Sunday Salon – Review of “Children of Dust: A Memoir of Pakistan” by Ali Eteraz

Ali Eteraz’s coming of age memoir takes us from his upbringing immersed in conservative Islam in Pakistan, to his education in philosophy and postmodernism in the West, to his epiphany about who he is when he is back in the Muslim world.

Eteraz has no qualms about showing us all his wavering, flaws and warts. It’s a big risk with a memoir, because readers might not like him enough to continue. But we get something valuable if we stay the course: Eteraz is without a doubt an interesting person, and moreover shares with us an inside look at a childhood overshadowed by Islamic teachings and religious madrassas (schools), and some plain language elucidation about the Quran and Islam.

I loved learning more about Islam. I had no idea, for example, that the Prophet Sulayman is none other than who we in the West call Solomon, son of King David (Daud), or that Isa, son of Maryam is the same as Jesus, son of Mary. I had thought that the Quran is considered holy in the same way the Bible is considered holy, but I learned differently. Eteraz explains:

“The Quran existed jointly with God. Timeless, immutable, perfect, the Quran was all Allah (though not all of Allah was the Quran). Allah had poured it through the mouth of Muhammad, and as it existed on paper now was how Allah intended for the Quran to look, taste, and sound. The Quran was the Islamic equivalent of Christ. The act of repeating the Arabic words, as they passed through the mouth and throat and echoed in the chest, was a form of transubstantiation: a way of making what was divine enter the human body.”

Well, you can certainly see why mistreatment of the Quran at Guatanamo by Western soldiers was such anathema to the prisoners there.

Eteraz’s memories about madrassas are pretty frightening. Young boys were physically abused – beaten, humiliated, harangued, even in one case raped. He doesn’t claim all madrassas are like this, but the ones in his experience certainly were. (The beatings were justified as helping to prepare the boys to serve Allah later in a greater capacity by being prepared for life’s pain.) No wonder this boy grew up to change his name to Ali Eteraz (“noble protest”) and to challenge the authority of ultraconservative Islam.

And yet, Eteraz has trouble escaping fundamentalist Islam’s noose. His friend Ziad observed:

“You have to ask yourself what you’re fighting for, Ali. Are you an enemy of Islamic fundamentalism simply because it pisses you off, or do you actually support liberty? If it’s the latter, why do you have to talk about Islam all day? If it’s the former, you have to ask yourself why you let your life be controlled by being pissed off. Or . . . maybe you’re just desperate to be relevant.”

Talks with Ziad, many as emotionally charged as this one, eventually lead Eteraz to understand what it is he believes.

Ali Eteraz

Evaluation: The press release on this book characterizes it as “astonishingly honest” and “darkly comic.” I would agree with the former, but with the latter I would only accept the word “darkly.” I thought it was a sad book. I found many elements of what happened to Eteraz to be horrific. Even his parents, seemingly very loving, instilled fears and expectations in him about religion that I thought tended toward the abusive. This book reminds me of Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander. Auslander also decried the deleterious and pervasive effects of an orthodox religious upbringing. No matter how he tried to reject it, it continued to inform his existence. I would say that Auslander’s book is more accurately described as “comic” however. But both of these books teach by example that bringing up children to fear God by issuing threats and inculcating stories of the harm their sins will bring upon the world is destructive to the human spirit.

Rating: 3/5

Published by HarperOne, 2009

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