A review by korrick
The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad

4.0

Recent events led me to starting this book, a choice that I now think I should have made ages ago. Then again, an earlier reading would not have resulted in the same breed of appreciation, not while I continued to adhere to the common formula of treating literature and politics as distinct and isolated entities. This is not to say that my interpretation is based on the current flavor of toxic vomit circulating in US media in regards to Pakistan, but rather that I acknowledged its insidious existence and stepped around accordingly. I will never be successful at such careful endeavors so long as my country's fetish for war eyes the lands described in this book (indeed I'm likely presuming too much when I consider my ingrained prejudice will stop in accordance with the times), but this work went well enough for me to look forward to more.

A single word that comes to mind in conjunction with this work is 'unassuming'. I don't say this in the much abused small-town-Americana or the tiny-village-Britannica senses of the word, but in efforts to describe the exact prose, the mix of mental insight and physical description, and the matter of fact observation of death, madness, and the cruelty of both environment and human being. It would make for a quick read if Ahmad didn't glide over a great deal of the myriad cultures and all their clashes within each of the nine links of stories, spending no longer than was necessary to paint a landscape and/or ideological picture before following his Tor Baz, the Wandering Falcon, on the next leg of his journey. The resulting read is both swift, yet sure.

In regards to the low rating, I have my suspicions that people came in for the hysterical badgering of terrorists and those who are popularly known as such in US media for springing out of convenient vacuums. Instead, you will find desert winds of insanity-birthing duration, colonialism, views of World War I in a far less mentioned part of the planet, the brutally jarring alignment of standing cities and migrating tribes, strength, persistence, and a world not as far removed from the United States as its politicians would like to think. Misogyny would be a common indictment of this, but there is a vast divide between the facts of a culture and the mentality of the author, and I did not find anything in the latter that encouraged a hatred of women. As for the selling of others, capitalism does this under the table in far more loftier institutions with the lives of millions and the capital of billions, so it is not something I can judge. In regards to everything else, the author never scorned nor mocked his characters and the ways in which they interacted with the world, so it would not begrudge me to do the same.

One last thing I must mention is the delightfully engaging scene of the planning, performing, and resolving of a kidnapping. It may be nostalgia for the Arabian Nights and other aspects parsed through Disney and the like that's doing it, but as I am now more than ever intrigued in my four-volume set of the former, I'd say it worked out.