Orientalism in Nadeem Aslam’s “The Blind Man’s Garden”

M Ans Ali

Sidra Masood

Department of English Literature, The University of Lahore

Ms Namra Najam

Post Modern Fiction

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Abstract:

This research paper delves into the theme of Orientalism as portrayed in Nadeem Aslam's

novel, "The Blind Man's Garden." The Novel tells the story of two different countries and

their cultural differences concerning the 9/11 incident and Islamic phobia elements. The term

"Orientalism" has been a subject of significant scholarly discourse since Edward Said's

seminal work, wherein he examined Western perceptions and representations of the East.

Aslam's novel, set against the backdrop of post-9/11 Afghanistan and Pakistan, provides a

rich tapestry for the exploration of Orientalist themes. This paper aims to analyze how the

author engages with and challenges Orientalist tropes, employing both narrative and character

development to offer a nuanced perspective on the East-West relationship.

Keywords:

Islamophobia, Orientalism, Post 9/11 fiction, Orientalist Tropes, East-

West Relationship

Introduction:

This study examines the ways in which Muslim writers from South Asia addressed the task of

elaborating on the connections between Islam and the 9/11 assaults on the World Trade

Centre in New York City, as well as the ongoing "war on terror." The fall of the Twin Towers

on 9/11 altered not just the geopolitical basis of the planet, but also the possibility of oneself

in a cosmos of tremendous flightiness and deeply rooted dread. Individuals were labelled

"psychological militants" based on racial and stringent affinities, putting ethnicity and strict

character under the microscope. By examining a Muslim diasporic fiction by a British-

Pakistani writer, this article confounds the meaning of Muslims' post-9/11 prescriptive

recognition designs. Orientalism is the impersonation or depiction of Eastern ideas. These

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delineations are often done by Western scholars and fashion designers. Specifically,

Orientalist painting, which depicted "the Middle East" more explicitly, was one of the various

specialisms of nineteenth-century scholarly handicraft, and Western nations' writing

developed a comparative interest in Oriental topics.

"The Blind Man's Garden by Nadeem Aslam (2013)" is a novel that describes the situation in

Afghanistan after 9/11. The Blind Man's Garden encourages readers to investigate the reasons

for the 9/11 tragedy. It condemns all violent perpetrators, whether Taliban, Afghanis, British,

Americans, or Russians. Since 9/11, it has been common for Western popular authors to

characterise Muslims in general as "terrorists" or sympathisers of terrorism in the West.

Orientalism encompasses the generation and obliteration of numerous literary and artistic

works that may initially seem different but collectively contribute to the reshaping of the

Orient. These creations make explicit statements about the Orient, authorize certain ideas

regarding it, educate about it, establish settlements within it, and exert control over it. This

paper aims to explore the proposition that Nadeem Aslam's international novel can be

interpreted as part of a post-9/11 endeavour to reassess contemporary understanding of the

Islamic world. The novel seeks to reframe perceptions of Muslims, fostering connections

between Muslims who adhere to different interpretations of Islam and non-Muslims. The

analysis delves into how global literature constructs and moulds networks of Islamic

affiliation, questioning where Aslam's characters seek a sense of identity.

Aslam's enormous novelistic environment is rich in detail and description, but its central

themes are ethical questions based on how humans treat one another. Aslam uses fiction to

pull out moral choices and to depict his characters wrestling with the appropriate action

almost didactically to emphasise the difficult and energising moral high ground.
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Theoretical Framework

Neo-Orientalism notions have affected discourse in the humanities and social sciences.

Orientalism is a word used by experts in the arts, literature, and cultural studies to describe

the portrayal of the East. Oriental civilizations encompass geographical regions, Southeast

Asian cultures, and certain Western artists. We can claim that language was a key component

in the understanding of Orientalism notions in 19th-century European perspectives, but the

Orient signified the Arab world or the Middle East. The Orient indicated inlay to Europe's

east. The Neo-Orientalists saw Islam and its movements as a global threat to Western culture

and civilization. The words "Muslim" and "Arab," which were indicators of non-unholy

identity, became code phrases for Neo-orientalists. Neo-Orientalism is primarily interpreted

in literature throughout the humanities. Both Orientalism in the 18th and 19th centuries and

neo-Orientalism post-9/11 are rooted in essentialist notions and reconstructions of Islam,

Muslim cultures, and Muslim populations in Western societies. This framework

oversimplifies the rich tapestry of Islamic tendencies, diverse traditions, various religious and

secular perspectives and movements, and the broad spectrum of social and cultural facets

within Muslim communities.

The theory of neo-orientalism analyses the influence of methods on identity negotiations,

exploring how cultural producers with Eastern affinities arrive at an Orientalized East. Neo-

orientalism offers a more contextual examination of how models of belonging have been

shifting via the demand for rights for their new identities and manifesto for self-

representation by emphasising persisting configurations of power and places of influence.

Through postcolonial structuralism, orientalism has had the most influence on literary theory,

cultural behaviour, and cultural patterns.

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Said was more concerned with defining progression than change since he was aiming to

establish the presence of an ideological norm. Regardless, he recognised that Orientalism was

a dynamic and adaptable arrangement of depictions, that as a style it had a broad variety of

articulations, and that it held up a mirror to the present moment. Said's Orientalism holds that

rather than serving as a means of intellectual inquiry and the study of Eastern civilizations,

the majority of Western research on Islamic civilization was an intellectual exercise—a

psychological exercise in the self-affirmation of "European identity."

Nochlin was one of the first craftsmanship historians to expressly apply Orientalism ideas to

the study of craftsmanship history in her 1983 paper, "The Imaginary Orient. “Her main point

was that Orientalism must be viewed through the lens of "the specific force structure in which

these works came into being," in this case, nineteenth-century French imperialism. Nochlin

focused mostly on the nineteenth-century French artisans Jean-Leon Gérôme and Eugène

Delacroix, both of whom characterised 'orientalist' issues in their work, notably The Snake

Charmer and The Death of Sardanapalus, respectively.

Orientalism is an individual failing rather than a failure of society, culture, and human

behaviour as a collective. We cannot pass judgement on someone as a person. It cannot

identify one's experiences; it only relates to an individual as a member of a society. We

sometimes see Arab culture, customs, and human behaviour as weird and uncivilised. That is

a representation of someone's feelings about a culture or society. The Arab Islamic World has

been conceived by the Western World. Overall, Orientalism was a product of the Vietnam

War, when America's "ideal and most splendid" had driven the country into an intractable

entanglement in Southeast Asia's wildernesses.

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Said's Orientalism signalled a change in thinking about the West's relationship. Said tried to

uncover how political power infiltrated Western political, cultural, and intellectual depictions

of the Middle East.

Discussion and Analysis

Writing, Islam, and Faith in South Asian Fiction after 9/11

In the preface to his 1981 work "Covering Islam: How the Media and Experts Determine

How We See the Rest of the World," Said expresses concern about the prevalence of

generalizations about Islam in the West, viewing them as an accepted means of defaming

foreign cultures. He reflects on his surprise at being approached for information about the

Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995 solely based on his Middle Eastern and Muslim

background.

"I think I got about twenty-five calls... I was never more forcefully shown the utterly false

connection between Arabs, Muslims, and terrorists; I was struck with the sensation of

shameful complicity against myself (Covering Islam P-12).

These findings from the late 20th century suggest a totalizing trend in American discourses

about Islam, which has unsettling ramifications for Muslim writers who could be asked to

comment on matters of public interest in the West. They provide a starting point for this

investigation, which asks how four Muslim South Asian writers addressed the task of writing

about their ties to the Islamic faith in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, which

overtook the Oklahoma City bombings as the most devastating on US soil to date.

Said's central claim in Orientalism is that the Orientalists' portrayal of the East's otherness

completely justified the West's intense yearning. Since it is easier to be strong if you don't
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understand your opponent, his thesis of otherness and the sociological generalisation of the

East may be found in the West's military conquest of Arab governments. The proverb "know

thy foe" is the genesis of Orientalism, claims the study of Orientalism, Misinformation, and

Islam. One may argue that Islamophobia is a subset of the current Orientalism he talks about

in the previous 50 years.

Said blames the West's mainstream media, films, news, books, articles, and images for

instilling a veiled feeling of predominance and innate prejudice (what he calls show

Orientalism) even today, when describing the Orient. When the world is forced to create

another phrase to judge progress across the board extremism, it is a dismal and frightening

turn of affairs,' writes Kofi Annan (2004). This is the case with Islamophobia.' The analogy

might be made with the obvious need for an Orientalist examination and the concept of

Orientalism.

The Blind Man’s Garden

Nadeem Aslam is an extraordinary storyteller. Nadeem Aslam's 2013 book The Blind Man's

Garden is more than just a work of masterful storytelling; it takes readers to the centre of the

fighting, to towns and villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan during the US-led war in

Afghanistan that followed September 11th, to locations associated with both jihadists and

peace-loving people, to torture camps, and to starry nights under the Afghan sky. Aslam's

enormous novelistic environment is rich in detail and description, but its central themes are

ethical questions based on how humans treat one another. Aslam uses fiction to pull out

moral choices and to depict his characters wrestling with the appropriate action almost

didactically to emphasise the difficult and energising moral high ground that he promotes at

all costs. Even though the events of 9/11 occurred thousands of kilometres away from
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Pakistan. Even in the little fictitious town of Heer, the repercussions are felt keenly.

Afghanistan is at war, and young men are sneaking across the border to join the fight.

Unlike them, Jeo and Mikal are going to Afghanistan to help the injured, not to battle. Jeo is a

third-year medical student who wants to help. Aslam creates characters like Jeo and Mikal,

who are both Muslim and Pakistani, gentle, loving, and peaceful, from the start, writing

against the grain and avoiding stereotypes. The Blind Man's Garden is mostly on Mikal's

capacity to withstand and overcome horrible traumas such as internment in an American

interrogation camp, from which he is thankfully released but not before killing two of his

American captors in self-defence.

Re-culturing Islam in Nadeem Aslam’s Mausoleum Fiction

In his work The Blind Man's Garden, Aslam depicts two separate communities from two

different nations, diverse cultures, and many more. His research focuses on how the

nonsectarian fiction Maps for Lost Lovers (2004) and The Wasted Vigil (2008) reveals the

pre-Islamic Persian and Sufi mystique and traditions that are part of the legacy of South and

Central Asian Islam. It confirms that his post-9/11 books reimagined those areas and Muslim

peoples, kid warriors and migrant housewives alike, as both allowing to influence a

structuralist Islam. Significantly, in his books, Muslim protagonists from various theological

origins are given an unexpected opportunity to uncover the commonality of outlooks through

contemplative art. Aslam appears to be engrossed in an ethical, humanitarian, and creative

rove that might be regarded as re-culturing Islam while creating these fictions.

Muslims are annoyed, assaulted, slain, and mistreated in modern multicultural social regimes

all over the world as a result of increased migration, and they have a rigid and ethnic position.

In Sweden, for example, there were around 200 registered police reports containing

Islamophobic mind processes in 2007. Islamophobia is an enigma that fascinates a wide

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variety of highlights and articulations. These highlights and articulations must be understood

from the perspective of the West rather than the East (the Occident vs the Orient). Muslims

are perceived in these behaviours as a homogeneous group with the same rigorous mindset.

Islamophobia is also a legacy from a previous era, in which power systems create issues and

obstacles today.

Islamophobia is becoming subtler in South Asia. Except for Pakistan and Bangladesh, the

majority of South Asian states have tiny Muslim populations and anti-Muslim sentiment is

mostly a political ploy. The plight of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims is one of the most

heinous disasters in South Asia right now. The situation has gone unnoticed, resulting in a

terrible death toll and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of mistreated Rohingyas.

Late twentieth and twenty-first-century Pakistani writing might be read as a kind of resistance

to the Western perception of Muslims as terror mongers. In the context of 9/11, we discover

Aslam's The Blind Man's Garden to be a great achievement. It invalidates Western prejudices

towards Pakistanis by sending a message of peace. It deals with war on fear and a wide

variety of viciousness in an unexpected way. It creates a horrible climate of mistrust and

doubts in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. During the initial extended periods of spread.

Aslam is fundamentally different in that he believes that no human opinion can be

disregarded as incomprehensible or insignificant. 'If You are a martyr's widow,' a woman

asks Naheed, 'what are you doing walking outside the home with your face uncovered?' You

should be ashamed of yourself now that everyone is looking at Naheed. He sacrificed his life

for Allah, and you are dishonouring him.' (P-106, The Blind Man's Garden).

In the midst of intense emotions—pain, anger, love, regret, and sorrow—other women

passionately shouted these heartfelt words. This study delves into the portrayal of South

Asian Muslims' encounters with annexation and connection in fictional works. The narrative

challenges the notion that Islam imposes such strict boundaries on women that they cannot
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find solace within themselves. Drawing from "Maps for Lost Lovers," the protagonist,

Kaukab, attempts to console herself with an image of Adam sculpted from the world, with his

head crafted from East's soil, his chest from Mecca, and his feet from the West (pp. 31-32).

However, this reflection raises doubts about her ability to truly feel at home in her own body,

resonating with the poignant tones characteristic of Aslam's works on the diverse lives of

Muslims worldwide.

"Blind Man's Garden" portrays acts of terrorism that are comparable to Aslam's conviction

that Islamic fundamentalists commit such acts of violence on a daily basis—not against

Americans abroad, but rather within Muslim nations where valid experiences of Islam are

marginalised by Islamist censors. This narrative underscores the challenges faced by

displaced migrant Muslim characters who grapple with extreme Western atheism or Arabian

Islamic ideologies on a nuanced, diasporic level. "Blind Man's Garden" unfolds as a cyclical

event, with everything converging at the same point in the complex interplay of fairness and

cruelty. Despite the hurdles, the East and West ultimately find a harmonious equilibrium.

Faith and Fundamentalism

In The Blind Man's Garden, Aslam distinguishes between religion and fanaticism. He

demonstrates that individuals of religion are secure in the principles conferred upon their

societies or communities, but others with fundamentalist tendencies demolish and defame

them for political reasons, as mentioned above. Rohan, Jeo's father and Mikal's foster father,

is the founder of a school and a lovely garden, and the story's blind man, even though he does

not lose his sight until later in the novel.

"Tara Condemns the women of Kabul for being wise enough to stay in their burkas because

more often than not there are no second chance or forgiveness if you are a woman and have

made a mistake or have been misunderstood" (The Blind Man's Garden, pp. 128-129).
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The Eastern Muslim community is notable for its stringent religious formation. Different

people react differently to vulgarity or breaching religious precepts. The most significant

distinction between Western and Eastern faiths is that the former was and is typically more

merciful than the latter. The context of culture and religion is widened, yet there is no room

for one's particular ideas. The oppressive religious rules take swearing quite seriously. A

devout believer in Islam does the Namaaz five times a day. A Muslim has five principles, the

foundation of religion, often known as the five pillars of Islam. Belief in the oneness of God,

daily prayers, charitable giving based on income, fasting during Ramadan, and completing

the hajj trip once in a lifetime, if one can afford it (Fatah, 17). In Islam, it is completely

forbidden for women to go outside without a veil. He has been to what he views to be "the six

centres of Islam's bygone brilliance" (The Blind Man's Garden, p. 21).

He creates school names. Ardent Spirit is divided into six homes, each named after one of the

six centres: Mecca House, Baghdad House, Cordoba House, Cairo House, Delhi House, and

Ottoman House. Each home is surrounded with foliage from its region, and a plaque

connected to its door describes the house's cultural and religious significance: "Mecca House

is situated amid Arabian date palms that release their fruit onto the roof throughout the

summer".... "A tablet bearing the name is affixed beside the entrance, reading, it was to

determine the exact direction of Mecca that Muslims developed an interest in geometry and

mathematics, eventually inventing trigonometry." The remarks were meant to remind the

youngsters of their heritage and Islam's rich record of knowledge and accomplishment. (The

Blind Man’s Garden p-21)

A former Pakistani army major named Major Kyra takes control of it years later, and he has

plans to attack a chapel connected to a school where his kids attend. Major Kyra and his

trainees are little jihadists, but as Aslam demonstrates, they can shatter the lives and hopes of

those who dwell in the novel's universe. They are labelled as "thugs with Korans" (The Blind
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Man's Garden p-305), and they assault the Christian school, killing many people, including

Rohan's Muslim foster son, Basie, who teaches there, as well as many others, including

children!

For an un-Islamic practice, the Taliban used to smear representations of live things and

painted objects. Marcus uses mud to reproduce all living organisms on the painted wall to

conserve the paintings. Rohan burnt paintings on Sophia's bedside during her final hours,

fearing that Sophia's disobedience would be punished, leading to paganism. He wishes she

would regret her deeds and fears she would not be admitted to paradise for such idolatry.

Sophia was a talented painter who co-founded the school with Rohan. Before constructing the

school, Rohan visited six sites from Islam's illustrious past; 'from each, he carried back a

handful of dust.' P-8 (The Blind Man's Garden).

"Women are not allowed into graveyards according to our religion" (The Blind Man's

Garden, p. 105). According to the Prophet (Peace be upon him), "Allah has cursed women

who frequently go and visit graves." Women may pray for the souls of their loved ones at

home, and we will do the same for the man killed in Afghanistan.

Behind the promises of benign and Universalist liberalism that allow the West to justify

large-scale violence, the force of that ideology isn't always simple to perceive. "It is always

preferable to begin atonement as soon as possible." That is why we will not have to dread the

repercussions of our actions in the grave or on the Day of Judgement" (The Blind Man's

Garden, pp. 107-108). In these verses, Aslam depicts the Day of Judgement and the night in

the tomb where everybody must answer for the crimes that they committed. It is preferable to

forgive faults committed both intentionally and subconsciously. One should make amends for

his misdeeds as quickly as feasible.

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Conclusion

Nadeem Aslam's "The Blind Man's Garden" displays a subtle and comprehensive depiction of

cultural crossings, power relationships, and the influence of global events on human lives. As

the story progresses, it becomes clear that Aslam uses the Orientalism lens not just as a

thematic background, but also as a tool to examine the intricacies and implications of East-

West connections. The characters wrestle with issues of identity, agency, and the

ramifications of historical events, providing readers with a profound meditation on the

complexities of cultural perspectives.

The work exposes the delicate interplay between human relationships and bigger social

situations via the characters of Jeo and Mikal, urging readers to examine preconceived

conceptions and prejudices connected with the Orient. Aslam's work, which is rich in vivid

imagery and poetic language, encourages readers to interact with the individuals' hardships as

well as the greater ramifications of Orientalism, transcending basic dichotomies. "The Blind

Man's Garden" is a sobering reminder of the long-term consequences of war, relocation, and

cultural misunderstandings. Aslam invites the reader to examine their own biases and

reevaluate the dominant myths surrounding the East by weaving together numerous

narratives and views.

The novel serves as a vehicle for a deeper investigation of humanity's common experiences,

universal ambitions, and the capacity for empathy to transcend cultural and geographical

borders. As readers weave their way through "The Blind Man's Garden," they are pushed to

consider the fluidity of cultural identities and the importance of recognising the shared

humanity that links us all, regardless of our cultural heritage.

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