Finding life and art in the in-betweens

There is a heavy air that hangs over a home that has experienced untimely death in the family. The memories linger in the nooks and crannies, their belongings remain in place years after they have gone, and their photos sometimes occupy every corner of the house. The surviving family members either talk about them constantly, or refuse to talk about them at all.  

It is as if the departed continue to live in the house. 

But what if they actually did continue to live? What if they dwelled in the mysterious rooms on the halfway landings of staircases that were once a feature of buildings in Dhaka? And then they emerged from the 'unknown side' at night to commune with the living family members. 

What if the living got another chance to ask all those unasked questions, to express those unexpressed feelings, to continue to share, argue and grow with those who went over to the unknown side?

Iffat Nawaz's debut novel Shurjo's Clan – the story of a Gandaria-based family who have lost two young male members to the 1971 independence war, and another woman a generation back to suicide – opens with that striking premise: the dead find their way back to the living world after sunset, every day, and continue to live with their family.

For those heavily immersed in magic realism, it is a clever trope, but not altogether unfamiliar. But where Shurjo's Clan departs from other stories is where Iffat takes this story from there, shedding light on the impact of a family that continues to live and drown in their trauma, what that does to the relationship between the living and the dead, and more importantly, between the living and the living. 

The story takes off from Gandaria, takes us on brief visits to the unknown world where the dead dwell, takes us to the US where some of the living have moved to, and brings us back to Gandaria, and Dhaka at large, to come full circle. 

We see pain, trauma and the joy of life not just through the eyes of the living, but also through the eyes of the dead, and the dying. 

TBS recently caught up with the author Iffat Nawaz to find out from where, within her, this story emerged, her relationship to the numerous characters in the novel, and life for the author in general.

TBS: When you read the story you can tell some of it is deeply personal, while some of it is also deeply imaginative. You're drawing from your own life, but you're also breathing life into it. How did you, as a writer, merge those two aspects? 

Iffat Nawaz: As you've probably already figured out, and like you said, it's personal. So there's a lot of the story which is semi-autobiographical. My two uncles did pass during the war. All that did happen.

I grew up in the 1980's in Bangladesh (I was born in 1978) and Bangladesh at the time was very exciting. Our parents were young enough to give us all sorts of stories, while a lot was happening around us. The new airport was coming up, there was not enough traffic, and everything was happening at the same time. I just remember my childhood being really perfect. Back then, we also had a lot of sense of community. 

So I think while it's personal, there was a lot of collection of stories and environments that I was in as a child, which I kept going back to, out of which my whole idea probably formed. 

My father did pass away when I was 15 in a very similar manner that I wrote about, and I think a lot of me might have had this story already embedded in me. We don't know these things when we are kids. It must be passed down through trauma.  

After my father passed away, slowly, I started to try to figure out my identity. I missed him so much that I dug deeper and deeper to figure him out, and his family. I began asking, what is in me that's his? What is in me that's the country's? All those contemplations for many years came to the fore because I'm now in my 40's. 

This book started in 2016 – it was 5 April of 2016 when I wrote the first chapter. Not this chapter that you read, but a first draft of it. But it took me all this time to really decipher it, in a way. 

When I first started writing it, I didn't want it to be so semi-autobiographical. I wanted magic realism to be there. My protagonist, her name was Shantori like the name of the grandmother in Shurjo's Clan, and she had six arms. Each arm was a baggage she was carrying. She was like a goddess with six arms, but at the same time there's baggage – extra weight – that gods also carry, that we don't think about. The extra weight represented the weight of history and the weight of memories.

The story became quite dark. I then began contemplating how to make something so dark, light? So all those journeys and thought processes together, I think, helped the story come out the way it did. 

A lot of it is also because of where I am now, in Pondicherry. I came here with one sort of idea about stories being driven by heroes, which is really big in our country. I thought this story had to be a story of heroes. 

But then, it was like, maybe not. After coming here and studying Sri Aurobindo, whom I follow, a lot of things changed for me. The edges of the characters became softer, and I put that in. The forms and manners became different, and it was no longer important to try to make people into heroes, or show people as heroes only. 

TBS: When something is so heavily autobiographical, do you fear there is risk of it becoming more of an intellectual exercise than a creative exercise? In your mind, is Shurjo a different person from you?

Iffat Nawaz: Certainly. When I was writing, there were parts of me that felt Shantori's pain, but there was not much of an interaction otherwise. There was very little intellectual exercise in my book. 

I wanted philosophy to be part of it, but in a way that was more smooth, and not like here is this piece of wisdom, or here's what I think. And I didn't want to be doing an analysis of history also. 

So I was very careful. If you notice, I don't mention much about what's happening in the historical context. You just know it's the 1940's or 1980's. I really wanted to stay away from that. 

While the story has that structure of my life as a child, it didn't follow through with it later. And also hopefully, others can also relate to where I was growing up around that time. We had very similar childhoods at that time, especially the middle-class and the upper middle-class, who were living in a similar manner and doing similar things. 

TBS: You mentioned magic realism. I was wondering what sort of literary influences you had over the years? 

Iffat Nawaz: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, of course. I always wondered why we don't have a '50 Years of Solitude' for Bangladesh, because our experiences are so similar in some ways. The passion and that angst we have, or the emotional things that we carry, the fire, it's within us as well. 

I didn't grow up reading English, I grew up reading Bangla. Satyajit Roy, Sukumar Roy, Sunil Ganguly and Shirshendu were my favourites. Satyajit, especially, because he was a little quirky with his writing, characters and fantasies, which were just random. 

And then of course, JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. As a 15/16-year-old, it really made an impact. And then later on Kurt Vonnegut – I love him as well. He's another person who writes about war, but he's not really steeped in it. He approaches it with sarcasm and humour. Jennifer Egan is another writer I really love. And Arundhati Roy of course, The God of Small Things; not the non-fiction stuff.

TBS: This brings us to the next question. Do you think two different literatures in two different languages had an impact on you as a writer?

Iffat Nawaz: I think so. I grew up studying in Bangla medium, Viqarunnisa, and then I moved to the US. I should really pay attention to how I think, like whether it's in Bangla or English?

It's really just like, when I see something and then a word comes… and often it is a Bangla word. Sometimes a Bangla word is more appropriate to think of a thing, or there's a better word for that feeling in Bangla than in English. 

I feel with my Bangali senses more, because we just have a lot more vocabulary when we're feeling. Sensory things like thoughts and feelings are better expressed in Bangla, and then I try to express that in English and not simply translate it. What comes out is probably a separate kind of English. 

But I think English is very good for precision and directness in writing. So maybe I use a combination of both in my thought process.

TBS: Speaking of using Bangla, I noticed you use the word 'obhiman' a lot in the story. What does that word mean to you? I was curious. 

Iffat Nawaz: When I was younger, in my 20s, obhiman was a good thing because it meant someone was kind of cute and sweet, and so forth. But then later on, I realised that obhiman is actually not such a good thing. Perhaps, not really a negative thing, but it's like you can only do that with your dear ones. So, it's not hurt, right? I think it's more sort of being aloof with someone close to you, but not ever explaining why. And then you're also trying to tell them enough, giving them hints to figure it out, but not clearly.

TBS: Is that why you used the Bangla word directly in the story instead of translating it?

Iffat Nawaz: Yeah, I think I explained in a couple of paragraphs what it means, but I don't ever use a word for it in English. I don't say obhiman is hurt, because I don't think it does the job. Just like 'ahlladi', we don't have a word for it in English. It's someone who likes affection, but it's way more than that. Those two words are like these in-between emotions that are there allowing people in a way to be passive-aggressive. So yeah, it's passive-aggressive anger or something like that, but it's also not. If you think of it from a psychological perspective, I don't think it's so negative. 

Obhiman is such an ingrained thing for Bangalis, I think. So I couldn't write a book without having that word in it. There is Babu's obhiman towards the country, towards the failure of the future, and how things went. And there are a lot of people like that in Bangladesh. I see a lot of people who were alive during 1971 who feel a lot of obhiman. But they're not very vocal about it.

TBS: Speaking of Babu, I really love the character development of Babu and Bela in Part 2 and 3 of the book. It was not just just their relationship that was fascinating, but it also felt like at a certain point these two people represented two different spectrums of human personality and behaviour. 

The sense I get from reading the book is you personally, as a writer or as a person, lean more towards Babu. How difficult was it to embody a much more introverted person like Bela? I really found the part about Bela's guilt over the war interesting. There are a lot of people in your society like that, but they often do not speak up. Where did that come from?

Iffat Nawaz: Bela is to me a surprise, honestly. I don't know where she came from. Bela literally just happened because of other characters. Bela had to be there in the beginning because I think I wanted her to be the practical one, which she remains – someone not so emotional as her family. 

But then somehow Bela just started changing after that. When she didn't have to make any more practical decisions, Bela became this. 

That chapter was actually written with a completely different ending. I changed it right before sending it out to my agent and publishers. I don't know how that even happened. 

I thought at first it would be corny if the mother came back. But then I was like: why not? A bit of it was also maybe hearing from my own mother the role of women at that time. Especially the young ones who were afraid of being raped or killed, and were stuck in the house. 

I've also heard stories of people who couldn't open the door to somebody trying to come in, because they were afraid they would be killed. That grief in their voice or that guilt, that they carry for the rest of their life, that made a lot of impact on me when I had heard it years ago. And maybe that's what came through Bela.

TBS: One other aspect that makes Shurjo's Clan so readable are these gems of wisdom that come through their conversations. I remember one which had to do with the harshness of men being dependent on the harshness of the earth they come from. And then there's the difference between loneliness and aloneness. And there's another one, where the grandfather talks about your wishes not being the same thing as your needs. Are these the sort of things that have been passed down from your own family and have played a part in your own life?

Iffat Nawaz: No, they're not from my family. Those are mine. 

TBS: They are fascinating insights. They really enrich the general frame of the story. 

Iffat Nawaz: Thank you. I think it comes from being alone for a long time and doing a lot of Vipassana courses. You're like, now I see things more clearly. You write down the thing and then you're like, what is this good for? 

I put them into the characters' mouths because then nobody would say this is wrong or right, it's just what the character feels. Take it or leave it. 

TBS: So tell me a bit about yourself right now. What is your routine as a writer and what are you doing right now?

Iffat Nawaz: The last four months have been mad. It's coming down a bit, but once the book came out there were lots of interviews, talks etc. 

I've already started working on my next book, but I didn't get to sit down to really work on it much. Now, I'm hoping to go back to it. My next book is called Easy Love, the working title, which is another magic realism. 

I write in the afternoon, just around this time actually, like 3:30. I like to sit down after the day is done. I work here as a volunteer for Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, which is a really great place. I work there as an English copy editor. In the mornings I'm there, and I work on different books that come in, and look at it.

I am very lucky, I live right by the sea, just two blocks from it. In the evenings, I have a lot of time and I'm usually out walking, or in the French town. It is really lovely, I spend time meditating in the ashram, the samadhi for half an hour/an hour every day. So it's a very simple life here. 

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Shurjo's Clan, published by Penguin India, is available at Batighar and other major bookstores.