A BOOK is like a painting: as dull or intriguing as your interpretation. What the creator intended becomes secondary. Kamila Shamsie?s A God in Every Stone seems to aim at creating many reflectives that you can choose to introspect based on your own experiences.
The backdrop of the book is the quest for a circlet worn by Scylax, a fifth-century BC explorer, who worked on behalf of the Persian king Darius. The search leads one through the kaleidoscopic rise and fall of many empires?Persian, Ottoman and British.
Set in 1914-1930s? Peshawar, the story meanders its way through stories of love, obsession, betrayal, power plays and the desperate need for purpose in human lives, with the search for the historic silver circlet stringing it all. The novel?s part-fiction, part-real narrative brings you into Vivian Rose Spencer?s, or Viv?s life?her love and betrayal of Turkish scholar Tahsin Bey and her struggle to cope with the new gender equations in Britain and its veiled existence in new cultures. Many questions arise here: was her search for the circlet driven by her need to hold on to something that was Tahsin Bey? Or was it just a comfort in antiquity that justifies existence? Or was it her stroke at suffragettic freedom to get away from a father-dominated childhood? You can choose the answer yourself.
Then there is Qayyum, a loyal British army servant. He is enamoured by all that is French, but then falls into the pits of disillusionment on his return to Peshawar as a glass-eyed soldier. Qayyum and Viv meet on a train, a coincidence brought together by a series of events that connect them through bonds created by Najeeb, Qayyum?s little brother, the fight for freedom, the circlet and the genocide in The Street of Storytellers. All this while, Qayyum?s search for Kalam, his loyal sepoy whom he remains indebted to for shielding him, continues.
Viv and Qayyum?s conflict to accept each others? outlooks is in contrast to Najeeb?s candid acceptance of war-affected Qayyum on the one hand, and Viv as the opposite of all that women are expected to be for Pashtuns on the other. His apprehension of the changes war brings on people remains just a passing question to Viv, but he is able to look beyond Qayyum?s wounds to rediscover his bonds with him.
As we grow older, our futures are bound by history?s shackles. Just like Qayyum?s by Kalam?s, Viv?s by Tahsin?s and, perhaps, the author?s by her many past experiences that seem to form the undertone of the novel. Says Kamila Shamsie: ?The museum had been built to make men feel small?. Perhaps, history needs to be larger than us, so that we respect the consequences that our actions leave behind. There are many histories and consequences wrapped in these pages adding complex layers to the story. What remains slightly lost is the depth of each relationship within the book, pulling you in and out too quickly for you to immerse in their intensity. Shamsie attempts to pack in too much?too many histories, characters, relationships and too much conflict. Although packed with many emotions, this leads to an emotional disconnect.
The novel is hard to classify as a love story, war novel, gender tale, a history or any other. But then, life is more beautiful when you set aside any deciphering and let yourself flow through the dimensions it reveals to you. Perhaps without judgment, you may find your own universe in these pages.
Charulata RK
Charulata RK is innovations adviser and director, Coffee Kettle
