Mukhota
By Prof Dr Najeeba Arif
Aks Publications
ISBN: 978697312016
128pp.

Breaking away from the conventions of a novel and venturing to explore the internal workings of characters’ minds is no simple task. But that is exactly what Prof Dr Najeeba Arif does in her new novel.

A poet, writer and critic, Dr Arif is currently serving as Chairperson of the Pakistan Academy of Letters and is Dean Faculty of Languages and Literature at the International Islamic University in Islamabad.

Her novel Mukhota is a story by which, using postmodern narrative techniques, she explores the themes of identity, alienation, class and the caste system, along with guilt and shame. The novel also reflects on the artificial nature and constructedness of language and meaning and, by all this, serves as an effective social commentary pointing at the ills of society.

Mukhota is the story of a young girl navigating through life’s challenges in a small town of southern Punjab. The protagonist Salima’s family migrated to Pakistan after the partition of India. Her father is a vendor who sells chaat chholay to make a living. Living as migrants, they have to face the issues of identity and belonging that migrants are often confronted with.

A postmodernist novel explores themes of identity and meaning and offers a unique and rewarding reading experience

The reader would definitely find many things to relate to in this novel — fears, anxieties, sense of alienation, discrimination and existential crises. I believe everyone must have experienced at least some of these things in their lives. Apart from that, it also enables the readers to walk in the protagonist’s shoes and experience things which they may have not experienced so far.

Unlike other girls of her age, Salima is sensitive, introspective and reflective and possesses a deep imagination from an early age. The story begins when she is studying at a primary school. She observes how society sees her family as inferior and wonders about why things happen the way they happen. She endures all the insults that she is forced to take. Still, she always tries to maintain her dignity. Similarly, her father and mother also maintain their honour and dignity, despite the insults, and never lower themselves in front of others in any situation.

The ignorance and narrow-mindedness of the society she lives in can be gauged from the fact that, whenever Salima is bullied on her way back from school, she never speaks about it at home, because she is afraid that her mother might stop her from going to school, even though she has done nothing wrong. School is the one thing that she never wants to skip.

Slowly, Salima turns into an introvert. As she becomes alienated from society, she creates her own world in her mind and tries to give meaning to it. The constant efforts to save her dignity in front of her classmates and people around her force her to cover her face with a mask, a ‘mukhota’, to hide from others her actual feelings and also the internal world that she desires to live in.

That world becomes a shelter, where she seeks refuge from the harsh realities of society, ultimately leading her to have a fragmented identity, where she presents one face to the world and conceals her true self within herself.

What sets this novel apart from others is the author’s ability to build such a compelling narrative that delves into the depths of Salima’s imagination and the emotional turbulence inside her, and that too in not too many pages.

As she grows up, Salima falls in love with a boy who lives in her neighbourhood. However, fate has other plans for the two. Something quite unexpected occurs in her experience of love, by which she also passes through another stage of understanding and is able to learn something that few people get a chance to understand.

After Salima passes her Matric exams by securing a good position, she is awarded a scholarship to study at a college in Lahore. We are curious to know what happens after she goes to Lahore but the chapter ends and, in the next chapter, we are met with a complete surprise.

There is a shifting of the narrative from the third person to the first person. Something totally unexpected is revealed, which turns the entire plot upside down. The same happens in the other chapters which follow.

One section has a letter that the narrator receives from a reader, who holds her accountable for what she is doing with the novel. In another section, the narrator receives a letter even from Salima, in which she is holding the narrator accountable.

Apart from the said surprise, however, the reader learns something else later about Salima and her family. A lawyer is seen frequenting their village, after which there is all kinds of gossip about Salima’s character.

Ultimately, in the last chapter, the reader sees a character fighting the battle of her life, as she is diagnosed with cancer.

The constant deviation from established narrative and structure techniques is postmodern in its nature. By using these techniques, the author forces the reader into realising the fictionality of fiction. This style defamiliarises the reader and the habitual way of seeing things and, by this, s/he is forced to take a fresh look at everything.

And then there are the reflections on the nature of language and meaning which, too, are influenced by postmodern thought. The speaker reflects on the artificial and constructed nature of language and the meaning-making system. Similarly, the reader also finds existential themes in the novel; the questioning of life’s meaning and all the parameters that are seen as sources of this meaning.

The diction of the novel is excellent. The author has made a careful choice of words to express deep emotions and experiences. Every word feels precisely picked, and expresses the depth of feelings and experiences very appropriately.

Similarly, the novel has a rich and vivid imagery that skilfully plays out the scenes while filling the reader with nostalgia that continues to linger even after finishing the novel.

Defying convention, Mukhota offers a unique and rewarding reading experience that keeps one guessing until the very end.

The writer is a member of staff.

X: WaqasAliRanjha

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 22nd, 2023