Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands

252 Pages·2009·1.17 MB·English

by  Aatish Taseer

Aatish Taseer was born in 1980 and has worked
as a reporter for Time magazine. He lives between
London and Delhi. This is his first book.
STRANGER TO
HISTORY
A son’s journey through Islamic lands
AATISH TASEER
TEXT PUBLISHING MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA
The paper used in this book is manufactured only from wood grown in sustainable regrowth forests.
The Text Publishing Company
Swann House
22 William St
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia
www.textpublishing.com.au
Copyright © Aatish Taseer 2009
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the
copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
First published by Canongate Books, London, 2009
This edition published by The Text Publishing Company, 2009
Printed and bound by Griffin Press
Cover design by Susan Miller National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data: Taseer, Aatish.
Stranger to history: a son’s journey through Islamic lands/Aatish Taseer.
ISBN: 9781921520174 (pbk.)
Taseer, Aatish–Travel–Islamic countries.
Islam–Asia. Muslims–Attitudes.
297.57
For Ma
Contents
A Pilgrim’s Prelude
PART I
The Licence-plate Game
The Beeston Mail
‘Homo Islamicos’
Recompense
Syria International: Notes from the
Translation Room
Nail Polish
Bhutto’s Footprint
Mecca Reprise: ‘Muslims Only’
PART II
Stranger to History
Rupture
The Tyranny of Trifles
Phone Booth
The Discplinary (sic) Force of the
Islamic Republic
Continuities
Renaissance Now
Nerve Blindness
The Mango King
Contact Paper
Sind 360: The Open Wound
The Idea Country
Articles of Faith
Postscript: Distrust
Acknowledgements
A Pilgrim’s Prelude
O
nce the car had driven away, and we were half-naked specks on the
marble plaza, Hani said, ‘I’ll read and you repeat after me.’ His dark,
strong face concentrated on the page and the Arabic words flowed out.
Kareem, pale with light eyes, and handsome, also muttered the words. We
stood close to each other in our pilgrims’ clothes – two white towels, one round
the waist, the other across the torso, leaving the right shoulder bare.
‘I seek refuge in Allah the Great, in His Honourable Face and His Ancient
Authority from the accursed Satan. Allah, open for me the doors of Your
Mercy.’
It was a clear, mild night and we were standing outside the Grand Mosque in
Mecca. The plaza was vast, open and powerfully floodlit. The pilgrims were
piebald dots, gliding across its marble surface. The congested city, the Mecca of
hotels and dormitories, lay behind us.
The mosque’s slim-pillared entrance, with frilled arches and two great
minarets, lay ahead. It was made of an ashen stone with streaks of white; its
balustrades, its minarets and its lights were white. A layer of white light hung
over the entire complex. Towers, some unfinished with overhanging cranes,
vanished into an inky night sky.
We paused, taking in the plaza’s scale.
I was mid-point in a much longer journey. I had set out six months earlier in the
hope of understanding my deep estrangement from my father: what had seemed
personal at first had since shown itself to contain deeper religious and historical
currents. And it was to discover their meaning that I travelled from Istanbul, on
one edge of the Islamic world, through Syria, to Mecca at the centre and the
Grand Mosque itself. The remaining half of my journey was to take me through