MOTH SMOKE
By MOHSIN HAMID
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. 247 pages, $23

Elizabeth White

The feckless life of upper-class youth of Pakistan, who talk on cell phones as they speed through congested lanes in their oversized, air-conditioned SUVs, oblivious to traffic lights, regulations, cyclists, beggars, and rickshaws, is vividly portrayed in Mohsin Hamid's fast-paced first novel. Hamid, who grew up in Lahore, graduated from Princeton and Harvard, and now resides in New York, is no less adept at bringing to life the struggles of the less fortunate-the beggars, prostitutes, fortune-tellers, and servants-and the sights and smells, dust and heat of Lahore. His novel illustrates with grim accuracy the decay of social order in Pakistan, a country which rejoices over its successful nuclear tests while ignoring the grinding poverty and illiteracy that plague more than half its population.
While Moth Smoke is set in contemporary Lahore, it is grounded in the history of the Moghul Empire. The main characters share names and characteristics of the family of Emperor Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal in honor of his wife Mumtaz. The antihero of Moth Smoke, Darashikoh Shezad, is doomed (as was the eldest son of Shah Jahan). He wrongs Aurangzeb, his best friend, who was like a brother to him, and suffers the consequences. Like their Moghul namesakes (Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh), the modern Ozi and Daru compete-not for a throne, but for the love of Mumtaz, Ozi's wife.
The story of Daru's descent from athletic boxer and upwardly mobile bank clerk to chronically ill addict and criminal is told in a series of short chapters, some narrated by Daru, others in the voices of Ozi, Mumtaz, and Murad Badshah, a hashish dealer. Daru's decline begins when he is fired from the bank job: his habitual tardiness and surly attitude are too much for the branch manager to tolerate. Daru then turns down a job at a car sales agency, saying he "prefers a bank or multinational." But rather than search for work, he is content to sink into a life of drugs, debt, and crime. He betrays his friends, his relatives, and even his lover, Mumtaz.

As guest of Ozi and Mumtaz, Daru attends elite parties where drunken couples whirl in the smoke of various substances. He quickly discovers the profit in selling hashish and marijuana. Obtaining the drugs from Murad, a rickshaw driver with a M.A. in English, Daru resells them to his friends and acquaintances. His brief success backfires; at a gathering of his classmates at the prestigious Punjab Club, Daru is ridiculed as a hashish dealer. More seriously, his sales to a youngster result in a brutal beating by the henchman of the boy's enraged father.
The novel is permeated with smoke-from cigarettes, cigars, marijuana, hashish, and vehicle exhaust. Moth smoke refers to the smudge left by moths who die circling candle flames, and Mumtaz's search for excitement as an pseudonymous investigative journalist and as Daru's lover is similarly self-destructive. In a drug-induced stupor, Daru watches moths circling the candles he must rely upon after his electricity is cut off for nonpayment. He invents moth badminton, a one-sided contest between his warped racket and the moths. During his lowest days, smoke hinting of burning flesh seeps into Daru's house from the dustbins outside.
Although it does not excuse their excesses and crimes, both Daru and Murad are victims of a system in which jobs and success depend upon influence, paternity, and corruption. Daru's father died in the war for Bangladesh independence, and his mother died from "festive firing"-a stray bullet shot into the hot night air killed her while she slept on the roof of their house. Daru's struggling middle-class relatives try to help him, but they are without social or financial resources. Murad's father died before his birth. Maternal relatives helped him obtain an excellent education; but without influence, his M.A. in English was worthless. So he purchased a motor rickshaw and built up a fleet. Selling hashish became a lucrative sideline.
Daru, Ozi, Mumtaz, and Murad display appalling behavior, but they are so vividly portrayed in their flawed humanity that the reader becomes sympathetic. I found myself wishing, like his Dadi (grandmother), that Daru would behave less disgracefully. I also find myself wishing that another book by Mohsin Hamid will appear soon. He has joined the ranks of outstanding South Asian authors whose writing can captivate those who are unfamiliar with the subcontinent and those who know it well.

Elizabeth White has worked in Asian development for thirty years. She spent nine of those years in Pakistan, where she was a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1962 to 1964, and in the early 1990s administrator of the Afghan Program of The Asia Foundation, based in Peshawar.