Entangled Lives

I was drawn to Entangled Lives by the ambiguous expression in the eyes of the man on its cover and when I discovered that this is an #ownvoices novel written by a Pakistani author, I knew I wanted to read it. Omer has made one of his protagonists a Taliban soldier which I felt was a brave step in the current political climate, especially as this soldier, Raza, tells us his story unapologetically. We follow his life from young orphaned child to American prison camp and so see the realities of life for poor families in Pakistan. Raza's family were Afghan refugees reduced to the most basic existence within Pakistan. And theirs is by no means an isolated case. Over decades from the partition of India in the 1940s to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s and beyond, the waves of migration from people seeking to escape conflict is overwhelming. Poor people of all faiths in this part of Asia have seemingly become so inured to growing up without hope of much more than simple survival that for Raza, as the example in this story, although he has some awareness that perhaps he shouldn't blindly believe everything he is taught in the madrassah, the reality is that he has no choice other than appearing to do so.

After we have learned much of Raza's life, the viewpoint switches to Rachael's story which, I admit, did briefly annoy me because I was so engrossed in reading about Raza. I initially didn't think I wanted to read about yet another entitled American journalist sweeping untouched through a poorer nation's civil war. As it turned out however Rachael's role is deeper than showing us Afghanistan from a Western perspective. She does travel more widely across the country than Raza can do and imparts an overview that helped with my understanding of the politics. She is also an interesting character in her own right so I revised my preconceptions there too!

I liked the ways in which Raza and Rachael's stories do become entangled. Omer's is deft yet with a nice delicacy that means he never hammers home his ideas or feels as though he is trying to hard to educate his readers. Instead I appreciated feeling as though I had space to make up my own mind. I am sure that some Western readers will look away from Entangled Lives because it doesn't neatly fit with the lines we are fed about good and evil, culpability and guilt. While we see the actions Raza has taken in his life and his own sense of shame, can we actually say he had free choice? If our rich nations have historically engineered so much of the destruction and despair 'over there', should we not also shoulder at least some of the responsibility for the current chaos and violence? There are absolutely no easy answers, but Entangled Lives is a powerful opening question especially for someone like me who wants to expand my knowledge of what is happening in countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. A thought provoking novel and a brilliantly uncomfortable read.