The Wish Maker Unfolds A Cultural Tapestry Of Contemporary Pakistan

About a month ago on "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart began a segment about Pakistan by describing it as a “distant and mysterious land of spice and anger.” After momentarily feigning interest in the country's history and culture, he admitted, “Actually, we really just care about the nuclear arsenal.”

That wry jab at single-minded reporters might amuse Ali Sethi, who's written an earnest and deeply considered debut novel about Pakistan without pandering to the interests and clichés that dominate our nightly news. The Wish Maker is a family saga that gracefully unfolds a cultural tapestry of contemporary Pakistan.

Zaki Shirazi is the intelligent, observant son of two affluent matriarchs, his grandmother Daadi and his mother Zakia. His father died while flying a military plane when Zaki was “minus two months old.”

The Wish Maker begins with Zaki returning from an Ivy League education in the States to find his home, Lahore, Pakistan, changed. “There was an added estrangement from the known,” Zaki notes.

“The drive home was too short, the bridge too small, the trees not high enough on the canal ... the bed in my room was just a bed.” Sethi's clearly writing from recent experience — he, too, is an affluent Ivy League-educated 24-year-old of Lahore, Pakistan. Sethi's prose, however, is written with the disciplined distance and evenhanded delivery expected from someone twice his age.

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The Rich Tapestry Of Contemporary American Extremism

For many years he was the “monetary architect” of the “Liberty dollar,” much beloved by antigovernment “Patriots.” Nowadays, after running afoul of federal authorities over his alternative currency scheme, Bernard von NotHaus has embarked on a more ethereal venture: the Free Marijuana Church of Honolulu, where he is the “high priest.”

Church members step into the “High Room” for one toke of marijuana, then retire to a meditation room “in serene bliss,” according to a church press release.

Von NotHaus, 64, says he once was friends with psychedelic drug proponent Timothy Leary. But he’s best known on the radical right for creating “American Liberty currency” certificates in denominations of $1, $5 and $10, starting in 1998. The certificates were backed by stocks of silver and gold stored in Idaho, von NotHaus said.

The currency has been popular with extreme-right tax protesters and members of the radical “sovereign citizens” movement, who maintain that the federal government has no right to tax or otherwise regulate them, as well as those who believe that the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, is run by a private body for personal profit.

In 2007, federal agents raided the company’s Evansville, Ind., headquarters, and seized two tons of copper coins featuring Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and 500 pounds of silver from a Liberty Dollars warehouse. The raids followed the U.S. Mint’s issuance of a public warning to consumers and businesses that using Liberty Dollars in lieu of U.S. currency was a crime.

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