Read And the World Changed Online
Authors: Muneeza Shamsie
And the World Changed
Published in 2008 by The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406, New York, NY 10016
Collection copyright © 2008 by The Feminist Press
Introduction, headnotes, and glossary copyright © 2008 by Muneeza Shamsie
And the World Changed
was first published in 2005 by Women Unlimited (an associate of Kali for Women).
Page 382
constitutes a continuation of this copyright page.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or used, stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission from The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
And the world changed: contemporary stories by Pakistani women / edited and with an introduction by Muneeza Shamsie.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-55861-931-9
1.
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Short stories, Pakistani (English) 2.
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Short stories, Pakistani (English)âWomen authors.
 Â
I. Shamsie, Muneeza.
PR9540.8.A53 2008
823'.010892870954910905âdc22
2008009270
Text and cover design by Lisa Force
This publication was made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
13 12 11 10 09 08
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EDITOR'S DEDICATION
In loving mamory of my mother, Begum Jahanara Habibullah (1915-2003), who wrote her first book in her eighties and was 84 when it was published
CONTENTS
Contents
2. Existing at the Center, Watching from the Edges: Mandalas
13. Impossible Shade of Home Brew
22. Variations: A Story in Voices
24. And Then the World Changed
Acknowledgments and Permissions
Also Available from Feminist Press
What you hold in your hands is the only anthology of creative texts written originally in English by Pakistani women, ever. This may come as a surprise, since from the creation of Pakistan in 1947, there has been a tradition of English writing by Pakistanis, and English has remained the language of government. The fanning out of migrants into the English-speaking diaspora, accompanied by the facility of travel and the growth of the electronic media, has provided an impetus to Pakistani English literature; it reaches a broad Anglophone audience but in Pakistan has a much smaller readership than indigenous languages and literatures, which are much more widely spoken and read.
1
Thus, Pakistani women who employ English as a creative language live between the East and the West, literally or figuratively, and have had to struggle to be heard. They write from the extreme edges of both English and Pakistani literatures.
Although many of the writers included here are well known, the goal of this pioneering anthology is to reveal how Pakistani women, writing in a globalâalbeit imperialâlanguage, challenge stereotypes that patriarchal cultures in Pakistan and the diaspora have imposed on them, both as women and as writers. In selecting stories for this volume, I have tried to include as wide a spectrum of experiences and voices as possible. Also, I
made a deliberate attempt to include new, young writers. I gave preference to short stories, but I included some extracts from longer works, provided they could stand on their own; in some instances these were given titles specifically for the purpose of this anthology, with the permission of the author. In the call for stories, I did not specify the subject matter because I did not want preconceived parameters to limit contributors. I wanted to discover what their texts might yield. I wanted literary merit to be the prime criterion. I think this has given the collection its diversity.
Contemporary English writing by Pakistani women, which is the subject of this volume, began with Bapsi Sidhwa and the publication of her first novel,
The Crow Eaters
, in 1978
2
; hers was also the first English novel by a resident Pakistani since Partition to receive international recognition, regardless of gender. However, the history of English-language fiction by Pakistani women, being a colonial legacy, must be looked at in the context of Indo-Anglian
3
women's writing in British India, which dates back to the late nineteenth century.
In traditional society, whether Hindu or Muslim, men and women were segregated. Women observed the veilâ
parda
âand lived in the women's apartmentsâthe
zenana
âwithin an extended family. Toru Dutt (1856â1877), who is widely regarded as the first Indo-Anglian woman writer, was a glaring exception. Her Anglicized wealthy Brahman family had converted to Christianity, and her literary uncles were famous for their creative writing in both English and their native Bengali. She was educated in France, traveled to England, wrote an acclaimed poetry collection, and was the author of the Indian English and Indian French novels,
Bianca
or
The Spanish Maiden
(1878) and
L'Journal de Mademoiselle Anvers
(1879), both written by the time she was 21 and published after her death at that age. Dutt's English poetry, as well as the work of a privileged milieu of Anglicized Indian men, emulated the Romantic English poets who, in turn, had been influenced
by the copious translations of classical Indian textsâSanskrit, Persian, Arabicâby British scholars in India.
In 1837, English replaced Persian, the language of the Mughal administration, as the language of government, but in the lower courts, Persian was replaced by vernacular languages. This led to a two-tiered educational system, English and vernacular, that persists in South Asia, perpetuating huge social schisms. English became the language of the Indian elite, a means of advancement and employment and of communication with the colonial rulers. Indian reformers such as the Bengali Brahman Ram Mohan Roy (1772â1833) also advocated English, believing it to be a window to new ideas, new technologiesâand progress (Rahman 2002). Muslims, who identified more strongly with Persianâbecause it was the language of the Mughal court and thus a symbol of Muslim power in Indiaâshunned English until the dynamic educationalist and reformer Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817â1898) galvanized public opinion among Muslims in favor of English. He inspired a social transformation, propagating reform among the Muslim elite who redefined their identity as modern Indian Muslims. His ideas were pivotal to the genesis and ethos of Pakistan (Jalal 2001).