Rebellion is a Lonely Road

I recently read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book, Nomad. I had already read her Infidel, a book that left me curiously untouched. And I was prepared for yet more agente provocateuse type of staccato gunfire at the Somali culture into which she was born and at the broader Islamic culture of which she was forced to be a part for many years. Written as an insight into how religious fundamentalism exacerbates familial and social dislocation, there is some needless taunting in this book too. What also struck me was Hirsi Ali's lack of knowledge about some things, and the employment of ignorance as a building block for her own narrative. For example, Hirsi Ali dismisses anticolonialsim. Colonialism in her view is a good thing because it brought western style feminism to the colonies (p. 132). Even though she confines this observation to the Muslim world, it still struck me as rather silly, given that so many of the ills of the present-day Muslim world stem from the colonial support to pliant conservative traditionalists and from the wholesale suppression of liberal voices as "disobedient dissidence." I mean, if all the left-liberal-secular people have been either killed or expelled, who else is left but the die hard orthodox? And in comparison to them, of course the colonial authorities would appear sane. And as I come from a country whose founding fathers and mothers were nothing if not wholeheartedly committed to social reform and the rights of women, that part of Hirsi Ali's argument just sank without any resonance.



Having got that out of the way, let me say that I found much in Nomad that was deeply moving and that resonated with me in many ways. For one thing, there is the sheer enormity of the distance that this woman has travelled. Ayaan Hirsi Ali does not belong to the group of women who began their lives in airconditioned rooms and ended their careers in the luxurious confines of well-funded think tanks. Her life was a hard one that most of us can only imagine - refugee camps, tents, household duties as a child, etc. Many of her observations might well have been my own. For example, when she described the Quran school in Mogadishu and how the lessons there were enforced through terrible corporal punishment (p. 186), my memory took me straight back to the little school I attended in rural Punjab in the 1970s, where the principal beat the boys (and, less often, the girls) quite terribly for all sorts of infractions, from not doing homework to not having a clean enough uniform. Although I never got beaten, I remember the silent terror such scenes induced in all of us.

I never lived in fear of my life (except for one long trip on a night train in Punjab during the 1980s) but I identify with her descriptions of the hardships of life in other countries. I keep quiet often during conversations with my friends here because it is impossible to explain to people who have grown up here what it means when one has to store water in buckets (because of severe water shortages) and how in my hostel (dorm) in JNU, I have seen grown women fighting over water, over who stole whose bucket of the precious fluid. There is simply no common experience that would enable my suburban friends to understand these things. But I have a feeling that Ayaan Hirsi Ali would recognize that scene and would smile and nod along with me. And when she writes about how poor, non-western immigrants to the west are often flummoxed about how to handle money, sex, and violence, I nod in agreement with her. The difference is, I think, in degrees. Most rural (and some urban) Indians would sympathize with the values she describes as prevailing among Muslim migrants to the west - control your women lest they become "wayward", beat them if they dissent, kill them if they break too audaciously with the prevailing culture. What keeps most of them in line (at least as immigrants) is a sixty-year tradition of at least lip service to the might of the law. That, and the fact that most of them understand that education is the key to getting ahead in the modern world. It is respect for the law that seems to be lacking among the people Hirsi Ali describes. But I wonder if it has less to do with the religion and more to do with the fact that most of the people she describes come from lands where there has been little law and order for decades. Of course, the pat answer would be that the lack of law and order is due to the religion. But then, I don't see how Hirsi Ali would categorize the lawlessness of that very non-Muslim country, Mexico.

Overall, despite my reservations about some of her analysis, I did sympathize with Ayaan Hirsi Ali's life story. My heart ached for her loneliness, trapped in a polygamous, dysfunctional family. Polygamy - how does that even work? Hirsi Ali's answer: it doesn't. Her anger is understandable, if not always justified, given that dysfunctional families are not something that Somalis or Muslims have a copyright on. And while her prescriptions sometimes seem strange (a Christian leadership against the "onslaught of Islam"?) and while she downplays emerging fascist trends in the west (the Koran burning pastors, the cabby-stabbing ideologues), I felt that I, too, could understand the enormous significance of her nomadic life. You've come a long way, baby.

Come September

It's September, time for things like apples and grapes, cooler temperatures and, above all, and thank God, time for school! Oh, I was sad when my little M. boarded the bus for the first time. But oh, how I danced a jig when I could sit down with my second cup of tea in delicious, uninterrupted - silence! Well, I danced a mental jig, of course, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to drink that tea.

My book contract has been signed, my manuscript is almost all ready, and now I have to face up to my blog dilemma. Once the book is out, my identity will no longer be hidden. So should I continue the semi-anonymity of this blog - this semi-private log which only a few friends and family know about? Or should I just put my name to it and direct more traffic here? I am tempted to go with the first option as I really enjoy writing without the burden of a known audience. And after all, I can always start a new blog for the book.

I have to say though that I have become the caricature of the writer-type. As the deadline approaches and I am writing frantically, I am always skulking around my home - in my faded t-shirt and yoga pants, running my fingers through my messy hair as I think through an idea, consuming hot tea by the gallon. And, generally, looking a sight. Ah well, what did they say about making sausages? It's the same way with writing. Readers should be very glad they don't see the author during the writing process. It ain't a pretty sight.