Violence, Grief, and Ghosts

Satire has been used widely to ridicule and criticize agents of oppression using literary tools like parody, irony, and exaggeration. In the wake of 9/11 2001, American neo-imperialist and global capitalist policies, effected through war, destabilized and destroyed many parts of the Middle East. However, this particular war also fused acts of violence with benevolence and aid. Pakistani Anglophone writer Mohammed Hanif’s novel Red Birds (2018), set in a refugee camp, uses multiple first-person narrators—representative of opposing sides—counter-realism, and multidirectional and referential satire to portray the war and its lingering aftereffects—emotional and physical—on all the actors involved. The novel satirizes the logic of war, intertwined violence and aid, and the intellectualization of destruction and grief. Importantly, while criticizing the US’s primary role in the war, the novel simultaneously also turns the gaze inwards, ultimately presenting a complex picture of varying degrees of resistance and compliance.