From the way it addresses the pangs of individual to national identity, this novel speaks potently, lyrically to our times and to the mystery of origins. It possesses a grace all on its own, writes Shraddha Singh
Commonwealth Writers’ Prize winner Tahmima Anam’s Bones of Grace is the third installment of her series that already includes A Golden Age which was nominated for the 2011 Man Asian literary Prize and The Good Muslim. Once again, Anam succeeds in crafting a deeply moving yet tragic story about belonging, migration, survival and the quest for one’s origins.
Protagonist Zubaida is a marine paleontologist from Dhaka studying at Harvard, where she falls in love with Elijah, a man she meets in a darkened concert hall in Boston. As bad timing would have it, they meet just a few days before Zubaida is due to fly to Pakistan to participate in a dig for an ancestral whale fossil, a ‘missing link’ species. This resonates with the tenor of the novel as tracing one’s roots, finding the missing links, is its fundamental theme. Also, Anam too earned her PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University in 2004.
Narrated in the form of a letter — almost like an epistoleric novel — to Elijah, she interestingly begins from the end. The connection between Elijah and Zubaida is immediate and intense, despite their differences: He belongs to an all American family, she is the adopted daughter of a wealthy Bangladeshi family in Dhaka. The stark contrast between their backgrounds yet the similarity in their understanding of each other is a beautiful blend of two different cultures. Their love is key to the plot but it also sets her on a quest to find meaning and significance in her unrevealed past.
Zubaida soon arrives in Pakistan and begins the excavation on the remains of Ambulocetus natans, the 49 million year old fossilised skeleton of the mammal she calls Diana. And there in the red desert sands of Dera Bugti, she realises that she is still in love with Elijah.
As they move from Britain to the ‘third world’ of South Asia, different layers in the novel begin to unfold. like the case with Murphy’s law, things go terribly wrong when one of the members Zamzam is brutalised and kidnapped and Pakistani authorities shut down the dig. Herein, Pakistan has been portrayed in a sensitive light, distanced from the hitherto stereotypical attributes associated with it. The author has effectively highlighted the internal turmoil that the natives of Pakistan are subjected to. She offers an insight into how misguided Government policies and petty local politics take a toll on the common folk.
Traumatised, Zubaida retreats to Dhaka, where she is entrapped in a web of familial emotions, caves into pressure and marries her childhood sweetheart, Rashid. Things could have been a lot simpler if Zubaida hadn’t been in such a muddle about Elijah, her whale, and her unknown marriage. Anam, a British Bangladeshi herself, hereby opens a window to the predicaments that even educated, ‘liberated’ women have to endure in this ostensibly progressive times. She has written extensively on other issues which have also been mentioned in the book — how far Bangladesh has come after 45 years of Independence, migrant labourers, poverty, rapes during Bangladesh’s war of Independence, and so on.
In this whirlwind of circumstances, fate takes Zubaida to India next. She is suspended in limbo, caught between different worlds and conflicting loyalties; between her husband and the man who could change her destiny. As her need to free herself from familial constraints and her own discontent pushes her to the point of desperation, she moves to Chittagong to work on a documentary film about the infamous beaches where decommissioned ships are destroyed and their remains are salvaged by locals, who depend on the goods for their survival. The symbology elicited in Chittagong is mesmerising; where ships like beasts are being drawn in by the ocean to meet the final demise, and it has been compared to the economic disparity of the workers. As she witnesses a ship being ripped down to its bones, Zubaida is torn between the social mores of her two homes — Bangladesh and America. She will be forced to strip away the vestiges of her own life and make a choice from which she can never turn back.
Music plays an essential role in drawing out the preferences of the protagonist as she met Elijah at a Shostakovich Concert and similarly it was this connection that made Elijah come to Chittagong to buy a piano just because of his love for music. Science and art have also been merged with subtlety. For instance, when she calls Diana, the earlier fossilised skeleton beautiful.
The disparate elements of the story are brought together very cleverly by Anam and readers will get deep into the novel before they realise just how broad, deep, and utterly contemporary and apposite its concerns are. From the way it addresses the plight of labourers entrapped in servitude in Dubai or in the hazardous work of ship-breaking in Bangladesh, to the pangs of individual and national identity, this is a novel that speaks so potently, so lyrically to our times and to the mystery of origins. It possesses a grace all on its own.