Nazuk: A Powerful Portrait of Baloch Women’s Struggles

By Sher Jan Qadir, The Broken Wings is a poetic novel written by Khalil Gibran, first published in Arabic in 1912. It is a touching story of tragic love, set in Beirut at the beginning of the twentieth century. The novel highlights several important social issues of Eastern Mediterranean society at that time. These include religious corruption, the oppression and limited rights of women, and the strong influence of money and power. Through the story, the author shows how wealth and authority often control people’s lives and decisions, revealing how power and money dominate society. The story begins when Khalil Gibran is eighteen years old, at an age when love opens his eyes to the intense and magical beauty of a young girl whom he falls in love with. He falls in love with a courageous, generous, and strong woman named Selma Karamy. She is the one and only daughter of Faris Effendi Karamy, who is known as one of the wealthiest men in Lebanon. As time passes, Khalil Gibran succeeds in finding Selma’s home and becomes familiar with her father, Faris Effendi, who considers Khalil to be the son of his closest friend. After some time, Khalil and Selma become tied by the bond of friendship, as their souls are similar. When they are in heaven, flying with angels and enjoying the delicious fruits of friendship, the devil, Mansur Bey Galib, enters the story. He is responsible for taking Adam and Eve out of heaven. Selma and Khalil become like Eve and Adam, who make the mistake of not revealing their feelings to Faris Effendi Karamy before the entry of the devil, Mansur Bey Galib. Mansur Bey Galib is a man of both power and wealth. His entry into their lives makes the family of Faris Effendi Karamy worried and horrified. He separates Selma and Khalil and drags them into a life of helplessness and worry. From here, the story enters a new phase, where Selma’s father, Faris Effendi Karamy, is compelled to give Selma’s hand in marriage to Mansur Bey Galib, who is a roisterer. Selma’s difficulties begin here, but she still remains in love with Khalil Gibran. All the luxuries and the mansion become a prison for Selma, where she is bound to live but finds it difficult to stay. After some time, Mansur Bey Galib becomes aware of Selma’s secrets—what she does, how she lives, and whom she meets. He forbids Selma from visiting her father’s home and forces her to obey him as her husband. One day, she secretly visits her father’s home to meet Khalil Gibran and makes him aware of all her circumstances. They then decide to separate with sadness. A few months later, Selma gives birth to a baby boy, but destiny plans the tragic end of the lives of both the child and his mother, leaving Lebanon in mourning.

By Shamsa Najeeb A Thousand Splendid Suns is an extraordinary novel by Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan writer and journalist currently living in America. Hosseini gained international recognition with his debut novel, The Kite Runner, and this brilliant work stands as his second novel. The book follows the parallel lives of two women: Mariam, a rural woman who is sent to Kabul to marry an older man named Rasheed, and Laila, a local teenager raised by open-minded and educated parents.The story is set in Kabul, Afghanistan, against the turbulent backdrop of the early rise of the Taliban. At its core, A Thousand Splendid Suns focuses heavily on the inequalities and hardships that Afghan women endure daily. The narrative masterfully explores how Mariam and Laila survive these harrowing challenges with deep bravery and heroism. Additionally, the characters in the book are written with such profound realism that readers cannot help but sympathize with their struggles. Khaled Hosseini has done an exceptional job of creating a masterpiece that is both deeply moving and emotionally gripping. It serves as a classic tribute to the courageous and resilient women of Afghanistan. In a nutshell, A Thousand Splendid Suns is one of those rare books that stays with you forever, fundamentally transforming your worldview regarding Afghanistan and its women.

The author Arslan Athar is based in Lahore. However, belongs to Hyderabad. In his novel Forty Days of Mourning, he weaves together themes of identity, migration, political questions, displacement and diaspora. He also flexes out human emotions of love, hate, betrayal and loss. The book is a refreshing piece of work sprinkled with a Pakistani flavour. Fatima Bhutto was the author’s mentor. She helped him navigate the troubled waters of writing and storytelling. Saleema and Ali are the protagonists. And Naveed, a soldier to Ali, acts as the villain. The city of Hyderabad is itself shown as a living character, with the description of the marketplace and the women in burqas; the city mattered a lot. As Saleema, in an act of disloyalty to Ali, twists the truth around to save herself from disgrace, Ali sends her to Surriya’s in Lahore on the pretext that she was going to be a grandmother and her daughter needed her. But was this really the matter? Or was there a graver issue at hand? Ali definitely did not know of Saleema’s infidelity, but he knew something much bigger. Hyderabad now belonged to India! And the people of Hyderabad would have to flee in order to save their lives. The women lost their husbands and sons. They had to figure out life in that moment, too. Where would they take shelter? Refugee camps? Saleema was a strong woman. She was growing with time. She was becoming more mature. She held onto her secret, careful not to spill it out to anyone. She was able to manipulate and swim through circumstances. The one person who knew her secret was Rukiaya, the maid, and she made a deal with her to set her free in return for her silence. Why the novel is titled such because there is constant mourning going on. First, it is with Ali’s mother’s death, then its Saleema saddened by her engagement to her cousin, which didn’t last long, then it is in Ali’s death and finally in the annexation of Hyderabad. Where would Hyderabad belong? India or Pakistan, or will it become independent? The novel explores the collapse of a political order through the eyes of Saleema Ali Khan, a woman whose personal struggles mirror the fate of the state she loves. It is interesting to know how the author depicts history through the relationships, conversations, homes and silences. The reader sees how the personal and political are entwined. When one reads the title, one is not too excited about buying the book. But despite the morbid title, the novel offers an interesting and colourful take on life in Hyderabad, Deccan. On the whole, the book is a marvellous read. Despite being the author’s debut book, it promises a high level of maturity and coherence. A great read!

I have always interpreted the quote, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” as a metaphor, denying the worldly meaning and focusing on the discrete sense it creates. But not until I read the book “Kingdom and Exile” by Albert Camus. Judging by the title, it establishes a scenario of a king ruling in his kingdom with absolute power and authority. But owing to certain reasons, he was compelled to exile and relinquish his power. That’s how I correlated the book with its title. I was totally left bemused when I started reading it, flapping one page after the other and realizing the book isn’t like how its title says; it’s different inside. It’s actually a collection of six intriguing stories, each with different lessons. This book, which contains amusing stories, was written by Albert Camus, a French author and philosopher. He narrated and published his book in 1957, and soon after, he died in a car accident in 1960. For his magnificent write-up, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in literature. ‘Kingdom and Exile’ is a book of 126 pages, completed within approximately 6 days without making us invest more time in it. The flow of stories makes us read them in no time. Each of the stories revolves around a new protagonist with different roles as a character in the story. I enjoyed reading all 6 stories, but I was more absorbed with the first story of the book, “The adulterous woman,” who follows her husband on his business trip when she is asked to. Undoubtedly, her husband loved her and made her existence real, but more often than not, she realized he was more involved in his business, which made her wonder about the probability of his affection. It eventually made certain boundaries between them where she kept her uneasiness to herself, making her feelings isolated within herself. But at the end of the day, he was her husband who always made her feel valued, so she ended up accepting the meager way of being valued. The other five stories were relinquishing; they always made me wonder about the end of them. But woefully, I was baffled by the ending most of the time because I thought there must have been a better ending. Though the book is interesting, it could have been in its best version if it had emphasized explicitness. I was actually finding it hard to understand because of the vocabulary. Overall, it made me willing to read it because I wasn’t bored and stayed focused. The best part of reading it was becoming involved as an invisible character in these stories who secretly observed the characters playing their roles. Since it is always better to surround ourselves with print media, read new things, and expand our domain of learning, this book is relevant to all those who are sluggish enough to start reading. It will keep us interested and focused throughout each story.