Aamer Hussein

 Fiction

 Poetry

 Short Stories

Born:

 Karachi, Pakistan

Publishers:

 Saqi Books

 Telegram Books

Biography

Aamer Hussein was born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1955, and moved to London in his teens.

He has been writing fiction since the mid-'eighties, and his work has been widely
anthologised in many languages including Spanish, Arabic, Japanese and Urdu. He is the
author of the short story collections, Mirror to the Sun (1993); This Other
Salt (1999); Turquoise (2002); Cactus Town and other
stories (2002); Insomnia (2007); Another Gulmohar Tree (2009), a novella, shortlisted for
the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book); and The Cloud
 Messenger (2011). He is also the editor of Kahani: Short Stories by Pakistani
Women (2005), a revised and extended edition of Hoops of Fire(1999).

He reviews regularly for The Independent, lectures at the University of Southampton, is a

Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies (University of London) and was
made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004. He has served on the jury of the
2002 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the 2007 Commonwealth Writers Prize and the
2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
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 Critical perspective

 Bibliography

 Awards

Critical perspective

'In my imagination [my father] had the semblance of an eagle or a hawk; but whereas those
predators went in search of food with cruel wing and beak and claw, [he] went in search of
stories and songs and visions. He enchanted me with anecdotes of his voyages to cities I
had never seen ...'

Born in Karachi to parents from different parts of the subcontinent, Hussein has been a
Londoner since his mid-teens. As such, there are numerous references to his cosmopolitan
heritage in Mirror to the Sun(1993), his first collection of stories. Exile, whether self-
imposed or otherwise, is often destructive and can lead to a stultifying sense of
aimlessness. Aamer Hussein, on the other hand, deals with the practical realities of the
'unfixed', and, as a result, he is one of its most eloquent chroniclers.

Mirror to the Sun reverberates with traumas. The Indo-Pakistan war (1971) looms large in
'Karima', a favourite of anthologists. In this story, Karima recounts the loss of her husband
to ethnic violence in the wake of Independence, as well as her virtual slavery in a London
butcher's where she works to send money back to Shahzad, her son, who, she later finds
out, has died under the wheels of a truck. It was a debut full of promise.
With his second collection, This Other Salt (1999), Hussein delves deeper into the ordinary
day-to-day activities of his characters. Its complex but rewarding sequence ‘Skies: Four
Texts for an Autobiography’, is a collage of prose and poetry where Sameer, the narrator,
re-visits the scenes of his childhood but is bewildered by Pakistan's strife-stricken society.
The late 1990s were a prolific period for Hussein. Research into early 20th-century Urdu
women’s fiction led to a superb anthology, Hoops of Fire (2000), later revised and
reprinted as Kahani (2005).

Hussein's last two collections of stories, Turquoise (2002) and Insomnia (2007), have been
his most mature in terms of scope and style. Highlights from Turquoise include 'The
Needlewoman's Calendar', where a woman sheds both her faithless husband and veil on
the train to Karachi. Refreshingly, Hussein does not claim to be a spokesperson for a
misinterpreted nation – and though he devotes much attention to cultural identities, his
themes remain universal: love, betrayal, loss, racism, corruption and social
decay. Insomnia's first story, 'Nine Postcards from Sanlucar de Barrameda', for instance,
written in the wake of the 7/7 bombings, explores the rising tide of Islamophobia. It has a
Venezuelan complain of how 'Muslims in Europe are a demographic problem' to which the
narrator replies: 'I guess I'm a Muslim in Europe too ... And foreign wherever I go.' In
'Hibiscus Days', a man falls asleep while reading an encyclopedia, and the moths on its
pages escape into the room only to be captured and placed inside a poem. 'The Angelic
Disposition' is another stand-out from Insomnia. Hussein's characters, delicately depicted,
help convey these various themes. His women are quietly powerful, the men melancholic
and severe; but both are sewn together by a deep-seated sense of compassion.

Nowhere is this compassion better explored than in Another Gulmohar Tree (2009), and its
chief protagonists, Usman and Lydia. The setting is London in 1950, an 'imperial dowager
without a throne”' Their budding liaison is interrupted by Usman's departure. Lydia, who
keeps in touch, spends two years learning 'Hindoostawney' from a Major MacGregor, and
heads for Karachi. The rest of the novella follows their marriage through its numerous
hardships and delights. As with the later works of Assia Djebar and Marguerite Duras – in
particular the Duras of La Musica deuxième or La Pluie d'été – Hussein's deceptively simple
prose belies a powerful symbolism where details like the flora, fauna, or even the weather,
have been wrought for a specific reason. This scene from Chapter 5 is particularly apt: 'She
was surprised to find that, like herself and so many other inhabitants of her adopted city,
the gulmohar, which appeared to be rooted in this soil, was a transplant.' Though
dissatisfied by how his marriage has progressed, Usman's 'revelation' in Chapter 11, which
leads him to re-awaken his passion for Rokeya, is both heart-warming and delicately
conveyed. Hussein's at times overtly romantic touches, seem designed to sweeten his
characters' existential clumsiness, and are, as his oeuvre shows, very well executed.
The exquisite fairy tale that functions as a preface to Another Gulmohar Tree is also highly
memorable.
 Hussein's novel The Cloud Messenger (2011), sees its narrator, Mehran, wrestle with
multiple linguistic allegiances (Urdu, Farsi, Italian, English), as well as various romantic
entanglements – and the implications these loves later have on his life and thoughts.
Again, Hussein's folkloristic touch proves mesmerizing: 'Years ago, one of the last times I
saw you, you told me a fable by a Senegalese sage, about all men being like walls full of
holes in which birds nested, white birds and black, ravens and doves; "If you send out the
white birds ones to someone else they return to their holes with blessings, but the ravens
of rancour are always in search of empty spaces to occupy and will pick holes in the wall
they perch on. Don't send your ravens to anyone."'

Hussein is no magic realist; he is equally at home with Urdu folk tales as with French
nouvelles. Such diverse sources of inspiration are not unusual, since his 'knowledge of the
work of writers both prominent and obscure' in Han Suyin's words, 'is second to none.' In
terms of Anglophone Pakistani authors, however, Hussein is an oddity, albeit a welcome
one. Hussein does not condescend to facile First World clichés – he is both liberal and
righteous. Instead of rants against religious and political establishments, one finds tactful,
delicate nuances. This is no doubt due to his dedication to the intense craft of the short
story, drawings elements from both classical and experimental components. He has had an
undoubtable influence on younger writers such as Kamila Shamsie, and, with the short-
listing of Another Gulmohar Treefor the Commonwealth Writers Prize, one can only hope
that Hussein's deserved critical recognition will translate into further acclaim.

André Naffis-Sahely, 2010

Read more

Books: Feasting alone on

sweet rice and bitter tears
Shusha Guppy goes into exile with lyrical tales of loss and restoration;
This Other Salt by Aamer Hussein Saqi Books, pounds 9.99, 201pp
 Shusha Guppy
 Saturday 3 July 1999 00:02

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The Independent Culture

AAMER HUSSEIN'S first collection of stories, Mirror To The Sun, was a

poetic exploration of the condition of exile. It was an impressive debut: a rite-
of-passage into the distinguished rank of writers from India and Pakistan who
have chosen English as their language. Nearly seven years later, he returns to
penetrate deeper into the same terrain. The characters in these stories are as
varied and original as the corners of the world they come from, while the first-
person voice of the storyteller links them in a cohesive whole.

There are those exiles who flourish, and those who founder; all suffer from a
rupture in the psyche that distinguishes them from "natives", however integrated
they may be. The psychological equivalent of a slight accent, or a skin hue gives
the game away. And the exploration of how each copes makes this intricate
tapestry of emotions so moving.

Many stories are about the loss - of parents, lovers, opportunities, the self -
brought about by dislocation. They echo that unrecoverable loss of the
homeland and the protective shield of a native culture. The title story tells of the
death of a loved woman, a migrant like the narrator, but from another part of the
globe. His search for consolation in a new love proves impossible, and leads to
more tears with a different, but equally bitter, taste.

Problems of exile are compounded by class distinctions. Losing a country, one

also loses a social position. Shireen, the heroine of "Sweet Rice", is a
Bangladeshi doctor whose banker husband has been posted to London, "this
impossibly difficult city, where even a powerfully-situated husband does not
guarantee a work permit or a job". Cooking for his high-powered guests seem to
be her only role. She finds salvation in editing and publishing the Naimatkhaneh
- an old cookery book, compiled in 1911.

The location of my favourite story, "The Blue Direction", is a boarding school

in an idyllic mountain village by a pellucid blue lake, where "camellias and
magnolias produce a sweet faintly venomous smell". The pupils and teachers
come from all over the world, and from different parts of India. You can tell by
their names: European, Sinhalese, Hindu and Muslim.
Memories of Partition, of the first exile to Pakistan from Bombay, are still fresh
in the mind of the boy-narrator. Lonely and vulnerable, the boys form
passionate friendships, only to be accused of "unnatural feelings" and expelled.
Hussein skilfully weaves delicate strands of emotion as they evolve in this
greenhouse atmosphere; while, all around, immutable Nature seems impervious
to human desolation.

In "The Actress's Tale", the migration is reversed. Helena, hitting a sticky patch
in her career in London, maltreated and abandoned by husband and lover, runs
away to India. Here the dislocation, the splendours and ruins, and the attention
of an aristocratic Indian, help her to recover her sense of self.

These stories of displacement are raised to the metaphysical plane through the
fairy-tales incorporated into their narratives. In the end, we are all exiles - from
history, politics, love, life itself. Yet once a writer has found a voice, then
language itself becomes the homeland. But periodic returns to the original
culture enrich both writer and language. In several stories, the narrator goes
"home" to the Subcontinent, in memory or in reality.

Aamer Hussein writes with the charm and grace that comes from his knowledge
of Persian and Urdu poetry, especially in the Sufi tradition. He is particularly
good in the evocation of landscape, of aching nostalgia, of love's hopelessness.
My only caveat is that, sometimes, elliptical writing gets in the way of clarity.
But that is a small price to pay for such an unusual bag of goodies.