Book review: Scenes From Early Life

THIS book is a hybrid, part memoir, part novel; more exactly, perhaps, it is the work of two people, Philip Hensher himself and his partner or husband Zaved Mamood. Hensher has made a novel from Zaved’s family memories, and tells it in the first person.

Some of it offers memories from Zaved’s own childhood; other parts are stories about family events before his birth. It is, however, more than a family story, for Zaved was born in late 1970 in Dacca, then the capital of East Pakistan. It is now Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, as a result of the events which took place in the first year of his life.

The partition of our old Indian Empire in 1947 created two new states: India and the predominantly Muslim Pakistan. This was not a neat arrangement. The two parts of Pakistan, West and East, were geographically separated, and linguistically and culturally distinct. All they had in common was religion. In West Pakistan they spoke Urdu, in East Pakistan Bengali. The government was based in the West and sought to impose uniformity, making Urdu the official language of the state and trying to suppress Bengali culture. This naturally caused resentment and provoked resistance. (One has the impression, too, that Bengali Muslims were rather more easy-going.)

Matters were further complicated by the fact that the population of East Pakistan was bigger, and in the election of 1970 the Bengali leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, came top of the poll. This was unacceptable to the Pakistani Army, the high command of which was almost entirely drawn from the Urdu-speakers of the West. Repression, with shootings and arrests, followed. The Bengalis resisted, got the support of India, and after months of vicious civil war, secured their independence; the first years of the new state were turbulent and made wretched by widespread famine and political corruption.

Zaved’s account of this terrible year, of the dangers his family experienced, is vivid and moving. It is, of course, based partly on hearsay, partly on research, since he was only a baby at the time. Hensher develops the narrative with fine artistry, offering a compelling picture of a society in turmoil. He doesn’t offer a war story as such, for he scarcely touches on the fighting; instead he shows the horror of war from the point of view of cultivated and charming civilians. It is a stark and chilling picture.

It is all the more stark and chilling because so much of the book is charming. Zaved’s large extended family are delightful, as are most of their friends. They are well-to-do, belonging to the upper-middle class. His father is a successful lawyer, his maternal grandfather, the dominant figure in the book (and the family) an even more successful one. There are numerous aunts, uncles and cousins, and friends of the family, many devoted to music, painting and poetry – and almost all of them to food. Meals play a big part, and sound delicious.

The novel begins with Zaved’s memories of his childhood – that is to say, it begins a few years after the terrible events of 1970-71. This is well-judged by (I suppose) Hensher, for the early chapters are entrancing – every bit as delightful as Tolstoy’s picture of the family life of the Rostovs in War and Peace. If one knew nothing of the horrors of the repression and the civil war, one might expect that the novel would continue in this vein. It doesn’t, of course, but by choosing to construct his narrative so artfully, Hensher offers an affirmative and life-enhancing narrative. At the same time this structure makes the violence of 1970-71 even more appalling. You are astonished that it should happen in such a well-ordered and civilised society, astonished and then reassured that these people survived their ordeal with such resilience and with their values intact.

There is a wonderful sense of felt life in the domestic passages of the novel, and there is comedy – the finest sort of comedy, which is comedy of character rather than situation. What is extraordinary, given the grim events and the stupid and destructive cruelty in the wartime passages (which include more than one atrocity as well as an all-too-credible picture of a society plunged into fear and incomprehension – that this should be happening to us) is that this is also a book suffused with tenderness, yet altogether free from sentimentality. One feels the writing has been a labour of love. Perhaps this is why the experience of reading it is so delightful. I confess to having embarked on it with misgivings, soon dispelled when I found both the matter and the manner of telling captivating.

• Scenes From Early Life

BY Philip Hensher

Fourth Estate, 310pp, £18.99