Mirza Waheed: Kashmir's Lost Boys

The class of debut authors 2011 starts off with a bang- journalist Mirza Waheed has created a shocking, moving and intense book about Kashmir and its teenage boys.

What is essentially a fiction book about friendship, becomes a stark portrayal of the harsh realities, compromises and broken promises that constitute the Valley near the border with Pakistan, littered with the dead bodies of freedom fighters.

Mirza Waheed's debut, thus, is The Collaborator and is out this month (February 2011) on Penguin Viking. It's an impressive, expansive debut. We caught up with Waheed to find out how much of the book was based on reality, what inspired him to write and what he thinks fiction should be.

> First of all, hello there, how are you?

For a recession-era debut novelist, I am quite alright. Although the nervousness won’t go away.

> This is your debut novel. Please tell us about The Collaborator?

The Collaborator is about a nation. A tragic, death-filled and often besieged nation called Kashmir. I first wanted to write the story of modern-day conflict in Kashmir, having witnessed the peak years of the separatist militant uprising against India, when I left the Valley in 1993 to study at the University of Delhi.

When I was growing up, I often thought about the number of unknown dead boys lying scattered across the Himalayas near the Line of Control, the de facto border between India and Pakistan. If dead bodies were ‘displayed’ openly in the city where I lived, and where my parents still live, what would the landscape be where hundreds of boys would get killed crossing into, or coming back from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir after receiving arms and training to fight against Indian rule? The Collaborator began with this single stark premise. What I eventually came to write shocked even me. I also obsessed over the fate of such delicate things as love and friendship at a time of brutal conflict.

> Having been a journalist for years, how difficult was it to make the jump into fiction and what made you decide to tell this story instead of a true one?

To a large extent it is because of journalism that I write fiction. While journalism is urgent, important and for the age we live in, relevant in real time, it can be limiting sometimes, particularly with regard to such complex stories as Kashmir. You cannot do nuance and extensive detail in byte-sized news or formatted reportage. The ‘simplifications of journalism’, as Nabokov put it perhaps, can be stifling at times. I have written fiction in the past, mostly short stories, so there was no significant or difficult jump that I had to make. As a teenager, I believed the novel to be one of the greatest inventions of all time. A part of me still can’t let go of that notion. 

> How close to real events and observations of real people is the book?

It is very close to what people in Kashmir have seen and gone through in the last twenty two years. I have also briefly fictionalised some real events in the novel. I didn’t need to do much research as many of the concerns of the novel derive from my lived experience. Having said that, the novel is not autobiographical.

> Did you fear any backlash from either Indians or Pakistanis, given the contentious landscape you explore?

I have thought about how some sectors in India and Pakistan might react to the book, but one doesn't write fiction for a constituency. If the book makes for upsetting, disturbing or uncomfortable reading for some people, so be it. Fiction should agitate people, make them sit up and think. If The Collaborator does that, even in some small measure, I will be a reasonably content novelist.

The most memorable response to the novel so far: One man stood up in a reading in my hometown Srinagar and asked me to stop. He couldn’t bear it any more, he said, crying. Worst thing: someone said it is not fiction. It’s all true.

> What are your thoughts on Arundathi Roy’s recent comments on Kashmir?

We should all be grateful for people such as Arundhati Roy. Her’s is a very important voice, both as a writer and an activist. Interestingly, what she’s been saying on Kashmir has been said before. She in fact later reproduced some of Jawaharlal Nehru's letters, which actually talk about Kashmir in strikingly similar terms--officially. If a state or an organ of the state tomorrow transgresses on the rights of the newly prosperous middle classes of India, I am sure it will be people like Arundhati Roy who will rise to defend their rights.

> The story is at once tense but also a bittersweet exploration of family, desperation and a claustrophobic lack of choice, but also features a very real war. What literary techniques did you employ to ensure there was a balance between storytelling and reality?

The only literary technique I was aware of was the use of the first-person narrative from the point of view of a teenager. He does not have enough knowledge of the world around him, or of the hostile forces in ‘play’ around him, so he has to be in close proximity to brutal militarism in order to tell us what he sees.

> What was the one book that inspired you to write and why?

Too many to cite here. The Greek epics were an early influence. Sophocles too.

> What is the one book we should have all read by now?

The Book of Imaginary Beings by J L Borges.

> What is the best piece of advice you’ve received about writing?

Print and read. Print and read. Print and read...

> What’s next for you?

A second novel. A young girl’s love story spanning Kashmir, Delhi and Pakistan.