BOOKS & AUTHORS, DAWN, March 13, 2001
Diary entries
N THE fall of 1969, Akhter Hameed Khan was invited by the University of Princeton to deliver a series of lectures on the work of the Academy of Rural Development, Comilla (then East Pakistan) of which he the direc tor and whose name was synmonous with his. As a result he spent twenty weeks in America and during this period he kept a personal diary. The diary was kept in Urdu, and the book Twenty weeks in America is an English translation of it.
Akhter Hameed Khan is considered by many many throu throughout the world as one of the leading social scientists and devel-opment practition ers of his age and this alone should. make the book of special interest even to lay readers. But there is much more to the book. The diary takes us into the personal thoughts, fears and conflicts of a great Phan. He is constant-ly worried about his ailing health and describes his feel-ings and emotions regarding it. He has spiritual conflicts; a feeling that som thing is very wrong, without being able to identify it. He is torn between mysticism and activism; he is con-cerned about death and wishes to pre pare for it, he appreciates physical beauty and is obsessed with exercise, something which he sees as a cure for both physical and spiritual problems. He argues with himself against his becoming an academic and against and for many issues that surface in the twenty weeks that he is
Akhter Hameed Khan
America, Akhter Hameed Khan also describes the places he visits, his feel ings related to them, the common American people he converses with, the birds and flowers in the parks, the food he eats, the transport he uses, the books he is reading and the messages they send to him all mall with a disarming simplicity and immense compassion, two of his most powerful attributes in all that he undertook in life.
The diary is also a fascinating docu mentation academic life in an American university. Lectures and lecturers; students, their clothes, physical appearances and the ques tions they ask; the administrative aspects of the university; and physi cal space, all dealt with in a matter of fact manner. Details of meetings with many famous persons such as Barbara Ward and Profestor Wilcox, bring them alive.
He looks at the American way of life through the eyes of a non judy mental South Asian Mualim. He visita the cinema, avante-garde feminist theatre, church services, an and even a rock and roll concert and tells us about what he saw and how he felt. While doing all this he is constantly preoccupied by the situation in Pakistan, especially in the Eastern
By Arif Hasan
wing. At one place he writes “I was very disturbed. Pakistan’s difficulties and the future troubles wrung my heart for a long time. There was a lot of activity in the streets, I walked along with my sorrow and reached the hotel”. He also sees the ruination of Bengal, he writes “East Pakistan is about to be destroyed and here I am telling the story of the Works Programme. What is the big deal about the Works Works Programme”.
The period that Dr Sahib was in the USA was also the period when the anti-Vietnam protests were taking place. He attended the protest meetings. and met the partici pants. He describes them along with the views of American press and of the common Americans about them and about the war. In a way, he has documented an important part of American history (without intending to and this is what makes it all the more fascinating), and the immense and irrational fears that common Americans have of all radical movements.
The book also takes us in the corri dors of where the impetus of Pakistan’s development programmes came from during the Ayub era. He visits the offices of the Harvard Advisory Group and of the Ford Foundation. He describes the people who work there and the lives they lead simply by giving details of his meetings with them and of visits to their homes and and clubs. clubs. Many Pakistani development-wallas will recognize many names and thinking processes that are no longer valid.
Whatever Dr Sahib sees and describes is not unique. Many h have seen it, many have been in his shoes, many have written about it. What makes the diary exceptional are three features: one, the charac ter of the author that comes across vulnerable (few could imagine this) and compassionate; two, the meaning that this vulnerablility and compassion and in addition knowl edge of history and literature, gives to what he sees and feels; and three, the simplicity of expression and language. And for the simplici ty of expression and language one has to congratulate the translator, Aquila Ismail, who has captured Dr. Sahib’s Urdu style of short sen tences beautifully in English and
made him come alive. A bo
worth reading.
Iwusty wests in America By Akhtar Hameed Khan Translated by Aquila Ismail City Press, 316 Madina City Mall, Abdullah Haroon Road, Karachi Tel: 021-5650623. Email: aaj@digicom 227pp. ISBN 969-8380-32-9. Ra150
