Then he was completely alone. The thousands of birds, which had kept him company for a while, had disappeared. With nothing to keep him occupied, he became aware of his thirst and hunger. He tried to resist it for a while, but as the pangs of hunger grew sharper, he finally walked over to the dead camel and opened the bag containing food. He ate a little, drank some water and then lay down squeezed against the dead camel as the sandstorm approached.
About the Cover
From the ornate horse-drawn carriages of the Raj to the pioneering craftsmanship featured on the Kohistan Bus Company’s fleet in the 1920s, Pakistan has a long-established tradition of decorating vehicles. The idiosyncratic designs serve as both moving advertisements and indicators of cultural affiliation. Truck artists transform village rickshaws, city buses and commercial trucks into a procession of moving colour.
The cover for Granta 112 was created by Islam Gull, a truck and bus artist of Bhutta village in Karachi, as part of a greater collaboration with Pakistani artists for the issue. Gull, born in Peshawar, has been painting since the age of thirteen. Twenty-two years ago he settled in Karachi, where he now teaches his craft to two young apprentices. In addition to trucks and buses, Gull decorates buildings and housewares and has worked for several consulates in Karachi, as well as travelling to Kandahar, Afghanistan to paint trucks there. Commissioned with the assistance of the British Council in Karachi, Gull produced two chipboard panels to be photographed for the magazine’s cover, using the same industrial paints with which he embellishes Pakistani trucks.
CONTRIBUTORS
Lorraine Adams is the author of two novels, Harbor, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and The Room and the Chair (Portobello/Knopf ). She lives in New York City.
Jamil Ahmad was born in Jalandhar, Punjab in 1933. A civil servant in the frontier areas and a minister in the Pakistani embassy in Kabul, his first book, The Wandering Falcon, will be published in 2011 (Penguin India/UK).
Nadeem Aslam was born in Gujranwala, Pakistan, and now lives in England. He is the author of the novels Season of the Rainbirds, Maps for Lost Lovers and The Wasted Vigil (Faber/Vintage).
Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1982. She is the author of three books including Songs of Blood and Sword (Jonathan Cape/Nation). She lives in Karachi.
Hasina Gul is a broadcaster at Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation’s Peshawar station. She is the author of two collections of poetry – Shpoon Shpole Shpelai, Khutah Khabray Kava and Da Hum Hagasey Mausam Dey.
Yasmeen Hameed, Urdu poet and translator, has produced four verse collections and won the Allama Iqbal Award.
Mohsin Hamid lives in Lahore and is the author of Moth Smoke (Granta/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Penguin/ Harcourt), shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007.
Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara. A former head of the BBC Urdu Service, he is the author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Jonathan Cape/Vintage). He lives in Karachi.
Intizar Hussain was born in 1923 in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and migrated to Pakistan in 1947. He has published six collections of short stories and four novels in Urdu. He is the recipient of the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s third highest governmental honour.
Aamer Hussein was born in Karachi in 1955 and moved to London in 1970. He is the author of five collections of short stories and a novella, Another Gulmohar Tree.
Uzma Aslam Khan was born in Lahore. She is the author of The Story of Noble Rot (Penguin India/Rupa & Co); Trespassing (Flamingo/Picador) and The Geometry of God (Haus Publishing, 2010).
Waqas Khwaja, professor of English at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, has published three collections of poetry and edited three anthologies of Pakistani literature, most recently Pakistani Short Stories.
Hari Kunzru is the author of three novels, The Impressionist, Transmission and My Revolutions (Penguin).
Sarfraz Manzoor is a journalist and broadcaster. He was born in Pakistan and migrated to Britain in 1974, at two. His memoir, Greetings From Bury Park (Bloomsbury/Vintage), was published in 2007.
Daniyal Mueenuddin grew up in Pakistan and Wisconsin. His first short-story collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Bloomsbury/ W. W. Norton), won the Story Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. He lives on a farm in southern Pakistan.
Ayesha Nasir is a journalist based in Lahore, Pakistan.
Basharat Peer is the author of Curfewed Night (Harper/Scribner), a memoir of the Kashmir conflict. He is a fellow at Open Society Institute, New York.
Jane Perlez is a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for the New York Times who has covered Pakistan for the last three years.
Kamila Shamsie is the author of five novels, including Burnt Shadows (Bloomsbury/Picador), published last year. Born in Karachi, she lives in London.
Declan Walsh is the Guardian’s correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan. His book Insh‘Allah Nation: A Journey Through Modern Pakistan will be published in 2011 (Random House).
Sher Zaman Taizi, born in Pabbi, is the author of fifteen books in Pashto and twenty-four in English. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Certificate in 1981 and the Tamgha-e-Imtiaz in Literature in 2009.
Green Cardamom, founded in 2004, is a London-based not-for-profit organization and gallery specializing in international contemporary art viewed from an Indian Ocean perspective. The images in this issue are a collaboration between Granta and Green Cardamom curators Hammad Nasar, Anita Dawood and Nada Raza.
Copyright
This selection copyright © 2010 Granta Publications
In the United States, Granta is published in association with Grove/Atlantic Inc., 841 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10003, and distributed by PGW. All editorial queries should be addressed to the London office.
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Granta is printed and bound in Italy by Legoprint. This magazine is printed on paper that fulfils the criteria for ‘Paper for permanent document’ according to ISO 9706 and the American Library Standard ANSI/NIZO Z39.48-1992 and has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Granta is indexed in the American Humanities Index.
The concluding sentence in ‘Leila in the Wilderness’ by Nadeem Aslam is paraphrased from one of the earliest surviving anthologies of Indian poetry, Gathasaptasati, which dates from the second century CE.
‘The House by the Gallows’ by Intizar Hussain was published in Urdu as ‘Jarnailee Zamaana’ in the collection Chiraghoon Ka Dhoowan: Yadoon Ke Pachaas Baras (The Lamp Still Burns: Fifty Years of Memories), Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2003.
ISBN 978–1–905881–53–6
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