Less Intermediated, Less Fractured Experience. They Guard Our Aloneness. That Is Why I Love Them, And Why I Read Printed Books Still.

It Seems An Obvious Thing To Say, But You Should Not Imagine That We Pakistanis Are All Potential Terrorists, Just As We Should Not Imagine That You Americans Are All Undercover Assassins.

In Pakistan, Many Of The Young People Read Novels Because In The Novels, Not Just My Novels But The Novels Of Many Other Pakistani Writers, They Encounter Ideas, Notions, Ways Of Thinking About The World, Thinking About Their Society That Are Different. And Fiction Functions In A Countercultural Way As It Does In America And Certainly As It Did In The, You Know, '60s.

Writing A Novel Is Like An Amusement Park Or A Museum Or A City. You Go Into That Place And You Have Certain Experiences And Those Experiences, Hopefully, Have Some Impact On You.

Chance Plays A Powerful Role In Every Life - Our Brains And Personalities Are Just Chemical Soup, After All; A Few Drops Here Or There Matter Enormously - But Consequences Often Become More Serious As Income Levels Go Down.

If Differences Can Be Hidden, Perhaps They Aren't Differences At All.

We're Being Subject To Incredible Amounts Of Surveillance, The Police Are Taking On Draconian Powers And Violating Our Rights. I Think This Attempt To Protect Ourselves Is Ultimately Going To Founder Because People Don't Like Living Inside Prisons.

If We Try To 'protect Ourselves', Our Nation-states Begin To Look Like Prisons.

You're Never Rude,' She Said, Smiling, 'and I Think It's Good To Be Touchy Sometimes. It Means You Care.

I Think Walking Is Very Useful, Like Sleeping And Dreaming, As Something That's Important To My Ability To Write.

If Your Book Is Set In The Plantation Days Of The Slave-owning South And You Write A Little Romance Between Two Slave Owners Without Acknowledging The System They Live, That's A Political Gesture.

Novel Writing Is Solitary Work.

So In Many Ways, The Bombing At The End Of This Year And The Terrorist Attack Of Last Year In Peshawar Have Bookended Both Those Years In A Very Unfortunate Way. But At A Bigger Picture Since, The Impression In Pakistan Is That Things Are Actually Improving On The Terrorism Front Quite Dramatically.

For Me, Writing A Novel Is Like Solving A Puzzle. But I Don't Intend My Novels As Puzzles. I Intend Them As Invitations To Dance.

I Responded To The Gravity Of An Invisible Moon At My Core, And I Undertook Journeys I Had Not Expected To Take.

It's Important To Have A Non-nostalgic View And Say, Let's Look Forward, Because If We Don't, All We'll Hear Are Voices Telling Us To Go Back.

I Think Fiction Allows You To Inhabit New Domains And It's You, The Reader Living In That Domain For A Few Days That Results In A Deeper Understanding As Opposed To The Novel Proclaiming This Is What It Is Right And This Is What Is Wrong.

When People, Particularly Young People And Especially Young Men, Can't Imagine Themselves As Heroes In Narratives That They Construct For Themselves, They Look To Be Heroes In Some Other Way. So Young Men In America Of, Let's Say, Muslim Background, Only A Tiny, Tiny Minority - So Small As To Be Almost Zero - Are Likely To Ever Commit Terrorist Acts.

We Think Of The Romance Novel As A Lesser Form Of Literature, But I Don't Think That's True. Love Is A Very Important Aspect Of Human Life And Worth Exploring.

If My Daughter Wanted To Wear A Headscarf And Dress In A Religiously Conservative Way, I Would Be Heartbroken. But If She Were To Decide To Do That And She Were To Live In A Place Where People Said She Couldn't Do That, I Would Be Entirely Committed To Her Right To Do So.

We Need A Self Because The Complexity Of The Chemical Processes That Make Up Our Individual Humanities Exceeds The Processing Power Of Our Brains.

Why The Brevity? Because I'd Rather People Read My Book Twice Than Only Half-way Through

Maybe We Are All Prospective Migrants. The Lines Of National Borders On Maps Are Artificial Constructs, As Unnatural To Us As They Are To Birds Flying Overhead. Our First Impulse Is To Ignore Them.

Literature Helps Us Transcend Ourselves.

Love Is Transient Even On A Very Personal Level. We Lose Everyone That We Love. Sometimes We Drift Apart And Sometimes We Die.

I Think The Beard Helps Offset - It's The Only Hairstyle I Can Really Pull Off. But I'm Often Clean-shaven. I Think, You Know, For Me, It's Not That Signifier. What's Interesting To Me Though Is Although The Beard Isn't A Signifier Of That To Me, Other People Very Often Think That It Is. And So People In America Might React Differently. The, You Know, Border Agents Might React Differently. The Guys At Airport Security Might React Differently.

Television Has Given Pakistan A Truly Open National Forum For The First Time In Its History. Ideas Are Debated, Leaders Are Assessed And Criticised, And A Nation Of 170 Million People Is Finally Discovering, Together, What It Thinks.

We Should Be Very Skeptical Of People Who Want To Place Limits On How We Express Ourselves.

Walking Is A Meditative Act. It's So Rare That We Allow Ourselves Just To Be.

Islamophobia, In All Its Guises, Seeks To Minimise The Importance Of The Individual And Maximise The Importance Of The Group. Yet Our Instinctive Stance Ought To Be One Of Suspicion Towards Such Endeavours. For Individuals Are Undeniably Real. Groups, On The Other Hand, Are Assertions Of Opinion.

I Was, In My Own Eyes, A Veritable James Bond — Only Younger, Darker, And Possibly Better Paid.

All Human Stories Are Migration Stories Because Everyone Is A Refugee From Their Own Childhood.

Like Many Of My Friends In The Pakistani Diaspora - And Many Of My Friends In Pakistan Itself, For That Matter - I Have Sometimes Looked At The Country Of My Birth And Wondered Whether Its Future Will Be One Of Steady And Sad Decline.

I Commit Her To Memory. When I'm Alone, I Feel A Strange Yearning, The Hunger Of A Man Fasting Not Because He Believes But Because He's Ashamed. Not The Cleansing Hunger Of The Devout, But The Feverish Hunger Of The Hypocrite. I Let Her Go Every Evening Only Because There's Nothing I Can Do To Stop Her.

I Did Not Grow Up In Poverty. But I Did Grow Up With A Poor Boy's Sense Of Longing, In My Case Not For What My Family Had Never Had, But For What We Had Had And Lost.

Contemporary Culture In Pakistan, Just Like In America, Is Continuously Hitting Us With Scary Stuff. And So We Are Utterly Anxious. I Think That It's Very Important To Resist That Anxiety, To Think Of Ways Of Resisting The Constant Inflow Of Negative Feelings, Not To Become Depoliticized As A Result But To Actually Work Actively To Bring Into Being An Optimistic Future.

Americans Need To Educate Themselves, From Elementary School Onward, About What Their Country Has Done Abroad. And They Need To Play A More Active Role In Ensuring That What The United States Does Abroad Is Not Merely In Keeping With A Foreign Policy Elite's Sense Of Realpolitik But Also With The American Public's Own Sense Of American Values.

Novels Are Make-believe And Play For Adults.

I Feel Engaged With Young People In Pakistan. But That Said, It's Still A Small Minority That Reads Novels, Literary Fiction. But It Isn't Necessarily A Small Minority Of The Wealthy Elite In The City Of Lahore. It Can Often Be And I Often Do Meet At Literary Festivals Students Who've Ridden A Bus 12 Hours From A Very Small Town Just To Hear Some Of Their Favorite Writers Come And Speak.

In Some Contexts In Pakistan Maybe A Beard Is Negative. It Depends. And In Some Contexts In America Maybe A Beard Is Positive. I Think There's Certainly Lots Of Hipster Communities Where Having A Beard Makes Me Look A Little Bit Less Like A, You Know, Middle-aged Fuddy-duddy. And There's Some Places In Pakistan Where Having A Beard, You Know, Certain Corporate Contexts, Certain Social Contexts, Where It's Not An Advantage To Have A Beard.

The Fruits Of Labor Are Delicious, But Individually They’re Not Particularly Fattening. So Don’t Share Yours, And Munch On Those Of Others Whenever You Can.

We Need To Start Imagining The Future Or It Will Get Imagined For Us, And The Ways That It Has Been Imagined Thus Far Don't Seem Very Attractive.

Imagining The Future

Growing Up In Pakistan In The 1980s, I Lived In The Shadow Of A Tyrannical State.

Being A Writer Is Not The Point. Writing Is.

With Movement, Families Get Split. With The Politicization Of Religion, Spirituality Gets Diluted. With People Intermarrying And Falling In Love Outside Of Pre-existing Defined Groups, The Tribe Is Disappearing. I'm Not In Favor Of Going Back To Those Things, But You Can't Take Those Things Away Without Putting Something New In Its Place. So Finding A Way To Make Transience More Acceptable, Even Beautiful Is Key.

Falling In Love

Empathy Is About Finding Echoes Of Another Person In Yourself.

I Have A Funny Relationship To Language. When I Came To California When I Was Three I Spoke Urdu Fluently And I Didn't Speak A Word Of English. Within A Few Months I Lost All My Urdu And Spoke Only English And Then I Learned Urdu All Over Again When I Was Nine. Urdu Is My First Language But It's Not As Good As My English And It's Sort Of Become My Third Language. English Is My Best Language But Was The Second Language I Learned.

Funny Relationship

I Think Massive Migration Is Inevitable. As Sea Levels Rise, As Climate Change Happens, As Fertile Fields Become Arid, As Wars Are Fought, People Are Going To Move. They Always Have.

Only In Novels Can We Take Another Human Being Into Our Head And Create Something Jointly.

Four Thousand Years Ago, We, The People Of The Indus River Basin, Had Cities That Were Laid Out On Grids And Boasted Underground Sewers, While The Ancestors Of Those Who Would Invade And Colonize America Were Illiterate Barbarians.

I Push Against The Tree And Run Away, Stumbling, The Unreal Night Playing With Me, Gravity Pulling From Below, Behind, Above, Making Me Fall. And I Run Through A World That Is Rotating, Conscious Of The Earth's Spin, Of Our Planet Twirling As It Careens Through Nothingness, Of The Stars Spiraling Above, Of The Uncertainty Of Everything, Even Ground, Even Sky. Mumtaz Never Calls Out, Although A Thousand And One Voices Scream In My Mind, Sing, Whisper, Taunt Me With Madness.

I'm Not Sure If Guys Are Supposed To Read Vanity Fair. I Feel Very Metrosexual With It But Am Not Sure It's In My Comfort Zone.

Living In A Place Like Pakistan, Very Often You Meet People Who Are Migrating Abroad. And Sometimes You'll Ask Their Parents, You Know - You Didn't Try To Stop Them? Like, Why Didn't You Say, Don't Go - I'll Miss You? Stay With Me. And, You Know, People Say, Well, It's Best For Them. They Have To Go. And Parents, You Know, Take On That Sadness Because They Know It's Better For Their Children If They Leave.

I Think Wars, Climate Change, All That Stuff Is Going To Move People. And So I Wanted To Say, "what If The Migration Apocalypse Occurs And It Isn't An Apocalypse At All?" Maybe We Will Still Find Ways To Be Happy And For Our Children And Grandchildren To Thrive And The World To Move On.

Novel Writing Is The Slowest Art Form In The World. It Is Not A Sprint. It Is Not Even A Marathon. It Is A Series Of Marathons That Stretch Over And Over Across A Continent.

The Ban On The Burkini, Which Is Basically A Wetsuit, Seems Particularly Ridiculous.

I Think Writing Is A Very Political Act. I Think That Any Writer Who Says It's Not, Is Simply A Writer Who Is Disavowing The Political Connotations Of What They Write.

Farmers And People Who Make A Living From The Land Are Finding It Impossible To Survive. So The First Step Is To Get Out Of That Place. Come To The City Where There Are Opportunities.

Outside Of America, There Are Many People, Myself Included, Who Champion Values That, In Some Senses, Could Be Thought Of As Traditionally American - The Idea That Everybody's Equal, That The Rights Of Women And Men Should Be The Same, That There Should Be No Discrimination On Religious Or Sexual Orientation, That Democracy And Rule Of Law And Due Process Are The Ways In Which Society Should Govern Themselves And Minorities Should Be Cared For.

I Think That People Are Going To Move. They Always Have And That's Going To Continue. The Question Is, How Are We Going To Deal With It?

I Don't Listen To Music When I Write. I Need Silence So I Can Hear The Sound Of The Words.

I Think The Idea Of Migration Through Time Is Very Important Because Every Human Being Does That And It Unites Us With People Who Migrate Through Geography.

I Like The Idea Of An Open, International London That Thrives On Attracting Hard-working, Talented People But Has The Confidence To Tell Them They Must Play By The Same Rules As Everyone Else.

All Over The World, The Nativist Perspective Is Being Privileged Over Those Who Are More Recent Arrivals.

I Think We Should Be Prepared, Given Environmental And Political Change For Large-scale Migration. If Sea Levels Rise And 200 Million People In Bangladesh And 300 Million People In Indonesia Need To Move, And The Entire Chinese Seaboard, New York City - That's Going To Be Huge.

A Beard Is Something That Is Almost Like A Mirror To The Viewer. When Someone Sees You Wearing A Beard, They're Seeing Something In Their Own Imagination Because It's Still Me Whether I'm Bearded Or Not.

If We Want Things To Be Okay, We Will Have To Make Things Okay.

And Also I Think The Rise Of Other, You Could Say, Destinations For International Jihadis Mean That Pakistan Isn't Necessarily The Place Where People From All Over The World Who Want To Engage In These Activities Gravitate To. They're Going Now To Places Like Syria Or Yemen Libya, Elsewhere.

In A Way, Every Parent Is Sort Of Dependent On The Benevolence Of The Society Around Them To Take Care Of Their Children.

Readers Don't Work For Writers. They Work For Themselves.

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