A tale of two countries plus one

Book review: Kartography by Kamila Shamsie

“The globe spins. Mountain ranges skim my fingers; there is static above the Arabian Sea. Pakistan is split in two, but undivided. This world is out of date.”

This world is out of latitudes and longitudes as well.

Kartography is not a spelling error, that one K weaves the story together, page by page.

To begin with a small gist, Kartography is one of the six novels written by the Pakistani author, Kamila Shamsie. Shamsie has won the women’s prize for fiction 2018 for her work, Home Fire. Kartography which got shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize echoes the complications of the political triangle between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh through its characters who are nothing but civilians. History never going by one face, rather which has several sides to one story is persistently tweaked for personal benefits and conditioning of people. In the narration of Bangladesh partition story, India’s savior wings flapping out loud is the only noise we mostly hear, but to take a peek at the other side, to take that one step which gives you a different narrative, a different face is all about knowing history. Literature is one powerful tool in lending readers a hand to show them perspectives and narratives which they would never think of in their wildest dreams.

The story of Kartography revolves around how the politics of the land often clashes with people’s personal untold tales, changing not only their relationships with others, but their very core personalities as well. The story is based in 1986, a decade plus several years post the formation of Bangladesh and it screeches out loud on how these political happenings slit through their skins and seep deeper into their lives, leaving grave impact on them and the future generations. The story also explores the idea of mapping and leaves the readers questioning the absurd thought of mapping the land and creating a gulf of us and them.

Based in Karachi, Kartography is narrated from the perspective of Raheen, a young adolescent who is happy in her small bubble with her parents and her childhood best friends, Karim, Zia and Sonia. Karim being her closest friend she could never imagine being parted from, has a disturbing growing up period as he’s constantly pulled apart between his parents and their troubled marriage. The constant violent happenings in Karachi scars Karim beyond measure and his troubles of identity, if he should carry the tag of a Bengali, as his mother is one, or a tag of a Karachi citizen like his father. Though Raheen is also offered a platter of two identities, one being a citizen and another being a Muhajir who left their homes in India during the partition, she never let any of the political issues come near her happy bubble and chose to blind herself with the illusion of permanence. But Karim, on the other hand, absorbed every conflict that came his way like sponge meeting water, and let that sink into his identity to hunt for oneself. This resulted in his quest to map the city of Karachi. He was down on forming a new map for the place with every intricate detail, and though this wavered their friendship a bit, it was too deep a relationship to break apart.

Multiple events in the story draws them away from each other and from the very land, but the dark secret of their parents’ weddings is what shatters their bond from the core. Amidst several fights and patches and interventions from Zia and Sonia, Karim and Raheen do get together at the end of the story, so yeah it is a happy ending, but also not a happy ending, as Shamsie very cleverly knows how to pull the strings of the tale and weave them in ways readers could never guess. Rather than the term ‘happy ending,’ one could say the novel ends with a deep breath, something like you have been holding it throughout your journey in the tale and when you flip that last page; you are just there, a small tear hanging by your eyelash, slightly clutching your heart fearing it’s going to fall apart and struggling to pull your cheek muscles into a smile without letting that one tear become a stream across your face.

The K in the Kartography represents Karim who, like most of, is struggling in terms of his identity of where he belongs, Karachi which is the soul of the country, yet wavering and trembling of its very identity as well and Kamila Shamsie herself who chose to speak about those identities which are mostly silenced. Kartography also highlights the very flaw in cartography, that one final truth on maps is impossible, rather places are mapped with memories and tags which do not appear on the internet, rather becomes a personal element of all of our identities. The fact that cartography can also be kartography is the face of the story.

Another dominant feature of the book, is that in spite of having main protagonists, the other characters in the book speak way too loudly, without actually speaking too loudly. Zia who seemed like a mere hyped adolescent in the beginning in fact mirrors the conflicts faced by most of the civilians, where they are driven to hate and love things according to their one-faced history and yet at the same time are willing to break away from that to choose to see things in a different light. Sonia is a character who actively opts for the traditional systems amidst its problematic elements and sticks to her decision and embraces her identity as she receives it. The parents of all the characters, on the other hand, are themselves faces of political representations, each parent being in par and against to one another.

Along with deep personalities to her characters and further deep political implications in her book, Shamsie has not compromised on the relationships between the characters. The love and friendships amidst the characters are portrayed in such flawed, yet idealistic standards, it leaves the readers craving and crying in desperate hope for such people in their lives as well. By comparing friendships to sore throats and romanticizing the concept of sleeping spine-to-spine, Shamsie truly captures the essence of flawed love and grey friendships and celebrates it with her characters without a hitch.

Whether you are a political person or not, the book does not leave you with warmth spreading across your skin, rather it leaves you hugging yourself and rocking back and forth, not knowing what to do with the emotions that is making you cry- happy and laugh-sad at the same time. With Raheen taking Karim’s hands to lead the way in the final sentence, the whole narrative of politics always clinging onto you, maps defining you and love sustaining all of it washes over you and without a U-turn or a side- street you continue walking in that road, leaving your mark and essence behind as well.

“I take Karim’s hand and pull him into the music.

‘Follow me,’ I say. ‘I know the way.’”