Volume 47, Number 20 · December 21, 2000
Passion in Lahore
By Anita Desai
Moth Smoke
by Mohsin Hamid
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 247 pp., $23.00
There is a wonderfully eloquent word in Urdu for the times, the age: it is zamana. To hear an elder take a puff at his hookah and sigh, 'Such is our zamana,' or a youth, while cocking an eyebrow and shrugging his shoulders, trying to explain 'our zamana' is to hear a world of comment on our day, our history, the passage of years and of human experience, in a way not quite conveyed by its equivalent in other languages (the German Zeitgeist comes closest in meaning but has not the same intimacy or emotion). Zamana is a word we use a good deal on the Indian subcontinent where time moves slowly and time moves inexorably, inviting reflection rather than reaction. Its concept hovers over a line in Mohsin Hamid's novel Moth Smoke: 'I know that no place has longer afternoons than this place, Lahore.'
Review, 3015 words
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