A code and its honour,Jameel Ahmad

Jameel Ahmad's depiction of the Pashtun tribe adds a new vista to the literary landscape of Pakistan.Four decades ago, a rangy civil servant in charge of overseeing the forested ridges and brick-hut villages of Pakistan's Swat Valley sought a pastime to get through slow days. He dabbled in poetry, composing haiku in longhand. His wife read the poems and called them "rubbish". "Why don't you write about something you know?" Jameel Ahmad recalled his wife, Helga, telling him. She said his focus should be the tribes of Pakistan's northwest frontier, where Ahmad had worked for 15 years. He thought, "That makes sense."For the next two years, Ahmad worked on his novel. He hewed his characters from the tribal badlands, where Pashtun society has always been demarcated by strict codes of honour, yet where the region's remoteness and anarchic economy made smuggling, snitching and kidnapping routine occupations. He wrote about the harsh beauty of the Baluch desert, the stoning of adulterers and a market where men shopped for women with the casualness of browsing for furniture.Thirty-eight years would pass before the publication of The Wandering Falcon, a collection of interwoven stories that is making the 80-year-old retired bureaucrat Pakistan's unlikeliest literary star.Written before the emergence of the Taliban, the novel moves beyond the Western media's stereotypical depiction of the tribal areas and brings a new vista to the literary landscape of a country known to the West as Al Qaida's post-September 11 sanctuary and home to a volatile mix of religious extremist groups.Dressed all in khaki and seated in an armchair at his Islamabad home, Ahmad exudes an energy that belies his years. Wisps of white hair top his head and his sun-weathered face is long with age, but he spryly moves from anecdote to anecdote in meticulous detail."I had an interest in the tribes per se, even in school," Ahmad said. "So that acted as a catalyst. I developed this interest early. And when I was selected for the civil service, you were given a choice where to serve. And my first choice was what was called the frontier list."Stretching from the peaks of the Hindu Kush down to the desert flats of northern Baluchistan, Pakistan's frontier for centuries has been home to the Pashtun, a proud tribal people with a history of resistance to foreign occupation, be it Britain's 19th-century colonial exploits or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Taliban militants waging war with the US in Afghanistan are ethnic Pashtuns.Pashtuns adhere to a code of conduct known as Pashtunwali. Besmirched honour must be avenged; sanctuary must be given to anyone who asks for it; hospitality to visitors isn't an option, it is a commandment. Ahmad was deeply moved by Pashtunwali. "I felt the tribes had far more grace, a far greater sense of honour, rectitude, truth than you found in the cities," Ahmad said.He began working in northwestern Pakistan in 1956, serving as the government's arm in a tribal world that relied on its own brands of justice. His experiences became fodder for the novel. He never took notes or kept a journal but relied only on his "kit bag of memories", as he put it.In 1971, when Ahmad was appointed commissioner of the Swat region, he began to write "off and on". "As commissioner, one had time," he said. "Sometimes I'd just play Scrabble."At first, the manuscript was a collection of short stories. A friend who was the US consul-general in the city of Peshawar at the time read the stories and suggested it needed a central character that linked them. Ahmad created Tor Baz, Pashtun for "the black falcon", an orphan boy who takes on a series of roles, an informant in one chapter, a mountain guide in another, a client at a market that bought and sold women at the novel's conclusion. Finished in 1973, the manuscript sat in a drawer for years.In 2008, Ahmad's younger brother heard an advertisement on a Karachi radio station about an upcoming short-story competition. The manuscript was submitted past the contest's deadline but the competition's organiser was impressed with the work and showed it to an editor at Penguin Books' India subsidiary. Penguin bought it the following year.Ahmad, who hasn't written anything since finishing The Wandering Falcon 38 years ago, hasn't made up his mind about tackling a second book. "It depends on how this thing is received. If this is acceptable, then maybe I'll try my hand."Dressed all in khaki and seated in an armchair at his Islamabad home, Ahmad exudes an energy that belies his years. Wisps of white hair top his head and his sun-weathered face is long with age, but he spryly moves from anecdote to anecdote in meticulous detail."I had an interest in the tribes per se, even in school," Ahmad said. "So that acted as a catalyst. I developed this interest early. And when I was selected for the civil service, you were given a choice where to serve. And my first choice was what was called the frontier list."Stretching from the peaks of the Hindu Kush down to the desert flats of northern Baluchistan, Pakistan's frontier for centuries has been home to the Pashtun, a proud tribal people with a history of resistance to foreign occupation, be it Britain's 19th-century colonial exploits or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Taliban militants waging war with the US in Afghanistan are ethnic Pashtuns.Pashtuns adhere to a code of conduct known as Pashtunwali. Besmirched honour must be avenged; sanctuary must be given to anyone who asks for it; hospitality to visitors isn't an option, it is a commandment. Ahmad was deeply moved by Pashtunwali. "I felt the tribes had far more grace, a far greater sense of honour, rectitude, truth than you found in the cities," Ahmad said.He began working in northwestern Pakistan in 1956, serving as the government's arm in a tribal world that relied on its own brands of justice. His experiences became fodder for the novel. He never took notes or kept a journal but relied only on his "kit bag of memories", as he put it.In 1971, when Ahmad was appointed commissioner of the Swat region, he began to write "off and on". "As commissioner, one had time," he said. "Sometimes I'd just play Scrabble."At first, the manuscript was a collection of short stories. A friend who was the US consul-general in the city of Peshawar at the time read the stories and suggested it needed a central character that linked them. Ahmad created Tor Baz, Pashtun for "the black falcon", an orphan boy who takes on a series of roles, an informant in one chapter, a mountain guide in another, a client at a market that bought and sold women at the novel's conclusion. Finished in 1973, the manuscript sat in a drawer for years.In 2008, Ahmad's younger brother heard an advertisement on a Karachi radio station about an upcoming short-story competition. The manuscript was submitted past the contest's deadline but the competition's organiser was impressed with the work and showed it to an editor at Penguin Books' India subsidiary. Penguin bought it the following year.Ahmad, who hasn't written anything since finishing The Wandering Falcon 38 years ago, hasn't made up his mind about tackling a second book. "It depends on how this thing is received. If this is acceptable, then maybe I'll try my hand."