Mullahs and Imaginary Cities

The writer Italo Calvino has written of a mysterious, unfinished city: ‘Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, and scaffoldings… If you ask, "Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?" the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, as they answer, "So that its destruction cannot begin."



And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, "Not only the city."



"What meaning does your construction have?" one asks. "What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?"



"We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now," they answer.



Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.’



This short imaginary travel tale raises questions: Are these workers rightly guided? What relationship is there between earth and air, city and stars? And can the vast starry sky really be our blueprint? But surely we do consider Night and Day, Life and Regeneration, Lights in the Sky as designs that guide the continual construction of our Muslim faith.



Like stars, stories may also serve as a blueprint of our sense of self. News reports may serve this purpose. But from time to time, literacy wakes from its long snooze and silence speaks. Last week, in its first 24 hours on sale, the final Harry Potter book broke sales records, with 8.3 million copies purchased in the US alone.



In fact, I have seen quite a few of those copies already. In the train today, I noticed that many riders had put away their usual tunes and become pale preoccupied readers of Harry Potter, bench-pressing enormous volumes like rabbis. The man sitting next to me reads an Italian newspaper article on the Harry Potter phenomenon. And another reads the Pakistan Daily Times article, “Delay in arrival of Harry Potter in Quetta riles fans.”



The article also quotes 20-year-old Sadiq Baloch, a student at Balochistan Institute of Technology, who declares that, “For me, Rowling’s inexplicable written expression is a source of inspiration. People of my age will miss Harry Potter very much.”’



I have never read these books or seen the films. But inexplicable or not, I do know we cannot dismiss the creative power of myth and fantasy. Nor should we be surprised at Harry Potter’s appeal in Quetta. But will there be consternation among the Mullahs?



No doubt there is already. But good readers of literature and poetry will not necessarily be led astray from Qur’an. A celebrity magazine is probably more likely to misguide, with its misdirected stars and its pandering to insecurities! Insha’Allah, better-educated and more sensitive readers may even appreciate our sacred texts more than before. Literature, like history and religion, gives meaning to life and clarifies shared human and social values; including faith, hope, love and freedom.



Speaking of freedom, Harry Potter’s last book “The Prisoner of Azkaban” concerned a prison for wizards guarded by the Dementors, working under the British Ministry of Magic. Interestingly, some of the detainees held there are quite innocent. As a character puts it, “I wouldn't mind if we were getting anywhere, but of the three arrests we've made in the last couple of months, I doubt that one of them is a genuine Death Eater… the top levels want to look as though they're making some progress, and "three arrests" sounds better than "three mistaken arrests and releases." War on Terror anyone?



According to his attorney Candace Gorman, Guantanamo detainee Abdul Al-Ghizzawi (a Libyan national who ran a bakery in Jalalabad, Afghanistan before being handed to the Americans for a bounty in late 2001), is a Harry Potter fan. And why not? Al Ghizzawi was found to have no ties to terrorism and not to be an enemy combatant. Unfortunately, the higher-ups intervened and the tribunal’s judgment was overturned six weeks later upon the miraculous discovery of “new evidence.” Sound familiar? His attorney writes, “I saw the classified proceedings of my client’s tribunals, and I can assure you that no new material was considered.”(http://gtmoblog.blogspot.com).



No doubt the detainees could become fans of Kafka as well as Qutub; or of many other writers who have passionately described the bureaucratic absurdity of the national security state.



Like our nation state, our city offers emptiness as well as fullness. As you read this, Mexicans are crouching in small kitchens, facing a world of fences and locked restrooms and curfews and sudden knocks on the door. It is our brave new world of disembodied electronic voices, urging the good citizens to exercise caution while on the escalator. Our heads echo.



The walls are flickering with light and shadow. Nothing seems quite solid. City past and city future share city present. Theater and restaurant reviews, bad hairstyles and the obsolescent cultural trends of adolescence haunt the present day like a bad dream. Unknown future languages, musical forms and street names blur and blot the present range of options. Surely we have all become strangers in a strange land.



But while all layers of city co-exist simultaneously, and all dimensions of our nation and our community exist in the eternal present, do all aspects of our self exist as you read this? Are all your many selves with you all together, in the imaginary person you call your name?



You and I think we know ourselves. But as we shift from one situation to another, trading one mask for another, reality is elusive. Let us seek ourselves-- through questioning, through continuous effort, through wandering, even through the shifting forms of imaginary worlds. For beyond the scaffolding and construction of our busy lives, human imagination may direct us to the fresh air of evening and sudden, starry sky.