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Dust on the Paw
Abdul Wahab, an Afghan science teacher, is eagerly anticipating the arrival of his British fiancée, Laura Johnstone, in the capital of his home country. Having met while Abdul was a student at Manchester University, the couple are eager to settle down in Isban. However, Abdul is not the only one interested in Miss Johnstone's arrival. Prince Naim, one of the sons of the king, sees the marriage as a symbol of a successful union between East and West, and in his hurry to cement this union, promotes Abdul into a position of power he is far from ready for. Meanwhile, the employees at The British Embassy are in turmoil at this new arrival and all the disaster they are sure this mixed marriage will bring.
454 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
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About the author
Robin Jenkins
54 books35 followersAuthor of a number of landmark novels including The Cone Gatherers, The Changeling, Happy for the Child, The Thistle and the Grail and Guests of War, Jenkins is recognised as one of Scotland's greatest writers. The themes of good and evil, of innocence lost, of fraudulence, cruelty and redemption shine through his work. His novels, shot through with ambiguity, are rarely about what they seem. He published his first book, So Gaily Sings the Lark, at the age of thirty-eight, and by the time of his death in 2005, over thirty of his novels were in print.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 2, 2024
The novels by Jenkins I have read so far have always been situated in Scotland so this one, set among the British diplomatic community in Kabul in the late 50s, marks a digression. (Jenkins did spend some in Afghanistan himself in the mid to late 50s and on the evidence here had a good insight into the country as he displays some sympathy for Afghans and their customs.)
The meat of the story is in the flurry caused by the intended marriage between local Abdul Wahab and Briton Laura Johnstone who met while he was studying in Manchester and apparently fell in love. The British set in Kabul is disturbed since the precedents for such marriages have not been happy ones. (They do mostly though seem to have been between relatively naïve young Englishwomen and Afghans who have misrepresented themselves as rich before the marriage.) One such, Mrs Mohebzada, is in despair due to her husband’s family’s insistence on her conforming to Afghan customs. She is trapped as she loves her children but they are deemed by Afghan law to be Afghani citizens and so not allowed to exit the country. Laura however is over thirty and a teacher so liable to be more level headed than most. And perhaps more strong-willed.
The universal consensus among the ex-pats is that the marriage must be prevented and steps are taken to dissuade Laura and also to lean on the headteacher of the school where she has applied to teach to turn her down and on the Afghan authoritiess not to give her a visa. Nevertheless, Laura persists and embarks on her visit (at first intended to be only for six months to see if she takes to the place.)
On the Aghan side Prince Naim sees the marriage as a way to symbolise a union between East and West as a step to modernising Afghanistan. All this has the potential to feed into debate about whether the women’s full body covering, here called a shaddry, enforced for locals but not for Westerners, ought to be abolished. An Islamic cleric, Mojedaji, at one point voices the opinion that, if it is, there will as a consequence be an increase in rape. (Aside. Surely this attitude speaks more about men’s behaviour than of women.) A shadowy but potentially menacing organisation called the Brotherhood attempts to recruit Wahab to its ranks - an opportunity for advancement he grabs eagerly.
Meanwhile in the background, and by no means the novel’s focus, the influence on the country of the Soviet Union is growing. A diplomatic visit by Minister Voroshilov is intermittently referenced through the book.
Racism explicit and implicit runs through the tale. Englishwoman Mrs Massaour is married to a Lebanese man and feels betrayed by the fact that both her children are deeper black than her husband. The loving marriage of journalist and poet Harold Moffatt and Lan, a woman of Chinese origin, is threatened by his reluctance to have children because of the prejudice they will suffer as ‘half-castes’.
Jenkins has Mrs Massaour venture the thought of the characteristic British failing - obtuseness, the centuries-old irremovable unawareness that other people in other countries ordered some things better. (In some British people the obtuseness was aggravated by conceit.) This is an attitude that still prevails in certain quarters.
Moffat says to his wife in relation to racism, “birds and animals join together to mob to death one that’s different from the rest. Human beings are civilized; their killing’s more subtly done, and it takes longer. It may take a lifetime, but, Christ, how much crueller it is”
The complicated relation between the British in Kabul and the local population is illustrated by the extravagant celebration of the anniversary (complete with captured guns) of an Afghan victory over the British. Such entanglements are hard to shake off especially if they keep recuring. The seeds of Afghanistan’s current situation are already present in the book.
Dust on the Paw (the title is a quote which means small people are of no significance to the wielders of power) is a book of its time - for example it employs the words Negroes, Dagos and wog along with the racist attitudes of some of its characters - but still of interest.
The meat of the story is in the flurry caused by the intended marriage between local Abdul Wahab and Briton Laura Johnstone who met while he was studying in Manchester and apparently fell in love. The British set in Kabul is disturbed since the precedents for such marriages have not been happy ones. (They do mostly though seem to have been between relatively naïve young Englishwomen and Afghans who have misrepresented themselves as rich before the marriage.) One such, Mrs Mohebzada, is in despair due to her husband’s family’s insistence on her conforming to Afghan customs. She is trapped as she loves her children but they are deemed by Afghan law to be Afghani citizens and so not allowed to exit the country. Laura however is over thirty and a teacher so liable to be more level headed than most. And perhaps more strong-willed.
The universal consensus among the ex-pats is that the marriage must be prevented and steps are taken to dissuade Laura and also to lean on the headteacher of the school where she has applied to teach to turn her down and on the Afghan authoritiess not to give her a visa. Nevertheless, Laura persists and embarks on her visit (at first intended to be only for six months to see if she takes to the place.)
On the Aghan side Prince Naim sees the marriage as a way to symbolise a union between East and West as a step to modernising Afghanistan. All this has the potential to feed into debate about whether the women’s full body covering, here called a shaddry, enforced for locals but not for Westerners, ought to be abolished. An Islamic cleric, Mojedaji, at one point voices the opinion that, if it is, there will as a consequence be an increase in rape. (Aside. Surely this attitude speaks more about men’s behaviour than of women.) A shadowy but potentially menacing organisation called the Brotherhood attempts to recruit Wahab to its ranks - an opportunity for advancement he grabs eagerly.
Meanwhile in the background, and by no means the novel’s focus, the influence on the country of the Soviet Union is growing. A diplomatic visit by Minister Voroshilov is intermittently referenced through the book.
Racism explicit and implicit runs through the tale. Englishwoman Mrs Massaour is married to a Lebanese man and feels betrayed by the fact that both her children are deeper black than her husband. The loving marriage of journalist and poet Harold Moffatt and Lan, a woman of Chinese origin, is threatened by his reluctance to have children because of the prejudice they will suffer as ‘half-castes’.
Jenkins has Mrs Massaour venture the thought of the characteristic British failing - obtuseness, the centuries-old irremovable unawareness that other people in other countries ordered some things better. (In some British people the obtuseness was aggravated by conceit.) This is an attitude that still prevails in certain quarters.
Moffat says to his wife in relation to racism, “birds and animals join together to mob to death one that’s different from the rest. Human beings are civilized; their killing’s more subtly done, and it takes longer. It may take a lifetime, but, Christ, how much crueller it is”
The complicated relation between the British in Kabul and the local population is illustrated by the extravagant celebration of the anniversary (complete with captured guns) of an Afghan victory over the British. Such entanglements are hard to shake off especially if they keep recuring. The seeds of Afghanistan’s current situation are already present in the book.
Dust on the Paw (the title is a quote which means small people are of no significance to the wielders of power) is a book of its time - for example it employs the words Negroes, Dagos and wog along with the racist attitudes of some of its characters - but still of interest.
October 11, 2017
The book was written in the 1960s about the British delegation in Afghanistan in the 1950s and how they deal with the proposed marriage between an English woman and an Afghan man. Class, cultural and racial differences are at the forefront of the story. The unwanted efforts of the various Embassy staff to dissuade both parties to the marriage, the behind the scenes machinations of Afghan royalty and politicians bring to light the differences and similarities in world view of the British upper class and Afghan cultures. I enjoyed the book very much.
March 16, 2013
Originally published on my blog here in March 2011.
A truly superb but apparently forgotten novel, Dust on the Paw is set in Afghanistan in the fifties, when the seeds of that troubled country's current problems were already apparent.
Set in the consular community in Kabul, with most of the characters being staff of the British Embassy, the story describes the complications which occur when a marriage between an English civil servant and an Afghani science teacher is taken up by an important member of the Afghani royal family to promote as part of the cultural progress made by the country. The problems arise from the extremes of the cultural differences between the two countries - Afghanistan was a conservative Moslem nation even then - and through the racist attitudes, conscious or not, of the British.
This may not sound like an ideal environment for humour. Jenkins uses sly, cynical comments on the pomposity of the British consular staff and the clash between two very different cultures - particularly in their treatment of women - to amuse. The humour does not use race as its basis. (It is perhaps important to say this because of the age of Dust on the Paw). Instead, the butt of the humour is the racism of the characters, like a subtler version of the ridicule of Rigsby in seventies sitcom Rising Damp. This mostly works extremely well, though for me it dips in the first of the three big set pieces of the novel (two parties, one informal and one formal, and a military parade), as the focus is on one Englishman's failure to come to terms with the racism which he has just become aware of within himself, and the unpleasant behaviour it provokes in him. In fact, he is so unprovokedly unpleasant that this is easily the least enjoyable part of the novel.
The background of Afghanistan in the fifties is very atmospheric, and (according to the preface to this edition) accurate. Clearly, it was a country which Jenkins loved, even if he did not like everything about it. He is particularly unhappy about the shaddry - his now old-fashioned Anglicisation of chadari, the enveloping garment now better known in the West as a birqa. Even fifty years ago, progressives wished to abolish the garment, and the women who wore them were known as "shuttlecocks" because of their appearance. The sexism of Afghan life is portrayed as the counterpart to the racism of the British.
The title is a quotation from a medieval Persian poet, who described the poor as the dust on the paw of the rich and powerful; Afghan politics is portrayed by Jenkins as rife with corruption, even without the meddling of the external powers which was going on since the clandestine machinations of the British and Russians imperial powers in the nineteenth century and which continues today with the war to defeat militant Islamic terrorism in the country.
The impression which Dust on the Paw makes is something between Lawrence Durrell's Antrobus stories and the The Balkan Trilogy of Olivia Manning. The consular background has got something to do with this, but I think that Jenkins' novel will appeal to admirers of either, within certain limits - the themes are a lot more serious than in the Lawrence Durrell.
This is a forgotten masterpiece by a writer I didn't know before the title caught my eye.
A truly superb but apparently forgotten novel, Dust on the Paw is set in Afghanistan in the fifties, when the seeds of that troubled country's current problems were already apparent.
Set in the consular community in Kabul, with most of the characters being staff of the British Embassy, the story describes the complications which occur when a marriage between an English civil servant and an Afghani science teacher is taken up by an important member of the Afghani royal family to promote as part of the cultural progress made by the country. The problems arise from the extremes of the cultural differences between the two countries - Afghanistan was a conservative Moslem nation even then - and through the racist attitudes, conscious or not, of the British.
This may not sound like an ideal environment for humour. Jenkins uses sly, cynical comments on the pomposity of the British consular staff and the clash between two very different cultures - particularly in their treatment of women - to amuse. The humour does not use race as its basis. (It is perhaps important to say this because of the age of Dust on the Paw). Instead, the butt of the humour is the racism of the characters, like a subtler version of the ridicule of Rigsby in seventies sitcom Rising Damp. This mostly works extremely well, though for me it dips in the first of the three big set pieces of the novel (two parties, one informal and one formal, and a military parade), as the focus is on one Englishman's failure to come to terms with the racism which he has just become aware of within himself, and the unpleasant behaviour it provokes in him. In fact, he is so unprovokedly unpleasant that this is easily the least enjoyable part of the novel.
The background of Afghanistan in the fifties is very atmospheric, and (according to the preface to this edition) accurate. Clearly, it was a country which Jenkins loved, even if he did not like everything about it. He is particularly unhappy about the shaddry - his now old-fashioned Anglicisation of chadari, the enveloping garment now better known in the West as a birqa. Even fifty years ago, progressives wished to abolish the garment, and the women who wore them were known as "shuttlecocks" because of their appearance. The sexism of Afghan life is portrayed as the counterpart to the racism of the British.
The title is a quotation from a medieval Persian poet, who described the poor as the dust on the paw of the rich and powerful; Afghan politics is portrayed by Jenkins as rife with corruption, even without the meddling of the external powers which was going on since the clandestine machinations of the British and Russians imperial powers in the nineteenth century and which continues today with the war to defeat militant Islamic terrorism in the country.
The impression which Dust on the Paw makes is something between Lawrence Durrell's Antrobus stories and the The Balkan Trilogy of Olivia Manning. The consular background has got something to do with this, but I think that Jenkins' novel will appeal to admirers of either, within certain limits - the themes are a lot more serious than in the Lawrence Durrell.
This is a forgotten masterpiece by a writer I didn't know before the title caught my eye.
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July 1, 2008i think the book got a bit redundant on the difficulties of people accepting interracial marriages and biracial children. it was written in another era, which makes more sense, but is still a bit hard for a biracial child to stomach.
August 13, 2013
Read for work book club. Just not my thing, dragging out for 400+ pages, things that could have been covered in half the time because he took the time to explain the symbolism of every little thing. Dude, we got it.
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