The Bargain from the Bazaar

Starred review from January 6, 2014
In his first book, Ullah intimately examines the effects of America's War on Terror on the everyday people of Pakistan through the story of one family living and working in Lahore. Meet the Reza family: Awais, his wife Shez, and their three boys: Salman, Daniyal, and Kamran. A middle-class family whose livelihood comes from a shop located in Anarkali Bazaar, opened by Awais's father. We follow the evolution of everyday life for the Rezas during increasingly turbulent times in Pakistan, from the boys' marriage arrangements to navigating a city with police checkpoints. Over the years Daniyal becomes radicalized. We watch his family worry as he trains for a suicide bombing and when Awais is arrested and questioned, he recalls his time in a POW camp during the civil war that broke up the country. Using a sharp journalistic eye, Ullah brings the bustle of Lahore and its market to life. He manages to quietly convey America's role in the conditions facing this long-troubled country without becoming preachy or needlessly partisan. Ullah is more interested in the common Pakistani experience and he makes these moments shine: the family watching the news or the moments in Kamran's classes. These instances powerfully demystify Pakistan for western audiences.

January 1, 2014
On-the-ground look at how terrorism has come to shape the way ordinary middle-class Pakistani families navigate their daily lives. Harvard-educated, Pakistani-American policy expert Ullah (Vying for Allah's Vote: Understanding Islamic Parties, Political Violence, and Extremism in Pakistan, 2013) chronicles the political and personal impact of a series of terror bombings in Lahore, focusing on the family of one of the perpetrators, Daniyal Reza, to illustrate the pressures on middle-class Pakistanis who do not support extremism. Daniyal was estranged from the members of his family, all of whom opposed his activities. Nonetheless, after he killed himself during a suicide bombing, his father, Awais, was jailed as an accomplice to his son's crime and only released after a public outcry against the injustice. Ullah attributes the arrest to American pressure on the corrupt Pakistani government to "root out its clandestine links to insurgent groups." As a former member of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke's Pakistan/Afghanistan policy team with family ties to Pakistan, the author was able to draw on his familiarity with the traditions and culture of the region. He spent eight years in the field researching the events surrounding a series of terrorist acts in Lahore. These included in-depth interviews with the Reza family and their associates, national and regional officials involved with the case, and former terrorist sympathizers. He describes the situation in which violence and bullying have become an everyday experience for ordinary people who do not embrace fundamentalism--e.g., women traveling alone and shopkeepers playing pop music. Ullah locates the roots of the problem in British imperial rule, with Pakistan divided into "two non-contiguous regions, West and East Pakistan [now Bangladesh]." The pressure on secular government only increased after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Ullah ends his engrossing book on a note of guarded optimism: "[F]amilies, like entire nations, must sometimes have to withstand the toughest trials and endure almost beyond endurance."

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February 15, 2014
Ullah spent more than eight years researching this true story of a Pakistani family, the Rezas (whose names are changed to protect their identities). The highly readable narrative, moving from 2008 through 2012, illustrates how the Reza family members adapted and endured in a culture that had been ripped from them by British rule and then returned under the interfering thumbs of the U.S., Russia, and others, with a political structure cobbled together from a host of competing traditions, including feudalism, Islamism, and Western-style representational government. Reza family patriarch Awais, a shopkeeper in Lahore's Anarkali Bazaar, fought in the Bangladesh War. His three sons chose distinct pathsshopkeeper, like his father; law student; and suicide bomber (one of the ultraholy men hell-bent on pleasing God in heaven). Their mother, Shez, never lost her faith in her family, herself (she became a nurse), or her religion. Ullah's straightforward depiction of bravery, love, and hard and illuminating truths about contemporary Pakistana shaky nation that might just hold the key to victory over the superpowers of terrormakes this an excellent book-club choice.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)