Mesmerising and haunting at the same time. Jamil Ahmad's vivid storytelling is something we should have gotten more of, this being his only book, unfortunately.
While paying tribute to the peoples of the frontier regions of what are now Pakistan and Afghanistan, from Balochistan to Upper Chitral, from their resilience to their tribal discipline and codes of honour, the book does not shy away from starkly depicting some of their brutal ways and customs, under which women are little more than objects to be bought and sold, by paying a "bride price", or one man's murderous act can be avenged on his male progenies.
The book can be described as an anthology, the strongest of the extremely loose connections between the stories being the presence of Tor Baz, the wandering falcon, in all of them bar one. Apart from his birth, there are no beginnings, nor ends. There are just stories, human stories of love, honour, greed and brutality, and above all of traditions that are being erased by the unstoppable force that is the modern nation state and its thirst for absolute power within its self-proclaimed boundaries.
Bearing witness to these tales are heavenly landscapes, which one must see to believe, even if the author leaves no stone unturned to portray their grandeur on paper.
The pictures painted of these areas have made me resolve to travel there the next time i am in Pakistan, such is their beauty.
I know it is a dream destined to remain unfulfilled, much like Jamil Ahmad's potential as a storyteller, but this book should be published in Pashto and Balochi, so the people it depicts can appreciate it in their own languages.