Looking back, moving on

Is the clash of civilisations inevitable? A sad novel infused with how Islam is at odds with first world societies.

Maps for Lost Lovers
Nadeem Aslam
Faber and faber
2004
Fiction
Pages: 498
Price: £ 6.99
ISBN: 0571221807
Hardcover (Also in paaperback)

Much of immigrant literature is about the clash of civilisations. If the new is entirely different from the old, how do you reconcile yourself? Do you move on or do you keep looking back?

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In Nadeem Aslam’s elegiac Maps for Lost Lovers, there is no assimilation for Pakistani immigrants in England. It has been years since Shamas and his wife Kaukab came over to Britain for a better life, but the sense of exile dominates their lives. The daughter of a cleric, the rigid Kaukab especially has made a mess of it. Her three children — Charag, Mah-Jabin and Ujala — have all drifted away, victims of her orthodoxy in a liberal land.

Shamas, approaching retirement at his job with the Community Relations Council, has fared a bit better. A Communist, his ungodly ways are more in tune with the society around him. But in a book of tragedies, nobody escapes the wrath of fate.

Shamas’ brother Jugnu and his lover Chanda have been missing for months. The strongest rumour abroad is that they have been murdered by Chanda’s brothers. The fact that the lovers had decided to live together out of wedlock didn’t meet the sanction of religion and Chanda’s brothers — belonging to a family of Pakistani immigrants — have let it be known that they feel an honour killing is justified.