Suspended Somewhere Between: A Book of Verse

by Akbar Ahmed

Akbar Ahmed’s Suspended Somewhere Between is a collection of poetry from the man the BBC calls “the world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam.” A mosaic of Ahmed’s life, which has traversed cultural and religious barriers, this book of verse is personal with a vocal range from introspective and reflective to romantic and emotive to historical and political. The poems take the reader from the forbidding valleys and mountains of Waziristan in the tribal areas of Pakistan to the think tanks and halls of power in Washington, DC; from the rustic tranquility of Cambridge to the urban chaos of Karachi. The collection spans half a century of writing and gives the reader a front row seat to the drama of a world in turmoil. Can there be more drama than Ahmed’s first memories as a boy of four on a train through the killing fields of North India during the partition of the subcontinent in 1947? Or the breakup of Pakistan into two counties amidst mass violence in 1971? Yet, in the midst of change and uncertainty, there is the optimism and faith of a man with confidence in his fellow man and in the future, despite the knowledge that perhaps the problems and challenges of the changing world would prove to be too great. Ahmed’s poetry was a constant source of solace and renewal to which he escaped for inspiration and sanity. He loved poetry of every kind whether English, Urdu or Persian. Ahmed was as fascinated by Keats and Coleridge as he was by Rumi and Ghalib. For us, he serves as a guide to the inner recesses of the Muslim world showing us its very heart. Through the poems, the reader gets fresh insights into the Muslim world and its struggles. Above all, they carry the eternal message of hope and compassion.

Genres: Poetry

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Akbar Salahuddin Ahmed, is a Pakistani-American academic, author, poet, playwright, filmmaker and former diplomat. He currently holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and is Professor of International Relations at the American University in Washington, D.C.Immediately prior, he taught at Princeton University as served as a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He also taught at Harvard University and was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Anthropology. Ahmed was the First Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. In 2004 Ahmed was named District of Columbia Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. A former Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland, Ahmed was a member of the Civil Service of Pakistan and served as Political Agent in South Waziristan Agency and Commissioner in Baluchistan. He also served as the Iqbal Fellow (Chair of Pakistan Studies) at the University of Cambridge. An anthropologist and scholar of Islam. He completed his MA at Cambridge University and received his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He has been called "the world's leading authority on contemporary Islam" by the BBC.

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has been far too long since I read poetry, as this book reminded me. I found it beautiful, thought-provoking, incredibly moving, catching me up completely on Brixton and Deptford buses full as they were with a crush of people and conversations. The poem to his daughter made me cry in fact, standing on the 436 so packed I could barely hold my book up to continue reading. I confess that for this poem it was less due to the power of his words themselves, but because the memories of my father are so sharp and his power to evoke both universals and particularities so strong.

The mark of a true poet.

My favourite section was probably the first, Pakistan, evoking a world unknown to me the way I would wish to experience it in all its pain and beauty (yet a world well known to so many who traveled with me on those buses, I wanted to give poems as gifts, reach out and ask them what they thought, but I was too shy):

Some beggars swayed
gnarled dying tree-trunks meanly clothed in
winter leaves through which dim-glowed
the night-lights of bazaar nocturnality;
some beggars dressed in tiers
of foreign suiting and fat of Lahori
ghee
rolled one eye to Arabic calligraphy
one to Swiss watch;
some eyes shone in kahjal darker than
the effacing black burkha
but the lights danced in their
brief pupils.

here spin 'dogs perennially unimpressed' and trains through the night fleeing violence and partition, dying children, kingdoms and tales of glory, Kabuls and Samarkands. Through all of the poems wander those questions so familiar to us all on the nature of god and solitude, life and death, love and conquest and history. It reminded me just how much the act of reading good poetry feels like an enrichment of your life as it is lived.