Sing to the Western Wind
In reflective prose, Tariq Mehmood’s kaleidoscopic novel Sing to the Western Wind unravels the life of man driven to the brink by political and religious violence.
Saleem is at the end of his life. He has bombs strapped to his chest and a plan to detonate them. As he moves through the motions of his plan, he reflects on his complicated past.
As a young man, Saleem left Pakistan to work at a mill in England. But England seemed intent on grinding him down with deep debt, vitriolic racism, loneliness, and displacement. Though he found pleasures where he could, through union solidarity and passionate love, Saleem never stopped dreaming of Pakistan. He spent decades going between the two countries—a sudden foreigner in both, caught in the crosshairs of war. Senseless losses and failures narrowed his path until he could see only death at its end.
The tragedies of Saleem’s life lay bare questions about radicalization and the efficacy of revenge. Western bombs rain down on everyone around him. The vacuum of grief they leave behind pushes bystanders towards desperate retaliation. “Is revenge wrong for someone like me?” Saleem asks; he is met with no answer.
The sound of warplanes hums within the prose, which is as stark as the violence it depicts. Memory structures the plot as it leap-frogs across time and space. Though the tumult of racist politics is the engine behind his decline, Saleem is not depicted as a perfect victim. His development is nuanced; he is both cruel and generous, giving humanity to his character.
The unflinching novel Sing to the Western Wind covers the human costs of imperial war in Pakistan, showing how innocence can be transformed into extremity through unjust violence: “sometimes, even doves are slaughtered for the crime of singing.”
Reviewed by
Luke Sutherland
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