Told in flashbacks, the story focuses on a 31-year-old woman named Ayesha who has a major accident and spends the entirety of the novel floating outside her body. She alternates between moaning and groaning about her current predicament and thinking back on her life, miserable and depressing as it has been. I don’t mean to make the story sound so gloomy, but that genuinely was the whole vibe of the novel: everything was sad and dismal, and sometimes there were funny bits but mostly there was, unfortunately, more of the death and the gloom.
So it was another day of self-inflicted tension, ceaseless self-doubt, and never-ending negativity.
One could argue that this book tries to paint a picture of what it is like to be a woman in her thirties with a job and a troubled family life, but my god, does nothing good ever happen to her? Even the romance, ostensibly a huge part of Ayesha’s life and one of the primary reasons for the accident in the first place, feels like a drag. That could be because the hero, whom we only see in flashbacks, turns out to be something of a spoilt, nepotism-loving, commitment-phobic idiot.
Rumour had it that he’d rejected his father’s offer of starting at the top and decided to work his way up instead. No one felt comfortable enough with him to point out that marketing director wasn’t exactly Step One.
Even the fact that he shares the same first name as my husband did not endear him to me, the most obvious explanation of this fact being that my Saad, whom I might be biased towards, is certainly a much better specimen of the male species compared to the book Saad. It also doesn’t help that there is so much problematic content to unpack here. Our protagonist regularly makes fun of mental illness and mentions them in the casually demeaning manner of those who have never been told to treat people with disabilities with respect.
I had a hard time resisting the urge to slap his head. His panic-stricken face last night, his complacent grinning mug the next morning, schizophrenic was what he was. He’d skipped the manic depression that affected the rest of us, and gone straight to the next level. Typical man, thinking he deserved better than the women.
Throughout the book, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the author wanted to come across as witty and wise, couching her nuggets of sage advice and thoughtful observation within her amusing, effortless writing. Sadly enough, the tone that comes across leans more towards bitter, self-loathing, and whiny than anything else. I’m usually all for stories that focus on characters and their personal lives, as long as the whole thing is moved along by the plot. In fact, some of my favourite novels have been slow, character-driven affairs. But in this case, I liked the idea more than the execution.
Did I like it because it distracted me from full comprehension of what a self-absorbed, man-hating, megalomaniac I was? But I wasn’t a self-absorbed, man-hating, megalomaniac! I was enlightened, if in moderation…
Of course, the really disturbing version of women empowerment in the book doesn’t really help. Ayesha has some deep-seated misogynistic issues that the story doesn’t really try to address, instead coating a veneer of feminism over the mostly problematic ideas being espoused. The Ayesha that we see is a brand of woman I have encountered in my own life far too many times, unfortunately. These are the people who, on the surface, will exhort all of the right values: women should have the right to wear what they want, do what they want, be what they want. But their actions and dialogues don’t really mesh with what they claim to support: they will routinely judge other women’s clothes, comment on another women’s poor child-rearing habits/cooking skills/house maintenance abilities, or indulge in the same sort of sexist behaviour that their chauvinistic contemporaries partake in. These people are a particularly trying brand of human beings, because I get lulled into a false sense of security with them, not knowing that their sexism is an internalized issue that will come out at the most inopportune moment.
For all its drawbacks, belonging to the female gender had its advantages. Separate, shorter lines for utility bills, the possibility of chivalrous assistance if your car broke down where a man would have had to push his vehicle himself, not to mention the advantage women extorted in shopping.
This idea of women’s lives being easier because of their gender is such a pile of festering horseshit that it blows my mind that people are still falling for this line. How have we not all, on a collective level, just finally gone past this obsession with the ‘woman card’, a concept so absurd and ridiculous that I do not have the time to sit down and explain the preposterousness of it all. I’m not being paid to educate anyone, so I’m not going to waste my time jotting down the ways in which a patriarchal society gives women these small, momentary conveniences or how separate lines/immediate help protect the women from the men themselves. At this stage, people should just know better.
So it’s fair to say that the book frustrated me, to a certain degree. And I had to struggle, in the face of all that misplaced misogyny, to find stuff that I liked within the book, but fair’s fair and there was some parts, here and there, that kept me going. A few of the paragraphs were well written, or relatable, or did the slight jump from pretentious to smart quickly enough to keep me hooked. In a way, there was a possibility of greatness, which an editor’s discerning eye could have polished, but sadly left untouched.
I wanted to matter to somebody other than my blood relatives. I wanted to matter, to anybody, for reasons that had to do with my self and not with the blood that ran in my veins. I wanted to be first on some other soul’s list of priorities.
A huge part of me had begun the book wanting to like it, so throughout the reading experience I was mostly balanced on the knife’s edge of being disappointed because it didn’t rise to my expectations and being agreeable because I had wanted to like it. Although a significant portion of it tended to disappoint me, I was glad that at least there were some parts where I felt justified in my desire to be pleased with the writing.
Sometimes I wanted to slap his well-bred, hair-free face. Shake him out of what I considered complacency and he considered peace of mind. Drag him down to where the rest of us thrashed in pointless exertion against crooked games.
Of course, the fact that Karachi features so prominently within the book was always going to be a winning point for me. I have always been very vocal about my soft spot for books that are desi in their settings and their characters. Having grown up reading mostly North American or European books, I still feel that slight thrill when encountering South Asian characters who could be a reflection of the reality of my life. While it’s true that even books with local settings can be a hit-and-miss (as proven by Mira Sethi or Daniyal Mueenuddin’s works), this author had used the map of Karachi to connect points in her story, naming all the famous spots diligently throughout the narrative. Being able to identify the places mentioned within a book is its own sort of high, a cultural currency I had been missing out on in my earlier reading years. That’s why, even when the book joked wryly about the rampant corruption or indulged in clichés about eating mangoes and suffering electricity breakdowns, I continued to be charmed.
They were very insulted if their fourth cousin’s third wife’s gardener’s dog wasn’t allowed to bend the rule and come for a visit. Their men might wait for the guard enforcing the rule to come off duty and beat him to a pulp.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. I like, in theory, the things the author has to say about literature and politics and the process of publishing in Pakistan. As someone who is part of the publishing industry of which she speaks, I can see very clearly the truth of what she is saying, and could, if pressed, back up her claims with personal anecdotes. But smart things said in a structured interview do not have any bearing on the written word in her novel, so unfortunately the book will be judged on its own merits. Final verdict: give this a miss.