Daniyal Mueenuddin's new book of stories charts a timeless tradition of cunning and corruption in Pakistan

In an interview to The New Yorker last year, Daniyal Mueenuddin described his story, The Golden Boy, as a piece that is “embedded in a much larger history”. “Like a peripheral scene in some enormous battle painting—think of Goya or Breughel,” the Pakistani-American writer put it. “All our stories—the stories of our lives—are so important to us, and yet we live in a corner of the painting, a corner of the tapestry.”

In his new book, This is Where the Serpent Lives, published nearly two decades after his luminous debut In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (2009), Mueenuddin revives the metaphor, indulging in the delicate art of teasing out the stories that lie on the fringes, usually hidden in plain sight.

Like Shakespeare’s minor characters, the men and women in Mueenuddin’s tales contain multitudes, secreted from the public eye, sometimes even from themselves, surprising the reader at every turn.

This is Where the Serpent Lives is made of three long stories and one novella, loosely interconnected by overlapping characters. Mueenuddin had followed a similar structure in his previous book, where the technique had felt fresh and original. Somewhat disappointingly, the new collection feels overpowered by themes he has already explored, with his unique sense of humour, in intimate detail. It is tough, if not impossible, to replicate the impact of a contemporary classic like Nawabdin Electrician (2009), though The Golden Boy, which opens the new collection, tries its hardest to live up to the standards of the author’s earlier work.

This story, along with Muscle, both previously published in The New Yorker, bring back echoes of Mueenuddin’s familiar light touch, his unsparing eye for detail, and the psychological acuity with which he imagines his characters. In contrast, The Clean Release and This is Where the Serpent Lives, the penultimate and final pieces respectively, feel weighed by too much realism. The lavish interiors of the farmhouses are invoked with unfailing regularity, bordering on tedium. The heirs are as degenerate as their ancestors, high on drugs, sex and booze, squandering their fortunes at home and abroad.

As the landed gentry—the master class—persists with their corrupt and debauched ways, the “servants” get embroiled in their own private dramas. In spite of strict hierarchies, the boundaries blur. Avarice acts as a great leveller as the downstairs world begins to mirror the ethos of the upstairs—if not in terms of material reality, then in matters of ambition and greed.

At his finest, Mueenuddin reveals these similarities to the reader by exploring subtle shifts of power. Mai Viro, an elderly maid, snitches on the young Bayazid, thereby ending his dream of getting close to the daughter of the family. Decades later, Bayazid pulls the same trick on Saqib, his protege of sorts, when he discovers the latter cheating on their employers, Hisham and Shahnaz Atar.

Mai Viro’s machination to get rid of Bayazid, or Bayazid’s decision to throw young Saqib to the wolves, isn’t motivated by their uniquely evil natures. Rather, their actions are undertaken as protectionist measures—to ensure that the old order is not rocked.

For Mai Viro, the very presence of Bayazid, who begins life as an orphan working in a tandoor shop near a middle-class family home, defies every norm she has imbibed from a ruthlessly feudal, classist and patrician society. For her, the proximity of such a low life to her employers not only defiles their status but also acts as a threat to her authority as the first among the serving class.

Mueenuddin drives home the irony of the situation by playing it against the backdrop of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s rise with his socialist rhetoric in Pakistani politics. Bayazid’s fall from grace, orchestrated by a woman from a station similar to him, is testimony to the hollowness of any vision of equality, let alone upward mobility, promised by the leader. Not only are their hopes dashed by their superiors, they are also betrayed by people from their own class.

The scenario is not much different when Bayazid catches Saqib red-handed decades later, cunningly pilfering from the Atar farm. Hisham and Shahnaz, who become fond of Saqib for his quick intelligence, bestow on the boy a chance to improve his lot. Instead of employing him as an indentured labourer at the farm, as his father had been, Saqib is made a manager. He is given an independent mandate to grow crops that he deems fit. And yet, the young man is waylaid by his own rapacity, too clever by half to rise the straight and narrow way.

In the last quarter of the book, Saqib gets his comeuppance, not only from Bayazid and the Atars, but also from the police, who torture him mercilessly. His punishment is described in gory detail, in a striking contrast to the patronage he receives earlier in life, as though to reinforce the severity of his transgressions.

Ending the book with this episode of wild justice as the status quo is viciously restored, Mueenuddin leaves the reader cynical and heavy. The barbaric values of the 1950s seem unchanged half a century on.