Tahmima Anam

:00:00. > :00:00.as actress Sian Blake says that he killed her and their two children --

:00:00. > :00:00.EastEnders. Those are the morning papers.

:00:00. > :00:36.Welcome to Talking Books. For years, the Hay Festival has been one of the

:00:37. > :00:40.most vibrant book festivals in the world, offering a chance to listen

:00:41. > :00:46.to some of the finest writers. But there are also world leaders, Nobel

:00:47. > :00:48.Prize winners, and stars from the world of entertainment. I'm

:00:49. > :00:54.delighted to introduce you to the writer Tahmima Anam.

:00:55. > :01:04.APPLAUSE Thank you very much. Thank you. Our

:01:05. > :01:09.guest today, Tahmima Anam, has a new book, The Bones Of Grace, where in

:01:10. > :01:12.the previous two books, Tahmima Anam was preoccupied with the birth of a

:01:13. > :01:20.nation and the way it was poised between that birth and a complex,

:01:21. > :01:24.perhaps problematic future. This book, The Bones Of Grace, is the

:01:25. > :01:30.story of one of that nation's daughters as she struggles to find

:01:31. > :01:37.meaning in her life. If you look at the Golden age and the two books for

:01:38. > :01:41.this, the weight of history is felt. The Bones Of Grace brings this

:01:42. > :01:45.tragedy right up to date. Why did you want to write a book

:01:46. > :01:50.specifically about your country's history, the mother country's

:01:51. > :01:54.history, this trilogy? I grew up outside of Bangladesh. My dad used

:01:55. > :02:00.to work for the United Nations. We moved all over the world. I grew up

:02:01. > :02:05.on these stories about this war he had been in. I found it both

:02:06. > :02:09.fascinating as a story but also something that I wish I had been

:02:10. > :02:14.part of. Being part of that war made them so sure of who they were. Their

:02:15. > :02:19.moral absurdities were very clear. This is where we come from, this is

:02:20. > :02:23.where we belong. There were cutting me all over the world and I did not

:02:24. > :02:27.belong in that way. -- karting. Writing these books was a way of

:02:28. > :02:36.carving a piece of history in my own way. The central protagonist, it

:02:37. > :02:40.struck me reading The Bones Of Grace, this is a book about someone

:02:41. > :02:48.in a no man's Lane. A psychological gnomon's land. She doesn't know

:02:49. > :02:53.where she belongs. Above all, she's caught between two great loves. A

:02:54. > :02:57.passionate love for the man she has met abroad, and the love that comes

:02:58. > :03:01.with duty, which we know about in our part of the world that comes

:03:02. > :03:06.with the person you are supposed to marry. Could you talk about that,

:03:07. > :03:10.being caught between those two places? And also if you might just

:03:11. > :03:17.read something from The Bones Of Grace that Illustrator. --

:03:18. > :03:21.illustrate that. She calls herself and in between species because she

:03:22. > :03:24.feels she is kind of neither here nor there. That is partly because

:03:25. > :03:27.she doesn't know her parents and also because she feels these

:03:28. > :03:33.different loyalties to different places. That confusion and

:03:34. > :03:39.ambivalence is encapsulated in her confusion about who to love. As we

:03:40. > :03:42.parted, Elijah, right in front of my husband, do you know what I was

:03:43. > :03:46.thinking? Not that I would regret the moment I left my apartment, the

:03:47. > :03:51.way I trashed everything that had passed between us in the last weeks.

:03:52. > :03:54.But abandoning you without even a proper goodbye. Not the bland

:03:55. > :03:58.expression I gave you is the last image of my face. Not the way I

:03:59. > :04:07.allowed Rashida to circle my waist with his aunt. None of that. As we

:04:08. > :04:11.descended the stairs, I was thinking if only he had arrived a few hours

:04:12. > :04:14.later, I could have spared him the side of gazing at you as if I had

:04:15. > :04:19.just been born and everything could have gone back to the way it was,

:04:20. > :04:22.and I would have had nothing to explain, no story to tell, no guilt

:04:23. > :04:27.weighing me down back stones around the ankles. Everything did not

:04:28. > :04:31.change enough, Elijah. Not enough for me to have the courage to tell

:04:32. > :04:35.the truth in the moment that the truth demanded. Not enough for me to

:04:36. > :04:39.stand by and leave behind all of the unanswered questions of my life. I

:04:40. > :04:43.wanted desperately to be the person who would upend everything and trust

:04:44. > :04:47.myself into the unknown at the future was not the only thing that

:04:48. > :04:50.was unknown to me. Because I was already on board, I could not cut

:04:51. > :04:54.the thread that held me in place. Not yet. -- unmoored. Isn't that it

:04:55. > :05:02.will? APPLAUSE

:05:03. > :05:06.-- beautiful. Fantastic. So this woman caught between these two

:05:07. > :05:15.loves, there are also other people caught between two places. And this

:05:16. > :05:22.while. -- whale. You will have to expand this. There is a whale called

:05:23. > :05:25.Diana. The great thing about being a writer is you can take all of the

:05:26. > :05:30.quirky things that are interesting to you and put them in books. If you

:05:31. > :05:34.try hard enough, you can weave them into make it as if they were meant

:05:35. > :05:39.to be there. I became fascinated with the story of this whale. Wales

:05:40. > :05:44.is a cc involved from land mammals that looked a bit like dogs --

:05:45. > :05:51.actually evolves. About 50 million years ago, they went into the sea.

:05:52. > :05:56.There was an in between species, called the walking whale, which both

:05:57. > :05:59.walked and swam. Although there were mammals they behaved like

:06:00. > :06:08.amphibians. She is obsessed with this mammal, with this whale. She

:06:09. > :06:11.goes on a dig to try to find it. She relates to this species because she

:06:12. > :06:16.feels like she is also caught in between, and read the novel, as she

:06:17. > :06:20.is looking for the bones of the whale, and trying and failing to

:06:21. > :06:26.find it, it is just a kind of image for her looking to find herself in

:06:27. > :06:33.the fossils of this creature that walked and swam at the same time. It

:06:34. > :06:39.is much more than professional curiosity. It is also a way for her

:06:40. > :06:44.to not answer the question she really wants to us, which is who and

:06:45. > :06:48.I? Instead of running her own origins, she is trying to find the

:06:49. > :06:52.origins of the whale. It is a displacement for her. In the book,

:06:53. > :06:56.she has fallen in love with this man and has to leave him. She goes on

:06:57. > :06:59.the dig for various reasons. It doesn't go well and she finds

:07:00. > :07:06.herself back home, in the family home in Dakar. She doesn't fit in.

:07:07. > :07:10.That's right. She goes home and it is this great homecoming. Everyone

:07:11. > :07:16.has been waiting for her. She has this retard she is supposed to

:07:17. > :07:20.marry. She actually does marry him -- she has this sweetheart she is

:07:21. > :07:25.supposed to marry. She never really felt at home there, and somehow the

:07:26. > :07:29.experience of going away and falling in love with some analysis and

:07:30. > :07:35.coming back next to she can never really belong there any more. --

:07:36. > :07:41.with someone else. She is symbolic of a board of us. It is so rare for

:07:42. > :07:45.people to be born and grow up and die in one place. We have these

:07:46. > :07:50.loyalties to all kinds of other places because of travel, love,

:07:51. > :07:54.relationships. She is one of those people. She reads her heart behind

:07:55. > :07:59.in these places whether she goes there to study all be with her

:08:00. > :08:03.beloved. So she ends up not fitting in when she comes back. She is

:08:04. > :08:09.deeply disturbed by this. I was interested in that partly because it

:08:10. > :08:16.is similar to both their histories. People born in Asia or Nepal, I

:08:17. > :08:20.certainly felt when I went back to Schumacher after 27 years, in my

:08:21. > :08:27.case, there was a kind of umbilical connection -- alike. But you say for

:08:28. > :08:35.your protagonist, it doesn't exist -- Sri Lanka. She says she feels a

:08:36. > :08:39.connection, but it is in the particular experiences. She loves

:08:40. > :08:45.the smell of paperbacks and the monsoon. She loves lying and the

:08:46. > :08:50.ceiling fan, or heard their mothers -- or her grandmothers. She does

:08:51. > :08:56.feel that umbilical connection. But I think that deep sense of belonging

:08:57. > :08:59.that her parents feel, and they are not only revolutionaries, but a

:09:00. > :09:06.mother is involved in a trial ringing war criminals to justice

:09:07. > :09:11.from the Bangladesh revolution. The country is the framework of their

:09:12. > :09:14.lives. I kind of grew up in that, where everything was about the

:09:15. > :09:19.country. We are going to go home and be patriots and serve the country.

:09:20. > :09:23.And that sense of if you were one of the privileged people who get to be

:09:24. > :09:28.educated and come from a country like that that has that image on the

:09:29. > :09:34.album cover of the starving child, you have a responsibility to that

:09:35. > :09:39.place. I think she doesn't feel that kind of moral response ability. In a

:09:40. > :09:45.sense, she is in the family, but not of the family -- response ability.

:09:46. > :09:52.That's right. I figured also has to do with class. The people who adopt

:09:53. > :09:57.her art related. -- are privileged. She knows she must have been adopted

:09:58. > :10:02.from a poor family. She looks around. She is driving in her

:10:03. > :10:06.air-conditioned car in the city and books around the streets and things

:10:07. > :10:11.any of these people could have been my mother. She sees herself in the

:10:12. > :10:14.faces of others. That is a fundamental aspect of her not

:10:15. > :10:19.feeling she fits into the elite society into which she has been

:10:20. > :10:25.adopted. Obviously you are not an orphan, but I wonder how much of her

:10:26. > :10:31.is actually Tahmima Anam. You were born in Bangladesh, but she moved in

:10:32. > :10:39.Thailand, New York, Paris. You are now settled here. How much is you? I

:10:40. > :10:43.was not adopted. But my sister told a lie which was a teenager, she told

:10:44. > :10:49.all her friends she was adopted, and she convinced everyone. My parents

:10:50. > :10:54.to this date to know this. They might if they watch this programme.

:10:55. > :10:58.I will have to pretend it is on at a time when it's not. My sister

:10:59. > :11:02.convinced everyone. She said I don't look like them and I don't like

:11:03. > :11:09.them, and somehow, she felt so much like an outsider in our family,

:11:10. > :11:12.probably that onset of teenage rebellion, she convinced everyone.

:11:13. > :11:15.That is where I got the idea that you could be completely embedded in

:11:16. > :11:20.a place and still feel like an outsider. In terms of my own

:11:21. > :11:24.biography, although I was not adopted, I did grow up outside

:11:25. > :11:30.Bangladesh and experienced a lot of these ambulances. -- this

:11:31. > :11:36.ambivalence. This novel feels much more intimate, and sometimes people,

:11:37. > :11:42.as they first book, I write something loosely autobiographical.

:11:43. > :11:47.My first it was more the story of my parents or grandparents. Stories are

:11:48. > :11:50.inherited. This felt more like I was being more open and honest about

:11:51. > :11:55.some of the conflicts I had had with the kind of history that had been

:11:56. > :12:01.presented to me. And that I was not really sure what to do with. I love

:12:02. > :12:05.being in Bangladesh, but in some ways I also feel it is not who I am.

:12:06. > :12:11.I don't speak the language as well as they should. I was at a book fair

:12:12. > :12:15.in Bangladesh and this woman came up to me and said, aren't you ashamed?

:12:16. > :12:22.She was young, about 19 or something. I said, and she said, you

:12:23. > :12:37.wrote your book in English. I'm too ashamed of yourself? -- aren't you?

:12:38. > :12:45.You are constantly asked by people to choose, to make a choice. Have

:12:46. > :12:48.you been confronted by that? I mean, I don't feel as much here that I

:12:49. > :12:53.have to choose because I live in a cosmopolitan city and it is all

:12:54. > :12:56.about dualities at all about people having relationships to other places

:12:57. > :13:03.and that's why I love being a part of that city. But fundamentally when

:13:04. > :13:10.you don't have some of those markers, like language or a

:13:11. > :13:16.particular real root in place, you have to be comfortable with a

:13:17. > :13:20.certain level of discomfort. So where are -- wherever I am I always

:13:21. > :13:24.wish I was somewhere else and when I get to that place a wish I was

:13:25. > :13:27.somewhere else. It isn't that I can ever get rid of that, it is that I

:13:28. > :13:33.have to accept that that's the fundamental condition of my life. I

:13:34. > :13:37.sort of feel, and it is something maybe people should talk about more,

:13:38. > :13:41.that in the end you get to a point where you stop trying to choose, or

:13:42. > :13:46.to fulfil this requirement, and just say, hey, it's a rare inheritance to

:13:47. > :13:53.be able to say there are two places or perhaps even three places that

:13:54. > :13:57.are home. Where you feel at home. Sure. And I think that's where she

:13:58. > :14:01.is trying to get to. It isn't about the questions of her life will

:14:02. > :14:04.fundamentally be answered, she may never discover who her mother is,

:14:05. > :14:11.she may never really feel that sense of attachment to a place that her

:14:12. > :14:16.parents want her to feel. It is that she will somehow be comfortable with

:14:17. > :14:20.those conflicts and with those ambiguities and that she will be in

:14:21. > :14:25.control. That she will on that. Say this is who I am, I don't have to

:14:26. > :14:34.choose. I can embrace the contradictions. You talk about her

:14:35. > :14:38.parents, freedom fighters, they helped create and with a shout of

:14:39. > :14:41.East Pakistan. We will get back to The Bones of Grace but the book that

:14:42. > :14:46.covers that, you call it a golden age. It was brutal. How many people

:14:47. > :14:53.were killed? There was a genocide. Many. Millions of people. You call

:14:54. > :14:59.it a golden age. What was that about? I did that because I grew up

:15:00. > :15:03.listening to the stories about war and then I decided to write a novel,

:15:04. > :15:09.so I talked to lots of people about what they had done during the war.

:15:10. > :15:12.And their stories were very tragic. People in their family who had been

:15:13. > :15:17.killed either army and had seen terrible things, but they also had

:15:18. > :15:21.the sense of purpose that came out. They were in their teens, born

:15:22. > :15:28.without a country and then made at country. They always look back on

:15:29. > :15:33.that time with great nostalgia. I mean, not perfect nostalgia, but

:15:34. > :15:37.with a sense of... That we really did something and changed the world

:15:38. > :15:43.and that such a magnetic story. For some people, they look back and even

:15:44. > :15:49.though it was violence and it was a genocide it was a golden age? Yes,

:15:50. > :15:53.and they talked about love. So many people told me that they fell in

:15:54. > :15:56.love during the war because some of the barriers between men and women

:15:57. > :15:59.kind of broke down at that time. They were allowed to mix more

:16:00. > :16:04.freely, they were calling each other comrades. So that really felt like a

:16:05. > :16:10.moment where they were young, they were fighting in war, falling in

:16:11. > :16:15.the. It felt cold. There are echoes of this golden age, the brutality

:16:16. > :16:19.and so on, in The Bones of Grace. It is a contemporary book. In

:16:20. > :16:26.particular there is a trial. It is only a small passage but there is a

:16:27. > :16:30.trial of somebody. It wasn't clear what he was supposed to have done. I

:16:31. > :16:36.think he was a collaborator. Is that true of Bangladesh now, that the

:16:37. > :16:40.past is very much part of the present and people are reminded of

:16:41. > :16:46.it? Sure. Bat file actually happened, so 44 years after the

:16:47. > :16:49.birth of Bangladesh the people, the local people, who collaborated with

:16:50. > :16:54.the Pakistan army to commit genocide and two very publicly supported the

:16:55. > :17:02.army were brought to trial for the first time. -- That trial actually

:17:03. > :17:07.happened. The leader of the organisation that was opposed to the

:17:08. > :17:14.war, that scene is set during his trial. I certainly feel like the war

:17:15. > :17:17.are still plays a very big part in people's imaginations. This idea

:17:18. > :17:21.that you can't just forgive and forget the past but you have to

:17:22. > :17:25.bring people accountable. If you are going to forgive something has to

:17:26. > :17:29.happen. You have to decide, we will never do this again. We are going to

:17:30. > :17:33.forever decide that this is a part of our history that we are going to

:17:34. > :17:40.lay to rest and that hadn't happened until that trail. I want to talk

:17:41. > :17:46.little bit about the other two books. Especially the second of the

:17:47. > :17:50.books. It is about the same family and a member of the family turns to

:17:51. > :17:55.religious extremism, I think that would be fair, and there's a

:17:56. > :18:03.conflict between a and sister. You said that as much as the West is

:18:04. > :18:06.afraid of Islam, others are much more frightened. What are they

:18:07. > :18:10.frightened of? Here in the rich world they are frightened of bombs

:18:11. > :18:15.going off. What is it people in the Muslim world are frightened of?

:18:16. > :18:20.Look, there are these little courts in America where they are trying to

:18:21. > :18:22.pass laws that say Sharia law will never be implemented in Texas or

:18:23. > :18:30.something. Which is never going to happen. That's just a way of people

:18:31. > :18:34.addressing their fear. But in Bangladesh we have political parties

:18:35. > :18:41.that are on the religious right that really wants to bring in religious

:18:42. > :18:44.law as part of the judicial code. But those people never get voted

:18:45. > :18:48.into power. They are always a minority. They exist as a minority

:18:49. > :18:54.but they never get voted into power because that's not what people want.

:18:55. > :18:57.Although people may be devout, they may have their prejudices against

:18:58. > :19:02.the outside world, they may have their sense of being part of a

:19:03. > :19:06.community that is enclosed. But they still hold to their civil rights and

:19:07. > :19:10.their secular beliefs. So the idea that in a country like mine that you

:19:11. > :19:16.would have religious law is terrifying to me. And it is much

:19:17. > :19:20.more terrifying than it should be to somebody who is born and brought up

:19:21. > :19:23.here because that's never going to happen. And this is a reality,

:19:24. > :19:26.although very remote, that is possible. So I was just trying to

:19:27. > :19:34.say that the consequences for a possibly very devout country of

:19:35. > :19:39.Muslim citizens of having religious law is in fact something that nobody

:19:40. > :19:42.wants. I mean, not nobody, not the majority of people as in the

:19:43. > :19:45.democratic process have never voted for. Let's get back to the love

:19:46. > :19:53.story. That's what this book is about. I merrily. When you write

:19:54. > :20:04.about the relationship between the two characters, it is soft, caring,

:20:05. > :20:07.beautiful. When you describe the relationship with Rashid it is about

:20:08. > :20:13.people getting up and having a fag in the middle of the night. It is

:20:14. > :20:15.very pedestrian. Were you trying to tell us something about arranged

:20:16. > :20:23.marriages? You don't think they work? Well, no, I think arranged

:20:24. > :20:30.marriages do work for a lot of people. I think Tinder is an

:20:31. > :20:33.arranged marriage. It works for people all over the world in

:20:34. > :20:39.different forms. What I was trying to say in this love triangle was not

:20:40. > :20:46.that the Asian relationship was somehow less romantic than the

:20:47. > :20:49.interracial relationship, it was that the relationship that had been

:20:50. > :20:55.presented to her as the one that would seem most natural was the one

:20:56. > :20:58.that felt deeply unnatural. And sometimes it is very contradictory.

:20:59. > :21:03.We can fall in love with people who have nothing to do with us and they

:21:04. > :21:07.have nothing in common. And yet she feels this deep connection with

:21:08. > :21:11.someone. So I wanted him to be as different from her as possible. So

:21:12. > :21:15.she says that she visits his home and she looks at the pictures on the

:21:16. > :21:19.wall and she says, well, you can trace your history back generations

:21:20. > :21:24.and I don't even know who my mother was, and yet I feel that we were

:21:25. > :21:30.born to be together. It is a very romantic thing, but I couldn't help

:21:31. > :21:37.it. No, I think it is powerful. That was the message. Maybe it is because

:21:38. > :21:43.I was a man but I kept thinking, poor Rashid! He is doing an

:21:44. > :21:49.honourable thing. I thought he was doing his duty. In the best way that

:21:50. > :21:53.it could, in the best way he was being taught. I am really glad you

:21:54. > :21:56.feel that way because they wanted you feel that he was honourable. I

:21:57. > :22:01.did that and they gave him that sense of generosity. He is a good

:22:02. > :22:07.guide. It isn't like the arranged marriage is with a terrible person.

:22:08. > :22:12.No, there are other people, men, in that book who behave very badly to

:22:13. > :22:18.their women, but he isn't one of them. Exactly. So he comes off

:22:19. > :22:23.looking pretty good. And Zubaida herself is the one who appears to be

:22:24. > :22:26.the one causing all of the problems and who is committing all of the

:22:27. > :22:32.betrayals. Sometimes people who read the book said, I didn't like her for

:22:33. > :22:42.a while. And I say, that's a cave. I didn't like her for a while! --

:22:43. > :22:44.that's OK. She comes around. We have spoken about identity, belonging,

:22:45. > :22:50.globalisation. But I would urge you to read this because at the heart of

:22:51. > :22:53.this book is a love story, a love triangle, if you like, and it's a

:22:54. > :23:13.very compelling read. Tahmima Anam, thank you very much. Thank you.

:23:14. > :23:20.Yet again on Friday some of us were dealing

:23:21. > :23:25.Here are couple of pictures taken by our weather watchers on Friday.