Belief - a novel

Belief, my debut novel, is being published next month. I began writing it soon after I came to Toronto; when I was working as a security guard at a condo in Toronto’s St. Clair West.

Those long and lonely (and cold) night shifts turned me into a fiction writer. The residents of the building supported me in many different ways, and one of them told me about Diaspora Dialogues. Through Diaspora Dialogues I met MG Vassanji, and then began a journey that transformed me as a person.

Writing doesn’t come easily to me, and it became more painful and nearly impossible during the four years I struggled with the manuscript. Many friends helped me in this process. And sometime in 2014, I forced myself to stop revising the manuscript.

Then, I waited for a publisher to publish the novel. Nobody seemed interested. If writing had been hard and painful, looking for a publisher was even more so. Helen Walsh of Diaspora Dialogues suggested I should ask Nurjehan Aziz of Mawenzi House (earlier known as TSAR). I did, and she agreed.

Finally, after a very long time, the novel is ready for its readers.

Here’s the media release from the publisher:

Belief

Mayank Bhatt

TERRORISM: What makes young people give up their secure, sheltered lives and take up causes that are sure to lead to catastrophe, for others as well as themselves? This is a burning question that plagues our times.

Rafiq is a young man whose family fled the 1993 violence against Muslims in Mumbai. His father Abdul is a sceptic in religious matter and a liberal, a former labour activist in India. His mother Ruksana is devout and practicing though also a former activist who worked with poor women. The family was reduced to humble circumstances after arriving in Toronto and with Rafiq working as a web-designer, is only now beginning to look up. They proudly own a house in Mississauga.

One late afternoon Rafiq’s father and his sister discover some files on Rafiq’s computer that strongly indicate that he is part of a Muslim-radical plot to bomb public places in Toronto.

Belief examines the radicalization and alienation among a section of young Muslims living in western societies, the interplay of attitudes on both sides that is leading to an ever-widening chasm.

It does this not polemically but by setting it within the intimacy of a family situation to accentuate the difficult material conditions and the conflicts of belief, values, and hope that immigrants face in a new country.

Mayank Bhatt immigrated to Toronto in 2008 from Mumbai (Bombay), where he worked as a journalist. His short stories have been published in TOK 5: Writing the New Toronto and Canadian Voices II. In Canada he has worked as a security guard, an administrator, and an arts festival organiser. He lives in Toronto with his family.

Contact

Nurjehan Aziz

naziz@mawenzihouse.com

Sabrina Pignataro

marketing@mawenzihouse.com

416-483-7191

You may buy the book from the publisher or Amazon or from me.

Also, visit my new website and the Facebook page for updates

A book all non-Muslims in Canada must read

The Syrian refugee crisis and the November 13 Paris attacks have once again focused the West’s attention on the Muslim Question. The abominable and reprehensible Paris attacks pushed to surface the subterranean resentment that western societies harbour against Muslims and Islam.

The attacks clouded the West’s effort to provide humanitarian succour to the millions of refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war. The debate that should have focused on humanitarian objectives such as providing safety to the fleeing millions, turned into fear-mongering, and resulted into devising means to delay if not altogether prevent the influx of the refugees.

Arguments such as ‘why the Arab states aren’t offering aid’, to ‘the Arab world need to fix its problems’, and statements such as ‘what if ISIS terrorists pretend to be refugees and infiltrate western societies to wreak mayhem’, to ‘western societies should have a right to choose who it should take in’, were (are) being made not merely in everyday conversations, but even in policy-making forums.

Canada emerged with dignity from a particularly brutish election campaign where the Conservative Party of Canada led by Stephen Harper focused on portraying Canadian Muslims as a threat to Canadian values. Justin Trudeau’s sweeping victory may provide temporary relief to the embittered Muslims of Canada, but unless the new Liberal government resolves to undertake substantive measures to rectify inherent biases, no far-reaching, long-lasting systemic changes should be anticipated.

Haroon Siddiqui at the
launch of the book

The Relevance of Islamic Identity in Canada published by Mawenzi House and edited by Nurjehan Aziz analyzes critical issues pertaining to Islam and Muslims. (Disclosure: My essay ‘Married to a Believer’ is in this anthology).

The essays in the volume discuss nearly every aspect of the Muslim identity, and how it impacts and is impacted by Canada. The collection is a great mix of the personal, the academic, and the polemical; all the 11 essays address the issue of identity, and what it means to be a Muslim immigrant. The volume offers a rich diversity of opinions, reinforcing the fact that Islam in Canada is multicultural and varied.

Nurjehan Aziz notes in the Preface of the book that it “began as an exploration” of “What does it mean to be a Muslim,” and that “the responses have been illuminating, though-provoking, and also disturbing…To our great surprise, however, one observation was almost universal: recently in Canada Muslims have found themselves the objects of vilification and discrimination. Being a Muslim then means being a victim.”

The three essays that contribute original though on the issue of Islam’s place in Canada are by Monia Mazigh (Reexamining Relations Between Men and Women); Haroon Siddiqui (Anti-Muslim Bigotry Goes Official – Canada’s Newest Dark Chapter); and Mohamed Abualy Alibhai (The Future of Islam in North America).

Audience at the launch program

Alibhai’s essay in particular is radically refreshing in its approach to interpreting Islam in present times. He says, “The time may have finally arrived when North American Muslims will not be able to avoid thinking the unthinkable with respect to verbal revelation. The experience of American Jews teaches us that once the question is raised it is difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. The only way forward is to abandon the belief in the verbal revelation of the Quran and to adopt an alternative understanding – for example, that the words of the Quran are words that Muhammed uttered and authored in a divinely inspired involuntary and creative cognitive-emotional state.” 

He adds, “Perhaps the most important practical consequence of abandoning the belief in the verbal revelation of the Quran is the corresponding abandonment of the legalist conception of Islam. The new denomination would be premised on the principle that it is possible to practice Islam without the Shariah.”

Jewels & other stories

A few months after I started this blog, I discovered that it’s easier to write about book launches than to write about books.

To write about books, you've got to read them. Reading requires time and patience. I don’t have either.

Moreover, writing about the books is fraught with awkward situations, especially when you know the writers.

Attending book launches and writing about them is  easier. Of course, I realise that nobody’s fooled into believing that I read all the books I write about.

The launch of Dawn Promislow’s Jewels & Other Stories was just about the most sensational book launches I’ve attended in a long time. 

Type Books at Queen Street W, the venue for the event, was packed. 

• Nurjehan Aziz was there. Aziz’s TSAR Publications has published Dawn’s book. 
• My mentor MG Vassanji was there. It’s always an honour to meet and talk to him. 
• Most my writer friends were there – Yoko Morgenstern, Joyce Wayne, Michael Fraser, and Leslie Shimotakahara.
• Antanas Sileika of Humber School for Writers and Olive Senior, poet, writer and Dawn’s mentor were there, too, along with probably many others whom I don't know. 

Dawn explained why she wrote these stories, read a passage from her book and answered a few questions.

To read Dawn’s interview on Open Book Toronto click here: Dawn's Interview.

I hope everyone who was there bought a copy of the book. 

For those who couldn’t attend or couldn’t buy, here’s your chance to do so. Click on this link: Jewels & Other Stories. 

Image: http://dd.maytree.com/index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=301&Itemid=30

Meeting writers

MG Vassanji, Dionne Brand, Olive Senior, Nurjehan Aziz, Priscila Uppal, Jasmine D’Costa, Tasleem Thawar, Dawn Promislow.

There were more writers per square foot at The Gladstone Hotel last Tuesday at Tsar’s annual book launch than I had seen in a long time.

And so many others that I didn’t know. Not that I know all of those I've listed here.

It was my first visit to Gladstone. I can't think of an equivalent institution in Mumbai.

I wanted to hear Sheema Khan read from her Hockey and Hijab – a book that has become a talking point everywhere in Toronto. She wasn’t there, but there were many other – equally interesting – writers.

I particularly liked the short passage Tasleem Thawar read from her work published in Her Mother's Ashes 3 (edited by Nurjehan Aziz), the translation by Chelva Kanaganayakam of a Tamil poem and Olive Senior’s passage from her book Arrival of the Snake-Woman.

For me the highpoint of the event was to be able to exchange a few guarded words with MG Vassanji. And to meet Dionne Brand. I went up to both of them and introduced myself.

Believe me, that is unusual; even though I sometimes do come across as a shameless self-promoter.

Thankfully, Vassanji remembered me. It'd have been rather embarrassing if he didn't. He's generally reticent, I guess. So exchanging a few pleasantries with him, especially after he had just won the Governor General’s prize for non-fiction, should count as a major achievement.

I told Brand that I had written about her book A Map to the Door of No Return (Notes to Belonging) on this blog and that I hadn’t read a more succinct explanation of VS Naipaul’s lifelong anxiety as a writer than her's. Brand said she had read my blog recently. That should count as another major achievement. Brand is Toronto's poet laureate.

Dawn Promislow introduced me to Olive Senior. I told her about my discovery of the Indo-Caribbean culture in Canada. Jasmine D’Costa introduced me to Fraser Sutherland, an editor of literary works and to Mariellen Ward, whose Hindi is as beautiful as she is.

A young woman walked up to me and asked whether I was a poet. I answered, “Yes. All my submissions have been rejected so far.” She laughed. I laughed, too. What can’t be cured has to be endured.

Everyone had a great time.

Image: Book Covers + Adobe Photoshop