Examining Post-Sept. 11 Afghanistan In 'Vigil'

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JACKI LYDEN, host:

In Nadeem Aslam's latest novel, "The Wasted Vigil," the lives of a small group of people intersect in contemporary Afghanistan in ways that touch on our modern clash of cultures. The characters are haunted by war and fanaticism, yes, but also by their own desires to remake the world as they see it. And these visions cannot all harmonize. The story begins in a remarkable house owned by a widowed English doctor named Marcus. Hundreds of books have been nailed to the ceiling. I asked the author, Nadeem Aslam, to read from the first page.

(Soundbite of novel "The Wasted Vigil")

Mr. NADEEM ASLAM (Author, The Wasted Vigil): (Reading) On the wide ceiling are hundreds of books, each held in place by an iron nail hammered through it, a spike driven through the pages of history, a spike through the pages of love, a spike through the sacred.

LYDEN: What has happened here?

Mr. ASLAM: The books are on the ceiling because when the Taliban arrived, they declared that only one book on the entire planet was worth reading, and that was the Koran, and that contained everything anyone could possibly need to know. So, they began burning books. And Marcus' wife, who by that time had lost her mind, one day nailed all the books to the ceiling to save them. So there is this sort of gentle, literally, rain throughout the novel when books fall from the ceiling during the night or during the day.

LYDEN: Eventually all the characters in this novel meet in this house or their lives intersect in this house. Could you describe the house for us, please?

Mr. ASLAM: Yes, the house I wanted to stand for the human body that has been shattered by the war. The house has six rooms. Each of the first five rooms are dedicated to one of the five senses. So, one of the rooms is about sense of smell, and on the walls are paintings that evoke the sense of smell. Then we move on to the sense of sight, the sense of touch, the sense of taste, the sense of hearing. And then the sixth room right at the top is dedicated to the ultimate human wonder which is love and which is the essential message of the novel.

Even though these people are desperate and separate and come from all different nations who have all different histories, there is such a thing as a common humanity. The way I feel love, the way I feel hatred, the way I taste milk and bread and strawberries is the way a Russian person does, the way an American person does, the way a Muslim does. So, that was ultimately the message.

LYDEN: Everybody in this book, Nadeem Aslam, is waiting for something or someone, everyone in "The Wasted Vigil" is keeping vigil.

Mr. ASLAM: Absolutely, the word vigil or its derivatives, vigilant and vigilantes, occur seven time in the novel. For example, I have a Jihadi character called Ghasa(ph) who when he arrives at the house and the house is full of what he consider are infidels, unbelievers, and he's a pure believer, he thinks that he must be vigilant in case they try to invade the purity of his mind, as it were.

But the moment he enters the house, the first time he comes into the house, and he's around those paintings, and then he walks away from the house, the way he looks at the world, the way he looks at the garden outside the house is totally different. The language I describe is slightly lyrical now, because he has been around art. He has been around ideas that are not his, that are different from his ideas. So his vigil is wasted, as it were.

LYDEN: There's a passage in which you have Casa ruminating about the passengers on Flight 93, the one that crashed in Pennsylvania.

Mr. ASLAM: Yes. I went to Pakistan, and I talked to any number of young men and boys who'd been to terrorist training camps. And when I began talking to these people, again and again it came up that they think they are justified in doing what they're doing because Islam is in danger. This is the most important thing that is in their life, which is Islam and which is their country, and they think it's in danger.

And then I began to think along the lines of what happened onboard Flight United 93, which is that a group of Americans, when they contacted the ground on their cell phones, they were told that two planes have gone into the World Trade Center, another plane has gone in to the Pentagon, and your plane has been hijacked and it's a possibility that you are heading towards either the Capitol building or towards the White House. And then those Americans decided to risk their lives in trying to prevent those people from succeeding, and eventually they gave up their lives.

And this is the mindset over there, in the Muslim countries. They think that the thing that they love is under attack. So they are doing everything they can, they are sacrificing themselves the way they think that those people onboard United 93 did. Now Islam has not been hijacked. These boys and these young men are being lied to. Nothing that is loved by a billion people can ever be destroyed. America and the West are loved by the people who live there, the way Islam is loved by Muslims. But Muslims do hate Islamic fundamentalism, and that can be destroyed.

LYDEN: It's an absolutely beautiful book, and heartbreaking too, because so much of your erudition and obvious love for this place is beauty set over the very, very brutal things that people can do to one another.

Mr. ASLAM: Indeed.

LYDEN: And I'm wondering if you're trying to fix a story here, a coherent narrative of Afghanistan - at least these last few decades - the way that your characters tried to fix stories to the ceiling of their very own home.

Mr. ASLAM: I always think of Czeslaw Milosz, the great Polish poet who said that in one of his poems, the poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date. So that is what I see as my job, to write down the deed and the date. So, yes, I mean, that is what you very succinctly put. It's trying to nail the story to the ceiling, so that it isn't destroyed.

LYDEN: Nadeem Aslam, his new book is called "The Wasted Vigil." It's been a great pleasure talking to you. It's a lovely book. Thank you for joining us.

Mr. ASLAM: Thank you very much for having me.

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