In A Town of Non-State Actors

The wiki entry on Fatima Bhutto says, ‘she grew up effectively stateless’. In her debut novel The Shadow of the Crescent Moon, Fatima takes us to a town called Mir Ali, in North Waziristan, on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The novel is about people but it is also about the place. The location so much a protagonist here. ‘But the shadow of the moon never faded over Mir Ali. It hung over its sky night after night, condemning the town to life under its cold shadow.’ In conflicted lands, everything in a border town is at risk. Everything takes a beating: people, families, friendships, histories, geographies, and most of all identities and trust. Such towns are poisoned webs and one never knows where one will lose one’s mind, respect, or life or all. Fatima brings her angst of being stateless to draw out a richly human story of those who we normally call non-state actors from shadow lands that sit on national consciences.