“The torrent of the past seeps through the sieves of our memories and we clutch at the silt that sticks, trusting that it contains gold.”
So runs one of several meditations on the difficulty of remembering in Tabish Khair's riotous new novel. The unnamed protagonist of How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position tells his tale by filtering recent recollections for nuggets of truth.
His account, we hear, is his take on an event that garnered much media attention in his adoptive home of Denmark. Some parts are based on police testimony. The rest is a chronicle of the months before disaster struck, a run-up that is also a countdown, comprising a series of witty and humane snapshots of three immigrants trying to fit in and feel welcome in a strange land.
The focal point of Khair’s novel is an apartment in Århus. After his marriage caves in, our “Muslim-skinned” Pakistan-born narrator moves into a flat with his Indian best friend Ravi. Their landlord, Karim, is a taxi-driver and fundamentalist Muslim who, every Friday, turns the flat into a hub for Quranic studies.
The narrator and Ravi humour Karim but lead secular and less stringent lifestyles involving dating, alcohol and flamboyantly colourful language. The narrator – like his creator – teaches English at Århus University. Ravi is equally academic but, juggling as many on-off career options as he is women, remains unfocused. Despite drinking with Danish girls and dining with neighbours, both feel adrift. It doesn’t help that they are perpetually stared at, commented on and made painfully aware of their foreignness.
Gradually, the two men begin to nurture doubts about their increasingly secretive landlord. Karim disappears for long stretches. A mysterious woman phones again and again, enquiring as to his whereabouts. What exactly goes on in his Quranic sessions and who is the ragtag bunch in attendance? Ravi, the self-proclaimed voice of reason, comes to his senses and allays the narrator’s concerns: “You sound like a Danish tabloid. What do you think they are? The secret Århus cell of Al Qaeda?”
Throughout the novel, the narrator frequently reminds the reader that all that is unfolding has already happened. His narrative is peppered with tracings of foreknowledge, ominous hints of impending catastrophe: “It is necessary to explain that when Karim Bhai returned after two nights, tired and red-eyed, I did not feel suspicious then.” He recalls how Karim listened to criticism of Denmark while “combing his fingers thoughtfully (or craftily? That idea struck me much later) through his flowing beard”. He is inevitably blinded by hindsight. The reader, in thrall to his storytelling, accurate or otherwise, reads on and waits for the detonation.
It would be unfair to reveal Khair’s explosive finale. Suffice to say, it resembles the build-up in his 2004 novel The Bus Stopped, in that the tragedy that occurs affects the whole cast and topples our expectations. More than this, though, Khair’s denouement is both a reaction to then-topical issues (a terrorist’s anger about the controversial Mohammed cartoons and his scorn towards “Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, all on the boil”) and a crisis point defused by farce.
It is at this juncture that we can take stock and marvel at just how broad Khair’s comic range is. There is that brilliantly audacious title. A satirical showdown caps the proceedings and a wonderfully brazen opener kick-starts them. In between are sly digs about over-orderly Denmark coupled with irreverent gags about degrees of “Muslimness”. Gem-like aperçus (“anyone who invests in relationships is heading for bankruptcy”) alternate with mordant one-liners (“Sanity was banned in Pakistan by Zia”). Only Khair’s Indian-flavoured puns achieve mixed results. “Every Tom, Dick and Hari” elicits a smile; “Play on, if music be the tandoori of love” as penned by “Sheikh Pir” a groan.
And yet Khair doesn’t play it all for laughs. His two male leads hold forth on many pertinent topics such as love, literature, religion and what is rotten in the state of Denmark. Ravi’s Bollywood good looks are redundant in “the only country in the Western Hemisphere where 80 per cent of all women were afraid of dating a coloured man”. Paranoia is shown to be the most effective means of engendering conspiracy and propagating fear.
Not content with coming up with the best title for a work of fiction since Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, Khair ensures that his own mock how-to guide How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position matches it as a clever black comedy rich in bitter truths.
Malcolm Forbes is a freelance reviewer.