Up and down the path of life

Muhammad Saad Atif’s dazzling narration ‘The Journey Land of Mysteries’ exploring multiple versions of a life is both joyful and moving. It can be read as a book about smart writing. The author appears to hold all the cards to manipulate the characters. He doesn’t give his characters a second chance. Their little hearts, helpless little hearts beating wildly stop suddenly like a bird dropped from the sky. A single shot and the darkness falls all over.

The story never does a volte-face whoever are there i.e. Allianz, Nou, Sapporo or Santiago. This is the pattern of the book; there are many deaths or near deaths. It is so suffocating that inventing mouth-to mouth-resuscitation doesn’t seem to work; the dead or near dead are not granted another life. All are swept away by a tide of pain physical and emotional — ostensibly never to be seen again — but later they reappear in the narrative. Through these deaths/near deaths, the author, represent the deep anxieties of life - the result of erroneous actions.

This is a wonderful book, but I found myself asking certain questions: did all the characters in the story remember all the aspects of their actions, and did they regret not changing their lives when they had the chance? I understood, of course, that author is making various points about the life of his characters - that they do not hang by a thread and that their identities are not necessarily fixed and could easily have been other; that their destinies were necessarily uncertain.

In every seemingly serene, peaceful underprivileged or high-class locality, a near tragedy can produce a sequence of dark disclosures for every person. From the outside, it might look like all-perfect vicinity, but behind every individual’s personality fencepost lies hidden a web of puzzles that is found in almost every house. By the same token, Allianz, Nou, Sapporo and Santiago have untold stories of evil and resentment they wish to never disclose.

Up and down the path of life, people quietly bear the weight of their own pasts, until an accident suddenly upsets their delicate equilibrium. And when tragic circumstances compel someone to return to normal life after years of self-inflicted consequences, the muddle of the unwanted acts begins to unravel.

During the course of a blistering summer and icy winter of life, long-dormant secrets of self are revealed, and we come to learn that it’s impossible to really know them even by the closest to us.