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A suicide bombing is being planned in Manchester, UK. Behind it lie Saleem Khan's vivid memories - some full of regret and yearning, others humorous and yet others overshadowed by the surreal brutality of the war.
In the 60s, he leaves his lover, his job as a teacher and his home in the rural Pakistan and travels to Bradford, a town seething with racism where Asians are 'Pakis' and their labour is cheap. He finds a job working in a mill on an all-Asian night-shift, becomes an active trade unionist and when the mills close down, he drives a taxi. He gives up his religion and eventually falls in love with an English woman.
But in the 1980s Pakistan draws him back. Now regarded as a smart 'abroadi', he gets involved as the English-speaking partner in his cousin's transport business. When a truck driver he knows, does not return to base, he sets out to find him and unwittingly gets drawn across the border and into the killing fields of Afghanistan. Here, among Russian soldiers, Saudi Arabian Sheikhs, American Pirs, prostitutes and the holy warriors of the Mujahadeen, who take their orders and weapons from the United States, he meets Gulzarina, the woman whose life and experiences in a war without end allow him to finally make sense of his own.
About the author
Tariq Mehmood is a prize-winning writer and film-maker. His books include Hand on the Sun While There Is Light and Song of Gulzarina. He co-directed the award-winning documentary Injustice. Tariq currently teaches at the American University of Beirut, in Lebanon and lives in Beirut and Manchester, UK.
