Despite the guns, the roses still bloomed at the Karachi Literature Festival

“At this festival, I get the feeling that literature has no boundaries,” said Ameena Saiyid, the director of the Karachi Literature Festival. The festival grew from a small-scale event, attracting the literati of Karachi and beyond, to one attended by thousands of Karachi people from all backgrounds.

This is no mean feat in a city that’s been racked with layers of violence from the 1990s, ranging from gangs, street crime, and to a slightly lower degree than the rest of the county, extremist-sponsored terrorism. In the week following the festival, a series of blasts rocked many locations in Pakistan, including a deadly explosion at a Sufi shrine in Sehwan, less than 300 kilometres from Karachi, killing at least 100 people and wounding many more.

“Security is one of our biggest challenges,” said Saiyid, sitting in her hotel room at the Beach Luxury Hotel, a name that has become a misnomer in recent years as the hotel descended into disrepair. But, it faces a creek that is a tributary off the Arabian Sea. From a distance and at night, decorated with fairy lights, this seems an idyllic view, especially in the context of Karachi, where the Arabian Sea is an integral feature of the former desert’s landscape.

Mangrove trees, close to extinction in recent years, grow on islands that are visible from the creek. But, when you go closer to the shore, the banks are blackened by pollution and a distinctive stink emanates. This is testimonial to the pollution and disrepair that has been Karachi for many decades.

Zoning back from the less than idyllic backdrop, but one that spells out Karachi’s realities, the security is particularly visible. To enter the festival, one must go through check posts and barriers, leaving one’s handbag at a conveyor belt, just like on an airport. Handbags are opened and checked by policewomen and men. Some people are patted down and others slid over by a security scanner. And outside, are police vans and rangers, a special paramilitary security forces. “Our biggest spend is on security,” said Saiyid. “We just don’t take any chances.”

Seventy years of decolonisation

But between security checks and the environmental disaster, the Beach Luxury Hotel transformed itself into a swarm of bodies, coming to hear authors from across the world. Ayesha Jalal, a prominent historian of South Asian based at Tufts University in Massachusetts, was the keynote speaker for the event. She also spoke at the history panels and was followed by fans who wanted selfies, photographs from her.

Pakistan and India are both celebrating 70 years of decolonisation from the English this year. And, Pakistan is celebrating its 70th birthday, as a nation that came into being a day before the South Asian subcontinent was made independent of colonialism. So, this year’s Karachi Literature Festival paid a tribute to decolonisation and to 70 years of the Pakistan’s birth. But many people were unhappy that the books launched and celebrated and the topics discussed had more to do with history and politics than “literature.”

“When you’re dealing with words, you’re a writer,” said Muneeza Shamsie, a Pakistani literary critic whose history of Pakistani writing in English was launched at the festival. Shamsie didn’t have a problem with Bob Dylan’s Nobel win either. “Literature is a very diverse term,” she said. “I don’t know how you define literature.”

Shamsie said she enjoyed the history sessions and the discussions of Partition, the traumatic division of lands that Pakistan and India suffered as the country was divided in half as India was decolonised and broken up into Pakistan and India.

A young journalist, who declined for professional reasons to give her name, said she enjoyed the history sessions very much. But she felt the festival was becoming redundant in the last few years. “There’s nothing too intellectual about the sessions.” She feared that there was an attempt to “dumb it down or reduce it for the masses” and there was nothing that would “initiate a controversial debate.”

Going social

While she craved the intellectual stimulus of a progressive debate, others attended the festival for entirely different reasons. Some people bought books, hung out by the shore of the creek, took selfies or watched the films screened. A stand up comedian performed on the main lawn as part of the session and dancers and musicians performed at the opening and closing ceremonies. Still others attended the festival to eat at the food court assembled in the carpark of the hotel.

On the lawn, overlooking the creek and mangroves, those attending the festival must go through another metal detector. Their bags are subject to search one more time and then they pass through the dated lobby of the Beach Luxury Hotel, where a sculpture, sponsored by a high street fast fashion outlet, Khaadi, celebrates the country’s attachment to textiles. The sculpture is a large spool of thread with colourful scarves spooled around it and a patchwork depicting scenes from Pakistan’s attachment to textiles.

Pakistan is the greatest exporter of textiles to the west. The cheap and high-quality labour is exploited both by western clothing giants and Pakistani exporters of the textiles. Kik has received recent blowback because of a huge inferno in 2012 that claimed hundreds of lives in their struggle to produce low cost jeans for the low-cost clothing label.

Further in from the sculpture, hundreds of young men and women and boys and girls wear volunteer T shirts, and help festival attendees find their places. Ilija Trojanow is visiting from the Munich to speak about his book, The Collector of Worlds, invited by the Goethe Institute in Karachi. He’s been to many festivals in the world, he said, and noticed that the audience was very young compared to more western festivals. This was a phenomenon he noticed in Iran also.

He also noted that that there were simply too many diplomats onstage during the inauguration of the festival. Sharing the centre of the stage with Saiyid – managing director of Oxford University Press, Pakistan – and Ayesha Jalal, a South Asian historian who is considered a global intellectual giant, were mostly western diplomats, many of whom were partners and sponsors of the festival. Saiyid said that they have complete independence over the festival, in spite of the sponsorships and partnerships, and the consulates have played a vital role in bringing in global writers to the festival. Those onstage included an Indian diplomat who had, despite recently strained relations, helped arrange for eight Indian authors to attend the festival.

Ring of security

Global academics and writers have been an integral part of the festival over the eight years of its existence, even despite security concerns, with Karachi having a particularly bad reputation. “We do have to reassure them,” said Saiyid. “But I find that academics (and writers) are happy to come.”

But the security seem even more visible this year than in the previous years. Women commandos, part of the special counter terrorism forces, in hijab, coral lipstick, soldierly gear and guns patrol the area along with their male colleagues. Though outnumbered, the women feel no different from the men. “We’re treated like men,” said one. “So we forget whether we are men or women.”

“We’re treated equally and appreciated even more because we’re women,” said another. They all refused to give their names for security and professional reasons. But despite multiple layers of security, including security boats patrolling the creek outside the venue, “there’s always a slight worry in the back of one’s mind,” as Saiyid put it.

This is a particular side effect of becoming larger, and one that Saiyid signed up for when she moved four years ago from a smaller venue in a posh part of Karachi that was inaccessible by public transport, the primary mode of mobility for the middle and lower middle classes. Then, the festival was attended only by Karachi’s literary elite, who could afford private cars to transport them. The Beach Luxury Hotel is easily accessed by most of Karachi via public and private transport, and has opened up the festival to thousands of people and college students.

Another factor that has brought the festival to non-elite audiences is the inclusion to Urdu and other national and regional languages of Pakistan. “It’s got so much larger,” said Shamsie. “Someone said, why are all these people coming in with their children?” Shamsie said she doesn’t have a problem with that. “You never know what might work,” she said. Her own daughter, celebrated Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie, is a regular fixture at the Karachi Literature Festival, failing just this year. Her daughter, Shamsie said, often talks of how she was inspired by her mother taking her to the library in Karachi while she was growing up.