The Wandering Falcon
By Jamil Ahmad
‘It is true, I am neither a Mahsud nor a Wazir. But I can tell you as little about who I am as I can about who I shall be. Think of Tor Baz as your hunting falcon. That should be enough’
A boy is born to a fleeing couple, seeking refuge from their implacable tribe in the Baluchistan desert. So begins the story of Tor Baz – the black falcon – whose travels with the nomads of that region provide a precious and unique perspective on a disappearing way of life.
The Wandering Falcon has been hailed as ‘One of the greatest collections of short stories to come out of South Asia in decades’ by the Guardian. The debut work of Jamil Ahmad, a 78-year-old former civil servant, The Wandering Falcon has been thirty years in the making. The author spent most of his career in the borderlands of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan and has created a powerfully mythic yet sensitive portrayal of the customs and culture that he came to know and understand.
Mohsin Hamid called the book ‘Superb. The work of a gifted story teller who has lived in the world of his fiction, and who offers his readers rare insight, wisdom and – above all – pleasure’. The Sunday Times described the ‘starkly compassionate portrait of the conditions of life in an inhospitable landscape, where emotions such as love and sorrow somehow survive intact’ as ‘reverberant, deeply moving’, while the Independent has praised ‘the magnificence of Ahmad’s storytelling’, labelling The Wandering Falcon a ‘gem of a find’.
Jamil Ahmad now resides in Islamabad, Pakistan.