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The troubadour
speaks
By Usman Faisal
In the
final pages of internationally-acclaimed author Pico
Iyer's new novel Abandon, the two main characters
- an American woman and an Englishman - are terrified
while travelling by bus at night through Iran's desert
as they find the other passengers abandoning them. But
instead of imminent death, they find the men kneeling in
the same direction - the day's first call to prayer.
The sympathy for Islam is evident in the book by
the author of the best-selling Cuba and the Night
and Falling off the Map. Abandon, which is
set in California, is about an Englishman's journey into
the world of Sufi poems and manuscripts. After six years
of reading about Islam and Sufism for the novel, Iyer,
who grew up in England and lived in California for
years, says he now knows a little more about Islam than
he did before.
Excerpts from an interview
with Iyer
"Abandon was written before the
September 11 attacks, but its content about Islam and
the West is more suitable to the present. I suppose it's
partly because Islam's discussion with the West has been
going on for a long time. I actually don't regard
September 11 as a turning point. It's a turning point
for America maybe, not for the world. As long as I have
been following the news there have been terrorist
attacks and American responses in the Middle East,
Africa and other places. Anyone who travels as I have
been lucky enough to do have seen these conflicts long
before September 11."
In the book, you say
Islam is not the great enemy of the new post-modern
order. Are you defending Islam?
"I want to
try to understand Islam from within, because I am a
Hindu and because I live in America. So many people
demonize Islam and are suspicious of it. If you're from
outside the culture your first obligation is to try to
see the world through the eyes of that culture. That is
part of what I was doing. People, especially in America,
have forgotten or are unaware of the amazing treasures
that Islam has given to every other part of the world.
One of the treasures being that quality of devotion in
Islam's prayers. That is one of the many things that
Islam can teach all of us. "
You explain that
jihad is not holy war but "struggle" or
"aspiration".
"Sufis, as I understand it,
always talk about the internal jihad or the greater
jihad. When I worked on this book in 2000 you were right
to assume what jihad meant. I do feel, especially living
in the West, that Islam is victim of a terrible double
standard. Everyone dramatizes certain aspects of Islam,
completely ignoring others. So often, for example,
Buddhism had a good press in the West, Islam has a bad
press and I think that is just unfair. Even at the time
of the [author Salman] Rushdie affair, everyone
reflexively said, 'Yeah, this is Islam being against
freedom'. I am not defending the fatwa [against
Rushdie], but it's more complex than you think. I don't
think you are in a position to judge about a religion
unless we really educate ourselves about it."
Is this sympathy for Islam coming from your
Indian roots?
I don't think so. Maybe an
interest in mysticism generally comes from my Indian
roots. I have noticed that increasingly I am more
separate from my Western friends in that interest. I see
the West's treatment of a variety of religions and see
this consistent unfairness towards Islam. I think my
thinking is related to not being American and not being
European, that is an advantage, perhaps."
You
say in Abandon in the form of a lecture on
religions that the religious transaction has to be a
love affair conducted in the inner chambers of the
heart. Is it a subtle message to the saffron brigade or
the Islamic militants in India?
"No. When I
was imagining that lecture I was thinking more about an
unbridgeable gulf between those people who are inside of
the faith and those who are outside of the faith,
whichever it is. That's a problem hard to resolve. When
I look at that man's wife I can't understand why they
are together. Because I am not that man. There is no way
unless I am him that I can appreciate his wife and his
feeling. I think that is how the religion is. It is not
a subtle message to anyone, may be it is a reminder that
it's very dangerous to pronounce on someone else's
religion. "
Your main character John
Macmillan is an Englishman. Did you have any premonition
that Tony Blair was going to support George W Bush?
(Laughs). "England is not a very tolerant
culture historically. But John is an Englishman who has
to put England behind him. Most of the book is about him
learning a lot of lessons about Sufism, which is much
larger than his notion of books. The political part is
fairly suppressed."
Coming to politics, you
describe 13th century Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi as the
reigning king of greeting cards in America. But the same
people who are buying Rumi cards may be supporting Bush
at war, isn't it?
"Exactly. I think people
make this division in their minds. When they are
thinking politically, Islam is their enemy. When they
are reading Rumi, suddenly they say he is not Islamic. I
consider it a fatal double standard in some ways. If
such people feel that politically Islam is their enemy,
they have to remember that culturally Islam is their
friend. "
Did you go to the countries
mentioned in the book, Iran, Syria, etc?
"For
this book I travelled to Syria twice, to Jordan, Oman,
Yemen and Malaysia. But I never went to Iran. In some
ways I chose not to go to Iran because I didn't want to
get distracted by the details of the political Iran
right now. I wanted to imagine about Iran rather than
try to report it. I have always wanted to go to Iran,
and now that I have finished the book, may be I will
go."
How did you get attracted to Sufism?
"Because I wanted to learn a little more about
Islam. For outsiders Sufism is the most appreciable part
of Islam because it's a mystical part. Mysticism is a
place where faces converge and the names become
unimportant because it's just a dialogue between a
person and his sense of the divine. When those of us who
are not Islamic read a Sufi poem it touches us deeply
because it's akin to what the Christian mystic or
Buddhist mystic would do to us. "
You have
been to the place where Osama bin Laden was born and
went to Aden, where the USS Cole was bombed when you
were writing this book. Is there some kind of
mystery?
"Not a mystery, but good fortune.
It was not connected with this book. I pretty much
finished writing the book and then out of the blue Time
magazine asked me to retrace the steps of this 18th
century Chinese admiral who had travelled all the way
from China to Oman and Aden at a time when they were
some of the richest ports in the world. So it was just
by chance I was in Aden in August 2001 and five weeks
later, it was September 11. Suddenly Bush decides Aden
or Yemen is the enemy and all the Yemenis are people we
should destroy. I could remember the Yemenis I met; many
of them went out of their way to help me. If only, I
thought, Bush would go to Yemen or Iraq or Iran and
actually meet the people he would begin to get a little
more humane towards them."
Your next novel?
Is it going the George [W] Bush's "axis of the evil"
way?
"No. In the past I have visited North
Korea. I have visited the other of America's enemies,
Cuba and Vietnam, because I feel that I'll never hear
the truth about them in America. I want something beyond
what the American newspapers tell me."
(Trans
World Features )
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