Exhausted writers often try to simplify their work by boiling their stories down to two predictable trajectories: someone new comes to town, or someone dies. Declan Walsh’s second book, The Nine Lives of Pakistan is a far cry from such simplifications. The author’s narration of his decade-long sojourn as a reporter in Pakistan with first The Guardian and then as bureau chief for The New York Times, loops together the comings and goings, entrances and expulsions, assassinations and appointments as told through his interactions and exchanges with the country’s most extraordinary set of politicians, provocateurs, activists and rogues, in a humming narrative of human movement.

The narrative is propelled by an enigmatic start, where Walsh finds himself escorted to and locked in a posh hotel room in Lahore. It is May, 2013 and he has just been ordered expelled from Pakistan on suspicion of “undesirable activities”. He only has 72 hours to make an exit. Guarding his room outside are the much feared, plainclothes officers. His words “…the angels came to spirit me away” create a first impression of an all-powerful group whose presence is felt throughout the book. On the streets, he hears the chants of a charged body politic gearing up for the upcoming general election.

The anecdotes in the Nine Lives that Walsh chooses to chronicle are interwoven with his years of on ground reporting, assembles a portrait of the socio-political, religious, cultural and intergenerational traumas that bind the country, explain the state of affairs and some generational fault-lines.

Declan Walsh’s particular fascination with the rogues is palpable in his action-packed travels to the far-flung districts of Pakistan where tribal chiefs and religious leaders are in the vanguard and the state struggles to forge a relationship with them. In Lakki Marwat, a dusty backwater of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, he acquaints himself with veteran Pashtun politician Anwar Kamal Khan, who is fabled for his swashbuckling show-down with Tehreek-i-Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, to prevent the Taliban from causing trouble in his area. He also provides an illuminating account of the literature-loving Baloch, Nawab Akbar Bugti, who is later assassinated.

Then there is the tale of the preacher, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, a jihadist who was killed in the Lal Masjid siege in Islamabad for harbouring terrorists. The time that Walsh spends with these characters observing them going about their daily grind, as opposed to simply interviewing them is what makes the account so engaging. Subsequently, he find connections between past events and the consequences that follow. For example, Ghazi’s death is what apparently catapulted Baitullah Mehsud into founding the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.

Walsh’s strengths as a correspondent are obvious. He is clever, articulate and light on his feet. Some of his descriptions are exceptionally clear and pithy.

There is a chapter on the human rights stalwart and crusading lawyer, Asma Jahangir who was subjected to house arrest on account of her opposition to Musharraf’s military regime. The “cast-iron idealist” remained committed to reforming Pakistan’s bigoted laws and advocated tirelessly for its most vulnerable: defenceless women and minorities who found themselves shackled to the uncompromising blasphemy laws. It is through the tireless efforts of Asma Jahangir that movements such as the annual Aurat March are allowed on the political map.

Walsh is at his best when shedding light on the discourse related to home-grown extremism and the societal acceptance of it. This is encapsulated in the pages dedicated to the flamboyant Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer who was assassinated by his bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri, for sympathising with a Christian woman accused of blasphemy. Mumtaz Qadri was later heralded as a saviour of Islam. Taseer’s death seemed to make the minorities more vulnerable.

Although this book is about the author’s experience of living in Pakistan as a reporter, it does not allude to a hagiographical account. Instead it is an oversized polemic against the forces that keep the country divided. Walsh’s strengths as a correspondent are obvious. He is clever, articulate and light on his feet. Some of his descriptions are exceptionally clear and pithy.

The Nine Lives of Pakistan

Dispatches from a Divided Nation

Author: Declan Walsh

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Pages: 368

Price: Rs 1,895

The writer is the Digital Director of the Lahore Literary Festival