Zahid Rafiq’s The World with Its Mouth Open delicately portrays eleven Kashmiri lives trapped between beauty and despair, blending realism and existential anguish to reveal the raw, human pulse of a wounded land, writes Azra Hussain
Zahid Rafiq’s debut collection, The World with Its Mouth Open, explores mundane events in the lives of eleven characters, ranging from a struggling child to a stray dog, over eleven short stories. The book brilliantly replicates the feeling of walking through the alleys of Kashmir, witnessing everyday occurrences through a unique perspective, one drenched in the unease and uncertainty that comes with living in a war-torn land.
The collection examines the experiences of varying protagonists with incredible flexibility and nuance, giving the reader the ability to place themselves in the characters’ shoes and walk a mile through their winding roads. Despite Rafiq oftentimes depicting the seemingly common, he does so with an undercurrent of unyielding humanity and empathy, making readers feel the grief and longing that often haunts his characters.
Diversity
The stories, following people from all walks of life, provide shards of experiences coloured with a strong sense of despair, one that the reader is unable to shake off long after the book is over. Rafiq does the incredibly difficult job of balancing vivid realism with what can only be described as grave existentialism, leaving the reader with questions about the very nature of life itself. As Mr Hussain from the story In Small Boxes says, “Truth is hard; offers no solace. I prefer beauty myself.”
The characters themselves are written to be as painfully human as they are painfully Kashmiri, with their beliefs and practices and their understanding of the world around them. The Kashmiri reader will have no trouble recognising themselves or someone they know in these characters, and the non-Kashmiri reader will walk away with a greater understanding of Kashmiri culture. Rafiq has the rare ability to capture the horror of this everydayness, which eludes most contemporary authors.
A Camusian Style
Unlike the absurdity of Kafka and the morality of Dostoevsky, The World with Its Mouth Open seems to possess a Camusian quality to it – turning to tackle the question of life more than any other phenomenon, but with a Kashmiri spin and a fresh narrative. The exploration of human (and animal, arguably) emotion in the collection is so outstanding that very few modern works can compare.
What is arguably most prominent in the work is the undeniable anguish almost every character seems to carry, oftentimes without being conscious of it themselves. This peculiar sorrow, native to Kashmir, is something only a Kashmiri themselves can convey, of which Rafiq does a wonderful job. The characters’ feelings, absurdly lifelike, will invoke a strong response even from the most apathetic of individuals.
Rafiq also conveys, as the title suggests, the uncaring hunger of the world itself. “This is the world,” Nazir from The Man with the Suitcase says, “and it doesn’t care.” The cold, capitalistic machine Rafiq depicts the world as is extremely compelling, a thing with its jaws open wide, ready to swallow whoever has the misfortune of falling in. The story Crows, from which the book gets its title, alludes to the cruelty of the world, asking, “Do you know what is waiting out there?”
Stories like Flowers from a Dog reflect upon the all-encompassing agony of loss and the process of grieving, with lines like, “Some cruel hand had pulled out the years from behind me and abandoned me again into a child,” and “The body is a mere feast for the worms.” The eloquent depiction of pain paired with the visceral imagery of decay grounds the reader in the reality of death, and, consequently, the reality of life.
Simply Elegant
Rafiq dabbles in unequivocal absurdity in his The Mannequin and a philosophical monologue in Frog in the Mouth. “I am convinced that if I keep quiet,” he writes, “my heart will stop, that it is the blabbering that keeps me going.” The collection is, quite frankly, philosophy disguised as fiction, and reality disguised as a narrative.
Rafiq writes in a simple yet elegant style, depicting the complicated in a way that is extremely easy to follow. The book explores complex emotions in a way both sophisticated and straightforward, a blend that proves to be astoundingly potent. The boundless sentiment in every story leaves a profound effect on the reader, furthered by the heartfelt phrasing of it.
The World with Its Mouth Open is, to be as precise as the author himself, a poignant reflection upon the human condition, one that drags you through the ceaseless horrors of life in Kashmir, all the while holding your hand. It is a devastating account of a land with a devastating fate – one of humanity.
