Say hi to Mohammed Hanif

Rahul Puri

How do you sniff a book that so needs to be read without needing someone to tell you? With Mohammed Hanif, just get on with it. Don’t worry, no one’s going to haul you up. Pop in the Hanif dose of oxygenated irreverence. About time.

Such are the times, even Nike’s managed to just do it. For its 30th anniversary campaign, it features a former NFL quarterback who first started kneeling during the US national anthem in 2016 to protest the treatment of African-Americans. Potential Hanif book.

Back to this Hanif book, for now. The celebrated journalist-author is a cover-to-cover engagement. The deadpan irony, the delightful wit will make you laugh and also make you wonder whether you should be really laughing at this crazy sad, all in complete sync, and you won’t know what you end up with. With Hanif, at most times, both at the same time. 

‘Red birds are real. The reason we don’t see them is because we don’t want to. Because if we see them, we’ll remember.’ Riveting? That’s just the front blurb. ‘Simultaneously timely and timeless’ — difficult to disagree. ‘A powerful novel about war, family and love’ — of course.

A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti and he has another trophy to his name: Red Birds. Greedy Pakistani. Wants to say everything there is to say himself. Though there’s Mutt, the mongrel, too, exploring the very human trait to be inhuman, of sounding meaningful when it’s clear it is meaningless, of looking for appreciation when there is nothing to be appreciated.

The absurdity of war and the business it generates, the American war machine, the Muslim world so at odds with it that things for inexplicable reasons even out at times, the true lies of those in the middle of it all, the false isms, the refugees deserted in the desert, the desert left to extricate itself out of the sand it has dug itself in. ‘To B or not to be B — to bomb or not to bomb.’ 

Red Birds is a serious book — seriously true, seriously black, seriously comic, seriously sarcastic, seriously a bit too long, and so seriously smart at all times that you unwittingly need a break. But all through, chapter after chapter, there will be this one gasping thought — Mohammed Hanif, seriously, did you just say that? And you managed it? He did, like he always does. Because someone has to say it, and since he does it so extremely well, we let him. Greedy Pakistani. We allow you this.

Say hi to Mohammed Hanif.

The book will be out next month. Gulp it down, but to avoid getting choked, here’s my suggestion. You can ignore it by all means, but since you’ve made the effort to reach this point, here’s my point: read it three to four to five chapters at a time.

Fine, give it the treatment. In one go. But then, for a small measure of time, you will feel like telling things as they are like Mohammed Hanif does, and you won’t be able to pull it off.   

The book releases in October.