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In 1967 the expatriate Zulfikar Ghose published the riveting The Murder of Aziz Khan.

This
was the first cohesive, modern English novel written by a writer of Pakistani origin. The
plot about a poor Punjab farmer destroyed by a group of industrialists, though fiction, was
so close to the bone, that the chattering classes were abuzz, speculating “who-was-who”.
Ghose’s remaining novels were set in South America, his wife’s country and few reached
Pakistan. However, his poetry appeared in the first two major anthologies of Pakistani
English writing: First Voices (1965) which also included the young Taufiq Rafat; and Pieces
Eight (1971) which introduced Adrian Husain, Nadir Hussein, Salman Tarik Kureshi and
Kaleem Omar. Soon I began to hear of an exciting new poet, Maki Kureishi. Wordfall
(1975) consisting of wonderful poems by Omar, Rafat and Kureishi, remains one of my
favourite books. We would all gather regularly at Adrian Husain’s multi-lingual, literary
meetings, ‘Mixed Voices’.

In 1980, Bapsi Sidhwa’s first novel, The Crow Eaters was published by Jonathan Cape in
England, which caused a tremendous stir. I remember my aunt and my sister chortling out
loud because they found it so funny. I still find it one of Bapsi’s best, but I particularly like
the accomplished Ice-Candy-Man (1988) which holds a place of its own as partition
literature. For me, its special quality lies in the use of an entertaining and canny English-
speaking child as narrator, who employs multi-lingual cadences of Pakistani English.

Meanwhile a new academic discourse revealed that some of the best English literature was
coming from minority and migrant groups in the West and Britain’s erstwhile colonies. In
1984, the British-born playwright Hanif Kureishi, having won the 1981 George Devine
Award, came to Pakistan for the first time. By then I had become a freelance journalist. My
interview with him raised many issues of identity and belonging. Hanif had thought himself
English, but England has perceived him as Pakistani — and his work tried to bridge the
two. He wrote a haunting memoir The Rainbow Sign (1986) about this and his Pakistan
trip, which was published with his Oscar-nominated screenplay My Beautiful Laundrette.

Sara Suleri’s creative memoir Meatless Days opened up a new dimension for me: I had
never read a work which occupied a space between fiction and non-fiction, with chapters
divided according to metaphor. I loved its beautiful tightly-knit prose too, as did my
teenage daughter, Kamila.

Over the next few years, the number of Pakistani English language writers grew rapidly.
Adam Zameenzad published four novels and won a first novel award, as did Hanif Kureishi,
while Nadeem Aslam won two. Tariq Ali embarked on a Communist trilogy, and an Islam
quintet; Bapsi Sidhwa received a prize in Germany, an award in the USA, and published
her fourth novel The American Brat (1993). Zulfikar Ghose, who had written around 10
accomplished novels, brought out the intricate and complex The Triple Mirror of the Self
about migration and a man’s quest for identity, across four continents.
Despite this, in Pakistan, everyone said, “Oh, there are so many Indians writing English,
but why aren’t there any Pakistanis?” But I was reading, reviewing and interviewing
Pakistani writers, all the time including playwright Rukhsana Ahmad and short story writer
Aamer Hussein in England. We also had some rather good resident English language poets,
but they had no outlets — Pakistan’s publishing and newspaper industry was in crisis and
the international fanfare revolved around South Asian English novels, not poetry or short
fiction. Even so, a younger generation, including Alamgir Hashmi and Athar Tahir had
emerged.

In 1996 Ameena Saiyid of OUP asked me to put together an anthology of Pakistani English
writing to commemorate Pakistan’s Golden Jubilee. The hunt for material was quite
challenging, though I found that through interviews I had collected a lot of rare, first hand,
biographical information. I chanced upon the Pakistani-born Moniza Alvi’s work for the first
time in the British Council Library and learnt that she was a promising mainstream British
poet. But the real surprise came from America. I knew of some short story writers such as
Tariq Rahman and Athar Tahir in Pakistan and Talat Abbasi in New York, but the real
surprise came from America. In answer to my query Professor M.U. Memon sent me a list
of Pakistani-Americans including Tahira Naqvi, Javed Qazi and Moazzam Sheikh; Moazzam,
in turn pointed me to Sorayya Y. Khan. Suddenly I found I had 44 published writers of
Pakistani origin for the book.

The anthology, Dragonfly in the Sun, which took its name from a Ghose poem, was a
retrospective of fiction, poetry and drama, which followed the development of Pakistani
English writing. In the process I re-discovered Shahid Suhrawardy, Ahmed Ali, Zaibunnissa
Hamidullah, Mumtaz Shahnawaz. There was one unexpected problem: many contributors
would not give their date of birth! So I had to resort to a loose grouping, instead of a
chronological order.

The major event in our lives was that Kamila’s first novel was accepted for publication in
1998. By the time my next anthology was out, Kamila had published her second and my
octogenarian mother had written a memoir. Amazingly, our three books appeared in the
space of a year.

Dragonfly raised questions of identity: How did I define ‘Pakistani”? Why had I included
expatriates? To me it seemed that with globalization, most people have more than one
identity. If a writer claims to be Pakistani, that is enough and will influence his/her writing,
responses, perspective.

Therefore my second anthology Leaving Home (2001) explored the Pakistani experience of
migration in its widest perspective, through fiction and essays. I had discovered that the
first South Asian English book, Travels by Sake Dean Mohamet, began with a migration.
He had served in the East India Company, migrated to Ireland and written his memoirs in
1794 to explain his homeland to Europeans — and I included an extract symbolically as a
prologue.

The rest of the book was divided into three sections. The first “When Borders Shift” opened
with an extract from Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel The Bride, about the 1947 train massacres. The
second “Go West” took its title from Javaid Qazi’s comic tale of a Pakistani student’s
fantasy of America. The third, “Voting With Their Feet” began with Irfan Husain’s essay on
why the brightest and best were leaving Pakistan.

In between the book also explored many other dimensions. Hamida Khuhro described the
changes she saw in Karachi after 1947; Aquila Ismail’s “Leaving Bangladesh” was a
harrowing eye-witness account of 1971; Kamila Shamsie’s “Mulberry absences” was a
mediation on exile and language; Zia Mohyeddin recalled his memories of Leela Lean in
London; the half German, Anwer Mooraj wrote about pre-and-post-war Germany. All these
were juxtaposed between fiction, mostly by expatriates, such as Rukhsana Ahmad, Zulfikar
Ghose and Aamer Hussein, but there were also stories by resident Pakistanis including
Tariq Rahman, Athar Tahir and Humair Yusuf. I also included two distinguished Urdu
writers Intizar Husain and Fahmida Riaz who wrote occasionally in English — and that in
itself was a form of migration.

Since 2001, Pakistani English literature has come into its own. Uzma Aslam Khan and
Mohsin Hamid have made spectacular debuts too. Saad Ashraf, Sorayya Khan and Feryal
Ali Gauhar have published accomplished new novels. However Pakistani women, who
chose English as a creative vehicle, occupy a unique space. They must constantly
challenge stereotypes imposed on them as women and as writers by the patriarchal
narratives and cultures of both English and Pakistani literatures. This is the focus of my
new anthology And the World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women, (June
2005) to be published by Women Unlimited. Twenty two writers are represented, including
well-known authors and exciting new talent such as Humera Afridi, Hima Raza and Soniah
Kamal. Collecting and collating material has been a journey of discovery and surprise and
here the oral narratives of my childhood and my bilingual world, all co-exist, held together
by themes of a ‘Quest’

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