Magazine 2013
International Peer-Reviewed Journal
RH, VOL. 3 JULY 2013
A Communicative Catharsis Of Political Violence:
Intercultural Narration Of Violence And
Migration In Adib Khan’s “Spiral Road”
Neeta Chakrabarty
ABSTRACT
Adib Khan is an eminent South Asian novelist of Bangladeshi origin. He represents the
Bangladeshi voice in Australian multicultural literature and he explores the clashes between political
events and everyday realities, oscillating across Bangladesh and Australia. This paper is an attempt to
analyze his novel, Spiral Road to see how the narrative tackles issues like violence, migration, and
dual nationality, effecting a psycho-moral cleansing of fear, isolation and exile. This paper has a
multidisciplinary scope when it examines how, Adib Khan counter balances his narrative with the
terror outfits which corrupt young minds and erode tribal values and culture. Further, this paper also
examines Adib Khan’s fiction as a cultural product that narrates and thereby negotiates violence. The
tension between an impulse to narrate and the effect of narrative has continued to play itself out, not
only in psychology, but also in the social sciences. Adib Khan’s The Spiral Road overcomes this
tension and the narrator’s subjectivity as well the readers’ minds are cleansed and unburdened when
the narrative takes them through the war-torn Bangladesh and the secrets of family history. By doing
so, Adib Khan neutralizes his personal fear and enables himself to come to terms with his past.
Hannah Arendt remarks that the distinguishing characteristic of the human is not only the capacity to
discern events in history, but also to narrate these events. Adib Khan, by narrating the impact of terror
outfits in contemporary tribal Bangladesh, achieves a narrative catharsis of political violence as Arendt
emphasizes. Arendt also stresses the communicative and deliberative processes essential to the
formation of a public sphere through speech and action. Adib Khan’s novel can be considered as this
deliberative cathartic process which creates an affective discourse on violence, migration and exile –
merging the personal with the political.
Keywords - Multicultural Literature, Terror, Violence, Catharsis
Adib Khan is an eminent South Asian novelist of Bangladeshi origin. He represents the Bangladeshi voice
in Australian multicultural literature and he explores the clashes between political events and everyday realities,
oscillating across Bangladesh and Australia. This paper is an attempt to analyze his novel, Spiral Road to see
how the narrative tackles issues like violence, migration, and dual nationality, effecting a psycho-moral cleansing
of fear, isolation and exile. This paper has a multidisciplinary scope as it examines how Adib Khan counter-
balances his narrative with the story of terror outfits which corrupt young minds and erode tribal values and
culture along with a psychological cleansing of the fear of terrorism. Further, this paper also examines Adib
Khan’s fiction as a cultural product that articulates and thereby negotiates violence through a cathartic narration.
Adib Khan through his narrative highlights the conditions that breed violence and the highly complex
traits that control the mind and action. Omar, who has embraced terrorism in Spiral Road argues with steely
resolve: “The world is more important than my family.”(Khan: 2008: 309) This statement emphasizes the
interpersonal nature of the narrative and the political fabric it has.
According to Hannah Arendt, storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
Arendt says that it is only after the completion of a particular action and seeing its repercussions on other
actions that it is possible for it to become a part of written history or literature. The lapse of time helps the writer
to evaluate the purpose of the perpetuators of the act. In Spiral Road, Adib Khan thus narrates the events
pertaining to the Freedom struggle and creation of Bangladesh and seeks redemption by tracing the events
and circumstances that have led to the present state of distrust, apprehension and intolerance in Bangladesh.
Further, his narrative takes the mask of a story to reflect upon the social and political developments in the
postcolonial Bangladesh. The postcolonial catharsis which Adib Khan aims at in the novel is in achieving a
microhistory of a nation which would provide an expressive outlet for a traumatized subject who battles with a
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legacy of lies and half-truths. At the outset of the novel, Khan explores the line between truth and perceptions of
the same, which is obscured in a continuum through time: “But the truth? …. the facts themselves now lie
crumpled beneath fabrications, distortions and exaggerations.” [Khan: 2008: 2]
As we proceed, Adib Khan introduces us to the fabric of society that is formed by a narrative that is
characterized by the crisscrossing of the personal and the political. Protagonist, Masud Alam, a migrant to
Australia is on a visit to his hometown Bangladesh. He aspires to ascribe his own identity within a new radius of
freedom that he has acquired in his migrant status. His definition of a home has metamorphosed since his
migration. He says,
Home? It’s not a physical location any more. More like several places in the mind. I like the flexibility of
such an arrangement. [Khan: 2008: 37]
By deterritorializing the concept of home and then by trying to theorize both home and his adaptive
flexibility, the protagonist tries for a diasporic catharsis of the sense of loss and homelessness. This flexibility of
his location also provides him an affective license to wander freely in time. In course of the novel, he travels
frequently between the past and the present. He describes his journey to his past:
But this isn’t a quick entry into the past. Rather, it’s a slow attenuation to a dimly perceived way of life –
to nuances and mannerisms, gestures, conventions and rituals. I hear snatches of long forgotten Bangla idioms
that would lose their texture and piquancy in translation. [Khan: 2008: 5]
He relates the past to the present as he surmises that one’s present identity is inextricably linked to the
past. He says:
Here are those other selves that emerge from the shadows of my past. I appear in different guises,
modeled by time. Voiceless figures. And the stories, some not worth recollecting, but others that are intricately
threaded and weave the design of who I am. [Khan: 2008: 5]
What Masud implies here is that story-telling is an act of self-fashioning as it enables a narrator not only
to create a life-sketch but also to reclaim the muted moments of the phases of life which otherwise go unrecorded.
This attempt to revisit such shadows of one’s past is also cathartic as it enables the narrator to negotiate the
past and its burden in the expressive framework of a story. Hence, Masud engagement with his past emerges as
a psychological strategy – of role-playing in the time frame of the past to experience a literary, dramatic
psycho-moral cleansing. His recollection of the past is not dictated by the demands of reality but rather it is
only a simulation of the past which gives the traumatized narrator-protagonist a chance to unburden him of the
haunting memories and guilt.
There are also a number of complications arising out of Masud’s migrant status. Although he possesses
an inherent love for his motherland, he no longer considers himself a practicing Muslim and has adopted a
healthy distance from religious fanaticism. His deliberate abandonment of identity in passport and embracing
of global environment concerns by joining the Greens in Australia is a part of his decision to stay away from
controversies. Moreover, thirty long years of stay in Australia has also introduced him to the ills of racism and he
is quick to distance himself from such practices as well. But this raises questions on his sense of patriotism,
loyalty and identity. He carries deep within him guilt of running away from his homeland. Masud Alam muses in
a blend of nostalgia and fear of racism:
Seeing my Muslim name, immigration officials there would want to know the motives for my visit, although
the Australian passport would probably lessen suspicion. Here (in Bangladesh) it’s my name that suppresses
hostility, but being an Australian isn’t an advantage. I am a resident of a Christian country, they reminded me,
mostly inhabited by whites. Cousins of the Americans and the British. They invaded Islamic countries. They all
speak English. [Khan: 2008: 173-174]
This extract also shows how Masud articulates the subtle signs of intolerance that he faces in Bangladesh
as he represents the West for the natives. Further, the scathing sarcasm that he uses in portraying the bias of the
natives redeems him of the racial hatred that the politics of his homeland would have infused in him. He also
manages to disengage himself from both the imperialist anti-Islamic bias of the West as well as from the
mindless anti-Christian propaganda of his homeland. Though his mind is caught between the ideological poles
of the West and Bangladesh, his role as narrator gives him a critical distance from both. Masud’s role as
narrator is also cathartic as it helps him to get out his emotions and experiences and to treat them objectively
in an aesthetic process.
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Adib Khan implies in the novel that by linking terrorism with Islam, the West has created a new margin in
human geography. By critiquing this Western prejudice, he creates a context and discourse for the new margins
to articulate through fiction. It also provides an expressive outlet for the angst and frustration of a marginalized
group.
The tension between an impulse to narrate and the effect of narrative has continued to play itself out, not
only in psychology, but also in the social sciences. Adib Khan’s The Spiral Road captures best this tension.
Masud as narrator has an impulse to narrate the anxiety about readjustment, his sense of loss, and regret – the
symptoms of the psyche of a marginal subject who is caught against the backdrop of cultural fragmentation.
Returning to his homeland and studying his mind, annoys him. He says:
Regret, nostalgia, dread and curiosity create a mesh in which I feel myself trapped and my sense of
selfhood already splintering. [Khan: 2008: 38]
Ironically, what happens here is a narration of regret, nostalgia, dread and curiosity and this irony
inherent in a narration too is cathartic along the Freudian terms of talking cure. Further, it plays out his irresistible
urge to narrate these aspects and his inhibition about what could be narrated.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains Arendt’s view of how narratives as critical re-engagements
with the past can be self-redeeming:
It is necessary to redeem from the past those moments worth preserving, to save those fragments from
past treasures that are significant for us. Only by means of this critical reappropriation can we discover the past
anew, endow it with relevance and meaning for the present, and make it a source of inspiration for the future.
[
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: 2008]
Adib Khan’s novel is such a critical reappropriation of the recent history. It reveals how after September
11, 2001 attack, the world has changed both for the white man as well as the Asians. Khan reminds the readers
that the white man has become increasingly suspicious of the Asian subject in general with his angst directed
at the Muslim Asian subject in particular. Khan narrates and dramatizes the tension which is created between
the White man’s world and the parts of the world that practice Islam in Spiral Road. Khan also takes us into his
feudalistic past by depicting the family’s display of piety and exaggerated humility and the justification of their
birth into a zamindar tradition followed by the façade of self deception in the face of nationalistic fervor,
traditional chaos and lost privileges. We also witness the attempts of his relatives to de-Christianise, de-Westernize
and redefine Masud Alam through religious procedures. At the end of one such procedure which requires
Masud to walk under the Koran and step inside his house, he sarcastically remarks: “Instant purgation. My true
identity is restored in the air-conditioned coolness of the foyer.” [Khan: 2008: 51] The real purgation that Masud
undergoes is not a religious one but psychological which is the result of his critical re-engagement with both
the political history of the post September 11 world and the feudalistic part of his personal history.
Adib Khan, in Spiral Road, also reveals the secrets of family history and revisits the Bangladesh freedom
struggle movement. Masud is initially unable to come to terms with his father’s betrayal of his mother and
affiliations outside the private domain. He aligns his father’s betrayal with the undermining of the freedom
movement by Feudalists. However, as he reads his father’s diary, he realizes that his father was a victim of being
considered a demi-god, and not one with flesh, desire or temptations. This enables him to come to terms with
his father’s past. Simillarly, uncle Musa’s adventures which were ill-received by the rest of the family prove to
have another side which redeems him in the eyes of Masud who believes in Uncle Musa’s right to fulfill his
personal needs and alleviate his burden of loneliness. By narrating and revisiting the personal stories of his
father and uncle, Adib Khan neutralizes his personal grudge for them. Interestingly, it is his father’s diary,
another piece of personal history that helps Masud to exorcise his pent up feelings for his family members.
Moving from the personal to the political, the narrative shows how Masud Alam’s unwilling visit to
Bangladesh to see his sick father is fraught with tensions as he is closely monitored by the Australian agent,
Steven Mills, who suspects that Masud has linkages with terrorists. However, Masud brushes off Mill’s suspicions
as being founded on distrust. But what shocks him is the reciprocation of this baggage of suspicion and
distrust evolving from his nephew, Omar, who seems to be left disillusioned and scarred forever. Masud is
disturbed to find Omar seeking solace in terrorist activities under a misguided sense of Nationalism. What
Masud has to rebuild is credibility in the eyes of the Ausrtalian authorities and his relatives in Bangladesh. He
tries to resolve this situation by understanding clearly his own intercultural, transnational identity. He muses:
“
The indigenous man of the subcontinent and the migrant will never reconcile their differences and live as
an entity. With each passing year, it becomes increasingly difficult to decide where I’d rather be. There will
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always be an awareness of the pieces that are missing. Now I’m unable to silence the voice of lament that
whispers about denial and loss. But regret has given way to resigned acceptance.” [Khan: 2008: 38]
The subjectivity that emerges in Masud’s narrative is truly intercultural as it tries to critique and at times,
integrate the cultural and political differences of his locations. Even as he hears the mullah’s speech in Bangladesh,
he is reminded of Pope Urban II. In both religions, he surmises, mere mortals cannot defy God’s will and so a
lot of misdeeds like slaughter, rape and looting can be explained as part of a grand design of the Omnipotent
and the Omniscient God. But although he can objectively compare the two religions, his presence raises
questions on his allegiance:
“
Are you trustworthy? How can we be certain that you haven’t gone over to the other side?”[Khan: 2008:
74]
While one side doubts him owing to his present nationality, the other side has misgivings on the basis of
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his religion. In this cathartic process, a new discourse on the fluidity of Identities is created. Old yardsticks for
studying traditional mores of life are proving to be self defeating.
Masud also observes the changing texture of tribal beliefs and customs in Bangladesh. He notices with
a distinct intercultural critical distance how the terrorists conveniently forge ties with the tribals to fulfill their
need for cover and protection from the National and International agencies on their lookout. Masud is reminded,
in the context of tribal-terrorist nexus, of his own adventurous days when he was termed ‘miscreant’ and nicknamed
‘
explosive’ by Pakistani soldiers while being elevated to the status of ‘Freedom fighter’ by the Bangladeshis.
His intercultural perspective neutralizes the political ambivalence that surrounds him by making him realize that
what is crime in one society is devotion in another. When Masud questions Zia’s role in sending supplies that
might reach terrorists, Zia in turn expresses misgivings about Masud’s grasp of Bangladesh’s present predicament:
“
Don’t be paranoid! Stop looking at the world with western lenses. Take them off! You might see and
understand things differently. Try relating to the thinking that shapes what we are in this part of the world.”
Khan: 2008: 104]
[
Arendt argues that, remembrance alone, the retelling of deeds as stories, can save the lives and deeds
of actors from oblivion and futility. By narrating the impact of terror outfits in contemporary tribal Bangladesh,
Adib Khan achieves a narrative catharsis of political violence as Arendt emphasizes. Arendt also stresses the
communicative and deliberative processes essential to the formation of a public sphere through speech and
action. Adib Khan’s novel strings together Masud’s tale along with the story of the nation. Revisiting his homeland
fragments his emotional make. Although a migrant and an atheist, he feels waves of self-consciousness wash
over him. An immense sense of loss and regret consumes his being. The homeland seems to entice him to
redefine belonging. His understanding of the world undergoes a change. The unpredictability and volatility of
his motherland begin to seem inviting when juxtaposed with the tame predictability of his adopted nation.
Although he attempts to distance himself from political bias and religious fundamentalism due to ideological
differences, his attempts to understand the silences enveloping the nation slowly starts undermining his resolve
to run away from the situation and prods him to face the situation head on. So, Adib Khan’s narrative begins
unfolding a deliberative cathartic process which creates an affective discourse on violence, migration and exile
–
merging the personal with the political. Thus, in Adib Khan’s Spiral Road, the narrator’s subjectivity as well the
readers’ minds are cleansed and unburdened when the narrative takes them through the war-torn Bangladesh
and the secrets of family history.
References
•
•
Khan, Adib. Spiral Road. New Delhi: Harper Collins & The India Today Group, 2008. print.
d’Entreves, Maurizio Passerin, “Hannah Arendt”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/arendt/>.
web
•
Arendt, Hannah. “Understanding and Politics.” Partisan Review, vol. 20, no. 4 (July–August 1953):
3
77–92. Reprinted in Essays in Understanding: 1930–1954 print
•
•
Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. print
Arendt, Hannah The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. print
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