ISLAMIC COMIX.

ISLAMIC COMIX. Ghalib Bilgrami Lakhnavi and Abdullah, Bilgrami The Adventures of Amir Hamza Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction Tr. Musharraf Ali Farooqi, New York: Modern Library, 2008. xxxix +948 pp. $45. "Eat Your Heart Out, Homer," begins WilliamDalrymple's celebratory review in The New York Times of thisendless, exuberant, fantastic Hindo-Persian romance aboutMuhammad's uncle, Amir Hamza. But Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, andthe usual epic suspects needn't feel threatened by a collection ofprose legends (however ably) translated from the Urdu. It's a horsein a very different garage. Dalrymple's piece was only one blossom in a vast bouquet ofadulatory critiques conferred on Amir Hamza, many so generically phrasedthat one had to wonder whether the writers had waded all the way throughthe nearly 1,000-page text. Perhaps not, but then this humon-gous workis itself only a nineteenth century precis of an incalculably vast (ca.46,000 page) cycle of stories, some of which go back as far as the ninthcentury; and nowadays we like our stories short. Still, while Amir Hamzais no Arabian Nights or Shahnameh (The Persian Book of Kings), it'sbuilt along the same generous lines. It has irrepressible gusto andflashes of narrative brilliance. It conveys a vivid sense of ahero-worshiping, pious-but-sensuous, and (sorry, multicult-uralists)utterly sexist folk culture. Amir Hamza (or, to give him a few of his fulsome appellations,"Lord of the Chivalrous, the crown bestower to kings who wear hisbadge of slavery, the slayer of beastly fire-breathing dragons, thecaptor of ferocious lions. Destroyer of Tilisms [magical spells], Devs[godlike beings] of Qaf and Zul-mat, the world renowned championwarrior," etc.) is basically Superman. Actually, he seldom wasteshis time on dragons or lions; he's too busy dispatching tens ofthousands of infidels to Hell (the ones he can't convert to"the True Faith"). Though only of normal human stature (asopposed to some of the giants he faces, who may be 180 or more yardstall), he has preternatural strength, which persists unabated throughoutthree vaguely traced three generations. His battle cry of "God isGreat" shatters the eardrums of opposing armies. Much of hissuccess derives from his ever-resourceful trickster sidekick, AmarAyyar, who is the ultimate jack-of-all-trades, general, spy, speedster,impersonator, cook, clown, musician, linguist--and rather moreinteresting than his boss. Amir Hamza, who knows all about Islam, but doesn't meetMuhammad until just before his own death, spends most of his workinglife in service to Naushervan, the emperor of Persia and a paganZoroastrian, whose daughter Mehr-Nigar he marries (among others), afterconverting her. Despite the fact that Naushervan never stops aiding,abetting, and listening to Amir Hamza's mortal enemies, the valiantArab never breaks faith with his faithless (or is he just clueless?)father-in-law, whom he saves from the brink of destruction butdoesn't manage to convert. Though Amir Hamza engages in a more or less non-stop orgy ofAchilles-Aeneas feats of slaughter, he does have a sort ofOdysseus-experience in the eighteen years he spends exiled in theparallel universe of Qaf, where he is separated from his belovedPenelopelike fiancee Mehr-Nigar and caught in the erotic toils of theCalypso-ish Aas-man Peri. He eventually makes it back to earth andMehr-Nigar, but immediately after the wedding launches out on aspectacular sexual marathon: "The next night he slept with SamanSeema Peri and ravished her as well. In this way, Amir took his pleasureof a different woman each night for forty nights and tasted the finestpleasures that life can offer." Thereafter, Amir "marries" a half dozen or so women, butlingers with each one only long enough to impregnate her with a son andmove on. In doing so he's simply following the advice given him ina dream by Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) who chides him for his excessivelamenting over Mehr-Nigar (dead from grief for her murdered son Qubad):"My son, it is against reason to reduce yourself to such a pitiablestate for the sake of a woman. In your life you will find thousands likeher. Many women will enter your service who would be far superior toMehr-Nigar!" And so they do. Which is not to say that women in this muscular roman fleuvefunction exclusively as delectable "recreation for thewarrior" (Nietzsche, in one of his worst moments). There are quitea few fiercely competent female rulers and fighters (Noor Bano, KhursidKhav-ari, etc.); and in the stunning, abrupt ending Amir Hamza himselfgets ambushed and beheaded by Hinda, mother of the prince of India, whoeats his heart and chops up his body into seventy pieces. Even thelovely Mehr-Nigar is handy with a bow and arrow. But, such scenes of Amazonian prowess aside, the women are at bestsecond-class creatures. Amir Hamza is angered by the birth of his oneand only daughter Quraisha (by the redoubtable Aasman Peri). He rebukes,but never punishes, his foster-brother Aadi Madi-Karib, who has a habitof killing pubescent girls with his monster phallus. At one point heswears to March on Ctesiphon, "reduce it to ruins, and give eversingle Sassanid's wife and daughter to the equerries and cameleersto do with them as they please." (The threat is never carriedout--Ctesiphon is, after all, Nausher-van's capital.) In thishyper-masculine world the supreme ignominy (it happens twice to AmirHamza's foes) is to be drugged, de-bearded, and posed while stillunconscious as if buggering a comrade, so that the victims awake to thewild hilarity of a crowd of onlookers. And then it's back to martial butchery in God's name.Amir Hamza's usual m.o. is to attack the champion of eachsuccessive kaffir horde (always idolaters, by the way, never People ofthe Book), lift him up by his cummerbund, body-slam him, and slice himin half like a cucumber. Doughtier enemies sometimes put up a longerfight; and they often save their skins and turn into allies by acceptingA.H.'s lightning-fast and incredibly persuasive proselytizing. Thataccomplished, however, religion barely gets mentioned, as the"Quake of Qaf" and his pals turn to more earthly concerns.Believers are reasonably well behaved, but never sanctimonious. When notbathing in the worthless blood of the vanquished, they know how to havea good time; and their campaigns have more the flavor of jousting thanof jihad. Somewhere around page 500 the reader is liable to be overcome withcombat-fatigue, but Amir Hamza soldiers relentlessly on. At long last hereturns to Mecca, his birthplace, where his stunning assassinationoccurs. Hinda first severs the legs of Ashqar Devaad, Amir Hamza'sphenomenal talking steed, then dismembers his dazed rider, and then begsforgiveness (from fear of retaliation) from Muhammad, who grants it.Most amazingly, the blame for Amir Hamza's death (and the earlierslaughter of his beloved companions) lies with Muhammad himself, whoconfidently predicted that his uncle would rout the infidels, but forgotto add "God willing." The Prophet also--such is thedastan-teller's license--made the mistake of boasting to his wifeAyesha about his teeth, which were so luminous that she could thread aneedle by their light--and so he lost a tooth in the final battle. Nowonder, as the now Toronto-based Far-ooqi reports, Pakistani religiousauthorities have shown zero interest in promoting this unorthodox saga(where delicious "moon-faced maidens" dance and singalluringly, where the wine never stops flowing, and joyful inebriationis viewed as positively as in The Rubdiyat of Omar Khayyam). TheBollywood possibilities here are infinite. For all the la-di-larhetorical flourishes of the chapter introductions ("Gardeners ofannals and singers of the nursery of articulation plant the trees ofwords row after row, and thus embellish the brightness of the page withthe flowers and redolent blossoms of colorful contents") Amir Hamzais at bottom no more complicated than any other cartoon superhero.There's no psychology or character development in his adventures.Chronology and consistency are merrily ignored (guns blaze and gunpowderexplodes in the seventh century). But, of course, that's the whole point--this is just fancypopular entertainment, thinly Islamized Persian tales transported to thesub-continent. If nothing else, it demonstrates something that Westernaudiences continue to be unaware of: that the Muslim imagination is farmore varied, eclectic, and unpredictable than the media-parade ofWahhabi photo ops would suggest. This exhaustive catalog of farawayplaces with strange-sounding names (Tal Shad-Kam, Bayaban-e-Mina,Haft-Sher, Siyah Boom, and so on) is marked by an almost unbrokenplayfulness (even during episodes of brutality where the westerner wouldcringe) and--there's no other word for it--fun, something like TheSong of Roland with a sense of humor. Osama bin Laden (whose Urdu by nowmust be good enough to read the original) would never approve.