When you open a book to read, a private dialogue ensues between you the reader and the protagonist or narrator of the story; the writer having done his work does not interfere.

The writer cannot control what you will eventually talk about, what you will carry away in your head when you resurface from the world he created. But none of this is important. When a conversation takes place between you and the people in the book and afterwards the remains of the story stay with you whether in dissonance or in consonance – either or is hardly an issue – the writer has been successful already. On this count alone Moazzam Sheikh’s Idol Lover and Other Stories of Pakistan deserves unstinting kudos.

The stories in this collection straddle two worlds. One a dusty desert wind-blown world stretching from India’s North West Frontier to Lahore to West Asia and the other, more prosperous, outwardly perfect world of San Fransisco. The stories in a sense come from one bone, taken from a connecting set of ribs. The music of these tales is distraught and poetic at the same time. The characters are neither placid nor easy to relate to. Indeed many of them are people one would not care to brush shoulders with when passing by them on a road. Often they don’t seem to be doing anything specific, yet they manage to open wounds, etch raw lines on the reader’s heart. Moazzam Sheikh’s prose is dense; it demands attention. You cannot skip through any of it at a pleasant pace. It’s only after you have read them and perhaps re-read them and mulled over them that the chatter of Sheikh’s characters inside your head subside, as if your understanding has pacified them somewhat.

Take the title story for instance, which begins thus: “In a recurrent Dream, appearing sporadically and nearly unchanged, he would recognise himself, more than the intimacy of the dream than from his own face, in the midst of a prolonged abysmal fall.”  The opening line itself lays out the canvas upon which the protagonist Prem Singh’s life will be laid bare, his inner most demons let loose. Sheikh never loosens his grip on the dream like quality of the narrative and the reader is practically sucked into Prem Singh’s mind. This dream like quality flows through many of the stories in The Idol Lover, but in the story “Snakeskins” it touches subliminal levels; I had the distinct impression of travelling to the times of Caliphs, even though the story has nothing whatsoever to do with that era. I think it was the texture of the story, and it left a pleasant aftertaste in my senses.  There are two stories in the book (both simmering with anger) that are easier to unravel  – “The Cow” where a young boy’s innocence is violated and “The Barbarians and the Mule” whose protagonist, also a young boy, is made to watch his father’s violation. The eight other stories are more complex, the anger embedded in them pricking at multiple levels. I am tempted to write a synopsis of each story, but that would give too much away. Besides these ten stories cannot really be synopsized. They have a tendency to unfurl into longer narratives once read and done with. What is a reader to do when this happens? I won’t answer that for you.

Moazzam Sheikh’s prose is provocative. Idol Lover doesn’t contain stories that feel good, but at the same time they don’t strive to show the underbelly of either world the characters inhabit –  I’ve probably touched on this before, but feel the need to reiterate because I think this is where and also how Moazzam Sheikh stands apart from many (contemporary) diaspora writers. The Idol Lover is gritty in many places; it hits the belly hard. Each story leaves questions and disturbances in reader’s mind, like a dervish. I confess, it took me more than a single reading to truly appreciate his book.  And it was only when I continued to be bothered by the stories that I realised how effective they were. The Idol Lover has been an interesting experience for me. I tend to live what I read and also what I write, in my imagination, and I have come away quite surprised at what this disarmingly slim book can do. Having said that I must add that my experience would be further enriched if students and teachers of Asian and South Asian Post Colonial literature and Studies read “The Idol Lover and Other Stories from Pakistan” and shared their opinions. This is a book where the stories un-peel at various layers. It would be very interesting indeed to know what dialogue this book inspires between one reader and itself as well as among all its readers, and where the stories go after that. I am quite certain the stories will elongate and create a noise at some level within each mind.