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Kamila Shamsie’s Novel Kartoghraphy: a Discourse of Karachi (Pakistani) Diaspora
Section 3. Literature of peoples of foreign countries
Zahoor Asma,
Assistant Professor of English at Government Postgraduate College for Women.Satellite Town.Rawalpindi. Pakistan Academic degree, academic title PhD Scholar
E-mail: asma.zahoor@live.com
Kamila Shamsie’s Novel Kartoghraphy: a Discourse of Karachi (Pakistani) Diaspora
Abstract: This paper explores Kamila Shamsie’s novel Kartoghraphy as diaspora writing by using Fairclough model of Critical Discourse Analysis. Shamsie traces the turbulent history of Karachi back to the arrival of Alexander-the Great and finds a continuation of turbulence till the end of the novel in 1994. Yet in her protagonist’s voice she conveys the message that Karachi is the only city where she feels safe.Despite all her transnational movement, Karachi is the 'home’ round which the whole discourse revolves proving her a Karachi diaspora. The final resolve of the protagonists to make an interactive electronic map of the city as their life long project to bring order to its disorder expresses Shamsie’s depth of diasporic attachment and concern for her city.
Keywords: Diaspora, transnational migrations, turbulent history, identity.
1. Introduction
This study aims at exploring Kartography as a discourse of Karachi diaspora. Shamsie [16] tells Kumar in an interview that it would be a terrible thing for her to be an outsider in Karachi; she adds that she visits her city regularly and “will always be a Karachiwallah...”, she does not call herself a “Ka-rachiites” in a popular Anglicized expression but “a Karachiwallah” to give it a more native, intimate touch. Though her diasporic experience, exposure and opportunities have made her “a Londoner and a Karachiwallah” [16] at the same time and she feels comfortable with both. Her broadened mental horizon makes her realize and negotiate “We put too much emphasis on identities. The fact is that we all have many identities and we keep negotiating between them.” [16].
The protagonist of Kartography Raheen and Shamsie has many things in common. They are of same age group. Raheen and Karim were of thirteen in 1986 that exactly corresponds with Shamsie’s age who was born in 1973, Shamsie’s and Raheen’s
birth place is also the same i. e. Karachi, Shamsie had her schooling from Grammar School Karachi, so do Raheen and her intimate friends. Shamsie did her graduation from University of Massachusetts Amherst, Raheen gets her degree from Upstate New York University, Shamsie keeps visiting her city regularly so does Raheen, she returns to her city every holidays. Shamsie wants to present an objective image of Karachi with all its turbulent history and rising violence, Raheen also owns the city despite all its turbulent history and calls herself a true product of Karachi.
Two parallel themes of violence and riots run in the novel in two different timelines linked through generation one is of 1970-1971 and other of 19861994. Shamsie relates this violence to Partition, migration, succession of East Pakistan, feudalism and ethnic divide and apparently there seems no end to the ethnic riots.Shamsie communicates the displacement caused by the civil war of1971and power politics of Sindh and the centre that resulted in ethnic riots creating displacement in time and space, making people ill at ease even while living at their own
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place. Communication of the experiences of the displaced people lies at the heart of Shamsie’s discourse of displacement [1].
Whipple [18] writes about Kartoghraphy in Mapping the boundaries of the human heart that the story behind the swapping of fiancees, though revealed as an intimate personal tale, has wider consequences, since it is indirectly associated with the ethnic unrest of 1971, when civil war broke out between East and West Pakistan, and Bangladesh came into being.She further elaborates that unaware of the conflicts that befell before they were born, Raheen and Karim are also ignorant of the reasons for the fiancee-switch. She adds that it is only after they have grown up, joined college, and acquired new perspectives that this mysterious situation starts haunting them, influencing both their relationships with their parents and their unique and special relationship with each other Whipple [18].
It is the presentation of both Raheen and Karim’s love for Karachi and ultimate resolve to make an interactive electronic map of Karachi as their life long project to bring order to city’s disorder along with the detailed review of Karachi elites’ life and political ups and downs of Karachi which makes Kartography a diasporic discourse.
2. Literature Review
Diaspora is the key term round which my study of Shamsie’s fiction revolves. Shamsie falls into the category of those writers who can be called diaspo-ras as a consequence of transnational migration. Es-man [9]. Movement across the borders has been a common phenomenon throughout human history but the advancement in the means of transportation has made it all the more easy and common.Global-ization has also added to the frequency and number of transnational migrations.
Coming back to the key term diaspora, initially it was used for the forced exile but now it has broader applications.Diasporas can be conquerors or settlers, they can be refugees escaping wars or persecutions or poor peasants fleeing drought and famine or unemployed labourers, or even skilled workers or highly educated professionals leaving their country for better earning [9].The trends of globalization and free market economy have also added to transnational migrations.
Most of the Asian and especially Pakistani English fiction writers fall into this category of immigrants. They rebuild their lives in their host country and make it their second home. Such diasporas “tend to lead transnational dual existences, economically and occupationally in their host country, but socially and culturally still in old country... they call upon their homeland for cultural reinforcement” [9, p. 5] Shamsie falls into this category of diaspora she did her graduation from America and has been working in England. She was quite at home in, in the new environment maintaining transnational sentiments but at the same time maintains her links with her homeland-the place of her origin Karachi.
Generally speaking in their new placements diasporas generally learn and use the language of the adopted country, and participate in mainstream educational and economic and at times political institutions. In Shamsie’s case there has been no language barrier for she uses English almost as a first language Despite active participation in social life in the host country diasporas usually maintain a dual or hybrid identity, making use of one or the other as required by different situations and diasporas that have a separate religious tradition maintain their distinct religious identity even when they have been fully ac-cultured to the local mainstream e. g. Jews in Britain, Greeks in United States and Muslims in the West.In recent times diasporas have become important nonstate actors in international affairs.
According to Brown [4] “Becoming a diaspora is a long -time business of managing change and continuity, and of negotiating old and new senses of ‘identity as people come to terms with their new environment.” Often migration requires a zeal for and a vision of wider horizons and a cognizance of the potential change and often connections, information and some material resources to make the decision to move across the continents. Shamsie is a privileged diaspora in the sense that she has the zeal, vision, resources, connections, talent and opportunities to prove her worth and distinguish herself as Pakistani Diaspora of notable stature.
In the last half of the 20th century historians were interested in the issues related to national identity — how people identify themselves as belonging to a nation — the predisposing circumstances and
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Kamila Shamsie’s Novel Kartoghraphy: a Discourse of Karachi (Pakistani) Diaspora
common experiences which created make-believe national identities, the political and material contrivances by which such identities were spread and nurtured, and the political implications of nationalism, predominantly the assumption that its fruita-tion was the nation state —this pre occupation reflected itself in the development of colonial nationalisms around the world in opposition to European empires. But in today’s world which is marked by various features of globalization there is a whole array of sense of belonging available for example regionalism, many forms of religious fundamentalism, new social and business identities created by multinational organizations, or partaking in the modern world universities with their international configurations of research and scholarly collaboration enabled by advanced means of communication and transportation.But even then most of diasporas love to identify themselves with a particular place they belong to in Shamsie’s case it is Karachi, the place of her origin.
According to Mishrah [13] the displacement of diasporas can be real or imagined, it can also be self-imposed exile.He is of the opinion that diasporas are fluid, ideal, social formations happy to live wherever there is an international airport and stand for a longer, much admired historical process. He elaborates that diasporas have a progressivist as well as a reactionary ‘streak’ centre on the idea of one’s ‘homeland’ as very real spaces from which alone a certain level of redemption is possible.’ And when a homeland is not available in any ‘real’ sense, it exists as an absence that acquires surplus meaning by the fact of diaspora. It is not unusual for the two versions; the physical and the mental to be collapsed into an ahis-torical past going back to antiquity [13]. Chambers
[5] says that shared memories and similar attributes are likely to diminish or assimilate with the dynamic environment as time passes by.
The new diaspora surfaces precisely at the moment ofpostmodern ascendancy; it comes with globalization and hyper mobility, it comes with modern means of communication already fully formed like aero planes, internet, video links webcam, cell phones etc [13].
To further discuss this meaning of diaspora, this research shall interlink the diasporic literature
reflected by Kamila Shamsie and its interplay with power and language, among other elements. The concept itself has meshed immensely with the studies of race, country, identity, migration and identity in the past years. Before the 1990’s, diaspora was extensively applied with reference to the Jewish and African experience of physical resettlement which was usually often “enforced” [3]. As the use of diaspora has widened to encompass a greater range of peoples, so its theoretical power has also heightened.
Diaspora, as a meaning, moves from a basic, descriptive tool to a concept used to cover a multifaceted and dynamic social dynamics Bauman [3]. Congruently, diaspora has developed from a concept mainly linked with geography, migration, and movement to being a field of study defined by a concern with identity construction and confusion Gray [10].
According to Bassnet & Trivedi [2], diaspora reflects the influence of both the local and the global on peoples’ conceptions of self: a “multiplicity of belongings and identities”. The hybrid identities that feature diasporic communities do not necessarily require a post-modernist diffusion of identity, in which “culture becomes a free-floating landscape; its parts are continuously in flux” [2]. Instead, these are always and constantly founded in power relations such as those linked with economic, political and cultural processes. However, these must be considered as the products of “a long history of contrasts between unequal cultures and forces Rahman [14].
Stuart Hall (as quoted by Berendse & Williams, 2002), holds that the use of the concept of diaspora facilitates the writers and scholars to develop various frameworks for understanding the identity formation. Hall is of the opinion that the consciousness of diaspora as a product of differentiation and this difference is generally stressed against homogenizing national concepts. A stereotyped national culture is defined contrary to the “generalized image of otherness which the diaspora has established Said [15].
Shamsie is unique with her diaspora stories since she lives and writes in Pakistan unlike most of the other diasporic authors who reside in the Western world. Diasporic writing falls under classifications such as ethnicity, hybridity and nationality Chambers [6]. Shamsie’s global interconnections and the use of modern technologies promote a more dynam-
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Section 3. Literature of peoples of foreign countries
ic theme in diaspora. As such, she has magnified the diasporic consciousness among migrants because the old place and abode can be so much more present in the lives of migrants Chambers [6]. Migration is stressed by the absence of permanence and the borders between Pakistan and some host country such as UK, in Shamsie’s case, render too much fluidity in her works.
I intend to explore Kartoghraphy as a discourse of Karachi diaspora to look for the totality of relations Foucault [8] among history, politics, literary discourses and their impact on individual and collective life. Text, for Foucault [8], is not merely verbal but an interlinked entity of verbal and non-verbal components of the social apparatus such as power and its effects on a larger scale.
Shamsie, as a diaspora writer, tackles “place and displacement” and the identity crisis which relate to the resumption of a successful relationship between “self” and “place” (Amireh & Majaj, 2000). Shamsie belongs to that part of the world which used to a part of a British colony.Despite being well-versed in her native language Urdu which finds an expression in code mixing at phrasal, clausal and sentential levels in her novels she prefers to write her novels in English rejecting the present and the ex-colonizers monopoly over the instruments of communication Hawley [11].
3. Methodology
In order to explore Kartography as a discourse of Karachi diaspora I will explore the text to look for the relevant details in the novel and apply Fairclough’s model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Fair-clough’ considers language is an irreducible part of social life, dialectically interconnected with other elements of social life, social analysis and research always have to take account of language Fairclough
[7].
The focus of Fairclough’s approach to discourse analysis is upon the language of texts and the happenings presented in particular texts. The link between the text, context and interdiscursivity is embedded in the discourse which CDA aims to bring to light [8]. I applied Fairclough’s model of Critical Discourse Analysis to ascertain whether or not Kartography can be taken as a discourse of Karachi diaspora.
Shamsie presents many characters in the novel who can be taken as Karachi diaspora but for this paper I will delimit my analysis to Raheen’s character only.
4. Analysis
4.1. Kartoghraphy as a Diasporic Discourse
Kartoghraphy, Shamsie’s fourth novel, has many things in it that bear a witness to the fact that Sham-sie is a Pakistani diaspora in general and Karachi diaspora in particular. The very title Kartoghraphy is indicative, in which TC is taken from Karachi which replaces the ‘C’ in the actual spellings of ‘cartography’ that means map-making, is in this particular case map-making of Karachi and the whole novel revolves around this theme. It is this decision of making a map of Karachi that creates a point of difference between the two main characters of the novel and it is the same urge to create a scientific electronic interactive map of Karachi which unites them in the end, proving Shamsie a true Karachi diaspora.
Despite having an awareness of the turbulent history of Karachi Shamsies protagonist Raheen has the realisation, ‘And yet, it is the only place where I have ever felt utterly safe’ (63). Such is the intensity and depth of her love for her native city, her home-land.Raheen, Shamsie’s protagonist keeps thinking, “Who among us has never been moved to tears, or to tears’ invisible counterparts, by mention of the word home? Is there any other word that can feel so heavy as you hold it in your mouth?” (122) What Shamsie conveys through this discourse is that love for one’s home, one’s city and one’s homeland is a natural feeling shared by all humans. The memory of one’s home can make one nostalgic — can move one to tears or the counterpart of tears means sadness — all these are typical feelings of diasporas.
Raheen, Shamsies voice in the novel, traces the history of violence in her own life ‘the ethnic fighting had broken out for the first time in my life in 1985” (62) then links it with greater historical perspective “I cannot remember Karachi being a safe city before” (62) tracing it back to the arrival of Alexander, the Great, whose admiral, the Cretan Nearchus “had to quell mutiny” (62) Shamsie shares with the readers that the recorded history of violence in Karachi dates back to twenty three hundred years. Despite
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Kamila Shamsie’s Novel Kartoghraphy: a Discourse of Karachi (Pakistani) Diaspora
all its turbulence by the end of the novel Karim, the second main character and the soul-mate of Raheen, the protagonist, returns with the plans:
“We’ll make an interactive map on the Internet. You start with a basic street map, OK, but everywhere there are links.Click here, you get sound files of Karachiites telling stories of what it’s like to live in different parts of town. Click there, you get a visual of any particular street. Click again, the camera zooms in and you see a rock or a leaf or a billboard that means something to that street.Click, you see streets that exist seasonally, like your lunar street. Click, you see which sections are under curfew. Click, you hear a poem. Click, you see a painting. Choice of languages in which you can read the thing. Sound files in all kinds of dialects. Strong on graphics for people who are illiterate... This is a lifelong project, Raheen, in a city that’s always changing” (337).
In the above-mentioned discourse, Karim, other die-hard Karachiites like Raheen, has to suffer from his first displacement from Karachi at the age of thirteen because of the closure of educational institutions on account of ethnic violence. They are sent to Rahim Yar Khan, where Karim declares that he will like to be a Karachi map-maker, and in the end he actually comes back to act upon his plan to make an interactive map of Karachi for he wants to bring order to its disorder.His second long displacement from Karachi was because of his father’s decision to settle in London because of security concerns but he has always kept in touch with his city like a typical diaspora, his transnational migration kept him engaged educationally and occupationally in the adopted land but emotionally, socially and culturally he maintained his links with his homeland Es-man [9]. He shares with Raheen that he has realized “There’s bound to be a map somewhere.The police, the Intelligence Services, may be even the post office, they have got to have a street map of Karachi” (339). Karim further informs her that he has picked up the idea of this map from her who told him about the “lunar street” and the stories associated with different parts of the city.
Shamsie mentions the use of technology for making a map of her city to let the world know that the Karachiites and Karachi diaspora have the vision
and the ability to modernize the map of their city ‘an interactive map’ with multiple links thus proving herself a modern Karachi diaspora who loves to write about her city and wants her city to be developed on the modern scientific lines.
Shamsie left Pakistan after her school education and went to America for her graduation, started doing job in Britain and regularly visits her home city and keeps herself up date about what has been going on in Karachi. The whole novel from the beginning till the end is about KarachiThe word Karachi has been used in the novel 197 times.
Raheen, Shamsie’s voice in the novel reflects her love for her home city. Shamsie [17] writes in Kamila Shamsie on Leaving and Returning to Karachi that there are two kinds of writers but for her, one of the most important type is of “those who write about places with which they are intimately acquainted and those who don’t”. She further writes in the same article, “But wherever I lived, Karachi was the place I knew best and the place about which I wrote” [17] proving herself a typical Karachi diaspora.
Kumar [12] regards the evoking and creating a sense of place has long been a concern of literature and Kartography belongs to this genre of place-making narratives. Shamsie presents the litany of her city through her protagonist Raheen, who recalled the minute details of all the activities associated with the winter season of Karachi, her personal recollections and life in the elite social circle is marked with envelopes containing invitations of the New Year parties. Raheen further elaborates that these envelops start arriving in November. From New Year invitations she turns to all other varieties of different functions and their invitations to show extravagance of the elites’ ways of livings but then comes back to “the Ghutnas, the Karachi Knees” (69). Through these parties Shamsie describes the superficial concerns of Karachi elites.Raheen elaborates that these “Ghutna parties” are used for “scrambling up the social ladder” (69). In all the timelines mentioned in the novel these New Year parties are an inseparable part of the social life of Karachi elites.
Shamsie, herself a Karachi diaspora, presents three individual Karachi diaspora in the novel they are: Raheen, Karim and Maheen.She also refers to Muhajirs community who came to Pakistan at
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Section 3. Literature of peoples of foreign countries
Partition, leaving everything behind forever to be Pakistanis but later turned into ‘besieged diaspora’ in Kumar [12] terms because of the discriminating behaviour and policy of the Sindhi feudals in particular and Pakistani ruling elites in general.
4.2. Presentation of Diaspora in the Novel
There are three main and many other diaspora characters mentioned in the novel but I delimit this analysis to Raheen, the protagonist only. Right in the beginning of the novel Raheen describes her placement at the age of thirteen:
“Of course, the garden, is located where all our beginnings, Karim’s and mine, are located: Karachi. That is a spider-plant city where, ifyou know what to look for and some higher power is feeling indulgent, you might find a fossilized footprint of Alexander, The Great” [3].
The opening discourse of the protagonist indicates that both the main characters Karim and Raheen belong to Karachi.And Raheen is the narrator through whose voice the main story is told. The emphasis is on a garden located in Karachi which is indicative of the class of people they belong to. She regards Karachi a “spider-plant city” with its ever expanding alleys and adds “where, ifyou know what you look for and some higher power is feeling indulgent, you might find a fossilized footprint ofAlexan-der.” [3]. Shamsie refers to the historical significance of her city Karachi though in a humourous way. She indirectly refers to the strong hold of the power politics and the high ups that run the whole show. Anything can be done, traced or accomplished in Karachi but with the indulgence of the ‘powerful’.
Raheen’s monologue at the very prospect of their first temporary displacement from Karachi goes like this, “For God’s sake, a farm! For two smog sniffers, Karachiites, damn it” [9] displays the way she identifies herself and her intimate friend Karim. Displacement from Karachi does not seem to be a good idea.
Quite in keeping with the tradition of the Karachi elites Raheen also goes to America for her graduation.But she returns to Karachi every holidays and misses her city with all its various colours and seasons of life. Once Raheen was in her tiny dorm room at the university in America along with some friends to whom she was reading from a book when she heard the sudden increase in the intensity of the
rain fall and she rushed out leaving everyone behind for, “It was the closest thing to the monsoons I had encountered in the three years I’d been at university in America, rain ricocheting off the ground with the speed and wings of bullets from a Kalashnikov.” (135).
She had been at the university for the last three years but it was for the first time that she could listen to the downpour with the ‘speed and wings’ of the bullets from a Kalashnikov. It is a typical Pakistani and Karachiites use of the language, representation of a typical culture introduced in Pakistan with the influx of the Afghans and spread of arms with the beginning of the Afghan Jihad. Raheen, a Karachi diaspora, missed monsoon and the similarity of the downpour in America made her rush outside. And the ‘Russet rustle’ to her was, “Almost the sound of waves breaking on the pebbled sand.” (135). Such was the rush of nostalgia for her home city.
Raheen’s Karachi was peopled by four of their parents and Karim and herself, Karim’s family’s shifting to England was a shock for her but Aunty Maheen’s divorce and remarriage was even a greater shock because it banished the possibility of things to be similar again.
Karim came to see her at the university while talking to him and seeing her friends lying in the snow she was thinking as if she could feel “the water currents tugging against my fingertips as I floated in Karachi’s sea.” (130) Whenever she talked to Karim on the phone “it was as though their time apart had merely been ‘Karachi sunset: swift and startling’”. (129) So her city was peopled by her friends and “The four of us had never really ceased being the four of us ‘to me, despite all the intervening years... ” (129). America brought Zia and Raheen together, “At university, in the middle of New York state, nostalgic for things we’d never paid attention to, like Urdu music and basmati rice .’ (150).
Raheen belonged to Westernized Karachi elites for whom there was neither a language barrier nor drastically different cultural shock in the West or in America but even then she missed her homeland and longed for the return. Search for Urdu music and basmati rice were indication of her nostalgia. Zia and she combined together formed Karachi diaspora but with a difference, Zia did not have the desire to
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Kamila Shamsie’s Novel Kartoghraphy: a Discourse of Karachi (Pakistani) Diaspora
return and he accused her for her desire to go back ‘home’ soon after graduation and throwing away a flyer from the Career Centre as “missing the luxuries of upper-middle class” (165) and she thought that only Karim could understand “that ‘belonging’ is a spider-plant-shaped, sea-bordering” (165). She considered her desire to go back and live in the conflict torn city in matching with, “The traits of Karachi-ites who was choosing to survive the calamity rather than weeping about it? From a distance, I could see how that looked like callousness.” (170). But the fact remains she was a Karachi diaspora for whom return to her ‘home’ was the only desire and the only op-tion.Her disillusionment with her father and awareness of ever increasing violence and experience of ‘the pristine surroundings of campus life’ she knew:
“...that every other city in the world showed me in surface, but when I looked at Karachi I saw the blood running through blood and out of its veins; I knew that I understood the unspoken as much as the articulated among its inhabitants; I knew there were so many reasons to fail to love it, to cease to love it, to be unable to love it, that it made love a fierce and unfathomable thing; I knew that I couldn’t think of Karachi and find any easy answers, and I didn’t know how to decide if that was reason to go back or reason to stay away”. (297)
Karim came to see Raheen in New York to ask her not to go back to Karachi after graduation and told her that he was ready to live with her anywhere else in the world but she could not agree though she regarded Karachi as ‘a city that was feasting on its own blood’ where the present deadly violence made “earlier violence felt like mere pinprick”, as a city “that breads monsters”, a city where she would have to face her father again whom she had been trying to avoid since the day he revealed what he said to Aunty Maheen to make her leave him. She questioned herself despite knowing all this, despite reading about ever increasing violence and despite having the experience of the ‘pristine’ surroundings at the campus in America why she wanted to go back to ‘any of that’ and then herself provided the answer for she, the die-hard Karachi diaspora, owned the city as she owned no other place in the world. She said that every other city in the world just showed her the surface but when she looked at Karachi-
her very own city, she could see the blood running through its veins, there she could understand all the heard and unheard (Keats,1819) “articulated” and ‘unspoken’ happiness and sorrows. She knew there were so many reasons not to love the city and that “it made love a fierce and unfathomable thing”, she knew there was no easy solution to Karachi’s problems and no rational justification for her love but she confessed she ‘didn’t know how to decide if that was reason to go back or reason to stay away.’ She told Karim that it was he who made her realise that “it’s not so simple to leave a city behind”.
Shamsie regards “Karachi at its worst is a Karachi unconcerned with people who exist outside the storyteller’s circle” (330); the same Karachi is “at its best, Karim, Karachi is intimate with strangers”. Talking about its duality she refers to the fact that despite being a city torn with hatred and ethnic divide it is a city where there is a lunar street where people open the doors of their houses for the purdah observing women during the month of Moharram to go to their place of worship being seen by anyone, it is a city where strangers are so concerned about the girls safety that they are offered the keys of their cars to safely move around, it is a place where poor flower bracelets’ vendor offers free bracelets to them calling them sisters, where the car thief helps the stranger to start their car so that they can safely go back with the girl who is along. All these examples show the respect for the female lot that is an indication of civility and humanity.Despite all the rift, the Karachiites retain their human values.
Raheen admits that Karachi is a complex city and there is no simple solution to its complicated problems. She refers to the letter her father wrote to Karim’s mother which they have both read and tells him that she is trying to be brave about the things that ‘terrify’ her. She says that “ what her father said and did though matter of the past but to pretend it could be easily discussed and resolved would be to deny how deep in our marrow consequences are lodged” (332).
She told Karim, “I love this place, Karim, for all its madness and complication.It’s not that I didn’t love it before, but I loved it with a child’s kind of love, the kind that either ends strengthened as understanding grows” (332). In the end she implored
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him to understand the underlying message “come home”, the expression is repeated thrice urging him to be no longer a ‘Karachi diaspora’ but a part of it.
4.3. Shamsie’s Use of Language as Diaspora Writer
Shamsie is a Pakistani and in particular a Karachi diaspora writer. She belongs to one of those Anglophone families in Pakistan for whom English is just like a first language, but, even then we can find appropriation of the language to bear the burden of the local colouring and local experiences.Similarly there is a lot of code-mixing as well.
In the beginning of the novel when Raheen and Kareem went to Uncle Asif’s farm, who was an Oxford graduate, his discourse “Sugar cane thataway, kino thi-saway, cotton every whichaway” (16) with them shows how he appropriated the accent to his local colouring by combining ‘that way’, ’this way’ and ‘which way’ as ‘thataway’, ‘thisaway’ and ‘whichaway’ respectively.
Shamsie uses many Urdu words the novel e. g. Aba, Ami, yaar, hanh, ghutnay, chillo, haina, bas-mati rice, he jamalo,, hajj, dupatta, thaanaas, motia, charpie, hijab, bakwas, kammez, Dekho, Karachiwala, eid, suno yaar, Khuda, Pathan, pyjama dheela, topi, Gymkhana, bilkul, Qabacha, Tanhaiyan, Begum, Pulloo, sari, jaanoo, dholkis, mehndis, may-ouns, milad, sham-e-rang, shadi reception, valima, ghuttnas, ghutnay, chil, gaye,, Shi’a, Sunni, kala pul, Amreekan, kurta, hulva puri, chai, Aboo, malai, shal-war-kameez,, Lohawala sahib.
Similarly we can code-mixing at words, phrasal, clausal and sentential level e. g. ‘khiskoing’/ghutnas’ at words level, ‘shadi reception’, ‘Tony Pan Shop’,’Basmati rice’, and ‘Ali, yaar, Ali, mate’ ‘Oh, boy friend girlfriend! Early starter haina?’, ‘Everything theek thaak’/mujhsay pheli si mohabat’, ‘ghutnay chil gaye’, ‘mera pya ghur ayya’, use of full Urdu sentences like, ‘Allah ka shukar hay Raheen Bibi, Karim Baba, Allah ka shukar’.
So while analysing Shamsie’s use of language in her fiction we can feel the local colouring and local touch in the use of vocabulary, presentation of the place, representation of different classes of people, she particularly mention the expression “ Karachispeak” like “go straight, straight, straight, straight” while referring to the way English is spoken in Karachi. All this proves her a Pakistani diaspora writer.
5. Conclusion
Displacement emerges as a major theme of the novel; the novel begins with the displacement of the Raheen and Karim because of ethnic violence in Karachi. Shamsie portrays ever deteriorating law and order situation in the background of the story. She refers to 1986 incident of killing of a Muhajir girl by a Pathan driver, she also refers to Muhajir Qaumi Movement, discrimination created through legislation by introducing quota system. Feudalism and its impact on Pakistani and Karachi politics, role and insensitivity of the Karachi elites in creating ethnic divides, circumstances that lead to Fall of Dhaka, national obliviousness of the grave tragedy, its lingering impacts and how its after effects influence the life of her fictional characters.Maheen, Ali, Karim, Bengalis and Muhajir displacements all are the result of personal and national conflicts creating displacement and diaspora
She refers to newspaper reporting about violence and killing and the repeated patterns of the controlled disorder. Amidst the turbulence she portrays the return of the second main character ofthe novel, Karim on Raheen’s imploring to come home with a resolve to make an interactive electronic map of Karachi to facilitate the law enforcing agencies and Karachiites which in a way is the return of diaspora to his motherland reflection Shamsie’s wish to create order in her city’s disorder and proving her a typical diaspora writer.She repeats Karachi 197 times in the novel.
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Kamila Shamsie’s Novel Kartoghraphy: a Discourse of Karachi (Pakistani) Diaspora
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