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ANAM (ZAHEDUL I. KHAN) |
A Golden Age
By Tahmima AnamHarper, 276 pp., $24.95
The map featured in Tahmima Anam's "A Golden Age" reveals the curious geography that once defined Pakistan. This volatile nation was created when India was partitioned in 1947, with West Pakistan on one side of India, and East Pakistan, hundreds of miles away, bordering the area around Calcutta. Rehana, the novel's protagonist, wonders about this odd drawing of borders: "What sense did it make to have a country in two halves, poised on either side of India like a pair of horns?"
From the beginning West Pakistan economically exploited its eastern counterpart - treating it, the novel asserts, like a "colony." West Pakistan also dominated the east in the political sphere, going so far as to cancel the results of the 1970 elections when the Awami League, led by East Pakistani Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won a majority in the parliament. Anam's assured and incisive debut novel chronicles the war of independence that allowed East Pakistan to break free and rechristen itself as Bangladesh.
The book opens with a prologue set in 1959. The recently widowed Rehana has just lost custody of her two young children to her well-heeled brother-in-law and his pinch-mouthed wife. Overcome with grief and despair at the loss of her husband, Rehana is too anguished to fight for the right to keep Sohail and Maya. And so, after mounting a futile legal challenge, she lets her children go - a decision that plagues her even after she pulls herself together and regains custody of her children one year later.
The narrative flashes forward to 1971, to the dawn of the annual party Rehana throws to commemorate the return of her children to her home. Now university students, Sohail and Maya are also activists involved in East Pakistan's liberation movement. Sohail, the elder, is the classic good boy: an obedient son, a loyal brother, a poetry-spouting pacifist who is head over heels in love with the girl next door. Maya, on the other hand, is the difficult child: politically impassioned and emotionally severe, she clashes constantly with her mother.
Unlike so much historical fiction, "A Golden Age" doesn't read like a history lesson. Instead, the novel's exploration of political, cultural, religious, and ethnic conflicts has a decidedly intimate feel. Though the Pakistani civil war defines and focuses the narrative, it is never at the expense of the characters, who emerge as richly textured and complicated human beings.
The most compelling character in the group is Rehana. Born in Calcutta, she speaks, "with fluency, the Urdu of the enemy." Though she has lived in East Pakistan all of her adult life, Rehana is conscious of the need to prove her loyalty to her neighbors, particularly as political tensions escalate. But her greatest burden is personal; Rehana has never forgiven herself for relinquishing custody of her children and views herself as a morally compromised figure.
Anam, born in Bangladesh in 1975 and educated in the West, details Rehana's attempt to redeem herself as the West Pakistan military begins to massacre the citizens of the east. Though she doesn't identify herself in political terms - she "did not have the proper trappings of a nationalist" - Rehana plays a greater and greater role in the resistance movement as the war gets underway. Her actions are noble, but she always comes off as decidedly down-to-earth - she's brave but not selfless, and her children, not their fellow resistance fighters, come first.
The novel takes an unexpected turn when Rehana, who has shunned male companionship since her husband's death, succumbs to a soldier identified only as "the Major." Gravely wounded, he stays in her home for several weeks to recuperate. It's not surprising when the two fall in love - their story has a cinematic, "English Patient" feel to it - but it's a rich development nonetheless. Here, as elsewhere, Anam resists the temptation to say too much; her clear-eyed prose elevates this love story, particularly when Rehana is forced to make an agonizing sacrifice.
The novel's most provocative plot turn hinges on Silvi, long the object of Sohail's affections. Early on, Silvi's busybody mother marries Silvi off to a soldier she barely knows, a decision that has dire and unexpected consequences for all involved. Anam explores how Silvi responds to her husband's involvement in the war by becoming a religious puritan, presenting Silvi's transformation as a betrayal of her community - and, indeed, of the war effort itself.
"A Golden Age" ends with Bangladesh's emergence as a nation - a would-be "happy" ending. The reader will be aware that the war's conclusion didn't lead to peace for Bangladesh, a nation troubled by political corruption and rampant poverty since its birth. Anam, who thanks her "beautiful and bruised country" in her acknowledgments, doesn't leave us with a starry-eyed vision of Bangladesh's future. Instead, she dwells on Rehana's personal redemption, on her need to protect her children at all costs.
Amy Kroin's reviews have appeared in The 
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
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