He began working in northwestern Pakistan in 1956, serving as the government's arm in a tribal world that relied on its own brands of justice. His experiences became fodder for the novel. He never took notes or kept a journal, but relied only on his "kit bag of memories," as he put it.
In one chapter, a band of Mahsud tribesmen kidnap a group of teachers in Waziristan. A young assistant commissioner is dispatched to a neighboring tribe's jirga — a meeting of Bhittani elders — to warn them of their treaty obligations to turn over the kidnappers. Because the kidnappers escaped through Bhittani territory, the tribe was also accountable for the crime, according to treaty rules.
A tribal elder responds with a story of an eloping man and woman who are confronted and raped by a pack of ruffians. Afterward, when the man chastises the woman for being raped, she replies that although what happened to her was wrong, it was a natural act. What happened to him was not.
The elder then tells the assistant commissioner, "You are like the man in the story.... You let them do it and when the deed is done, you rush out and vent your fury on others."
Ahmad says he indeed sent a young officer to the jirga, who left humiliated after hearing the elder's story. The only difference was that the original crime was not a kidnapping, but the theft of rifles from a police checkpoint.
Though thrust into a Pashtun tribal world leery of the federal government's oversight, Ahmad developed a rapport with elders and tribesmen that often produced memorable encounters. Some he recalls with a raspy chuckle.
Before taking an eight-day trip on mule into a Khyber valley controlled by a notoriously violent tribe, Ahmad learned that a tribal elder whom he had once befriended was preparing to ambush him. Ahmad took a different route and escaped unharmed. Sometime later, when Ahmad ran into the elder, the man explained that he set up the ambush because he was miffed that Ahmad had not told him of his trip in advance.
The two men bear-hugged. "I felt my sunglasses crunching against my chest," Ahmad said, smiling.
In 1971, when Ahmad was appointed commissioner of the Swat region, he began to write "off and on."
"As commissioner, one had time," he said. "Sometimes I'd just play Scrabble."
At first, the manuscript was a collection of short stories. A friend who was the U.S. consul general in the city of Peshawar at the time read the stories and suggested it needed a central character that linked them. Ahmad created Tor Baz, Pashtun for "the black falcon," an orphan boy who takes on a series of roles, an informant in one chapter, a mountain guide in another, a client at a market that bought and sold women at the novel's conclusion.
Finished in 1973, the manuscript sat in a drawer for years. On occasion, Ahmad would show it to publishers in London, who were lukewarm. One suggested recasting the book as nonfiction. "I said, 'Sorry, but I'm not an academic or an anthropologist. This is fiction,'" Ahmad recalled.
Then, in 2008, Ahmad's younger brother heard an ad on a Karachi radio station about an upcoming short story competition. The manuscript was submitted past the contest's deadline, but the competition's organizer was impressed with the work and showed it to an editor at Penguin Books' India subsidiary. Penguin bought it the following year.
In Pakistan, Ahmad's writing has been getting rave reviews.
"It took me by surprise, with its rich texture of observation, its uncanny power of making the eerie landscape come alive, and the sheer mastery of language," said Asif Farrukhi, a Pakistani writer and co-founder of the Karachi Literature Festival. Ameena Saiyid, managing director for Oxford University Press Pakistan and a co-founder of the Karachi festival, called Ahmad's writing style "natural and very forthright.... It just came across as something very true and real."
Ahmad, who hasn't written anything since finishing "Wandering Falcon" 38 years ago, hasn't made up his mind about tackling a second book. "It depends on how this thing is received. If this is acceptable, then maybe I'll try my hand."
alex.rodriguez@latimes.com
