Noor and Banu

On the same day — Tuesday — when the Supreme Court of Pakistan upheld the death sentence awarded to Zahir Zakir Jaffer in the 2021 Noor Mukadam murder case in Islamabad, a ceremony was held in London’s Tate Modern Museum to announce this year’s International Booker Prize.

Though I noticed this coincidence and have it here, it would be a bit hard for me to connect the two events meaningfully. But I do discern a relationship between the gruesome murder of a bright young woman in Pakistan and an honour bestowed upon short stories written about Muslim women in the Indian state of Karnataka.

In a general sense, the focus is on challenges that women face in traditional, deeply patriarchal societies in South Asia. We have an example here of how life can be stranger than fiction. At the same time, great fiction has always reflected the realities that exist on the ground.

Anyhow, I first need to explain why the International Booker Prize has caught my attention. There was certainly an element of surprise that the prestigious literary award meant for the English translation of the work of an author from any nationality was given this year to Banu Mushtaq for her collection of short stories written in the Kannada language.

The title of the book is "Heart Lamp" and the short stories are translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi. There was a lot of buzz around the book when it was shortlisted. Here is a female Muslim writer of a regional language of India, who portrays the plight of Muslim women of her society, and the literary world has to sit up and take notice. 

After all, previous winners of this highly regarded prize have usually been luminaries of the major world languages. A middle-class Muslim woman writing in Kannada – this was something.

This is also the first time the prize has been awarded to a collection of short stories. Consequently, Banu Mushtaq is now a name that belongs in the galaxy of international literary stars. What a journey this must have been for a Muslim lawyer and social activist fighting for the rights of Muslim women in a country dominated by Hindu fundamentalists.

Credit also goes to Deepa Bhasthi, who translated the stories from Kannada into English, allowing the world an access to a regional South Asian language. Because of the value of translation, the International Booker Prize money – 50,000 pounds – is equally divided between the author and the translator.

I wonder if Banu Mushtaq has had any knowledge of the Noor Mukadam murder, and if it were possible that this crime would inspire her to make Noor a model for a fictional story of how misogyny and domestic violence, as well as weird lifestyles in the upper class, can lapse into such brutality and blind passion.

In any case, the Noor Mukadam murder had shaken Pakistani society and it did have the ingredients of a cinematic thriller. Netflix has created a number of serials based on real-life stories, mainly about high crime. There was "Delhi Crime", based on a Delhi gang rape that had shaken India.

The point I want to make is that the Noor Mukadam murder was a very shocking and curious incident — its details unbearably gruesome and violent. It said something about our society that we must understand and contend with. It deserves the attention of social scientists, psychiatrists and social reformers. It is a measure of our intellectual deprivation that no such initiatives were taken in Pakistan.

However, Tuesday’s judgment of the Supreme Court that upheld the death sentence of Zahir has been welcomed by a number of lawyers and civil society activists. 

Wealthy and privileged criminals are usually not brought to justice in our broken criminal justice system. This exception was also called a victory for women. It brought a sense of closure to an agonising episode.

To return to Banu, she is said to be part of a movement that has focused on addressing social and economic injustices through literature and activism. We have women activists in Pakistan who make similar efforts to underline social injustice, and they should feel encouraged by the recognition won by Banu.

Let me quote from one review of her writings published in an Indian daily: “In mainstream Indian literature, Muslim women are often flattened into metaphors — silent sufferers or tropes in someone else’s moral argument. Banu refuses both. Her characters endure, negotiate and occasionally push back – not in ways that claim headlines, but in ways that matter to their lives”.

In her speech while receiving the award on Tuesday, Banu said: “In a world that often divides us, literature remains one of the last sacred spaces where we can live inside each other’s minds, if only for a few pages”.

As I have said, the International Booker Prize is a major literary award. It was launched in 2005 and initially recognised a lifetime’s work by an author of any nationality whose work is available in English. Our own Intizar Hussain, the great writer of Urdu fiction who died in February 2016, was shortlisted in 2013. It was then a biennial award.

Now it is awarded annually for a single book translated into English. And it was a landmark decision when, in 2022, Indian writer Geetanjali Shree won the award for her Hindi novel, translated into English by Daisy Rockwell. Its title: "Tomb of Sand" (Rait Samadhi). One can say that literature in South Asian languages is demanding the attention of the world.

Those of us who read books — and it is a small community — would be anxious to get a copy of "Heart Lamp’\" and hopefully, there will soon be an Urdu translation. Chair of the judges, Max Porter, said that it is a “really special book in terms of its politics”. Its stories contain “extraordinary accounts of patriarchal systems and resistance”. Could it be that these stories are also about us?

The writer is a senior journalist. He can be reached at: [email protected]

Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer's own and don't necessarily reflect Geo.tv's editorial policy.

Originally published in The News