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Ajay Singh


When people or things go in different directions, they are said to "scatter". Some of the most extreme scattering occurs when a bomb goes off in a busy street, killing, maiming and causing havoc. In his debut novel, The Scatter Here is Too Great , Bilal Tanweer describes what it's like to live in Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital, where thousands of people have been killed over the years in extremist violence.
"Insulation was the most important lesson you learned on Karachi's roads: see as little as possible, hear even less, and touch absolutely nothing," the Karachi-born author writes. "Half the trick of surviving here was to learn to extricate yourself from all the invasive influences around you while keeping a calm appearance. The other half was to emanate some of those influences, so that strangers would stay away."
Yet the horrors of violence in Karachi exist side by side with the joys of everyday life, Tanweer tells Ajay Singh .
 
Why did you write your novel in fragments that lack a narrative arc and contain stories within stories? 
I wanted to explore the importance of storytelling in a world where storytelling and literature are in crisis. I also wanted to give a narrative to certain histories that are largely unknown or have not been written, such as the history of the left and of Karachi.
Why does your novel contain such deeply political overtones? 
I don't think it's possible to get away from politics. A writer invariably has a certain attitude towards power and is aware of how power functions in a particular context or discourse.
Your novel opens with the quote, "We are continually living a solution to problems that reflection cannot hope to solve." What was the quote's original context?
I found the quote in a book called Poetics of Space, by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. For me, the quote evoked questions about living, reflecting and writing. A narrative creates beautiful illusions about normality and stability that allow us to live our lives in a particular way. But writing - and the thinking that goes into it - does not really address problems at an individual or collective level. Writers need to be aware of that.
Tell us about your novel's title. 
The scattered fragments through which we construct an idea of ourselves and of the world are too great. No narrative can contain all these varied, disconnected or contradictory fragments. That's the challenge of writing - to make sense of the fragments in an attempt to understand the world.
How concerned are you about extremist violence in Pakistan? 
It's terrifying and deeply disturbing. Much of the violence is directed inward and its polarising impact on Pakistani society has created social rifts. Living with the paranoia of violence makes it very hard to plan for the future. There's no serious or honest attempt to think about what's actually going on. Who, for example, has empowered and continues to empower these extremist groups? It's Saudi Arabia, the biggest exporter and funder of extremist ideology all over the world. But nobody talks about Saudi Arabia.
Given that Pakistan was the first nation in the 20th century to be founded on the basis of religion, is it so surprising that religious extremists would try to hijack it? 
In the 1990s, it would not have been so obvious at all. In the 1980s, even less so. There's nothing deterministic about history - it all depends on where the hindsight is constructed from. So, if you're going to say this is how Pakistan was destined to be, then my question would be, who is this particular narrative serving and empowering? I would say this narrative serves precisely those who created this mess in the first place.
One of your protagonists blames General Zia-ul-Haq, surely Pakistan's most dictatorial president, for empowering extremism. Why has it been so difficult for successive presidents to reverse what he did? 
There was a large part of social engineering that went with Zia's actions for about a decade. It had a great impact on Pakistani society. Zia destroyed most of the cultural institutions in the country. After him, there was no film industry and very little theatre. Even the democrats have to espouse conservative values to get votes from people who are not liberal.
What do you think needs to happen for Pakistan and India to have a peaceful relationship? 
I don't think it suits the power configurations on both sides to be peaceful. Peace is not in the political or economic interest of those in power in Pakistan. It's the same, I feel, across the border as well. These are countries that have expended all of their histories trying to manufacture narratives that portray the other side as the devil.


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Author Q&A: Bilal Tanweer

Debut novel tackles deadly political violence in Karachi