Rude Awakening

Mehvash Amin Book Review of Akbar in Wonderland by Umber Khairi. “What I am saying is not ridiculous, nor is it fantasy, nor is it paranoia. This is a reality. And unless you can see that, you’ll be as clueless as Alice was in Wonderland, surprised at every turn…”  from Akbar in Wonderland.

The first thing of note about Umber Khairi’s book Akbar in Wonderland is how little has changed regarding the role of the ‘establishment’ since almost thirty years ago, the time in which her novel is set.

Akbar In Wonderland by Umber Khairi

The second is Khairi’s bravery in speaking truth to power.

The third, at a time when countless journalists have been killed in Gaza, Pakistan and indeed the whole world in their quest for truth, is that this novel is a paen to the bravery of those who dare to speak out.

When I asked her when she started the novel, she replied:  “I actually started the book a long time ago (more than two decades), but it was put on the back burner while I worked at the BBC (2001-2018). It finally all came together in 2023 and a major motivator to complete and publish it was the political events of 2022 in Pakistan (regime change and a ruthless crackdown on poltical protest). That period of political history showed how little had changed over the decades.”

This is absolutely on the nose. The scene in which Akbar’s family is woken up from their bed in the middle of the night is eerily reminiscent of recent past events in my own family: My daughter-in-law is a supporter of the party that cannot be named, and while she was on the run with the ‘establishment’ looking for her, my son was taken away in the middle of the night in front of his children, roughed around and thrown in prison. We did not know of his whereabouts for many days. To put it mildly, it was a tough time harbouring his distraught kids while searching for him.

But to get back to the novel: Set in the early nineties, Akbar is a somewhat naïve journalist who is unexpectedly made editor of a new political weekly at the newspaper he works for. The country is under a civilian government led by a woman prime minister and her spouse after years of chafing under the draconian rule of an Islamist General Ghazi. Rumours gather strength about the corruption of the new populist government, and Akbar’s name is rubber-stamped on a hard-hitting piece about this corruption that paves the way for the dismissal of the government. At this point Akbar meekly plays along, but his friend and colleague, the irreverant and eccentric Zed (Zaheer Khan) tells him that he should wake up to the truth. Zed is independently making inquiries to prove that the dismissal was the culmination of an elaborately planned conspiracy.

And while Akbar, at the start of the book, is in a kind of wonderland, one based on his naivete and gullibility, a wonderland that according to Zed simply does not exist, all that changes after an unexpected death, when he is thrown in a sinister and dark world when he realizes, as the author puts it, “that all is not as it seems in terms of media and politics.”

The second half of the book traces his rude awakening in a surreal dystopia, where murders are passed off as suicides, where booted ‘dacoits’ enter houses in the middle of the night, where phones are tapped, where the reputations of dead intellectuals are attacked, where honest policemen are casually assasinated in their jeeps by passing motorcylists and where even Akbar’s editor Irfan turns out to be a mere cog in the implacable and invisible machinery that thinks nothing of silencing a few to achieve their agenda.

Akbar initiates this rude awakening himself when he finds Zed’s papers hidden in his car and inserts his journalistic findings in the front page of his paper. After that, all that was sunny and harmless turns dark and malevolent, and almost against his will, he becomes a true journalist as he is forced to negotiate a thrilling escape from his ruthless adversaries. His awakening to the dark side includes a touching scene where even a likeable little flower-boy that he helps occasionally, dons another avatar as a poverty-stricken victim forced to opportune men in cars for shady services.

And while Akbar, at the start of the book, is in a kind of wonderland, one based on his naivete and gullibility, a wonderland that according to Zed simply does not exist, all that changes after an unexpected death.

One of my favourite Pakistani writers, Omar Shahid Hamid, calls this book a ‘tour de force.’ As is true about Hamid’s books, Khairi has created an un-put-downable page-turner invested with her insight into the media world gleaned from her three decades as a journalist. Indeed, the epilogue of the book comprises of news bulletins and reports that tell us what happened to our reluctant hero years down the line.

But this is not just a political and journalistic thriller… it is peppered with humorous and believable vignettes as Khairi builds up the backdrop to Akbar’s journey: his office and his colleagues, including the lush siren Natasha on whom he has a crush till she becomes minister of information in the new caretaker set-up; the two irritating interns that his boss foists on him; and his middle-class, very believable family, including his jealous brother and his upstart wife and his very religious and annoying cousin who nevertheless has a hand in helping him escape.

Another believable construct is the Karachi of more than three decades ago, where cellular phones were just making their appearance as cumbersome, box-like gadgets, where hand-written interviews were all the norm and where it was a novelty when restaurants served olives as appetizers!

I was delighted to discover that Zed’s character is based on that of Kaleem Omar, a poet and journalist.  I knew him very well in his role as a poet-mentor, someone who came over regularly to guide me in my poetry-writing journey. Reading Khairi’s book brought out his journalistic avatar, and once she confirmed that Zed’s character  was indeed based on his, Zed’s mannerisms and peccadillos created a familiar face in the film that unspools in your head as you read a book.

All in all, this dark-light story about an unwitting young man caught in a world where “narratives are manipulated and dissent is silenced” is a thoroughly satisfying and necessary read.

About the author: Umber Khairi is a writer and columnist, as well as a former BBC producer and presenter and one of the co-founders of the independent journalist-owned magazine, Newsline. She organises the annual IBA/CEJ Razia Bhatti Memorial Lecture series with the IBA Karachi’s Centre for Excellence in Journalism.She was born in Karachi, and now lives in the UK. She was educated at schools in Khartoum, Rawalpindi, Buenos Aires and Karachi and is a graduate of Princeton University where she studied Comparative Literature. 

Umber Khairi

Published by Moringa Books, a division of Reverie Publishing, Karachi