September 9, 2013
Journalist Mufti incorporates the stories of his family and ancestors into a larger history of Pakistan and its post-9/11 political turmoil. He begins on the eve of his parentsâ wedding in 1971, which coincides with the day India intervened in Pakistanâs civil war. This story is followed by discussions of clashes between supporters of Socialist Zulfiqar Bhutto and the devout Jamaat-e-Islami party, whose followers incited violence at Punjab University where Muftiâs father was a professor. The author discusses the complicated relationship between Pakistan and America, focusing on the Cold War and the Reagan administrationâs funding of the guerrilla mujahideen, as well as the more recent wave of attacks ordered by President Obama. Moving toward the personal, Mufti describes his familyâs alienation and harassment while briefly living in Ohio at a time rife with anti-Muslim sentiment and memories of acclimating when they moved back to Pakistan. He recalls living in Pakistan during the deadly protest at the Red Mosque and the hotel bombing that was an attempted assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistanâs first female prime minister. Mufti takes readers on a tour of Lahore, his parentsâ hometown, Sodhra, the town where his grandfather was born, and Islamabad, the nationâs capital, sharing his remarkable family tree, which includes an ancestor who was a close adviser to the prophet Muhammad. This astonishingly detailed, well-researched history is brought to life by the addition of Muftiâs personal storyâ and journalistic acumen.
May 15, 2013
The rich cultural and religious history of Pakistan dictated through a journalist's personal stories. Born in America to Pakistani parents, Mufti (Journalism/Univ. of Richmond) considers himself a native of both lands. He spares readers "every torturous twist and turn in Pakistan's modern history," opting for a harmonic analysis of the sovereign country from both a frontline journalistic approach and a familial, homeland perspective. Mufti proudly unspools his country's tapestry of allegiance and warring strife and embeds his own family's legacy within it. The nuances of his parents' arranged marriage amid the violence of the Pakistan-India war of 1965 merges into his father Shahzad's struggle to maintain order throughout a doctoral tenure amid political upheavals in the 1970s. A decade later, after his father had accepted a medical school professorship at Ohio University, the author was born into an era where being Muslim equated with an allegiance to Ayatollah Khomeini. He traces his earliest memory of Pakistan from age 4, settling in Lahore, war-torn by Indian army attacks. The author pauses to reflect on how the Islamic culture became (and continues to be) denigrated in the shadow of 9/11 and posits that even a cease-fire in the Afghanistan War would still fail to curb the senseless violence decimating Pakistan. Steeped in personal anecdotes, Mufti writes of bomb scares and defiant million-man marches on the streets of Islamabad as a roving journalist and gingerly dissects the roots of his surname, which can be traced back to the prophet Muhammad. Yet he ponders if he will ever live to see a quiescence between Islam and the West. An undeniable visionary, Mufti insightfully glances back at Pakistan's past and nods hopefully toward its precarious future.
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October 1, 2013
Mufti (journalism, Univ. of Richmond), a journalist who has covered Pakistan, intertwines his family's history with that of Pakistan's as a nation. His main narrative starts when his parents got married in 1971 on the day that India and Pakistan went to war. His U.S.-educated father moved the family to the States when political conditions in Pakistan became increasingly Islamist. They went back to Pakistan when they perceived that Americans had become less tolerant of Muslims in the wake of the 1979-81 Iranian hostage crisis. The author returned to the States to attend boarding school and then college and, as a journalist, ended up shuttling between Pakistan and America. While Mufti's intent here is to illuminate Pakistan's intricate history by tracing that of his own family, most of the time the personal and the historical are disconnected, with neither narrative unfolding chronologically. The onus is on readers to cope with gaps in time and keep track of dates. A time line of major events, historical and personal, would have helped, as would a table of contents, endnotes, a bibliography, and an index. VERDICT Recommended, with reservations, for those interested in Pakistan's history or in how political decisions impact citizens.--Muhammed Hassanali, Shaker Heights, OH
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