Book Review of Moth Smoke !

[SADIA SHAFIQ]

The début novel of Hamid gained much acclaim in foreign newspapers as well as got many prizes . Pakistani writers are getting prizes like Bepsi Sidwah , Sara Suleri and now Mohsin . Which is in fact a good way for others writers to write novels and kind to show their intellectual caliber .But more interesting is that these English writers have to portray the society in it’s all colors which he failed to do so apart from it .There are many loopholes in its structure and theme connotation is made perplexed with allegory which do not find its true meaning and essence in novel. Also he could not do justice with its characters . But he excelled in the art of diction ,poetic language and picture description.

The novel starts with an allegory where four brothers` succession question was being asked by emperor Shah Jehan . The sufi saint reply told the reader there are two main characters : two opposite character with contradictory opinions will make it a Tragedy which is not after all .The theme of the novel is adultery , lust but not love which antagonized the Oze and Daru Shehzad . Oze had a car accident which killed a child .Oze knew the relations of his wife with Daru , so he made a plan in lieu . So Daru had to face a bad fate . And novel start with highly advanced language which speak itself the caliber of a writer .

My cell is full of shadows. Hanging naked from a wire in the hall outside, a bulb casts light cut by rusted bars into thin strips that snake along the concrete floor and up the back wall.People like stains dissolve into the grayness.I sit alone, the drying smell of a man’s insides burning in my nostrils. Out of my imagination the footsteps of a guard approach, become real when a darkness silhouettes itself behind the bars and a shadow falls like blindness over the shadows in the cell”

It is an extract defining the burning of Moth ( Daru shehzad ) like a candle or a flame which turned these wandering creatures into black and little flames rising from body after intervals shows us their burn . Start tell us that an action has already been done and what is next it is told to us in kinds of different chapters . Each character in subsequent chapter introduces itself to us to unfolds its secrets and miseries . There is no specific pattern which may jolt events so an explosion of action would lead to climax .Mohsin did not connects characters to delineate psychoanalysis which define tragic flaw of a character.



The character of Mumtaz Begum remained controversial through out the novel . In the end women or Mumtaz was blamed and had been called out monster . It definitely shows us writer`s imagination about woman and his misogyny. What made Daru misogynist is not told to us , calling Mumtaz monster because of her instincts define the trends of west oriented fiction as it is not a reflection of Pakistan`s society beyond one decade . Daru Shezad, a junior banker with a fondness for hash and wisecracks. His insecurity is heightened by the return from the US of a childhood friend and rival. Ozi has everything Daru doesn’t: a Mitsubishi Pajero, a well-paid job, a foreign education, a wealthy, corrupt father and a beautiful wife, Mumtaz, who leads a secret double life as an investigative journalist. well it reminds me George Eliot who named herself as a man to get fame and publicity .



In post colonial status quo , Pakistan writers are encouraged and female writers got more acclaim .I could not make out why Mohsin made Mumtaz mysterious to conceal what she is doing and bold enough to go in Red Light areas to ink the refelction of Minto . In fact He did not do justice with Pakisran`s intellectual Saadaat Hasan . Yes , Sadat Haasan Minto had been remained a controversial figure in our Pakistan because he wrote on sex and drugs due to which which he faced harsh criticism . Mumtaz was a wife of Mughal emperor but here she is wife of Aurngzeb or Oze leading towards ambiguity. She was fallen is love with Daru which is just instinct based and Oze`s father Khuram Shah has political linkages .The allegorical set up should have made Khurram as as 5th Prime minster or president of Pakistan like Khurran or Shah Jehan was on the fifth line of kingship .



Daru’s slightly middle-class morality is shown to be completely out -of -place in a system of which he simply does not understand the rules. amoral as they are. He has neither the inferior social standing of Murad Badshah nor the fundamental religious orientation of people like Mujahid Alam, one of “the bearded boys.” As such, Daru is of course, the proverbial misfit, the rebel without a cause—the collaborator who feeds off the oppressive élite and benefits from their influence.

“Moth Smoke” is set in the summer of 1998, when Pakistan detonated its first nuclear weapons in an escalating test-for-test with India. Like the atoms that must be split for a fission bomb to explode, modern-day Lahore is itself divided: between old and new, rich and poor, conservative and liberal. Murad Badshah role who is also a son of shah jehan is a drug dealer who role is limited to yellow cabs and auto-rickshaws. The 1998 set of Lahore did not have such race but yellow cab schemes is initiated now when CM Shehbaz sharif announced yellow cabs scheme during Zardari`s tenure . Yes the case would be true if Karachi would be center of gravity which needed to develop in this set up to come up the demands of novel set up .


No doubt , ”Moth Smoke” has done a great job in its depiction of characters and themes that do not conform to traditional moral paradigms, it also rejects conformity by tackling issues that are usually regarded as taboo in literature about the Middle East. Moth Smoke time and time again diverges from conventional depictions of post-colonial Pakistan by telling a story whose plot and characters do not fit into Western preconceptions of the Middle East/South Asia. While it has become almost a reflex for the West to associate the Muslim world with Islam and fundamentalism, Hamid’s characters disassociate themselves with Islam almost entirely, concerning themselves with the more universal themes of greed, status, lust, and pleasure. Daru’s life revolves not around religion or ideology, but around money, drugs and sex. When reading the vivid, euphoric sequences of Daru’s experiences with ecstasy, marijuana and heroin, or the visceral, shocking scenes of sex and violence, I was shocked to remember that the novel takes place in Pakistan.