Each year, prophecies about the next big thing abound, whether the field discussed is sports or literature. Often they are wrong. Knowing this and disregarding the advice to “never make predictions, especially about the future,” Newsline has profiled five likely success stories of 2009. Some have already debuted and garnered acclaim, while others are slowly building their way to a grand crescendo. The point is that they are fresh faces, bringing something original and pioneering to help stem the stagnation in Pakistan. After 2008, a year in which more political leaders were recycled and creative and unconventional ideas were few and far between, the current crop promises something altogether different in the years to come. From the lawyer-turned-writer/farmer to the female reporter from Pakistan’s most volatile region, they are a diverse group, united only by their drive to make an impact. And so we present five future household names, already on their way up.

By Akbar S. Ahmed

         Dartmouth. Yale Law. MFA from the University of Arizona. Farm in Khanpur, Punjab. Daniyal Mueenuddin’s journey has been varied and distinctive, yet he now seems set to take the Pakistani English literary world by storm, once his upcoming collection, In Other Rooms, Other Worlds, is published in February 2009. Described as the Pakistani equivalent of Ivan Turgenev and William Faulkner, Mueenuddin has garnered interest around the world with his clever, wry, descriptive short stories, which have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, and Zoetrope, as well as in The Best American Short Stories 2008. After fierce bidding in New York and London, publishing houses Norton and Bloomsbury emerged with the rights to publish his debut compilation in America and Britain, respectively. Hailing from a background in which both his grandfather and father wrote poetry, and brought up in Lahore and Wisconsin, Mueenuddin says, “I always knew I would write, regardless of my career.”

         Having specialised in human rights law, Mueenuddin was a man with a plan: he wanted to write on the side, while working for a humanitarian concern with a focus on South Asia. After a brief stint at Human Rights Watch, Mueenuddin joined a large New York law firm “in order to gain practical experience.” Yet three years later, he had “reached a crux.” He explains: “I didn’t like corporate life and knew [I] must get a job doing something more meaningful.” So Mueenuddin decided to take a risk and follow his dream of being a professional writer, with his law degree as a safety net. As a writer, he tells Newsline, “Chekhov is my hero … a number of the Russians have been important to me, like Tolstoy and Turgenev,” while his favourite later writers include Nabokov, Joyce, Munro and Bishop. On the local front, he perceives “a renaissance,” mentioning Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif, and Kamila Shamsie. “My generation of writers is not much bothered by post-colonial stereotypes,” argues Mueenuddin. “Today, readers in the West identify Pakistan with images much less benign than blimpish white or brown sahibs drinking gin-and-tonics and abusing the club servants.” Thus, he feels, such archetypes are no longer relevant. “Fiction writers from Pakistan are part of an intense ongoing dialogue between the East and West in a way that mostly works to our advantage – we benefit from a high level of interest in what’s going on here,” claims Mueenuddin.

         Now residing on a farm in southern Punjab, he shoos away comparisons with New York, his former home, asserting, “There’s no preferring when the two places are so different.” He is full of praise for agrarian life, telling us that “the farm is where I work best.” The now-rural lawyer also says, “Managing a farm is deeply satisfying … if I had to choose … it would certainly be the farm.” As for a more macro contrast, Mueenuddin describes Pakistan as “bright and vivid and pulsing and glaring and violent and painful,” and America as “so solid and open and glittering and homogenised and bland.” Here, there are no favourites. “Living in America, one longs for more colour; and living in Pakistan, one so often turns away exhausted, saying ‘Please, no more, no more.’ Both are fascinating places.” The eight short stories in his collection, however (“or really seven and then a novella”), are all set in Pakistan except one. All his characters are “more-or-less connected” with Mueenuddin’s central creation, the fictional Harouni family, “declining feudals, the patriarch living in Lahore.” That sounds like an archetype that is more relevant to Pakistan today.

By Akbar S. Ahmed

          Peshawar is one of the most well-known, most coveted and most dangerous datelines in the world today. Add to that an increasingly patriarchal society, and you have enough to scare anyone away. Yet Farzana Ali of Aaj TV is unperturbed by the risk or the discrimination, arguing that she doesn’t “believe in gender-based reporting.” In Ali’s eyes, “Reporters are just reporters, and they have nothing to do with gender. The truth always remains the truth, whether reported by a male or a female.” Continuing on this tack, she told Newsline, “Working in a war zone is as difficult for me as it is for other reporters.” This attitude sets her apart, giving her the distinction of being the best-known female reporter in the region.

         Born in Dera Ismail Khan and armed with a masters degree from the department of journalism and mass communications at Gomal University, Ali calls journalism her “dream and passion.” As a young girl, she was inspired by an uncle running a local paper. Thus began her “attraction to the news world.” She started her career as a sub-editor at Peshawar’s daily Mashriq. It took little time for her talent to be realised and she was promoted to the rank of magazine editor within a year. After eight years in the print media, during which she wrote numerous pieces on women and the social and political issues of the region, she joined Aaj as a reporter in 2005, which she calls a “very important time for me.” Ali does not, however, restrict her prowess to reporting: she is also the general secretary of the South Asia Free Media Association. After the Afghan war, she did a consultancy with the UN Development Programme to aid them with their facilities for women refugees. In addition, she was the only Pakistani journalist invited to the US by the International Visitor Programme in 2004 to discuss equity in the workplace.

         Working in areas like the tribal belt is exceedingly difficult, she admits, as the “centuries-old traditions make it awkward.” Still, she keeps on going, revealing that “working in a Pashtun society makes a difference.” Ali says her colleagues always give her the respect due a woman in that society. Unsurprisingly then, she has rejected offers to work in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, forsaking a safer environment for the dateline “Peshawar,” that “matters a lot” to her. She further explains this reluctance to leave the war-torn area: “As a journalist, I always follow the flow of the news and I’ve found myself more comfortable in the tribal areas, being a daughter of the soil.” Ali is brutally honest, making no bones about terming the region a ‘war zone.’

         Her ambition and dedication shine through as she tells Newsline, “Truth, and nothing but the truth, is my ultimate goal.” And little can halt this drive. “Whatever comes in my life as a challenge, I accept it.” All in all, says Ali, “Being a woman and working in a war zone is very difficult, but if you have the spirit and the courage to do what you want to do, nothing is impossible,” adding that she is grateful to her husband, eight-year-old son and her TV team for making everything possible. Driven and committed, Ali sees herself soon “leading the voice of the silent majority.”