The ideal reviewer is rarely expected to direct the reader of any text as to how to approach it, since doing so can come across as being obtrusive. However, given that this edited anthology of Attia Hosain’s collected fiction, Distant Traveller, contains not only an important foreword by her daughter Shama Habibullah, but also a publisher’s note by the eminent Ritu Menon, and an afterword by noted author Aamer Hussein, it would be wise to peruse all three of these pieces before immersing oneself in the actual text. Hussein’s afterword focuses extensively on Hosain’s love of literature and her specific place and position in the world of literature; thus it is worth examining that before reading her stories, especially if one is not already familiar with any other works authored by her.

Born in 1913, Hosain hailed from a scholarly background and was also allied to a distinguished Lucknow taluqdar (elite landed gentry) family, independently choosing to marry her cousin Ali Bahadur Habibullah at the age of 19. Habibullah does an admirable job of expressing — with warmth, elegance, and affection — their lineage and background as well as her mother’s interesting biography. Genuine literary talent runs abundantly in the family; Hosain’s niece Muneeza Shamsie and great-niece Kamila Shamsie are internationally renowned writers in their own right. Uncharacteristically feminist and strong-minded for her age, Hosain channelled her passion into her writing, of which her novel Sunlight on a Broken Column is the best-known example. With candid respect, Hussein opines that the book “is an undoubted classic and would have survived as such even if it had been the only book she ever published.”

An anthology presents some unfinished pieces of work by Attia Hosain that are no less brilliant than those published in her lifetime

Fortunately, she wrote more than just one novel. She migrated to Britain and raised her two children (Shama and Waris) there largely as a single parent — her marriage, due to the rather unfair disparagement of her by her in-laws, did not prove to be a conventionally successful one. Nevertheless, as her daughter intimates, Hosain had an indomitable social spirit and consistently surrounded herself with like-minded friends and intellectuals. In the words of Shama: “To earn a living, Attia began to broadcast in the BBC Eastern Service, in Urdu. From the outset, the Eastern Service or more particularly the Bush House canteen housed a very disparate and extraordinary group of people. Among them were Ijaz Batalvi, then a young lawyer; Zia Mohiuddin [sic], just beginning an acting career; [and] Amina Ahuja, a brilliant young linguist and artist.” Having been educated at India’s prestigious Isabella Thoburn College, Hosain developed an ability to appreciate British literature and express herself in excellent English when she was quite young. OUP has helpfully included some photographs of longhand drafts of her work (in English) that depict a literary consciousness that clearly prioritised sound editing and meticulous planning.

Although later in life Hosain inexplicably stopped writing, we are indebted to both her daughter and Hussein for gathering, in this volume, several of her unpublished pieces as well as a number of published ones that deserve reprinting. Introducing the works is a segment titled ‘Deep Roots’ where the writer comments on the challenges of being a strong bilingual, especially since it is often difficult to express in English what one can only feel in Urdu. What follows is a fascinating excerpt from an unfinished novel that delineates the adventures of its protagonist Murad.

Murad goes through diverse experiences ranging from a plan to visit his late friend’s mistress, to reminiscing about a successful Indian eatery in Britain run by an enterprising man named Chaudhary. One immediately gets the sense that vivid characterisation is one of Hosain’s most evident strengths as a writer; indeed, some of the pieces that follow the unfinished novel are not short stories as much as vignettes that simply portray what a particular character may be thinking or feeling at a particular juncture in time. Nevertheless, in spite of their brevity they remain enjoyable.

“The flowers were awkwardly crowded into the small-necked bottle. Its paper label had not been successfully washed away and triumphantly survived in its scratched mutilation. On and around the bottle there was dust. There was a film of dust on everything. It crept up with the hot wind that found its way into the room in spite of shut doors and windows. Green paper on glass panes shut out the glare that burned away colour from earth and sky and the sensual delight of vision from the eyes. The heavy sweet scent of the flowers reached out into the skin-drying air with a cooling touch. The flowers were white and wax-petalled among thick deep green leaves. Their buds were tight wrapped in slender pale green sepals. They were allies in the battle against the cruel summer — lying cool on hot pillows — around earthenware water pots — strung in garlands sold in scented streets by singing men — adorning women when gold and silver grew heavy with heat and sweat. This summer the battle was lost before it began. The desolation it brought was the visible expression of desolate hearts. The tainted wind blew hot from blazing homes, and carried the dust of devastated fields, and the dead…” — Excerpt from the book

Brief vignettes such as ‘Gossamer Thread,’ ‘Coolie,’ ‘Phoenix Fled,’ and even slightly longer stories such as ‘The Storm’ reflect Hosain’s uncanny ability to hone in on the essence of a character and authentically capture the way he or she might behave under certain circumstances. Regardless of whether she is writing about an elderly woman who is abandoned as her family flees from danger, a world-weary businessman, a provincial candidate up for election, a fallen woman, or a deformed human being, Hosain manages to bring each character to life in a manner that is both convincing and entertaining. Her powers of description enable her multi-layered images to remain with the reader long after one has comprehensively closed the book.

Two of her longer stories deserve special consideration at this point, particularly since they both dwell on the intriguing lives of domestics. In ‘The Street of the Moon’ Hosain writes about the problematic marriage of Kalloo, a cook, and his wayward young wife Hasina whose moral slide from unfaithful spouse to fallen woman is described with considerable skill. In ‘The Daughter-in-Law’ Hosain groups together a delightfully intriguing bunch of female servants who initially think that mysterious happenings in the house can only be attributed to a jinn, only to realise that the bahu of one of them is responsible for much of the havoc. Writing about women in general and feminist issues in particular was fundamentally important to Hosain: one of her unfinished pieces, ‘The Leader of Women’ centres on a model society wife who aspires to a political career. Rather tantalisingly Hosain penned a note at the bottom of this brief vignette stating: “Unfinished because I don’t know what I was driving at really.”

The inability to complete some of her stories may indeed have frustrated Hosain, but with anthologies such as this one, the perceptive reader benefits far more from simply watching the writer’s mind at work, as opposed to demanding closure for every piece included in the book. There is an almost Arabian Nights quality to this collection and as long as one keeps an open mind one finds that it is just as rewarding to sample Hosain’s unfinished work as it is to read her completed endeavours.

My personal favourite is ‘Parrot in a Cage,’ a short story that is both humorous and well-written; moreover, it demonstrates the type of sharp ironic twist at the end that remains characteristic of much of Hosain’s writing. She was a complex and talented woman, far ahead of her time, strongly divided between her elitist background and her deeply empathetic nature. Yet, perhaps it was this very conflict that enabled her to write with such remarkable versatility, and hence ensure that we continue to savour her efforts over a hundred years after her birth.

The reviewer is assistant professor of social sciences and liberal arts at the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi.

Distant Traveller
(ANTHOLOGY)
By Attia Hosain
Oxford University Press, Pakistan
ISBN: 9780199402694
312pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 10th, 2016