‘The Pakistani Bride’ – A Gripping Novel by Bapsi Sidhwa
Bapsi Sidhwa needs no introduction. Author of five internationally acclaimed novels, recipient of several awards including Pakistan’s Sitara-i-Imtiaz, she has been called by The New York Times “Pakistan’s finest English-language novelist”, while the Washington Post has described her as “Pakistan’s leading female author”. The famous film “Water” by Deepa Mehta, a well-known Canadian-Indian film producer, is based on Sidhwa’s novel by the same name. The same filmmaker adopted her widely acclaimed novel about the partition of India, “Cracking India,” into the movie “Earth”.
Her novel ‘The Pakistani Bride’, which has been brought out recently by the non-profit publisher, Milkweed Editions, was the first story she wrote at age 26 after visiting the Karakoram mountain area on her honeymoon but it was not published till 1983 when her husband decided to move to Houston, Texas, in pursuit of his business ambitions.
Sidhwa, a Parsi mother of three grownup children, still lives in Houston but visits Pakistan often and holds dual nationality. A graduate of Kinnaird College, she entertains fond memories of Lahore. “I can write a lot more in Lahore than I can write anywhere else…Lahore does have a very romantic atmosphere and it does release some type of a creative energy”, she maintains.
The reissue now of “The Pakistani Bride” is quite significant and timely, inasmuch as the locale of the story is similar to the region suspected of being the hideout for Osama Ben Laden and his Al Qaeda militants. The mountain inhabitants, called Kohistanis, follow no law of any civil society but their own stringent traditions and codes of conduct.
Sidhwa’s portrayal of Qasim, father of the bride, a Kohistani, epitomizes the traits of the primitive tribes of the region: “A simple man from a primitive, warring tribe, his impulses were as direct and concentrated as pinpoints of heat. No subtle concessions to reason or consequence tempered his fierce capacity to love or hate, to lavish loyalty or pity. Each emotion arose spontaneously and without complication, and was reinforced by racial tradition, tribal honor and superstition. Generations had carried it that way in his volatile Kohistani blood.”
The tall, handsome, hardy Kohistanis can survive for days on just corn bread and water. Matter of fact, survival is the sole aim of life in that rugged, uncompromising highland; and the tribesmen ask for no more. But, they have uncanny notions of honor, revenge and loyalty.
Sidhwa has weaved her story around those values and on an actual incident she came to know during her sojourn decades back in the picturesque Karakoram region.
Qasim, a mountain man, happened to be in East Punjab when communal riots broke out there in the wake of the independence of India. He rescues a young girl from a massacre in which her parents were killed. He brings her to Lahore and raises her there as her own daughter, showering on her unbounded love of a father, till she reaches the marriageable age. The girl, whom he calls Zaitoon after his own biological daughter who had been killed by smallpox, also believes him to be her real father and loves and respects him as such.
Qasim had spent 15 years in the plains of Punjab, developed intimate friendship with his neighbor and benefactor, but his tribal trait of valuing his word of honor remained unaffected. He had given the word to his cousin that he would give Zaitoon in marriage to his son. He had described his tribal area to Zaitoon as a magnificent place inhabited by handsome and loveable people. Zaitoon agrees to the match and starts dreaming about a romantic life.
On their way to the tribal habitation where her wedding was to take place, she learns from the soldiers building the Karakoram Highway what a misfit she would be in the austere, savage and cruel tribal community. She begs her father to take her back to Punjab.
“I have given my word”, he says, “on it depends my honor. It is dearer to me than life. If you besmirch it, I will kill you by my bare hands”.
She is married and her husband, though a virile and handsome young man, starts treating her cruelly like some inferior being and beating her on the slightest excuse. He considers it his right to even beat his own mother.
Zaitoon decides to escape; it takes her nine days of tortuous trek through the mountains to reach the camp of the Pakistan army engaged on the road. The entire tribe is out hunting for her, as they feel that their honor had been compromised. In the lead were her father-in-law and his two sons, including her husband.
She reaches half dead the bridge straddling the Indus River near the army camp. The Major in charge of the road construction there who knew the episode, helps her escape the posse of savage tribals to go back to her own way of life.
Sidhwa has the remarkable faculty of drawing vivid pen pictures. Her text thrives and throbs with the profusion of action-filled verbs. In this story, she makes the reader feel the ambiance of the locale that plays a crucial part in the turns and twists of the story. The characters come alive as the story moves from episode to episode.
One shouldn’t be surprised if Deepa Mehta or some other filmmaker picks up this novel for a film. It has all the ingredients that make for a thrilling movie about a region that has been since 9/11 at the center of media attention. ‘The Pakistani Bride’ could be a good follow up of Khaled Hosseini’s ‘The Kite Runner’ and might be as successful at the box office.
Her two other novels already made into films, “Earth”, based on Cracking India, and Water based on the novel by the same name, have earned several laurels for her and the producer. Interesting, I have read the novel Cracking India but not seen its movie version, while I have enjoyed thoroughly the film Water without reading the novel. In the story about the tragic and traumatic events attending the partition of India, Sidhwa has presented the events as seen by a 7-8 year old Parsi girl – too young to have any bias but too old to be indifferent to the trauma and the hideous episodes taking place around her.
Decades back, I had read Khushwant Sing’s master piece, “A Train to Pakistan”, and Syed Waliullah’s novelette “Escape”, and Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories “Thanda Gousht” (Cold flesh) and Kholdo (Open up) and filed them in my mind as outstanding literary pieces inspired by the cruelties generated by partition. I have since added “Cracking India” to that list.
Although she is but a graduate from the Punjab University, Sidhwa has taught creative writing at several seats of learning, including Columbia, Rice and Houston, a clear recognition of her attainments as a writer.
She is, indeed, a scintillating star from Pakistan on the literary firmament of the world.
(arifhussaini@hotmail.com)
