NAZAN SAATCI / View of Lost and Found by Karim Khan by Nazan Saatci on Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 12:56pm

NAZAN SAATCI / View of Lost and Found by Karim Khan

by Nazan Saatci on Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 12:56pm


Karim Khan , Peshawar: Feb 4 2009

Nazan Saatcisi’s creativity radiates itself in her experimental prose that blends nonfiction and parable with imagery of nature, teaching a lesson and gifting compassion to its readers. What moved me to write this appreciation is her view This Forest is Mine, published in Daily Times (January 29, 2009), a story told with all the effulgence of literary flair and beauty of language that complement the appeal to love of nature. Nazan Sacchi’s View of Lost and Found

Sacchi’s care for the animal world, living in natural harmony without malice, takes us to the scene of a jungle where we see different creatures living in their niches; but all connected through their common habitat – the forest. There are no intruders on the scene, and so we feel the peace filtering through every sentence of the writer’s description depicting the forest life. Then the undesirable happens; bullets are fired and blood is spilt – innocent blood of animals that do not hate or kill for fun; the humans have arrived as hunters. Many animals lose their kin; and with the arrival of humans, fear has made its appearance in the forest. The trial passes and fear lingers, also precipitating grief over the loss and anxiety about the future.

The belongingness among the forest’s inhabitants, however, continues as Raja – the lion king – assures them of security and survival. A young chimp, who has lost his mother to the human aggression, feels he is lost. Raja makes him see how being ‘lost’ in the dangerous world is better than being ‘found’. Nazan Sacchi’s criticism on the danger of human destructiveness manifests its meaning in the contrast with the animal world where ‘lost’ is not lost but ‘safe’; safe from human brutality. And in the modern world of thoroughly archived identities and totalitarian monitoring of people’s activities, much like George Orwell’s 1984, being connected and found both translate into ‘danger’ and ‘pain’. For conscientious souls, perhaps Nazan Sacchi’s prose is the kind of inspiration to find ways for somehow getting ‘lost’.

Tags: Nazan Sacchi, lost and found, this forest is mine, nature

Karim Khan

Peshawar, Pakistan

Karim Khan is a graduate in geology and English literature. He writes in various genres and styles. He is the author of four books and the editor of the print quarterly 'Recovering the Self' (Michigan) - all published under his pen name Ernest Dempsey. He is working on his first novel.