The
soiled country had to be sanctified again, and the ceremony took place on May
16, 1991. A new prime minister, clean and pure as only a man could be, had introduced
a bill that would allow the country to expiate for the sin of electing a woman.
It’s so disappointing to be disappointed by
Rafia Zakaria’s writing because I was expecting it to be, if not the best thing
I had ever read, at least better than what it turned out to be. And what’s even
more frustrating is that I think this book could have done much better as two
books: one related to the politics, and the other about Zakaria’s aunt.
Of course, I’m guessing that there’s probably
a good reason why Zakaria (and her editor, and publisher, and whoever else was
involved in this endeavour) thought it was a good idea to juxtapose the two
major threads of these two completely unrelated narratives into one, but it
just didn’t work. Primarily because, except for a few singular exceptions where
the two plotlines complemented each other, most of the book displayed a
complete divergence in terms of the tone, theme, or events unfolding in each of
their respective corners. If well handled, this had the potential to be
brilliant. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.
Zakaria seems to have plotted it so that throughout
the book the two stories, or rather, two non-fiction accounts, are being
unspooled side by side. On the one hand, we have the story of Aunt Amina, the
author’s phuppo, who had to suffer the indignity of her husband choosing to
marry again because she couldn’t bear him any children. It is her position as
the titular ‘upstairs wife’ that Zakaria uses as a vehicle to take a
fascinating look at the way patriarchy, culture, and religion combine together
to treat women less as a being with agency and feelings, and more as a
child-bearing machine.
The
purpose of a marriage was a child. The purpose of bearing children was to eventually
bear a male child. The purpose of a male child was to be an heir.
The other half of the book details
Pakistan’s history, stretching from partition up until the moment of Benazir
Bhutto’s assassination in 2007, one of the many turning points in Pakistan’s
tumultuous political history. In turns using a tone horrified or wry, Zakaria
lays down the bare facts of the major events in the country’s history, which
have been turbulent enough to make us pity every Pakistan Studies student out
there. With regularly attempted coups, martial law implementation, hanged prime
ministers, and assassinated leaders among the few scandalous things the past
few decades can offer us, Pakistan has an overabundance of titillating political
drama, enough to keep any non-fiction writer worth their salt in the business
for a while.
Unfurled
before a Parliament of men clad in pristine white tunics and vests tailored to
hug rotund bellies, the Enforcement of Shariat Act declared itself the supreme
law of Pakistan. The act next declared that all Muslim citizens were required
to follow Shariat, and that the state, under auspices of the act, would insure
that Shariat was taught in schools, practiced in law courts, and dominant in
matters of state, economics, and exchange. Swooning with repentance, no one
seemed to notice that the act neglected to say what Shariat was or which
version of Shariat among the many existing schools and subschools of Islamic
thought and countless splinter groups would determine these important
questions.
It is clear enough, if you read the two
parts as separate entities, that Zakaria can write really well. There is a
visible ease in the flow of the writing, and a certain amount of command over
the words she uses. Read enough books and it becomes easy to identify the
confident writer versus the one who waffles over each and every word; Zakaria
seems to fall into the former category, which might be the main reason why this
book managed to not fall into the black void of books I hated with a passion. In
parts where I wanted the book to just finish already so that I could get to
better, more interesting novels, it was the writing that kept me reading
instead of forcing me to slot this book into the ‘books I’ll probably never
finish’ pile.
She
disappointed, not because she was pretty or even ugly or interesting or boring
or tall or short or intelligent looking or bearing on her forehead the telling mark
of the simpleminded. She was a shock because she was so unremarkable, so lacking
in anything special that as a result, she became an affront to the provocative
idea we had constructed in her place. Uncle Sohail’s second wife was like the
lady you might meet at a visit to the next-door neighbors’, or like the woman
you could join with in accusing the tomato seller of being an extortionist, or
like someone you might greet respectfully as the mother of some girl who was a
friend of a friend. In her bland regularity she was an accusation as vexing and
confusing as the betrayal she represented.
The problem, then, wasn’t the writing, but
the content, which lacked any incentive to keep the reader reading. Now, since
I’m not a very regular non-fiction reader, I’m going to go with the fairly basic
assumption that non-fiction doesn’t follow the same pattern of introduction,
rising action, climax, and ending that a normal novel follows. In which case,
how exactly does nonfiction claim to retain the casual reader? I’m not talking
about the people who have a vested interest in learning and retaining the
information presented in these kinds of books, but rather the browser who picks
these books up just for the sake of it.
This is clearly the kind of detailed
discussion I need to have with my friends, but for reference’s sake, I’m just
going to list here all the concerns I have with this form of writing, the most
primary of those being the sharing of really, really personal information.
While most autobiographical writing has the advantage of the person controlling
exactly what is being said about them, I just can’t help but wonder how, in
this particular case, the author’s aunt feels about having her dirty laundry
aired so very publicly. While I’m all for a clear, honest look at the suffering
women endure caused by the convoluted, brutal conditions placed by patriarchy, we
really get into the nitty-gritty of Aunty Amina’s sorrow here, in a way which
makes me both horrified and a little bit embarrassed for her.
One
day a visiting older lady assessed my aunt’s dejection and rendered her verdict
before us all: Aunt Amina owed her husband gratitude... The children of the new
wife would brighten her life; she had no right to weep and make it out to be
such a tragedy.
I also always wonder how the other people
being named and shamed in biographical content feel about how they are being
depicted. I mean, in this case it’s not a very hard stretch to guess that
Zakaria’s aunt must have provided a significant amount of the details of the
things that happened (especially since lots of things involved only her
presence and those of people whose perspectives are never shown). But how do the
other characters, such as Amina’s sister-in-law, who initially loves Amina but
then becomes dismissive and condescending after her brother’s second marriage,
feel about how they are shown? In this case, the sister-in-law (Aziza) is just
one example of the multiple people whose depictions are sometimes flattering
but sometimes not really, not at all, and I’m left wondering what are the lines
which shouldn’t be crossed in such a method of storytelling, and how much of
the author’s own opinions are allowed to colour the writing.
The
jolly woman who brought gifts and lavished praise had vanished once the new
bride had been installed in her brother’s home. The new Aunt Aziza expected
complete submission from her youngest brother’s wife and daily devotion, which
spanned from a morning phone call to ask after her health to a full meal cooked
and sent to her home every Friday. On Sundays all the wives of her brothers
were expected to pay homage to their matriarch, digest her evaluations of their
lives, praise her children, and often even clean her house. No detail was too
private: for years Aziza Apa had been inquiring every month, before all
gathered, whether Aunt Amina was pregnant.
I’ll admit, though, that Zakaria doesn’t
really try to insert herself into the narrative much. Most of what she shares
has to do with her ancestor’s journey from India to Pakistan, leading up to her
Aunt’s marriage, and then the disgraceful second marriage. Even though in some
ways it helps give a veneer of impartiality to the overall account, I personally
felt that the parts where the writing shone the best was where the author got
personal about her own thoughts and feelings.
Mostly, this has to do with the fact that
in the parts that she did get personal, she talked, in a frank and open manner,
about how life has treated her differently because of her gender, which is a
conversation I’m always willing to engage in. And because, instead of being
didactic and insufferable, she made it part of the story she was telling, I found
it even more interesting to read.
The
window of the upstairs bedroom from which Amina first saw Sohail became mine. I
shared the room with my brother, but the window was mine alone, as only one of
us felt compelled to look outside. Not permitted to roam the streets like my
brother, the window was my avenue to the world beyond our house.
Unfortunately, we don’t spend a lot of time
with Zakaria herself, veering back into boring territory pretty much regularly.
And while one could assume that the parts of me that grow impatient with
non-fiction would have suffered more, the truth of the matter is that Aunt
Amina’s portion of the tale also sometimes dragged. There’s only so many ways
you can talk about the unfairness of a second wife before the chronicle starts
to suffer, and I found myself losing interest about halfway into the book.
Maybe that’s a pretty heartless thing to say, but a large portion of my reading
experience was spent wondering when the good parts of the writing were going to
appear. And while they would appear briefly, they would also disappear as
quickly as they had come.
Overall, then, I’d say it’s an okay read.
Maybe a bit more interesting for the non-Pakistani reader, for whom Zakaria
spends a lot of time explaining things that any Pakistani would already know
about. Maybe some parts of it important for those who have no idea of the
realities of trying to survive in Pakistan’s patriarchal society. But
generally, I’d say only those who are truly interested should bother reading
this.
And as a parting note, I’m going to share a
quote here, which managed to so perfectly describe the complications that
define the politics of living in Karachi that I actually highlighted it while
reading. I’ve always been honest and transparent about liking authors who seem
to truly understand Karachi, the city where I’ve lived my whole life. Because
there are already so many stereotypes out there about Muslims and Pakistanis,
these particular gifts of writing where I suddenly read something that makes me
stop and think, ‘Yes, that is the essence of Karachi’ are particularly heart-warming.
While Zakaria didn’t mould Karachi into a personality the way other authors
have done, she definitely gets those few extra points for understanding the
intricacies of its streets.
It
was not enough to be born in Karachi to be from Karachi. It was not enough to live
in Karachi to be from Karachi. It was also not enough to be born in Karachi and
to live in Karachi to be from Karachi. To be from Karachi, you had to prove that
your father, and preferably his father before him, had been born in Karachi and
lived in Karachi, and therefore were from Karachi. If you were from Karachi by
these markers, you could claim to be from Sindh, the province in which Karachi
was located. If you could claim to be from Sindh, you could claim a lot more—a
larger quota for government jobs, a larger quota for seats in government colleges,
a larger quota on belonging and so a greater chance of making your life in
Karachi as comfortable as possible.