it's being seen as a test of a peace deal between the government and the former guerrillas of the farc, now a left—wing political party. conservative parties bitterly opposed to the peace agreement hope to win an absolute majority. satellite photographs released by the human rights group amnesty international suggest the myanmar military has been building bases in villages where rohingya muslims have been forced off their land. amnesty called it a "massive land grab." myanmar‘s government has not yet responded to the report. the veteran british entertainer, sir ken dodd, has died at the age of 90. his stage debut was in 1954 and he continued to perform until last year. he was famous for his ability to reel offjokes for shows regularly lasting as long as four hours. he had been ill and married his long—term partner on friday. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur.

globalisation is based on movement — of money, goods, ideas and people, across continents and national borders. in a world of glaring inequality, it has stirred a powerful backlash, manifested in the rise of nationalism and identity politics. and this clash of human impulses is fertile territory for my guest today, the pakistani novelist mohsin hamid. in his novels, he has explored cultural, economic and religious tensions between east and west, rich and poor. his latest book focuses on migration. why does it frighten so many of us? mohsin hamid, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you. i want to start with this interesting idea of yours, that you, you say, are a mongrel through and through. what do you mean by being a mongrel? well, i was born in pakistan, i moved to california when i was three, back to pakistan at nine, america 18, london 30, and back to pakistan about nine years ago. and along the way, i have become a mixture of things. so i can't think of myself as just pakistani, or just british, orjust american. i am a mixed—up kind of creature, a hybrid, and that is what i mean by mongrel. it's a term that we tend to think of as kind of negative. yes, i mean, do you wear that badge with pride? i do, i think that is something we should all wear with pride, because everyone is

a mongrel, actually. we are descended from all sorts of people, and we have travelled and we have mixed through our ancestry, but also in our own lives. but it is such an interesting statement, everybody is a mongrel. because, of course, most people don't want to think of themselves as mongrel. indeed, the notion of belonging, having a clear identity, having a group, a tribe that is yours, that is something that seems today, in the 21st century, to be extraordinarily important to people. i think it is very important. i think that the sense of belonging to a group of people, having connection to those people, is very important. but what happened some time ago was the people we actually had a connection to, our immediate, you know, family and clan, was replaced by this idea of the nation, the nationstate, which is kind of a fictitious connection. we don't really have a personal connection to most people of our nation. well, for you, maybe, but maybe not for most people. i wonder, because of your rather special international upbringing, with a well—to—do family, who moved with you to america and then could afford to put you through a us university, and you got a very good job — you know, you are a part of a sort

of a global elite, which most people in most parts of the world are simply not part of. that's true, absolutely. that said, i mean, my childhood was spent trying to blend in with other people. so i was like a chameleon, you know, more pakistani in pakistan, more american in america. and as i got older, i began to be comfortable being a bit of a misfit, a sort of a strange, semi—foreign creature. but, as i have become comfortable with this, what i find is how many other people find themselves feeling foreign. i think everybody feels foreign, actually. so, you know, the only gay child in a straight family feels foreign. the only daughter with five brothers feels foreign. a poet in the engineering faculty feels a bit foreign. there is a sense each of us has of being a bit different, of not fitting in. just one more political thought about this notion

of identity and belonging. it is a very interesting statement which the british prime minister, theresa may, came out with not so long ago. she said, if you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are in fact a citizen of nowhere. you don't understand what the very word citizenship means. do you feel yourself, you know, with this mongrel idea of yours, to be a citizen of the world, rather than anywhere in particular? i think we can have multiple, overlapping citizenships. so i'm a citizen of london, in the sense that i used to live here and pay taxes here, i feel something to this place, a connection to this place. i am also a british citizen, which to theresa may might make me a sort of a citizen of nowhere, because i am also pakistani. but it has a real meaning to me, in terms of my sense of connection to this country, and my belief in abiding by the laws of this country, et cetera, voting when i'm here. i don't think you become a citizen of nowhere. i think the question is, really,

can you be a citizen of more than one place? can you be a family with two parents, instead of one parent, as a child? i think you can. you can have multiple families that you belong to. your latest novel, exit west, it is a sort of an epic tale with fantasy elements to it, about a couple that fall in love, in a city which is never named, but let's say it sounds a bit like aleppo, in syria — a city which is pleasant, but falls into the most terrible war. these two young people get caught up in it, and they ultimately decide that their only hope of a decent future is to leave. you wrote it, as i understand it, while living in lahore. did you write it because you felt yourself in a city, lahore, in pakistan, which was almost as fragile and as vulnerable as a city like aleppo proved to be? i hope that lahore is not that fragile, but i imagine people in kabul and aleppo and damascus and sarajevo also felt

that their cities were not that fragile. what has changed for me is, the plausibility of this disaster occurring in the place where i live has grown. i think it has grown for many people, in many places. and so the novel is born out of that kind of nightmare, something i hope will never happen. it is a visceral, personal fear. yes. ithink, you know, living in pakistan, again, i don't want to sort of contribute to a narrative that pakistan is going to decline and fall into chaos. i don't think it is likely to do so. i think it is likely to do the opposite. but it is possible that it could, and when you live in a place like that, there is a background fear that can occur, and for me does occur, and fiction is the way it takes shape. and it is a fundamentally bleak vision. i mean, you catalogue in so many interesting emotional and intimate ways the way in which it narrows down the life of all the people captured by it, in this city, trapped in this city. and in the end, as i say, the two young people decide that escape is their only alternative.

but the really interesting thing you do in this novel, because a lot of it is quite realistic, and evokes images from aleppo and mosul and elsewhere, but then what you do is you add this sort of fantastical element, where they discover a sort of magical doorway, that can transport them from the hell of war to a new life, first on a greek island, and then they make it to london. what is all this fabulous magic doorway about? well, sometimes i think we can get closer to emotional reality by bending other aspects that we think of as being real. so yes, the doors that they travel through don't exist, according to physics as we know it. and yet we each carry around a small black rectangle in our pockets and our handbags which is a kind of portal — you know, the screen of our phones. the smartphone.

yes, through which our consciousness leaps forward from our body constantly. we also know that, if we wanted people to move very quickly, they could. there is no technological reason why people can't move around the planet, maybe not instantaneously, but very, very easily. and so the doors for me are a combination of what technology is making our world feel like, the world we are suddenly seeing, and mentally present wherever we wish to be, and a way to compress the next couple of centuries of human history into a very short period of time. and yet, i suppose, the reader wonders whether you are devaluing the sheer bravery, courage, and also the risk, that comes with actually escaping a war—torn city and trying to make a new life. because, whether it be syria or whether it be sub—saharan africa, those who choose to leave and try to reach the rich world, and usually it is europe, they are undertaking a terribly dangerous journey, either by sea or across mountains and deserts, or maybe both. and your description of the migrant experience doesn't include that journey at all. yes, absolutely.

i think that is... it's not my intention to minimise, or to say that it is not horrific, the way in which refugees and migrants are often forced to travel. it is horrific, and very frequently deadly. but what has happened is, by focusing so much on the journey of these people, we have created a different category of human being. those who have crossed the mediterranean on a small rubber dinghy or crawled underneath the barbed wire on the us—mexican border are different from us. we have made them into another category of person, and then this other category can be dealt with, i think, inhumanely. when you take away that part that makes them different, they are simply people who are in a place, and then left the place for another place, which every one of us has done, even if it's just leaving our parents‘ houses to move out on our own. and so my intent was not to devalue, de—emphasise that part of the story, but to establish a kind of similarity between migrant communities and every else. to make them seem less different.

yes, because at the end of the day, what i think we are encountering is not so much that there is a conflict between two kinds of feeling — the feeling of those who are fleeing dangerous geographies, and the feeling of those who are resisting the arrival of those geographies. i think, actually, the feelings are very similar. the idea of losing the place where you grew up can occur both because you change geographies, and it can occur because you are starting to feel foreign in a place where you yourself have grown up. and so, if we can recognise that the sorrow of these two experiences is similar, we can get beyond the kind of fruitless notion of inevitable conflict between these two divisions. there is a phrase in the book where you describe the passage they make from their war—torn home to a new life, which ends up

being for a long time in london, but then they actually make another move to california. the passage, you say, was both like dying and like being born. now, i'm interested in the juxtaposition of the two. it says something about your own life, as well, when you lived in those different places, that yes, a huge amount of opportunity came your way, but there was also, always, a sense of sorrow and loss as well. there is — i mean, there is an emotional violence to moving that we often don't give enough consideration. and the echoes of that emotional violence can go — proceed through our lifetime and across generations. when — for example, if i were to leave pakistan again, my children every day play with their grandparents. let's say we were to move somewhere far away, and they were to see them once a week — once a yearfor a week. that relationship would, in a sense, end. and there is an enormous sorrow to that ending. i think people do experience incredible senses of loss when they leave a place, and it is important to recognise that. when we say, what has this person done, what have they given up to be here?

the answer is, when you say that of the refugee, the migrant, they have given up everything, and the emotional consequences of that are huge. and one interesting — it is only one, but one interesting element of how they try to maintain a memory of where they came from is actually the use of religion as a vehicle, and prayer as a way of reconnecting. and i'm particularly interested, because you of course are also the author of the reluctant fundamentalist, which looked at the relationship between the west and the muslim world, through the eyes of a young man meeting an american, a young pakistani man. and in this book, you have another young man, saeed, who turns to prayer. and is your message that sometimes religion, in this case the muslim religion, can be a means of trying to maintain an identity?

well, certainly it can be. i think that what has happened is that many... was it for you, by the way? religion as a way of maintaining my identity? i would say that, in a sense, i've been made conscious of muslims as a group because of how i am treated by other people. so when i arrived on the eurostar from paris in london recently, everybody walked off the train. we had already been through immigration. i have a uk passport, but i was stopped by some officers and asked a whole bunch of questions, and i think it is to do with belonging to this group. so yes, to a certain extent. and did that make you feel resentful, angry? did it actually reinforce this feeling of being the other? yes, it did those things. it made me sad, more than those other feelings, because i think that the uk has been better than many countries at not having this sort of sense of constant surveillance. is that one reason you left

the united states after 9/11, because you found you were being regarded as a potential threat? it wasn't the reason i left. i was living in london a couple of months before it happened. it is perhaps a reason i didn't go back after a year as i initially had planned to do. it was the george bush, the second george w bush administration and a lot of wars were starting and london felt very conducive as this kind of international hub of thinking, writing, people protesting the iraq war. i felt culturally, politically, in a sense, more at home in london in those days. and yet in the end, your life decision was to go back to pakistan which brings us back to where we began this conversation, questions of identity and belonging. it is very interesting to me that despite everything you have said about the universality of the human experience and values, you in the end did what so many

people want to do, you went home. absolutely and i think what's important is i am not somebody who is in that sense a rootless mongrel wandering the earth. although i think being such a person is a potentially wonderful person to be. no worse or better than any other kind of person. i am somebody who is living in the same place i lived as a child, after having wandered in all these places. in a sense, the reverse migration from the one which is the overbearing pre—occu pation of politicians in so much of the world. that is from the poor world to the rich world. you'd made it in the rich world, you'd had a great education, you'd became a consultant for mckinsey, a golden egg job, and then you decided to be a writer and had written best sellers. you were a success in new york, in london and yet, you then decided you wanted to make your life in lahore, in pakistan, and i dare say many of your friends said you're crazy.

i think some people thought it was a strange decision. but many people are doing this. what we're seeing is, migration has always been a way for human beings to find something they're looking for. homo sapiens did not evolve on the british isles. people came here over many thousands of years and they keep coming. they don't necessarily stay. people whose ancestors were in britain have moved on to america, whatnot, some might come back this way. i think we can migrate and return. this is where i struggle to keep up with you because it seems to me, when you talk about the migration of the future in which you say, and i am going to quote you here, "i imagine that centuries hence when people are finally free to move as they please around our planet,

they will look back at our moment now and wonderjust as we wonder about those who kept slaves, how people who seemed so modern could do such cruel things to their fellow human beings like caging them up as animals". your implication being, we will reach this sort of heavenly moment where migration is just completely normal, acceptable, easy and accessible to everybody on this planet. i put it to you that flies in the face of everything about the human condition and human history. well, i think human history and human condition is a march towards greater equality. until recently, the idea that black people would be slaves in the southern part of america 150 years ago was accepted as common wisdom. the idea that women were inferior to men or that gay people shouldn't have the same rights as straight people, that religious people and atheists should have fundamentally different rights. all these things have changed. darks and light skins. but what hasn't changed,

and we can say in 2018 that we can see the strains of nationalism and populism and building fences and borders and fortifications. today, we can say that there is something about all of human history where yes, there are constant movements of people. usually invasions which involve violence and those movements of people generally have involved epic amounts of killing and bloodshed. i don't think they have, i don't think that's true. look at the history of north america, south america, central asia. almost any geographical part of the world is full of such stories. yes, there has been violence associated with migration but it's not necessarily the case. in north america, there was a kind of genocide where the free colombian population of america was effectively wiped out by those who came in. but, you know, i have brown skin because for tens of thousands of years, lighter skinned people have come into the darker skinned parts of the indian subcontinent where i live and that they didn't

actually massacre each other and result in just lighter skinned people surviving. they stuck around and inter—mixed. most of human history i think is like that. it is not genocide after genocide. frequently, i think most often, we don't engage in genocide which is why we're shocked by genocide. ijust wonder and i alluded to this earlier, whether you would acknowledge that your rather optimistic view of where humanity is going, particularly on this question of migration and the intermingling of peoples, whether it is reflective of having a rather gilded life. i think probably it is, in my case. but that said, i think there are two strong reasons to believe it is going to happen. one reason is the pressure of migration is going to become enormous. if we are truly going to resist it, we will no longer be able to simply outsource to libya and turkey the job of preventing migrants, we will have to actively kill the people who want to come. to erect very violent barriers. we will have to catch those who get through. we will have to catch those who try to help those get through. we will begin to... you are saying there is no middle ground? there is no control that is possible

in a humanitarian way? there never has been. when have people stopped moving? we've always moved, it is the nature of humanity. we have never been confined to geographies in this way. also, the population of africa was a small fraction of europe's 50 years ago. it will be several multiples 50 years hence. and as climate change occurs, people will move. what are we going to do? one is we won't have the stomach, i hope, to inflict the atrocities and create the totalitarian societies that will resist this. secondly, we actually need to think about ourselves as humans and less divided to solve the most pressing problems we face. climate change cannot be solved by countries thinking of national self interest. the issue of migration i don't think will be addressed in this way. also the most important issue is how we will regulate and manage technology. we are on the verge of giving birth to intelligent machines that can think. how are we going to regulate this? how will we share the benefits? they could potentially create great surpluses but if they accrue to just one dozen trillionaires in california and the rest of us lose ourjobs, it is not going to be a very pleasant planet. all of this requires a more human thinking.

and there you sit it in pakistan today. i want to end by coming back to your current life in pakistan. you have left california where as you just said, so many of the developments in tech are coming from and you are now living in a country where there are 200 million people, many of whom are living in poverty. you have said very recently that these are disheartening times. you feel more depressed now than i have for a long time about the political direction of your country because the question has become who is muslim enough and after 70 years of nationhood, the answer appears to be nobody is muslim enough. after all of your optimism about what humanity can achieve and the values that we idealise, actually, your own home, you seem to think, is in very profound trouble. it's in trouble but i think it can get out. it is important for us to begin to articulate optimistic visions of politics, the future, culture, because what we are facing right now is the dominance of nostalgic pessimistic visions. if you are pessimistic about our ability to have a more equal world, you tend to think it's a good idea to make america great again. thanks for putting that phrase in.

ijust noted donald trump's first tweet of 2018 which was directed at pakistan. "$33 billion that we've given them and they've given us nothing but lies and deceit, taking our leaders for fools, giving safe haven to the terrorists we are hunting for in afghanistan". it seems to me that right now you are living in a part of the world that given the messages being sent by donald trump and the current american administration, is going to be a cockpit of tension and trouble. yes but what we are seeing is an older generation that has migrated to becoming older, it is in power right now. disproportionately, they want these barriers. but younger americans disproportionately did not vote for donald trump and younger british did not vote for brexit. younger people are much more comfortable with this openness. this is how civilisation evolves. it's not that we suddenly become enlightened. the older generation, people like us who have more closed—minded views, eventually die. we each achieve the great brexit in the sky. and then the younger people who are left who are still here will take us into domains

we can't imagine including people moving around the world in a way that today we think of as very strange. you are one of the most optimistic people i've ever met! well, i'm a dad. it's sort of myjob to be optimistic, but also it's very important because pessimism at this moment is feeding political reactionary thinking. we have to end there, mohsin hamid, thank you very much for being on hardtalk. thank you. hello there.

well, southern parts of the uk were fairly unsettled for the second part of the weekend. the best of the dry and brighter weather was further north. but even across the south—west, despite the showers and increasing rain, there were spells of sunshine which broke through. as we head into monday, this area of low pressure will be in control of the weather across england and wales. further north, it should be drier with clear spells. as we head through the course of the night into the early hours of monday, the rain will pep up to become quite heavy across much of england and wales. just nudging into southern parts of scotland. although for northern ireland and scotland, it should be a dry quite chilly with mist and fog around but less cold because of the cloud and rain and the wind across england and wales. it looks like a messy morning commute for england and wales, outbreaks of rain, some quite heavy and turning windy across the south—west of england, towards the channel islands in the afternoon. gusts of 40—50 mph. we will see a line of showers pushing in to western parts of northern ireland.

some sunny spells for northern ireland and western scotland. a cooler feel to things across the board. temperatures ranging from 7—11. 0n into tuesday, a ridge of high pressure builds in before this area of low pressure makes inroads for wednesday and thursday to bring a succession of fronts with outbreaks of rain. for tuesday, we will start to lose the low pressure system from the south—east through the morning. and then conditions brighten up. the winds fall lighter and the sun is strong this time of year so it should feel quite decent in the sunny spells although temperatures will still be in single figures for a few. we could see 10 or 11 degrees in a few spots, maybe the odd shower. a ridge of high—pressure breaks down as we head towards wednesday. notice the squeeze isobars become tightly packed together. winds coming up from the south, always a mild direction. we start off on a cool note across the eastern side of the country with the best of the sunshine. further west, wind will be picking up, cloud, outbreaks of rain for northern ireland

around irish sea coasts. further east, it should stay largely dry and given some sunshine, and a mild feel, temperatures into the low teens celsius, even ten degrees for glasgow and belfast. for the week ahead, fairly unsettled with a lot of cloud and quite windy. a bit of rain at times and then turning a bit colder, particularly towards the weekend as colder air moves in off the near continent. this is the briefing. i'm sally bundock. our top stories: parties opposed to colombia's peace deal with left—wing rebels win most seats in parliamentary elections. the bbc protests to the united nations over iran's treatment of its staff and their families. we have been tickled by goodwill. what about you ? we have been tickled by goodwill. what about you? have you been tickled?

and the veteran british entertainer, sir ken dodd, dies at the age of 90. and the business news. the world's biggest stock market listing looks set to be delayed, as advisers struggle to achieve a $2 trillion valuation for the saudi oil giant, aramco.