A Year, in Dhaka

A novel about 1971 keeps the war so personal

A Golden Age
Tahmima Anam
John Murray,
6.25 pounds

More than a decade before the war of independence in 1971 inspires her participation, Rehana makes a personal commitment to what is then still East Pakistan. In 1959, she has recently lost her husband, she struggles to maintain her two children. And when her brother-in-law takes the battle for their custody to court, pointing out amongst other instances as proof of her incapacity to provide wholesome upbringing the fact that she took them to see Cleopatra, she loses. They are shepherded away to Lahore. It is in those dire times that Rehana refuses the assistance that’d come by moving in with her family in Karachi — aid that would help get back her children. Instead, in Dhaka she works on her patch of land — Shona — so recently claimed from paddy cultivation. She finds by a dark deed the money to put up another house in order to gain economic salience. And get her children back.

The rest of book is set in 1971. Her children are older now, and each is drawn into political agitation over the failure to have Sheikh Mujib declared winner of the national elections. As that eventful year unfolds, Rehana’s earlier apprehensions of losing her children to the western part of her country develop into an emphatic resolve to become an active participant in their political aspirations. As the novel progresses, Rehana’s story becomes the story of her country gaining independence.

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The war for independence streams into her Shona compound, as her son Sohail uses it as a base for his guerrilla friends. Rehana, fearful still, knows the enterprise will leave them changed, but realises she has no choice. Her daughter, Maya, who is the more politically conversant of the siblings, extracts a more difficult demonstration of loyalty from her. To her, Rehana must show — unnecessarily but overtly — that her loyalties are truly with the east. But as mother and daughter negotiate a more equal relationship, Rehana will, with her choice of reading material, also assert that she is not willing to subscribe to any narrowing of ethnic and linguistic identities this may imply.

London-based Tahmima Anam lives up to the ambition of her theme by never allowing her characters occasion to boast even once any earnestness of purpose or extraordinariness of sacrifice. The times are exceptional, not the people. The choices too are exceptional, and Rehana will find that those choices are never perfect. To keep her children by year’s end, she must consider making the most shocking betrayal. Keeping Shona whole will come at a heartbreaking price.

Rehana has in fact spent her life so far anticipating a last difficult defence to keep her children. Anam places that suspicion so softly at the book’s beginning as a cricket match (Pakistan vs England NCC) being enjoyed over spicy puffed rice and neat sandwiches turns into a political moment. “Just as Nigel Gifford raised his right hand and prepared to release the worn red ball from his fingertips and send it, straight as a bullet, through the air to Azmat, who waited with bent knees and bat tilted against the sharp, cloudless afternoon sun, the crowd shifted, tensed.” Till the end, the tension never lets up.