Of Mothers and Magic: Nur Nasreen Ibrahim's 'Picture of a Dying World' was a complicated, entertaining mess
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| Cover Art - Winter 2023 |
The morning a tree appeared outside my window, I received
a phone call informing me my mother was dying.
We start this short story by
being introduced to a heroine who is living far away from her parents, and
happier for it, for all intents and purposes. Stories of children living away
from their parents have been hitting me a lot more recently, given my own move
miles away from my own family, and so I always read such tales with a wary sort
of dread, aware that the smallest moment of empathy is capable of tipping me
over into the maudlin and the teary-eyed. But this story doesn’t connect with
the emotions so much as with the freaky, bringing about a dead mother, lost
children, and magically appearing machinery, as if the land itself is growing
vehicles from the earth.
I refused to listen to them then, even after I heard
from Mashal amma how the land was revolting against its own nature.
Truth be told, I’m sure this
story has a lot of potential for analysis. It carries with it that idea of
multiple meanings, layers hidden behind another, but I’ll be honest and admit
that when I was reading it I was looking for some simple, pure entertainment
and not for an exercise in mental gymnastics. So much of our reading experience
is dictated not by the tale itself, but our own moods at the moment, our
desires for complexity or a fluffy, mindless diversion, even the time of the
day in which we are sitting down with the book. When commuting I prefer
fanfiction, and while waiting for the tea to boil I read articles. The thickest
books are saved for those hours before sleeping when I know I won’t be
interrupted and can really sink into the story. Carrying on in that vein, I can
tell that I didn’t read this story in the mindset where I was ready for it, and
that really soured my whole experience of it.
But the queen of the night opening its eyes in the
morning, the moving trees, the tractor quietly appearing overnight, the
shifting water, I could not explain.
There were definitely
elements that I wish had been fleshed out more. The complicated relationship
between the parents, the idea of the mother speaking from beyond her grave,
even the elements of abuse and sexual assault that were part of the story could
have done with a bit more elaboration. I know that a lot of stories and authors
tend to leave things implied between the lines, hoping the reader will see
things that are only hinted it, and sometimes this can be a fun exercise, the
finding and unwinding of clues left clearly in the text to figure out what the
author left unstated. But like I said, I was in the mood for the in-my-face facts,
the neatly tied up story with all the endings explained and all the clues
unearthed in a proper manner. Thus the sort of implicit, disguised narrative
that ran parallel to our story remained pretty elusive to me, which reduced my
enjoyment of the whole thing.
I explained away the late nights and the early
mornings where women materialized from my father’s study, covering their heads,
muttering about being asked to help him with something, wiping away tears,
adjusting their shalwar, hiding the bruises on their cheeks.
What kept me reading, even
after things stopped making sense, was that there was some good writing. The
bare bones of a command over the language is definitely visible here, in
multiple sentences that spoke of eloquence in their simplicity. Maybe with another
subject matter in the author’s hands, and a clearer, more engaged mind from me,
I could read a story by this author in the future and actually enjoy it.
I wanted this rotating new world to spin faster, this
river to submerge us, these dying trees to take over, and my father to die with
his farm.
There were obviously a few
editing errors, misplaced commas, colons missing from places where they should
be, and a lack of hyphens from places where two words were presented as one.
I’ve now come to terms with the fact that the editors and authors working for
and writing for this online collection of literary pieces are engaged in some
sort of prank war with each other, where the editors keep messing up and the
authors keep looking in the other direction, pretending at nonchalance.
Personally, if I ever wrote a story which was put up for the world to see, I’d
go back and re-check it a million times to make sure there were no errors in
it, but I guess this is what they mean when they say we are all strangers to
each other.
Red flowers dotting the sumbal tree that had crept in
from my father’s farm in Punjab, flashed like a warning.
Overall, a good enough tale,
if a little complicated in its intended meaning. I enjoyed it even when I was
lost in it, which is a high enough praise when you feel no connection to the
characters whatsoever. This author goes on my list of authors to follow for
future works.
“You children think that by leaving you can forget all
your responsibilities. You aren’t better than us because you left.”
Picture of a Dying World by Nur Nasreen Ibrahim was published in Issue 005 (Winter 2023) of Tasavvur, an online portal for South Asian writing. The remaining reviews for other Tasavvur stories by Pakistani authors can be found here.