The Bargain from the Bazaar by Haroon K. Ullah: book review

The Bargain fromthe Bazaar (2014) is subtitled: A Family’s Day of Reckoning in Lahore. Set in Lahore, Pakistan, and the Anarkli bazaar from the 1970s it begins with Lance Corporal Awais Reza, the son of a cloth, rug, and jewelry merchant. He returns home in 1972 after walking out of a Prisoner of War (POW) camp at the age of 25. A year earlier he had hastily married sixteen-year-old Shez Akbar and enjoyed a two-day honeymoon before his military unit was surrounded and he was held prisoner near Dhaka, East Pakistan [now Bangladesh] during the war.

After Reza’s escape from the POW camp, he leaves the military. After the death of his father, Reza assumes ownership of the store in the Anarkli bazaar. Shez commences working as a nurse at the local hospital. Their lives focus on raising their three sons.

By 2008 the oldest son, Salman, helps at the bazaar after a miserable stint in the army. He is partial to a nugget of opium from time to time to relieve the stress and frustration of the day. Their second son, Daniyal, drops out of school and joins a group of “extreme-minded religious students” – eventually becoming radicalized, and choosing to stay at a Taliban Safe House. The youngest son, Kamran, is a third year law student beginning a romantic friendship with a fellow student Rania.

It is a time of rising insurgencies and terrorist bombings throughout Pakistan. The Taliban are planning suicide attacks at three locations in Lahore: a shopping mall, a police station, and a university. But when a policeman is shot outside Reza’s bazaar, the family is placed at risk.

The novel is a well-paced story about the government and the public trying to come to terms with violent extremism within their own country, and the fragility of trust and truth. The book commences well and maintained a level of interest past the halfway mark. However, the dialogue is stilted with a sense of predictability – I would have preferred more intertwining threads and intrigue. I also think the title could have been more appropriate.

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