Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies

Shagufta Cheema, Iqra

2018 Pakistan Related Texts

Khan, Nyla Ali

Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 7 (2019) 
Citizenship in an Age of Combative Nationalisms 
 
By Nyla Ali Khan 
 
The predominant theme of my work is the crossing of frontiers of 
nationality, culture, and language in three areas of the Indian subcontinent: India, 
Pakistan, and Kashmir. To that list, I would add my attempt to cross the barrier of 
citizenship as a self-conscious political philosophy. I hope, through my work, to 
make my readers aware of the humanist response to the ridiculousness of war, a 
response that transcends national boundaries and barriers. 
In the summer of 2017 I got a chance to go to Attari Railway Station and Wagha 
Border, on either side of which the flags of India and Pakistan are brandished with 
pride as well as a belligerent ferocity. I witnessed the histrionics and 
performativity of the Border Security Force of India and Pakistan Rangers. 
Disregarding the sweltering heat, frenetic and excited crowds waving the flags of 
their respective countries and dancing to Bollywood songs that evoked a frenzy. 
The complex and elaborate performance of the two sides, which I saw, was 
symbolic of the combative and truculent narratives of nationalism in the 
subcontinent.  
It was a sentimental visit for my mother, because that was the closest she 
got to the city of her birth and the city where her maternal grandfather is buried: 
Lahore. In her mind’s eye, she was traversing spaces created by political, cultural, 
and religious differences. Such memories and stories challenge the notion of 
nationalism as an alliance that is forged with people from the same linguistic, 
cultural, and religious background. 
Many aspects of the era of the Partition of 1947 are repressed into the 
political unconscious of the people of the Indian subcontinent. As a Subaltern 
Studies scholar, Shail Mayaram, reminds us, during the Partition of India various 
state authorities rigidified borders and boundaries that were once flexible, and 
people were forced to opt for one nation or the other, India or Pakistan, or one 
religious identity or the other, Hindu or Muslim. And in many cases the choice 
was imposed on them (128). We require a vision that questions the ethnolinguistic 
and cultural divides created by the fiery resurgence of nationalist ideologies, and 
interweaves that vision with human stories. I seek to elaborate on the larger 
politics of postcolonialism in affirming the identities of common people and their 
cultural anchors. I have attempted, in my previous and current work, to 
interrogate the authenticity of colonial and nationalist historiography by, on the 
Nyla Ali Khan 
one hand, recording the vivid and verifiable details of individual memories that do 
not necessarily correspond with the documented version of history. It is now that I 
am able to integrate fragments of my memory and experiences into a composite 
whole. I consider it incumbent upon responsible and creative scholars of the 
subcontinent to engage with the cultural and historical past by rejecting the 
process of historicizing the imperial past in favor of personal memory and 
imagination. 
Unfortunately, some of us take a rather limited and restrictive view of 
nationalism by portraying the concept of the nation as an invention that breeds 
heinous crimes and relentless violence. The nation is rendered all the more 
threatening when the war that leads to its construction is internecine and does not 
bind Muslim to Hindu or Punjabi to Kashmiri, but rather sunders Punjabi from 
Punjabi and Kashmiri from Kashmiri. Such an irregular war polarized these ethnic 
groups into Hindus and Muslims who are required to disaffirm their cultural, 
linguistic, and social unities. As one of the characters in Amitav Ghosh’s novel 
Shadow Lines wonders, “And then I think to myself why don’t they draw 
thousands of little lines through the whole subcontinent and give every little place 
a new name? What would it change? It’s a mirage; the whole thing is a mirage. 
How can anyone divide a memory?” (247). 
The political and social upheaval that followed upon the creation of the 
dominions of India and Pakistan in 1947 has left legacies that continue to haunt 
the two countries. The Partition enabled the thunderous forces of violence and 
displacement to tear the pre-existing cultural and social fabric so systematically 
that the process of repair hasn’t even begun. 
It is an unfortunate fact that all the historical, political, and social events 
that led to the catastrophe of 1947 can best be understood within the explanatory 
frameworks of religious and familial obligation. This molding of collective 
subjectivities by the evocation of pan-national religious affinities results in the 
stifling of minority voices that express divergent cultural and social opinions. The 
narrator of Ghosh’s Shadow Lines observes, “As always, there were innumerable 
cases of Muslims in East Pakistan giving shelter to Hindus, often at the cost of 
their own lives, and equally in India of Hindus sheltering Muslims” (229-30). 
Such people demonstrate the “indivisible sanctity that binds people to each other 
independently . . ., for it is in the logic of states that to exist at all they must claim 
the monopoly of all relationships between peoples” (230). Since these two nations 
were founded on the idea of religious difference, the religious agendas of right-
wing organizations and militaries now rule over the Indian subcontinent. 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 7 (2019) 
In addition, “official” accounts of the Partition discount narratives that do 
not contribute to the deepening of the breach caused by the fracture lines of 
nationalist collective subjectivity and religious identity. This exclusionary tactic 
deployed by nationalist historiography, according to which the populace of the 
Indian subcontinent was a passive recipient of the repercussions of the nationalist 
struggle valiantly fought by the Western-educated elite, is articulately interrogated 
in the inaugural statement in Subaltern Studies 1: “What is clearly left out of the 
un-historical historiography is the politics of the people” (Guha 1). 
I observe that the Partition is a vivid manifestation of the claim that 
postcolonial nations are founded in a bloody severance of the umbilical cord, one 
that fortifies borders between nation-states with irrational and remorseless 
violence. The discourse of nationalism, however, affects to make sense of the 
absurd loss of lives that occurs. 
 
Works Cited 
 
Ghosh, Amitav. Shadow Lines. New York: Viking, 1989. 
Guha, Ramachandran, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial  
India.” Subaltern Studies 1: Writings on South Asian History and Society. 
Ed. Ranajit Guha. New Delhi:Oxford UP, 1982. 1-8. 
Mayaram, Shail. “Speech, Silence and the Making of Partition Violence in  
Mewar.” SubalternStudies IX: Writings on South Asian History and 
Society. Ed. Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty. New Deli: Oxford UP, 
1996. 126-63. 


English

Citizenship in an Age of Combative Nationalisms

Sheeraz, Muhammad

Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
 
Awake in a Dream 
Reviewed by Muhammad Sheeraz 
Jaagay Hain Khuab Mein (Novel). Akhtar Raza Saleemi. Lahore: Dastavez 
Publications, 2018. 241 pages. Pakistani Rupees 350  
Once I thought of writing a tale of a princess who sleeps for several weeks to live 
the dreams that she could not dream of living all those summers she had been 
awake. I needed to know how they work. Dreams, thus, became my favorite 
shopping. I would search them everywhere: book stores, coffee shops, flower 
markets, shining eyes. This search one day brought me my best Urdu novel on 
dreams: Jaagay hain khuab men (Awake in a Dream).  
Written by Akhtar Raza Saleemi, this book has dreams scattered everywhere in it. 
Dreams that explore life. Life that travels through space in time. Time that 
expands in dreams and contracts in the real. The real that happens to be an 
illusion. And illusion that outshines the real!  
Inquisitive by nature and interested in cosmology, the protagonist of the novel, 
Zaman, lies down on a rocky platform at the mouth of a cave and lets his eyes 
feast on the stars. His background knowledge of physics boosts his galactic 
imagination. Moonlit nights spark questions in his mind. Motion—be it that of a 
rabbit or of the solar system—transports him to persons and places existing at a 
time distance as humble as a moment to as great as a light year. His romantic self 
lives in dreams, nature, physics and philosophy, and wears a range of persons 
from his paternal line.  
The summary-and-scene balance of the novel keeps us engrossed. At one point, 
we experience stillness, at another, we find ourselves surrounded by the Sikh 
army preparing to kill Syed Ahmad Brelvi. The zigzag plot of the novel hikes 
through the mountains taking us to the heights of ecstasy as we go in and out of 
Noor Abad. In and around the town, we see questions inscribed on rocks: What is 
time? What is space-time? Are we awake only in dreams? Can a well-dreamed 
sleep fully unpack all our genetic codes and show us through all the persons we 
have been living since Adam? Are we the us who lived ages ago? Does a perfect 
victory of our internal nature over the external one make us experience 
timelessness? Can we see forth in time the way we can look back through it? 
Muhammad Sheeraz 
Faced with these and several other such questions, we cry out for help, only to 
awake Zaman.  
If you dream a lot, if dreams trouble you, if you dream of places before you 
actually visit and see them, if your dreams have actually happened to others, if 
you believe in spiritualism, if you see oneness in the universe, if you wish to be 
jolted by storms and earthquakes, then the first thing you want to do is read 
Jaagay Hain Khuab Men. Its ambitious characters, novel setting, complex plot, 
converged subjects, fluid style, and vivid images make Jaagay Hain Khuab Men 
an extraordinary book. Books like this are there to be read, translated and made 
into films. 


Awake in a Dream

Irum, Sonia

Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
 
 
Fall in Love  
(Short Story) 
By Sonia Irum 
 
We understood each other, and understanding is addictive. 
My room is scattered with my half-finished articles. I know I 
never read enough to be able to write well. Sometimes I feel all the 
important things in life are half finished. I think they are beautiful that 
way. They would lose their charm if achieved. Perhaps that is why 
you loved me; I was never enough and there was always something to 
explore like an addiction.  
I get up and start collecting the article papers from the floor 
laced with university papers; the messy floor, your voice echoes in 
my ears, “I want you here with me. It’s a beautiful feeling to see the 
person you love lying beside you, breathing: I want to smell your 
skin, touch you and feel you.” I grab a half-written page from under a 
book, you echo again, “Distance is awful for me. What is the point in 
living away, I don’t believe in love that thrives on distance.” I smiled 
and assured you, “I love you.” 
Egham Hills hear the giant clock strike eleven in the morning. 
Lisa, my housemate has ordered some groceries; no one else is here. I 
need to go and collect them. A lot of items. I wonder where she is 
going to store all this. The fridge is not big enough but admittedly, 
she does have fridge organising skills. How I find my food inside it, 
that is my skill. She has forgotten breakfast items. Closing the fridge 
door, I recall how I would leave a note on the dressing table mirror, in 
your office drawer, sometimes on the fridge door saying “Smile” but 
you never noticed because you wanted me there, smiling back at you.  
Sonia Irum 
Remembering this I look at the weather report on my phone. 
It’s October, and it’s sunny. I pick up my keys and stroll to the 
grocery store to buy milk and yogurt for breakfast. I carefully read the 
details on milk bottles. I am new in Surrey; in fact, I am new in 
England. I am learning to adjust. I pay the bill and step outside to find 
beautiful skylines. This is my favorite weather – cold sunlight. 
Perhaps that is what I am composed of – cold and warm elements. My 
coldness disturbs you, but you can’t leave me because I carry warmth 
too. Coldness lets you let go and warmth lets you go on. I sit at the 
bench near the bus stop where sunrays fall perfectly on me. The day 
reminds me of the hours spent waiting at Daewoo terminal. It starts 
sleeting. Weather is strange here. The ground is becoming wet, and 
the distinctive smell of earth takes me three years back and a thousand 
miles away to another time in Rawalpindi. I was at the busiest bus 
station in one of Pakistan’s largest cities. It had rained the night 
before, so the air was fresh. I am not fond of rain, but I like it when 
the ground gives off that fresh earthy smell. Remember I told you 
how pleasant that day was? 
* * * * * * 
That day at Rawalpindi Daewoo Bus terminal the rush was 
relatively controlled (perhaps because advanced booking had arranged 
the flow of people to travel). As I waited, I observed the people 
around me. The hostess of one bus looked tired; she had come from 
Abbotabad and would be on her way to Lahore after a stay of 15 
minutes or so. She met another hostess, giving her a usual courteous 
smile before they entered the office together. There were a lot of 
people that morning because of Eid holidays. People came and went; 
the way people come and go. “Going is a little harder than coming,” 
you had once told me. 
A young girl looked apprehensive. Maybe she was travelling 
alone for the first time; she clutched her bag tightly and looked 
around, fearful that someone might steal her bag or, worse, grab her. 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
 
 
A young boy with a shopping bag looked restlessly for his bus. He 
had bought shoes, from Sage, the bag declared. His worn-out jeans 
were ambiguous and didn’t reveal whether this was his youthful style 
or whether he couldn’t afford new ones. A woman in uncomfortable 
stilettos tried to walk casually, but the agony in her face, contrasted 
with the shine of her shoes, told a different story. Her long brittle nails 
and cracked heels conjured an image of primitive caveman. It seemed 
obvious to an observer, though not to her, that at least half of the pain 
in her life right now was due to heels she wore. A middle-aged village 
woman in intricately patterned tea-pink print shalwar qameez and 
white malmal ka dupatta alighted from a Multan bus. She carried a 
small steel bucket of desi ghee or sooji ka halwa, or maybe gur wala 
halwa. She looked like a headstrong woman from Punjab; she was 
alone and seemed confident to travel, but now she looked anxious as 
her eyes roved, waiting for someone, or something. She carried the 
small bucket determinedly –  her only possession. A chubby guy 
hurriedly paid his taxi driver and looked for his bus. Late? I became 
anxious, I didn’t want him to miss it. At least he was trying to reach to 
honour the waiting. 
After checking two, three buses, his movements slowed, a 
visible contentment lulled his steps. He had his bus. He felt relieved. 
To celebrate this moment, he lit a cigarette and released the pleasure 
in puffs. He leaned back on the wall staring at his destination bus. 
Another man, old-school with a nice English hair-cut, stood in camel-
coloured corduroy pants and gave occasional glances to people sitting 
on the bench. He had an 80s-style suitcase. Taking some measured 
steps, he moved towards the tuck shop and slowly examined the 
displayed items. He eventually settled on a hot coffee, but suddenly 
looked disturbed, as though he felt my eyes watching him. He didn’t 
like being observed. This memory reminds me how one fine day you 
kept looking at me with a curious gaze and complained that I ignored 
what you felt though you knew how deep I felt too. I remember how 
passionate you would become when I responded to your non-verbal 
Sonia Irum 
communication with words, “Don’t imagine me – it’s an aphrodisiac. 
When you wrap me in your thoughts, you become irresistible to me.” 
I began looking at the terminal gate again. A family with five 
children entered the terminal, each child carrying a pack of crisps. 
The mother seemed tired. Perhaps she rose early to prepare for the 
journey while her husband and children stole a couple more hours of 
sleep. Behind them, another family with two boys. The woman in 
abaya seemed furious and admonished her husband, “Aamir! I cannot 
sit in such a dirty place,” she said, refusing to sit on the bench. She 
continued lambasting the filth of the station (she probably hadn’t seen 
the real bus stops and dhaabay there). They seemed to come from 
some Arab country. Maybe Dubai. Giving up and seeing she had little 
other choice, she sat on the bench.  I could smell the strong fragrance 
of her perfume as if she had doused herself with the whole bottle. The 
man and sons seemed quite peaceful and ignored her concerns. They 
were busy watching a young couple arguing with the bus host about 
the alleged non-availability of seats. Perhaps they had been issued 
with wrong tickets. The host tried to assure them that the company 
was doing its upmost to accommodate them. A sweeper came to clean 
the floor. Passengers sitting nearby became incensed by the dust his 
broom whipped up. He said sorry to all, but what could he do? It’s all 
wrappers, juice packs and used tissues, thrown on the ground by 
educated people, civilized and cultured enough to travel by expensive 
bus service. He was there to clean the mess they had brought with 
them. He did it with a smile. As the weather was good, he did not 
mind. Most of the passengers preferred to sit outside as it was 
enjoyable out there. A newly-wed couple glided towards their bus 
with new suit cases. They were happy and so oblivious to the dirt, 
dust and rush around them. They looked forward to joyful days 
together. Oh, my own, this flashes across my mind: our beautiful 
happy days back in Islamabad when we first met. You were amused 
to discover that I could observe an abundance of love in the slightest 
movement of your eye, in thousandths of a second. I could connect. I 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
 
 
know why you loved me. You loved me because I observed. I noticed. 
I absorbed. I radiated. And because I was never enough. 
* * * * * * 
Sitting here in Egham Hills, I get lost in the voices of the 
people moving around that are mixed with the smell of flavored 
cigarettes, men’s perfume and hamburgers. I close my eyes and 
picture the drive back to home from Margalla Hills. We discussed our 
busy lives that day. We hated weak and stringy relationships, and 
despite our happy lives I felt my life complicating; my schedule was 
always filled with work, you and goals. Sometimes I would hold my 
tears, trying not to cry when I was squeezed by all three of them. You 
knew it, you knew it all. I was all yours, yet not enough for you. We 
were silent after an argument and in that space of silence I started 
looking outside. I was lost in the past where we met. We met at a 
beautiful hill station just a short distance from concrete jungle of the 
capital. I was travelling to Islamabad lost in my thoughts. I saw a 
hand fading away in a distant view through the window, and with a 
jerk I came back to the life around. The bus had stopped. The 
passengers filed off the bus in search of a cup of tea at the sub-
terminal in a hilly area with lush natural backdrop. I sat down to 
people watch in the garden of the restaurant next to a small cafeteria. 
The café speakers played a famous Hindi song in the most celestial 
female voice: 
Aaj phir jeenay ki tamanna hai, Aaj phir marnay ka iraada hai
 (Today I want to live again; Today I again want to die) 
I was thinking years back – when I heard this song it did not 
inspire any significant thought. But that day it caught my attention as 
I recognised the intensified desire hidden in these lines recording a 
passion to live out one’s own will and choice, to awaken in one’s self 
a ‘vibrational being.’ While I was lost in my thoughts you came and 
sat next to me because that was the only chair left. It had been a long 
Sonia Irum 
time since we met each other during the university days. You casually 
appreciated the song. I was already preoccupied because of an issue 
back home. To relax my mind, I started a journalistic conversation 
with you about a girl who wanted to rise. The family wanted her to 
read great thoughts but not think, they wanted her to meet people but 
not speak, they wanted her to learn but not practice. Such culture 
makes you excel in hypocrisy. You were listening to me bemused. 
You said, “You don’t talk much, right?” I felt alarmed by your 
insight; I had already observed that you could understand and that you 
knew I understood too. I was being examined the whole journey. I 
want you to do that again. 
I didn’t answer, and you continued telling me how that 
melodious song made you wonder about your life span on earth. 
There was an urge in your eyes, in your speech. You said, “A few 
years? And we continue to shrink that short life span through 
unnecessary restrictions, sometimes for our own selves and often for 
others. People don’t realize how they deny someone their right to live 
life to its full. Can they imagine how much their soul is wounded 
when they deny them a full life…?” I picked up your thread and 
replied, “So, I left the world with restrictions behind…”. You had 
already understood my struggle. You smiled and gave me a deep look. 
I kept on telling you that there were social things I did differently, I 
broke constructed, unnecessary traditions and restrictions to live life 
to its full, people stood in the way, threw stones, put hurdles in the 
way, but I had to bull my way through it, and once in a life I just 
wanted to go my way differently – for it would complete who I was. 
You knew it and you loved me for that. You wanted to see me 
complete. It was you who taught me that if we want our passions 
around us, sometimes we should do it the hard way for our heart goes 
with it. 
I looked at a boy who sipped his last drop of tea and I thought 
one would never want to be dead while still alive, one would never 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
 
 
choose to put herself in an endless misery which has no 
compensation. Once lost you can survive, but what is left behind is so 
much less of you. And then you came nearer and offered your heart, 
“Come with me!” So, I did not wait passively for something to 
happen. I left behind the darkness of false fears and tried to live just 
for once, at least with you. I chose you, believing and not knowing 
that you had already chosen me. Together we realized “Life is 
Beautiful.” The moment was seized, and I thought it would never tick 
back. 
* * * * * * 
A father in a waistcoat scolded his five-year-old son who 
insisted on buying snacks from the high-priced tuck shop, while his 
mother was busy scrutinising the dress of another woman who was 
busy texting. Announcements at the Daewoo Bus terminal informed 
of arrival and departure times, but the old loud speaker failed to make 
the message clear due to its gritty sound, so most people were 
hovering around their buses, none the wiser. Two young boys greeted 
each other warmly and looked surprised to be meeting. They walked 
towards the open area talking eagerly. A young mother carried a baby 
peacefully sleeping.  The infant woke, and the mother put a Milk Pack 
in a small feeder and began feeding; the elderly woman with her 
seemed suspicious about it. Perhaps she was thinking it’s not good for 
a baby to drink such thick and artificial milk, that it might cause 
terrible constipation and stomach cramps. But why would a young 
mother care? She might hate traditional approaches and remedy. 
Dissatisfied, the elderly woman turned her face aside. It’s time to 
leave. Everyone with their luggage moved towards the bus. Kids 
having eaten their snacks left wrappers on the floor. A girl moving 
towards the bus stumbled upon an empty Milk Pack under her feet. 
While everyone moved, the sweeper came again to clean the mess the 
passengers had left behind. A half-smoked cigarette lay burning on 
the floor. I loved that small glow of a burning end as if a sigh was 
Sonia Irum 
being released from deep within the chest. Burning with the range of 
bright colours; red, orange, yellow, amber…Colors always fascinated 
me. 
* * * * * * 
At Egham bus stop my train of thoughts halts as I am distracted 
by the crying of a toddler who is unhappy and not willing to wait at 
the bus stop with his mother. I look at the woman wearing the red and 
black checkered blouse. Right now, I am wearing grey denim 
jeggings and a black and white checkered shirt. I resume my thoughts, 
“I know you like me this way: stylish, petite, well dressed, always up 
to date. You believe it’s a blessing, a soft and warm feeling to know 
that your companion is beautiful. Oh, come on, why do I have to dress 
to validate your standards? Love me the way I am,” I said while 
getting ready for the walk. You just smiled back at me with the most 
beautiful smile in the world, for you loved my expressions and 
spontaneity. I continued while walking through the woods, “Making 
up and grooming to look smart is not bad. I like it, but sometimes I 
want to materialize my abstract side, my feelings in some tangible, 
touchable form because we are human beings made of flesh. How 
long can we survive on soul? We need physical with us. Our body 
needs it. Why should I deprive it of what it is created for?” I was 
trying to come to the point. You stopped, I stopped. You looked at 
me. It was an inquisitive look that carried deep emotions. Before I 
could read it, you moved forward to the woods. You were never so 
quiet before. 
I still remember the patio where I sat, the soft couch specially 
bought a day before, maybe you wanted to welcome me warmly, 
softly. I sat there in my beautiful skirt trying to cover my legs. Soft 
afternoon light touched my face as I looked outside the window 
observing the patio. I remember you were amazed to see me. You 
grew fonder of me. I smiled. You sat at my feet, and I felt like a deity. 
That is how you always made me feel, my true. 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
 
 
I still think of you sometimes in flesh with your warm body, no, 
a lot of times, and I wonder if you still can miss me, feel me. You are 
so far from my material world. I wonder if you still feel and miss the 
moments that you wanted to preserve; our rhythmic silence, my hair 
falling on the naked back. You always thought your chaotic soul was 
dangerous for me. You’re no more here in this world but you’re 
present. Now you’re trying to remove your presence that wrapped 
around me, and so now it is getting easier to sit at the bus stop 
observing people and their lives, and to get lost in that. I am trying to 
fall in love with life. I know you wanted me to feel alive, but life is no 
life without you. I told myself each day that I would never give up on 
life if you were there. 
I am recalling how I would interrupt your thoughts with my 
endless talk while planting a fork in the steak. You would look at me 
with a deep smile. I know you loved that interruption in our silences. 
You always told me you used to wake up feeling you hadn’t slept, 
that when I came into your life I gave you back peaceful sleep like 
that of a child. Now it’s I who suffer sleeplessness. I miss you a lot 
and now I am tired. I am tired of your permanent silence. 
I see wind blowing tired leaves off the Maple tree. I see peak 
fall colors through the window. I have enjoyed the changing colors of 
leaves before they fall. I want to fall again, deeper. In my room, I sink 
into the cushion, and try to feel how your voice grew louder the more 
you spoke. You spoke gracefully and wrote beautifully. You loved 
gracefully. Who wouldn’t fall in love with you?  
Your enduring love has made me wonder if there could be any 
other way of living. For me, abstraction was fascinating, while you 
found concreteness captivating. And now that you are gone, I try to 
feel your absence as presence, but this is abstraction and I no longer 
am fascinated by abstractions. I miss you. I am addicted to your being 
with me. You understood me, and understanding is addictive. At 
Sonia Irum 
times, I hope that I will walk in through the door and you will turn 
with arms outstretched to let the fall begin. 


Fall in Love

Aziz, Anum

Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
 
Exit West  
Reviewed by Anum Aziz 
Exit West: A Novel. Mohsin Hamid. Riverhead Books (Reprint Edition), 2018. 
256 pages. Paperback. $10.40 
 Mohsin Hamid explores the issues of identity, migration and change in the 
face of a war-ridden and fast-evolving world in his fourth novel Exit West. This 
novel has been nominated for and has won multiple awards globally including LA 
Times Book Prize. Exit West follows the lives of the two protagonists, Nadia and 
Saeed as war and an extremist regime forces them to abandon their (unnamed) 
home country and search for refuge in the West. Hamid has used extremely 
simple, yet poignant and profound, prose intertwined with elements of magic 
realism to tell a story of humanity in flux through the experiences of the two 
protagonists. He explores the transience of human contact in the bigger scheme of 
the world which nonetheless forms bonds and leaves lasting impact – molding 
personalities and changing lives. Despite the profundity and seriousness of the 
subject matter, Exit West never becomes bleak and continues to paint an 
optimistic and variable picture of a world with an innate understanding of human 
nature and abundance of humor.  
 Nadia is an unconventional young woman who is estranged from her 
family for opting to live alone and flout convention in a highly traditional place. 
Saeed is a mild mannered young man who lives with his parents as per tradition 
and is part of a happy family. They meet in an evening class on “corporate 
identity and product branding” and fall in love while the world around them 
changes and transitions from a comparatively peaceful place to a dangerous and 
conflictual one, which eventually claims the life of Saeed’s mother. Grouping 
together for protection and security, Nadia moves in with Saeed and his father 
where they mourn his mother and plan an escape from this place where the new 
regime carries out daily killings of opponents.  
 Hamid has brilliantly used the elements of magic realism to draw a vivid 
picture of change and migration and the dangers they entail. He subtly blends in 
the magical elements with the real by referring to the magical “doors” as “dark 
rectangles” and simultaneously showing them emerge across the globe with 
shadowy people moving through them. These secret doors open onto new and 
unknown places and thus offer an escape from war. Hamid describes them 
emerging in mundane places but quickly reclaimed by secret agents who let 
Anum Aziz 
desperate people pass for a price. There is complete uncertainty as to the journey 
and place of arrival, depicting not only passage and escape but also danger and 
uncertainty of the refugee routes in the contemporary world. Nadia and Saeed 
hear of the portals and decide to use one to escape the dangerous and oppressive 
regime. As they move from their native home to Mykonos, the narrative focuses 
on regret and loss as the first change which makes itself apparent in their 
identities. Nadia’s and her family’s regret of never bridging the gap which 
becomes final in the face of war; Saeed’s regret and sense of guilt and loss at 
giving in to his father’s injunction and leaving him behind. 
 They use these “doors” to move from Mykonos to London and then to 
Marin, California. Each place of transition brings in its own challenges, hardships 
and dangers for them – all the while contributing to the change and development 
in their identities and outlooks on life. These changes transform their romantic 
relationship to one of familiarity and then distance. Despite the hardships, Nadia 
embraces the challenges more readily than Saeed and does not have difficulty in 
accepting and fitting in with different cultures. It is because of her initiative that 
they are able to find the door to London and then to Marin. Saeed, on the other 
hand, finds it difficult to adjust and is forever looking for a connection with home. 
These differences slowly transcend into the silences between them, mimicking the 
changes that occur in cultures and identities due to displacement and migration. 
Hamid intersperses the story of their journey with short narratives of similar 
changes occurring all over the globe, where people are coming together from all 
across the world and making new hybrid cultures – a dazed family emerging in a 
luxury building, a dark shadow emerging from a cupboard in Australia and an old 
“wrinkled” man emerging from a shed and taking a native for an exhilarating trip 
back through it.  All these stories paint a picture of a world in flux, which is 
changing and evolving and giving birth to new worldviews and new vistas. 
 Nadia and Saeed’s move from one part of the globe to another, leads to 
their unintentional yet unavoidable involvement in the conflict between natives 
and incoming refugees. The authorities of the host city (London) decide to 
provide habitation for the foreigners by starting a home building project. The 
influx of strangers of various ethnicities into Saeed and Nadia’s daily lives, the 
politics surrounding such interactions, the dilemma of faith in such a diverse 
community all become factors in the development of their identity. Nadia, the 
woman who did not pray, finds it easier to adjust and move away from a culture 
and a country which she already sees in the past. Saeed on the other hand, is 
nostalgic about his home and connects with his countrymen – all the while 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
 
becoming more religious. These differences in their personalities keep expanding, 
slowly pulling them apart even as they try to hold on. In a failed attempt to 
reignite the spark between them they use another door and move to Maine. The 
reformation of their individual identities due to contact with diversity eventually 
results in them splitting, with Saeed moving on with a priest’s daughter and Nadia 
finding a companion in a blue-eyed woman. 
 Hamid uses the story of their journey to create a microcosm of the globe 
which is constantly changing and reforming due to the onslaught of terrorism, war 
and displacement. Exit West discusses these changes with optimism for a more 
fluid world which oscillates between cultures and identities smoothly. So, in the 
end, when Nadia and Saeed meet again after fifty years in the now peaceful city 
of their origin and make plans to see the stars in Chile, they are different and yet 
the same people – reflecting real human beings and their development. Hamid’s 
narrative is a vivid, optimistic and yet real depiction of our modern fragmented 
world and his recent Sitara-i-Imtiaz [Star of Excellence] from the government of 
Pakistan is a timely and well-deserved testament to his excellence.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 


Exit West

Skinnell, Ryan

Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
Research::Culture::Exchange: Complex Cultural 
Exchange Amid a US-Pakistani Education Partnership 
 
By Ryan Skinnell 
 
In 2013, I was an assistant professor of rhetoric and writing at the 
University of North Texas.1 My friend and colleague, Masood Ashraf Raja, 
invited me to participate in a US State Department Public Diplomacy Program 
grant that he was applying for and subsequently won. The grant was one of 
seventeen throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan, and they were designed to fund 
cultural exchanges that connected arts and education institutions in America with 
arts and education institutions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Dr. Raja’s grant 
connected the University of North Texas (UNT), where he and I worked, with the 
National University of Modern Languages (NUML) in Islamabad, Pakistan. Over 
the course of four years, fifty-eight NUML scholars traveled to Denton, TX to 
conduct research and build their scholarly networks. As well, half a dozen or so 
UNT scholars traveled to Islamabad to teach various summer seminars at NUML 
in subjects such as Shakespeare, sociolinguistics, and postcolonial theory. In June 
of 2014, I traveled to Pakistan to teach a two-week faculty research seminar about 
writing for publication. 
Pakistan, like many other countries around the world, is in the middle of a 
precipitous rise in what many higher education analysts call a “culture of 
research.” There are various ways of defining what a research culture is and even 
more various ways of arguing over how to establish a research culture and what it 
should bring about (see Hanover). Nevertheless, the rise in research cultures is 
becoming a global standard—scholars at universities around the world are being 
asked, and often compelled, to produce and publish research in ever-increasing 
amounts. This is as true in countries with thoroughly established research cultures 
as it is in countries that are just beginning to build them. 
There are plenty of good reasons to pursue a culture of research, including 
institutional advancement, faculty development, and pedagogical enhancement. 
At the same time, there are significant challenges that arise as well. As A. Suresh 
Canagarajah forcefully argues in A Geopolitics of Academic Writing, for instance, 
access to resources, power, and legitimacy are neither evenly distributed nor 
equally accessible around the world. Nevertheless research expectations—both 
locally and globally—are very often not keyed in to that reality. And even in 
places where faculty and administrators are well aware of these kinds of resource 
Ryan Skinnell 
challenges, and even where good-faith efforts are made to address them, there 
remains the additional challenge of research training and development. 
It was in this global educational context that I went to Islamabad. NUML 
faculty administrators and faculty were well aware of and working to address the 
resource challenges that accompany research. My participation in the UNT-
NUML cultural exchange was intended to address the latter challenge of research 
training and development. To be clear, I was not invited to develop NUML 
researchers’ ability to research. Thirty faculty from seven NUML campuses in 
various parts of the country enrolled in the seminar, and many of the participants 
were already accomplished researchers in their own rights.2 They were capable 
scholars trained in research on topics ranging from cognitive and sociolinguistics 
to global literature, class and gender geopolitics, second-language acquisition, and 
national and international language pedagogy. Most were well trained in research 
methods and others were in the process of training. Some were already PhDs and 
others were graduate students in the advanced stages of earning PhDs. They 
didn’t need me to teach them research, even if I could have. 
What I was invited to do was help the researchers who enrolled in the 
seminar develop an orientation to, and methods for contributing to, a globalizing 
network of research publication.3 In other words, in keeping with my disciplinary 
identity as a rhetoric and writing scholar, I was brought in to teach writing. 
A quick digression: It is common to think of writing as a thing that doesn’t 
need to be taught to smart people. For complex historical and political reasons, 
post-secondary writing instruction is often treated as a remedial activity that 
people should purportedly have learned before they move into higher-level 
instruction, and certainly before they are graduate students or professors. As I 
have written elsewhere: 
Until very recently, writing instruction has been all but absent from upper-
division, graduate, and professional contexts in higher education, even 
though there has been a sharp increase in writing requirements for students 
and professors around the world. For instance, post-secondary faculty are 
seeing significant rises in publication expectations globally, and failure to 
produce research articles has serious consequences. Still, even with the 
critical expansion of academic and professional writing requirements, and 
even with the increasing presence of students in US institutions who need 
writing instruction beyond the first year, writing instruction has largely 
retained the complexion of remediation—as a thing people should have 
already learned. (Skinnell 132) 
My goal in this reflection is not to rehash this argument, nor even to fully 
elaborate it. I gesture to it here, however, to point out what seems obvious to me 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
but may not actually be obvious to everyone. Developing a research culture 
obviously requires research, but it also requires writing, and writing is hard. 
Writing for publication is especially hard—even for highly accomplished 
researchers and thoroughly engaged scholars and teachers. When I noted above 
that training and development are central challenges to establishing a research 
culture, I meant that researchers must be given resources to do research, but they 
also need support to learn (and relearn) how to write for publication. The two are 
intimately connected, but they are not the same, as the vast scholarly literature on 
writing for publication attests (see, e.g., Casanave and Vandrick; Feak and 
Swales; and Rose). Learning to research is not learning to write, and learning to 
write is a lifelong endeavor that is best accomplished through research, 
consultation, practice, feedback, and revision on an endless loop. 
What I had to offer as a writing teacher—or more realistically, a writing 
consultant—was perfectly in keeping with what I might have offered to any other 
group of advanced researchers in a writing for publication workshop. We 
discussed writing habits such as planning, getting feedback, and revising. We 
discussed how to assess audiences, how to evaluate journal and book publishers’ 
needs and values, how to situate research in a body of scholarship, and so on. And 
the participants in the seminar were perfectly up to the task. We were, I think, 
quite well-matched. 
I could conclude this narrative here and feel pretty confident that I proved 
my initial argument—(1) Pakistan has raised research requirements in higher 
education, (2) doing so requires resources, (3) NUML administrators procured 
resources (specifically, me and other UNT scholars) to help their faculty, (4) their 
faculty have subsequently produced more and better research. The lesson is clear 
and perfectly tidy. 
But quite honestly, it’s more than a little unsatisfying. As I noted above, 
the US State Department Public Diplomacy Program grant that funded my trip to 
Islamabad was designed to fund cultural exchanges. The story I’ve been telling, 
which is true so far as it goes, is not a story of exchange. It is a story of 
benevolent altruism. And if it was the sum total of my experience in Pakistan, I 
would be apprehensive to reflect on it here because it’s clichéd (and, frankly, 
damaging for being so).  
There are two common narratives that Westerners (especially white 
Westerners) have enjoyed telling each other for centuries about traveling to the 
East—one is essentially an old colonizer’s tale: we (Westerners) come bearing all 
manner of civilization to bestow on the unwashed (Eastern) hordes. We bring 
religion and medicine and democracy (sort of) to tame the wild impulses of the 
natives. There is an extensive catalogue of colonizer’s tales in Western literature, 
Ryan Skinnell 
but for me, Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “The White Man’s Burden,” and Edgar Rice 
Burroughs’s Tarzan are the quintessential examples. As it currently stands, the 
story I tell above about my trip to Pakistan in 2014 is more or less the colonizer’s 
tale. The other common West-to-East narrative is somewhat more recent, and an 
attempt, perhaps, to reverse the colonizer’s tale. In this story, a troubled 
Westerner travels East on a journey of personal discovery. In the course of the 
journey, the (Western) protagonist rediscovers him or herself by (re)discovering 
the simplicity and uncomplicated goodness of humanity embodied by the 
(humble, spiritual, technologically naïve) people in the East. Eat, Pray, Love by 
Elizabeth Gilbert is probably the most prominent example in the current moment, 
though again, there is no shortage of examples to choose from. 
The profound problems with both of these narratives—including, but not 
limited to exoticizing and fetishizing non-Westerners and reinforcing global 
systems of Western, white supremacy and predatory capitalism—have been well 
documented by post- and anti-colonial scholars.4 But both ur-narratives are 
seductive in their ways, and I will admit, having written and rewritten this 
reflective essay more than a dozen times over the past three months, I’ve 
struggled to tell a story about traveling from West to East without lapsing into one 
or the other of those well-trod narrative paths.5 
Ultimately, it is to the notion of exchange that I have returned. It is true 
that I taught a writing class to faculty in Islamabad. It is true that the participants 
seemed to value what they got from the class. It is also true that I learned a lot 
from them as well. For one, any pretensions I had to being the smartest person in 
the room because I have a PhD from a Western university were pretty quickly 
dashed. The members of that class were not just smart, which I expected, but they 
were also working in areas of research that made me feel positively dumb. I am 
grateful for this feeling—it helped to be more receptive to intellectual exchange, 
as such. 
But there were also important cultural exchanges. Many of the people I 
met in Pakistan became my friends. They invited me to their homes, introduced 
me to their families, fed me, and engaged me in thoughtful conversation. On one 
afternoon, I ended up in a restaurant with Dr. Raja and two other men—one who 
had driven us to a meeting across town and the other who came along as an 
escort. They did not speak English, and I do not speak Urdu (or any of the other 
multiple languages they spoke). At the restaurant, two local musicians were 
busking for tips. We paid them to play for us, and in the course of their 
performance, we learned that they were classically trained musicians picking up 
extra money by playing in restaurants in between jobs at state functions and 
weddings. The musicians played ghazals, a form of music that was completely 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
unfamiliar to me before I went to Pakistan, and which frankly are rather distant 
from my musical tastes. But in that restaurant, translating through Dr. Raja, my 
hosts (all of them) taught me how to understand the music better, how to 
understand its relationship to Pakistani culture and history, and how to understand 
some of its critical complexity. 
I tell this story—one of many I could have told—because it helps to round 
out my reflection on my experience in Pakistan. I went to Islamabad with things I 
could offer as a writing teacher. I think what I took was important, but it was also 
relatively narrow. The seminar participants welcomed me, challenged me, learned 
from me, and taught me. Likewise I came with cultural beliefs and values, and 
nearly everyone I met welcomed me, challenged me, learned from me, and taught 
me. In effect, my time in Pakistan was, thankfully, an exchange, or better yet, a 
series of exchanges—presumably of the sort that the grant was intended to 
encourage. 
And this notion of exchange hints at the complexity that characterizes both 
Pakistan and its international counterparts. I saw beautiful art and stunning 
landscapes, I experienced warm and sincere hospitality, I ate food that I still crave 
four years later, and I learned about the history of Pakistan by attending rehearsals 
for a play that was written, directed, and performed by a group of brilliant high 
school students. I saw in equal measure strains on the economic order, violence 
and its omnipresent possibility, and seemingly insurmountable limitations on 
people’s capacity to live full lives. I saw Americans in Pakistan acting foolishly, 
and I saw Pakistanis in their own country also acting foolishly. I also saw their 
opposites. And perhaps more importantly still, I saw Pakistanis, Americans, and 
people from a variety of other cultures acting foolishly at some times, valiantly at 
others, and unexceptionally at other times still. The people I met were 
complicated and worth knowing because of it. In the end, that is the true promise 
of exchange—not easy connections but rather the willingness to grant complexity 
to people who may challenge you to live and think differently long after the 
formal exchange has ended. The stories of going West-to-East are so often heroic 
and simple; but the experience of going West-to-East resists easy characterization. 
That is what I hope this reflection demonstrates. 
I want to conclude by expressing a message that multiple Pakistanis asked 
me to convey to other Americans, which is that Pakistanis and their culture(s) are 
poorly represented in most Western media—films and journalism, in particular. 
The people I met asked me to covey their goodness, humanity, generosity, and so 
forth. I am happy to do this because it is certainly in keeping with my experience. 
But I also want to suggest that one of the chief reasons for Pakistanis’ 
misrepresentation in the West is the familiarity of West-to-East narratives, which 
Ryan Skinnell 
impose simplicity and naïveté at the expense of richness and complexity. I want to 
suggest further that merely discovering that Pakistanis are good, humane, and 
generous is not sufficient. 
Ultimately, what I am most grateful for are the people I met with whom I 
still have the good fortune to keep in contact. But in large part, I keep in contact 
with them (and hopefully they with me) because they helped me experience the 
complexity of our cultural exchange rather than the simplicity of benevolent 
altruism on the one hand or naïve virtue on the other. It is worth remembering, of 
course, that experiencing complexity is built directly into the promise of a 
research culture, from which this reflection began. Research and culture, in the 
best exchanges, teach us to act differently in the hopes of making people’s lives 
better. The challenges entailed in doing so never go away, and I am as grateful for 
the reminder now as I was four years ago.  
 
About the Author: 
 
Dr. Ryan Skinnell is an assistant professor of rhetoric and writing at San José 
State University. He is the author of Conceding Composition: A Crooked History 
of Composition’s Institutional Fortunes (Utah State University Press, 2016) and 
an editor or co-editor of four additional books.  
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
Works Cited 
Canagarajah, A. Suresh. A Geopolitics of Academic Writing. Pittsburgh: U of 
Pittsburgh P, 2002. 
Casanave, Christine, and Stephanie Vandrick, eds. Writing for Scholarly 
Publication: Behind the Scenes in Language Education. London: 
Routledge, 2003. 
Feak, Christine B., and John M. Swales. Creating Contexts: Writing Introductions 
Across Genres. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2011. 
Hanover Research. Building a Culture of Research: Recommended Practices. 
Washington, DC: Hanover Research, 2014. 
Rose, Shirley K. “What’s Love Got to Do with It? Scholarly Citation Practices as 
Courtship Rituals.” Language and Learning Across the Disciplines 1.3 
(1996): 34-48. 
Skinnell, Ryan. “Why Studying Writing Matters.” Proceedings of the 
International Conference on Social Sciences & Humanities: Emerging 
Interdisciplinary Trends in Social Sciences & Humanities, Oct. 20, 2015. 
National University of Modern Languages-Islamabad (2016): 130-4. 
  
Ryan Skinnell 
Notes:  
                                                 
1 My profound thanks to Faiza Ali Khokar, Dr. M. Uzair, and Roohi Vora for 
their feedback on previous drafts of this essay. 
2 The thirty participants in the seminar were: Bashir Ahmed, Afsheen Ekhteyar, 
Yasser Ghayoor, Azher Habib, Farah Hashmi, Farheen Hashmi, Saima Hassan, 
Bilal Hussain, Sadiq Hussain, Noveera Jaffar, M. Kashif Jaleel, Arshad 
Mahmood, Ayyaz Mahmood, Aisha Makhdoom, Ejaz Mirza, Jaweria Mobeen, 
Mudassir Mukhtar, Saima Niazi, Samina Qayyum, Farhat Sajjad, Hadeeqa 
Sarwar, Khurram Shahzad, Atteya Shahnaz, Amarah Sumbal, Hazrat Umar, 
Saima Umer, Shahida Usamah, M. Uzair, Faiza Yunus, Faiza Zeb. 
3 Dr. Raja offered a Postcolonial literature seminar at the same time I was 
teaching the writing for publication seminar. I suspect some of my seminarians 
wished they had been in his seminar instead of mine, but they were gracious 
enough not to mention it in my presence. 
4 Homi Bhaba, Franz Fanon, Masood Ashraf Raja, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, 
and countless others have helped to track the ways these narratives shape beliefs, 
understandings, and relations across various parts of the world, and especially 
between what have traditionally been Western (colonizing) nations and Eastern 
(colonized) nations by reinforcing the cultural-geographical divide, despite how 
empirically artificial it is.  
5 I hope to avoid the trappings of the two West-to-East narratives I sketched 
above. Where I fail, as I fear I will, I sincerely hope readers will not make excuses 
on my behalf and will instead hold me accountable. Where I succeed, as I hope to 
do at least occasionally, I hope readers will recognize those successes as the result 
of astonishing goodwill of a global network of friends, colleagues, and 
interlocutors. 


Research::Culture::Exchange: Complex Cultural Exchange Amid a US-Pakistani Education Partnership

Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
 
Recent Pakistan-Related Texts 
Compiled by Iqra Shagufta Cheema 
Ahmed, Kashmala. Russian Interest and Bid for Collaboration In 
CPEC. Dec 2017. 
Allen, John L. Shahbaz Bhatti: Martyr of The Suffering Church. 
Liturgical Press, 2017. 
Aslam, Nadeem. The Golden Legend. Knopf, 2017.  
Azeem, Muhammad. Law, State and Inequality in Pakistan: 
Explaining the Rise of The Judiciary. Springer, 2017. 
Bad Company: Lashkar-E- Tayyiba And the Growing Ambition of 
Islamist Militancy in Pakistan. By United States Congress. 
December 2017.  
Baloch, J. J. Whiter Than White: The Daughter of The Land of Pure. 
Matador, 2017. 
Bhuchar, Sudha. Child of The Divide. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 
An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017. 
Binder, Leonard. Religion and Politics in Pakistan (Reprint). Literary 
Licensing, LLC, 2017. 
Bose, Sugata, And Ayesha Jalal. Modern South Asia: History, 
Culture, Political Economy. Routledge, Taylor Et Francis 
Group, 2018. 
Charsley, Katharine. Transnational Pakistani Connections: Marrying 
Back Home. Garland Science, 2017. 
Colachal, Dr Abdul Ruff. Rex Tillerson In Islamabad What Do 
Americans Still Want From Destabilized Pakistan?;USA Should 
Let Pakistan Decide Its Own Course. Bookrix. 
Dashti, Naseer. Baloch Conflict with Iran And Pakistan: Aspects of A 
National Liberation Struggle. Trafford On Demand Pub, 2017. 
Davar, Kamal. Tryst with Perfidy: The Deep State of Pakistan. Rupa, 
2017. 
Iqra S. Cheema 
Davis, Raymond Allen, And Storms Reback. The Contractor: How I 
Landed In A Pakistani Prison And Ignited A Diplomatic Crisis. 
Benbella Books, Inc., 2017. 
Debnath, Madhumanti. Strategic Implications of The China-Pakistan 
Economic Corridor. Grin Publishing, 2017. 
Dolnik, Adam, And Khuram Iqbal. Negotiating the Siege of The Lal 
Masjid. Oxford University Press, 2016. 
Ghosh, Bishwanath. Gazing at Neighbours: Travels Along The Line 
That Partitioned India. Tranquebar Press, 2017. 
GulazāRa, Et Al. Footprints on Zero Line: Writings on The Partition. 
Harper Perennial, 2017. 
Hamid, Mohsin. Exit West. Penguin Books, 2017. 
Hashmi, Ali Madeeh. Desert of Possibility: Writings on Poetry and 
Literature. Sang-E-Meel Publications, 2017. 
Hersh, Seymour M. The Killing of Osama Bin Laden. Verso, 2017. 
Imagining Punjab, Punjabi And Punjabiat In the Transnational Era. 
Routledge, 2017. 
Iqbal, Samina. Wille, Simone. Dadi, Iftikhar. Shakir Ali And Lahore 
Art Circle: Naya Daur. Sang-E-Meel Publications, 2017. 
J, Akbar M. Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan. 
Harpercollins India, 2017. 
Jain, Rajendra Kumar. India, Europe And Pakistan. Kw Publishers 
Pvt Ltd, 2017. 
Jalal, Ayesha. Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global 
Politics. Belknap Harvard, 2017. 
Karim, Selena. Secular Jinnah & Pakistan: What the Nation Doesn't 
Know (Revised & Enlarged). Liberedux And Umt Press. 
December 2017.  
Khan, Nichola. Cityscapes of Violence in Karachi: Publics and 
Counterpublics. Oxford University Press, 2017. 
Khan, Prof Dr. Farakh A. Murree During the Raj: A British Town in 
The Hills. Sang-E-Meel Publications, 2017. 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
 
Loude, Jean-Yves. Kalash Solstice: Winter Feasts of The Kalash Of 
North Pakistan. Ishi Press, 2017. 
M., Ali Saleem Raja. State, Nationalism, And Islamization: Historical 
Analysis of Turkey and Pakistan. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 
Mahmood, Dr Safdar. Pakistan Divided: Study of Factors and Forces, 
Leading to The Breakup Of Pakistan In 1971. Sang-E-Meel 
Publications, 2017. 
Malhotra, Aanchal. Remnants of A Separation: A History of The 
Partition Through Material Memory. Harpercollins Publishers, 
India, 2017. 
Maqsood, Ammara. The New Pakistani Middle Class. Harvard 
University Press, 2017. 
Martin, Nikolas. Politics, Landlords, And Islam In Pakistan. 
Routledge. 2016.  
Memories of A Lacerated Heart (1971) A War Memoir (From East 
Pakistan To Bangladesh). Trafford On Demand Pub, 2017. 
Nichols, Thomas J. Arrows of Allah. Dog Ear Publishing, 2017. 
Martin, Nicolas. Politics, Landlords and Islam In Pakistan (Exploring 
the Political in South Asia). 2017.  
O’doherty, Mark. Healing Pakistan: Improving Human Rights, 
Gender Mainstreaming, And Religious Education in The 
Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Crystal Grove Books. 2017.  
Prassad, Nitin. Contemporary Pakistan: Political System, Military and 
Changing Scenario. Alpha Editions, 2016. 
Rais, Rasul Bux. Imagining Pakistan: Modernism, State, And the 
Politics of Islamic Revival. Lexington Books, 2017. 
Sadiq, B. J. Let There Be Justice: The Political Journey of Imran 
Khan. Fonthill Media, 2017. 
Saqib, Syed. My Father's Kidnapping and Retrieval in Pakistan: A 
Father's Nightmare and A Son's Desperate Struggle To Save 
Him. Street 33. 2017.  
Schaar, Stuart. Eqbal Ahmad: Critical Outsider in A Turbulent Age. 
Columbia University Press, 2017. 
Iqra S. Cheema 
Schaflechner, Jurgen. Hinglaj Devi: Identity, Change, And 
Solidification at A Hindu Temple in Pakistan. Oxford 
University Press. 2018.  
Shamsie, Muneeza. Hybrid Tapestries: The Development of Pakistani 
Literature in English. Oxford University Press, 2017. 
Shukla, Ashish. Pakistan Army: Institution That Matters. Kw 
Publishers Pvt Ltd, 2017. 
Siddiqi, Muhammad Ali. Waiting for Dawn: Memoirs of A Journalist 
in Pakistan. Filament Publishing, 2017. 
Simner, Mark. Chitral 1895: An Episode of The Great Game. Fonthill, 
2017. 
Sulehria, Farooq. Media Imperialism in India And Pakistan. Rutledge. 
2017. 
Synnott, Hilary. Transforming Pakistan: Ways Out of Instability. 
Routledge, 2017. 
Talbot, Ian, And Tahir Kamran. Colonial Lahore: A History of The 
City and Beyond. Oxford University Press, 2016. 
Treichler, Don. Warrior’s Tale. Creatspace, December 2017.  
Troubling Muslim Youth Identities: Nation, Religion, Gender. 
Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 
Widmalm, Sten. Political Tolerance in The Global South: Images Of 
India, Pakistan And Uganda. Routledge, Taylor Et Francis 
Group, 2017. 
Wilkinson, Isambard. Travels in A Darvesh Cloak. Eland Publishers. 
December 2017 
Wille, Simone. Modern Art in Pakistan: History, Tradition, Place. 
Routledge, Taylor And Francis Group, 2017. 
Wille, Simone. Modern Art in Pakistan: History, Tradition, Place. 
Routledge, Taylor And Francis Group, 2017. 
ZamāN, Fak̲hr, Et Al. You Or I?: A Novel. Sang-E-Meel Publications, 
2017. 
Zuberi, Lara. Torn Pages. Createspace. January 2018. 274 Pages.  


Recent Pakistan-Related Texts

Akhtar, Rizwan

Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 
	
Two Poems 
By Rizwan Akhtar 
1 
Broken-in 
 
for Zulfqar Hyder 
 
On ground broken doors were like unidentified corpses 
clumsy bolts and gauze portals showed nail scratching   
in the compound our car was untouched and a layer of dust 
sat secure on its roof, no fingerprints except a cat’s excrement. 
On floor scattered clothes showed an epic quest of undressing 
us for leaving our house to mere faith and that stretch of bond  
hidden in photographs and my son’s books and cupboard 
ransacked, what we horded was taken away with a primitive 
glee; men smelt each corner of the house, each room combed 
where a legacy compelled us to huddle, this spectacle put us  
in a war with invisible antagonists who took away my memory 
cast in my mother’s jewelry, her trinkets of pride she passed on 
now gone to a no-place rattling with robbers’ risqué laughter; 
I make plans to compensate covering my daughter’s face  
with weak fingers the custodian of the home scattered 
like many reflections thinking that our history is not in  
the family graveyard but in this house exposed to silence. 
  
Rizwan Akhtar 
 
  
2 
 
Form 
It was such a close thing to feel 
your body unaware of its 
beauty and the space 
it occupies like sparrows 
transgressing rooms and 
passages carrying on their 
feathers muddy bits of a dug-
up earth flitting mad waves 
of recognition through 
crevices under eyelashes, you  
mutter something I can only 
surmise such was the quick 
departure elbowing  
me to jot down to structure 
and to frame your visit, 
perilously leaning on me  
while the noisy world 
continues without cantos and 
stanzas and freak meters 
you bring the desire to write 
in couplets and silence that 
called you afterwards. 
 


Two Poems

Raja, Masood Ashraf

Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 7 (2019) 
 
Of Clay Pigeons, Sapient Crows, and Magpies: Waqas 
Khwaja’s Hold Your Breath 
 
Reviewed by Masood Ashraf Raja 
 
Hold your Breath. Waqas Khwaja. Oxford: The Onslaught Press, 2017. 97 pages.  
ISBN 978-1912111725 
 
 I have often wondered about my relationship to English poetry: it never 
touches me deeply enough to care about it. Yes, I have read my Shakespeare, 
Donne, and Milton and have even seen great Billy Collins read to a live audience 
and have felt slightly moved by some of Alan Dugan’s poems, but that is pretty 
much my whole engagement with English poetry. 
 So, lately I have been contemplating my relationship to English poetry and 
I think I have finally pinned down the reason for my general apathy toward it. I 
encountered my first English poetry in 8th grade at a Pakistani boarding school, 
about two years after I had already read most of Ghalib, Faiz, and Iqbal. Thus, in 
that moment when we started discussing the “Daffodils,’ as  part of the grand 
colonial curriculum of the British empire, I received it not as this marvel of 
Romantic poetry but as a poem by an English poet, a poem that had to compete 
with the my preestablished expectations of “good” poetry, Urdu poetry, and 
“Daffodils,” thus,  had only a referential value. The English poem, to me then and 
now, has always been about how it compares to my own idea of poetry and my 
idea of poetry is deeply structured by the subtlety, the rhythm, and the aesthetic 
appeal of Urdu verse. It is, therefore, rare for me to read a work of English verse 
and really really feel it, feel it enough to set aside my unpronounced and deeply 
entrenched, almost unconscious, prejudices about English poetry.  
 Hold Your Breath is one such book of poetry that moved me. It offered 
itself as a book of English verse, but then it exceeded its literal claim, for it is 
more than just a book of English poetry: Khwaja brings to you, almost 
unapologetically, the kind of poetry that is layered, that relies on languages and 
poetic heritage of two cultures, and then expects you to take what you can, for he 
does not pander to the reader nor does he make his rich cross-cultural references 
transparent. And this poetic representation of a life lived across cultures and 
across several languages is what makes Hold Your Breath into a book that would 
keep any reader, especially one as prejudiced as me, really hooked.  
Masood Ashraf Raja 
 Those of us who dwell in two places are often caught in this perpetual 
struggle, the pulls from two cultures often at war with each other defined more by 
their mutual distrust, hatreds, and grievances and less by the possibility of a 
loving present and a harmonious future. In such a scenario,  the figure of the poet 
is often caught in this inescapable, almost destructive, narrative of You and I,  Us 
and Them. But then, maybe this dichotomy is also the space of ultimate creativity, 
for only this anguished existence, this lived conflict can birth the kind of poems 
that Hold your Breath Offers. Maybe, the price of such beauty, such passion is life 
itself, or a life lived on the borders of two cultures where the one you live in never 
really fully accepts you, for you were “born in many lands” (53) and the one you 
left either rejects you outright or at least holds your responsible for having left, for 
not being authentic enough, and thus having acceded your right to speak of your 
primary culture as your own. Khwaja, takes us beyond this dichotomy, this world 
of you and I and he doses that not only metaphorically and allegorically but by 
also forcing the two languages together glossing for neither this or that, making 
the reader work for it, for his cross-cultural heritage does not need an apology and 
can be, if rightly mobilized, a new war song, a song that forcefully pushes the 
world to confront its differences and instead of resolving them, for resolutions 
always default in the favor of the powerful, live with them: 
He declares: 
 I was born in many lands 
 I have traveled across many seas 
 Scaled mountains and trekked through timeless deserts 
 I have been many people 
 
 Mujhay dekho tau sahih merey jism kay kitnay tukrray hain 
 Ek ek hissa jis ka naam tha 
 Aaj gumnaam hae (53) 
And this self, born elsewhere, that has trekked across the mountains and has 
lodged itself in another land, sent its roots down, and spread its branches is the 
self that is absolutely necessary for the future of the world, a self that can live 
here but occasionally transport itself “there” a self capable of being at two places 
at one time, a self that loves the past but does not dwell in it a self that longs for a 
future, a “tomorrow [where] this desert/ may come to bloom” (42) even if you and 
I “will not know” (42) or see it unfold, but the possibility of that future is what 
animates this poetry. 
 Being able to draw on more than two cultural heritages, derided by all 
purists, is also the ultimate enrichment of self and the work that that self produces. 
This richness of this layered representation becomes evident in one particular 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 7 (2019) 
 
poem: “Kughu Khorray” (ےڑوھگ وھگک). This is a poem with layers upon layers of 
meaning! Even to contemporary native Pakistanis, the literal core of the poem 
would be elusive, and this is also where the Western obsession with close reading, 
especially when it comes to poetry, as the ultimate tool to unravel intricacies of a 
poem would fail miserably, for one needs more than what is on the page to 
actually grasp the poem. The poem, therefore, is instructive, for it teaches us the 
limits of our own interpretive acumen and forces us to acknowledge that to enter 
this poem, or any other poem in this collection, a reader will first have to wander 
somewhere outside of it to develop the necessary reading repertoire or an 
apparatus to simply read and understand the poem. Here is what a traditionally 
trained American reader will get: This is a poem about a toy peddler! But beyond 
that, beyond this paraphrase, not much liked by some of the stalwarts of New 
criticism, one would have to know the specific rural and urban culture of 
Pakistani street vendors, their melodious calls and narrative techniques to really 
imagine the scene. In a sense then, the poem forces us to acknowledge that in 
order for us to reach its core, we have to enter this world with humility, with some 
training and only then we would hear the toy peddler with his  
 Doves and horses 
 Dumb birds and beasts 
 Hoopoes and goats (43) 
To really understand the poem, one will have to be privy to the culture of street 
peddlers but also of their trade: kumhars. As a caste the kumhars specialized in 
making clay pots and pitchers which were widely used by rural communities in 
India and Pakistan for storing water and grains. The toys, the Kughu Khorrays, 
were usually made out of leftover clay and then fired in a small kiln along with 
the larger utensils. Traditionally, the villages worked on a barter economy; the 
Kumhars will exchange their wares for wheat. But when they ventured into urban 
spaces, the kumhar peddlers would mostly peddle small utensils, like plates and 
saucers, along with their toys. The poem captures that exchange: a kumhar 
peddler in a city street surrounded by wild eyed children as he blows into a dove 
to produce a melancholy sound or when he displays that the clay wheels on his 
clay cart actually roll when you push the oxcart around. You can imagine his 
song, the sound produced by the toys as you “give them your breath” (43) and the 
gendered exchange of goods, for if you are a girl or a housewife he also has 
 Pots, serving trays, and saucers 
 Clay skillets and pans 
 Bowls, sifters, colanders, jars, dishes, and spoons (45) 
 The toy peddler, thus, is a lost figure from our Pakistani past but also one 
cog in the machine of precapitalistic economy who, also, simply through 
Masood Ashraf Raja 
exchange of goods and toys stabilized the gender roles, for girls never bought the 
singing doves and pigeons, only boys did! But more than that, as the ending part 
of the poem suggests, this “toy” economy had a natural cycle, was environment-
friendly, for after the toys were discarded, they could be reused as clay for future 
toys. But, to further clarify my point, this and other poems in the collection give 
me what most English poetry cannot: the possibility of a deeply felt subjective 
response. I understand that those of us still in the last remaining thralls of New 
Criticism and its bloodless technicality of reading poetry would probably find this 
assertion a bit troubling, but I am relying on David Bleich’s important work here.1 
 Bleich suggests that “the essence of a symbolic work is not in its visible 
sensory structure or in its manifests semantic load but in its subjective recreation 
by a reader and in his public presentation of that re-creation” (20). This 
“recreation” of the poem, In Bleich’s view, relies on the “affective” and 
“associative” responses to an act of reading. The affective response “describes the 
actual affect he felt while reading the poem” (33) and the associative response, 
which allows the reader to associate his or her own feelings to the feelings 
invoked by the poem, for Bleich, “is the most complex but the most useful form 
of expressing feelings about literature” (48). Thus, read under the registers of 
affective and associative responses, “Kughu Khorray” comes across to me as a 
different and probably oversaturated poem because I can step from its immediate 
affect, my own cultural memory of the toy peddler, to a larger associative net of 
feelings: plight of the peddler, the nature of toys now, and the destructive impacts 
of plastics in opposition to the clay knickknacks sold by the toy peddler. A 
Western reader, of course, would have his or her own affective responses to the 
poem, but it would take someone striving and traveling these two cultures, 
physically or at least metaphorically, to really receive the poem with its complex 
meaning. It is this ability to read the poem and feel it in its complexity that in my 
view makes a reader like me really “feel” this poetry, a feeling that no English 
poem, no matter how technically sound, if written within the confined symbolics 
of a purely European or American symbology will do. And maybe this promise of 
drawing on these two worlds of lived and imagined incommensurabilities and 
similarities that is absolutely needed for today’s poetry to make a difference in 
this world. 
 This aspect of Khwaja’s poetry, in my view, runs through the entire 
collection, for every poem, in one way or the other, is a testament to the 
                                                      
1 Bleich, David. Reading and Feelings: An Introduction to Subjective Criticism, 
(Urbana: NCTE Press, 1975). 
 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 7 (2019) 
 
subjectivity of a writing subject that can only be constructed across cultures, in a 
material and symbolic habitat where the subject can neither fully assimilate in its 
new habitus nor completely dislodge the cultural and historical markers of his 
primary culture. This aspect of seeing both places—the place of one’s birth and 
the place of one’s dwelling—comes across clearly in “Going Back,” a poem 
where this dual, complex self and its relationship to both the places (the place of 
birth and the place of dwelling) is staged: 
 
 Not this time— 
 No, it does not feel like home 
 All is familiar as before 
 Nothing seems to have changed 
 Covered in dust 
 Leaves hang limp 
 Birds struggle 
  To find shade (12) 
Contrary to the usual journey back home, which often narrates either the altered 
“homescape” or at least one’s transformed perception or memory of it, for the 
narrator of this poem, nothing in fact has changed. But as you read further, you 
realize that the poem is not only about cosmetic changes, but rather an indictment 
of the class structure, for the poor are still poor and the rich still live their 
privileged lives. Capital, as usual, underwrites this material narrative of life, and 
for the native elite 
 Generators purr away 
 In walled mansions 
 Electric motors pull 
 All water for private use 
 While people wait at public hydrants (14) 
But in comparison, the miseries of the place of abode, or where the narrator lives 
now: 
 Where I live now 
 The fight is all about fuel 
 Not water 
 Billions of gallons are flushed down 
 With toilet paper every day 
 And many more 
 Spiked with lethal 
 Chemicals and carcinogens 
 Injected down earth’s throat 
Masood Ashraf Raja 
 To access oil and gas (14) 
And, we learn, the very rich in the place where the narrator lives, are equally as 
ruthless and rapacious but they remain untouched: 
 Their filching clever 
 Their deceptions commendable 
 They operate without fear 
 While, the destitute are, well 
 Destitute in all things 
 Except the taint of their epidermis (16) 
Thus, in this poem that moves from one world to another—back and forth—while 
the common suffering of average humans exists at both the places, the reasons 
vary, and the privilege of the elite is maintained and structured through 
normalized corruptions and racialized identities, for “deprivation and guilt/ Are 
inked into the hide” (16) but back “home” of your past, no matter who you are, 
but especially if you stand out, “There are bullets printed/ with your name on 
them” (17). The poem thus captures the ultimate dilemma of a cross-cultural life, 
a life of reflection, for when you live across two cultures, you never get to choose 
one over the other, you never can eject one and overwrite your self with the other, 
but rather, if you care, you acutely feel the very wrongs of both and, surprisingly, 
you find that while your race decides your value in the place where you live, your 
thoughts and link to this other place that never fully accepts you, makes you, 
sometimes, a target and often a subject of derision! 
 Now, why does this poem move me? I had started this review with an 
inquiry about my own problematic relationship to English poetry, so may be I can 
hazard an opinion here. This poem moves me because it brings me in touch with 
both the affective registers: The affective and associative! I feel for the people of 
the place where I live, for I know the possibilities and limitations of this 
experience, but I can also feel for the people that I came from. For this poem to 
work in an associative register, where I can apply these feelings to my own life 
having both registers functional is ideal; having at least one is absolutely 
necessary and anyone who tends to read it without either one of the registers 
would probably just perform an apt close reading of the poem and move on, thus 
robing poetry of its most crucial function: its ability to help us reshape and 
transform our feelings!! 
 So, this is what Hold Your Breath does: it forces you to read these pomes 
and then feel with the poet about the possibilities of cross cultural life, its 
heartaches and anguishes, and, most importantly, that it is okay to be out of place 
to feel lost and to know, deep down, that all acts of belonging are transitory and 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 7 (2019) 
 
that, in the end, even when we have rooted and grown tall in a place, it does not 
mean that we belong there! 
 So, to reiterate my stance on English poetry,  It would take works like 
Hold Your Breath for someone such as me, caught in between two cultures, to 
really love and appreciate English poetry, for it does, what people like me expect 
of poetry: it commemorates what we have lost in our primary cultures and 
inaugurates a mode of writing in which the poet from the global periphery neither 
panders to his or her host culture nor unpacks its thoughts transparently. It rather 
does what any great work of literature must do: Trust the reader and occasionally 
force them to confront their own empty handedness so that they go looking for the 
tools to read poetry that comes from more than one place and that captures the 
thought in its most effervescent form, neither here nor there, but like the “sapient 
crow,” and the magpie, both: 
 Hunted and trapped 
 Pursued by assassins and slayers 
 Indiscriminate epicures 
 Perceived as menace 
 Their roots blown up by dynamite 
 Neither eats its kind. (48). 
 On the whole, Hold Your Breath is an exquisite work of verse and a  great 
contribution to contemporary world poetry and I highly recommend it to be read, 
discussed, and taught by all those who still believe in the transformative power of 
poetry in our collective and individual lives!! 
 
 
 
 
 


Of Clay Pigeons, Sapient Crows, and Magpies: Waqas Khwajaâ€™s Hold Your Breath

Zakaria, Rafia

Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 	
Ismat and India 
 
By Rafia Zakaria 
 
  This upcoming Saturday it will have been twenty-four years since the author Ismat 
Chughtai died. A fiery woman, she was known for her ascerbic and trenchant prose, piles 
of acutely observed short stories that laid bare the hypocrisies of middle class Muslim 
society in pre and post-partition India. It was the fiery burial she chose decades later that 
made the Pakistani side of Urdu speakers uncomfortable. A Muslim writer must choose a 
Muslim burial, and the insecure borders of post Partition South Asia dictated that such 
post-mortem predilections, even by the eccentric and eclectic, be considered complete 
repudiations. 
  So it was with Ismat Chughtai, whose receding position in the canon of Urdu 
literature has been chronicled in at least bi-annual laments near her birth and death dates. 
In an additional burden, Ismat Chughtai’s birthday falls on August15; the detail that this 
happenstance took place in 1915, long before the divisive vagaries of Partition would 
mandate patriotic hatreds, is often lost in the fervid mileau of nationalist passions.  The 
calculations left to the subcontinent by the British also mandate that a hesitant embrace of 
Pakistan equals an amorous passion for India. Ismat Chughtai, the brilliant author, the 
talented wordsmith, the creative genius, chose to live in India even after Pakistan was 
carved out as the better location for the subcontinent’s Muslims. For this she was loved by 
India and Indians, their ardor for this living female testament to the superior soil offered by 
their staunchly secular environment, reflected in the pile of awards and titles with which 
they festooned her. The possibility that Ismat Chughtai may have chosen to stay even in 
some small part from some mix of habit and familiarity, a banal repugnance toward the 
usually inconvenient project of migration, was not a proposition that anyone wished to 
consider. India the secular was assumed to be India the freer, more given to bending and 
bowing the constrictions of culture to suit the whims and fancies of reliably unpredictable 
writers and artists. 
  That may well have been then, but like so much else in a subcontinent increasingly 
empty of writers who lived through its bloody border carving, it is not so anymore.  In the 
past several weeks, Indian writers, some of Muslim origin but largely any who have had 
Rafia Zakaria 
the temerity to question the Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have become 
subject to harassment and hate crimes. Three notable public intellectuals, M.M Kalburgi, 
Govind Pansare and Narendra Dhabolkar, have all been recently murdered. Other writers 
and poets are also facing censorship and harassment; they include Perumal Murugan, 
scholar M.M Basheer and poet K Satchidanadan.  Dismayed by the Modi Government’s 
refusal to investigate the murders and cases of harassment, over thirty Indian writers have 
returned the “Sahitya Akademi Awards,” one of the highest literary honours awarded in 
India. According to PEN International, the organization that monitors literary freedom 
around the world and which is trying to organize a campaign to protect literary freedom in 
India, two Ministers from the Modi Government have even questioned the intentions of 
these writers in returning the awards. In the words of PEN International, “it takes courage 
in the current climate in India to express dissent in a public manner. PEN international 
salutes the courage of and expresses solidarity with those who have returned the awards in 
protest or have resigned membership of the Akademi.” 
  On the Pakistani side of the border, of course, there is even less room for glib 
satisfaction at threatened state of Indian secularism. With recent months and years littered 
with the unabashed killing of writers, scholars, students and really anyone uninterested in 
the constricted agenda of a blood thirsty few, the streets of the country are stained with 
blood of slain intellectuals. If Indian writers are protesting, Pakistani intellectuals have had 
to flee or die or hide. Those too poor to hire coteries of guards to protect themselves must 
beg at the embassies of former or recent colonial masters; those even poorer must keep 
quiet in life or be sentenced to a more permanent silence. The choices are all bleak ones 
and their paltry offerings have been lamented often on vast acres of newsprint filled with 
incessant and helpless eulogies. Writers after all have only words to commemorate the 
words that were taken from the mouths of murdered others. 
  It is well that Ismat Chughtai is dead, however, for neither India nor Pakistan would 
have offered her much relief from the ever constricting shackles of religiously motivated 
obscurantism. The dead who saw the hopeful, if momentarily so, birth of two separate 
nations seem luckier in their demise than they would evaluating the miserable present.  
As the two countries get older, they do not get wiser; new generations are born reared on 
resolute and hatreds they are told are sacred. For the writer, it is a delicate balance of 
precision mourning: criticizing Muslim persecution in India can launch mobs that kill the 
Hindus left behind in Pakistan; criticizing Hindu persecution in Pakistan can launch mobs 
Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 6 (2018) 	
that kill Muslims left behind in India. There are a lot more of the latter but even such 
factual acknowledgements morph into macabre competitions of greater bigotries. The 
construction of a sentence, here or there, is burdened with this baggage; it is evidence of 
the success of a gruesome osmosis, the equalization of hatreds on either side. 
  Ismat Chughtai is actually dead; others in Pakistan and in India and in all the other 
scattered corners of the world where they live and read and write in shrines to their lost 
lands, are the breathing dead, the living ones. Their words stained with the pain of exile or 
the burden of censorship, the fire of zealotry that burns and burns unsated and on either 
side.  
 


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