It’s a world in limbo, figuratively and literally. There are ghosts looming around, bowed down in the afterlife by the burdens they collected while alive, their spirits now suspended in barzakh, the in-between place Muslims believe spirits go to once they pass away.

There are also men and women, still alive, wandering, searching for meaning and fulfilment, their souls stuck between the physical and metaphysical. They too, are bent — but not visibly — by the weight of unresolved emotions that do not permit them to move forward.

There are characters, emotions, pink plumes of smoke, fairies, shamans and myriad spooky occurrences scattered about, dialogues and symbols left hanging mid-air in a haunting ‘Land of Nowhere’, tangents of thought let loose which will unravel much more before they eventually tie up. There are moments that leave you uncomfortable and images that trigger myriad questions.

It’s quintessential Asim Abbasi — and yet, Barzakh is very unlike the director and writer’s previous works.

The initial episodes of the series, created in collaboration with Zee5, have just been released on YouTube — the OTT platform itself continues to be banned in Pakistan — and undeniably, was highly anticipated. This was not just due to Asim’s reputation but also because it stars, along with a brilliant ensemble cast, actors Fawad Khan and Sanam Saeed.

Churrails’ director Asim Abbasi is back with a new series, Barzakh. But those expecting more of the same, or misled into ideas of typical romance by seeing Fawad Khan and Sanam Saeed together in the cast, might have to recalibrate…

For the less informed, Fawad and Sanam became one of Pakistani entertainment’s most-loved on-screen pairs — especially in India — when they had TV drama audiences swooning with a feel-good romance in the Hum TV Network drama Zindagi Gulzar Hai. Now, more than a decade later, they are acting together again in multiple projects.

Barzakh is the first of these projects to release, the other two being the Asim Raza-directed series for Sony LIV, Shandur, and Jo Bachay Hain Sang Samait Lo, an MD Productions venture, which will hopefully become Pakistan’s first-ever Netflix release. Fans have been excited — ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) is testament to this.

And yet, Barzakh is certainly not what the romantic drama aficionado would expect from these two actors. I mention this to director Asim Abbasi, connecting with me from the UK via a Zoom call.

Having seen the first two episodes of the show, in order to put together this story — a work in progress spanning over a week, traversing interviews from around the globe — I can tell that this is hardly the romantic story that has you smiling and humming love songs.

Asim nods. “I would never want to be put in a box, with people expecting a certain kind of story from me. I could be in a different mood and tell a completely different story from my previous one. The last series I made — Churrails, also for Zee5 — was angrier, more feisty and here I wanted to talk about forgiveness, love, loss, hope.

“My father passed away during the making of Churrails,” he adds, “but it was only when I was done with the series that I began to reflect on how he was gone and started dealing with the pain.

“And then, the coronavirus pandemic happened and I became consumed with the notion of what we are here for, what we leave behind, where do we go after death.

“But yes, in this, zindagi gulzar nahin hai!” He laughs.

He is aware, then, that with Barzakh he is squashing the romantic hopes of a huge fanbase?

“If I were in the business of repeating cliches then, sure, I would have cast Fawad and Sanam as star-crossed lovers,” he responds. “But there are others that will do that and I know that those projects are coming soon.”

He adds: “The fact that Barzakh stars these two actors together may draw the attention of a mass audience towards it, but their casting was pure serendipity rather than part of a strategic plan.

“The same had happened with my movie Cake which was meant to be a smaller film but just became bigger when Sanam [Saeed] and Aaminah [Sheikh] became part of the cast. Similarly, Fawad and Sanam wanted to become part of Barzakh and this really speaks of them as actors.

“I am sure that they both appreciate being stars and the love that they get from the audience but this is them saying that, hey, we’re actors first and stars second. It is important to do projects that fulfil you and it is only when you have your cup full, creatively, that you are able to give back to the audience.”

In a similar vein, Barzakh has been an exercise in self-fulfilment for Asim too. “I have truly made Barzakh for myself and hope that there are enough people out there who think like me and connect with it. And I don’t mean to sound immodest but, since I have made this series for myself and I am happy with what I am putting out there, I am less concerned about what audiences will say about it.

“I was different back when Churrails had released. It was my first web-series, I had been really nervous and really wanted the audience to love me and love my work. This time, I feel that I am not personally answerable to any of the critique anymore.

“This is a big change in me. I do hope that, in time, Barzakh will be considered a piece of work that was trying to say something about the universe that we exist in. The high of this may be much more than the high of Churrails because this is a more personal project. I have bared my soul and, perhaps, someone watching the series will pause and say, this is my soul too! It essentially means that we are the same soul, that we are all the same.”

So there was never the concern that the story’s very artistic trajectory may not be conventionally pleasing to the masses?

“There are layers to the story, yes, but ultimately the base layers are the same,” says Asim. “Everyone has seen death, everyone has or will have to experience the pain of ageing parents, children will always feel that they were not looked after by their parents as well as they should have been.

“These themes are all universal enough to connect with people but, yes, the narration is not entirely commercial. For me, the measure of Barzakh’s success is not the number of people who will watch it but, rather, the people who will be talking about it two, three months from now, analysing it and looking for answers.

“I am lucky to have found a producer — Shailja at Zee5 — who believed in me enough to allow me to tell the story the way that I wanted to, without the pressure of wondering if it were ‘massy’ enough.”

This leads me to pose the same question to the series’ producer, Shailja Kejriwal, Chief Creative Officer, Special Projects at Zee5.

“The way I define success is, did we do something pioneering, did we do something thought-provoking, did we do something that might start a debate, did we all put in our best, and did we all love doing what we did?” she writes to me in a cross-border text message.

“If the answer is yes, then we have been successful. As far as business goes, I look at the numbers at the end of the year and with all shows combined! How much did I spend, and how much did I make? That’s the only way to try out different things. I would not consider it successful if I were to just cater to the lowest common denominator at all times for the sake of business. I feel makers and artists are also required to provide food for thought.”

She adds, “For both Asim and me, the story, characters and script come first, and then the casting process. This way, we know that the script is getting made for sure — we just need to find actors who fit in and find the script equally exciting.

“I feel so lucky that we found such an amazing ensemble of actors starting with Salman Shahid sahib, Fawad Khan, Fawad M. Khan, Sanam Saeed, Faiza Gilani, Khushhal Khan, Sajid Hasan, Eman Suleman, Anika and Arham. This is a dream line-up for any show!

“Perhaps if we were making a project that was designed for the Fawad-Sanam chemistry, we would have felt the pressure. Here, we were just happy that our cast loved Asim’s vision and have been so supportive in every way.”

What drew her to Barzakh? She replies: “A family reunion of the living and the dead! Red moon nights! Fairies and shamans! Relatable traumas set in a surreal world! All of these put together reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And here I had Asim, who was willing to go there. Few would have the courage to do what Asim has done. Hence, I felt the need to enable Barzakh.

“Undoubtedly, it is niche. But it is also timeless. And the good thing about OTT is that, unlike television, the shows remain on a platform forever. So, as audiences get more exposed to different stories and genres beyond television, they will catch up with Barzakh.”

Waqas Hassan, handling the production end in Pakistan, adds, “I knew that Barzakh wouldn’t be an easy production but I was confident in my ability to rise to the same challenge Asim and Shailja entrusted me with the responsibility and we successfully pushed the boundaries to create something truly unique.”

I ask Fawad Khan and Sanam Saeed the same question — what draws actors of their stature, constantly under scrutiny for the projects they do, to sign on to a mystical, fantastical Barzakh?

“I don’t think any mainstream actor or actress would have refused Barzakh if it were offered to them,” says Sanam. “Why would they? You get tired of playing out the same formulaic stories again and again.

“In my case, my character develops a lot throughout the story. You might not be initially able to entirely understand why she is there and who she is but, by the end, you realise what all the symbols and scenes signified. It was a tough character to play out because she doesn’t show too many emotions and, yet, I had to somehow keep the audience engaged.”

She adds, “There are so many intriguing themes within the story. It is dark, mystical, magical, focusing on family dynamics, death and loss. There’s a lot of pain in the script but also, hope. There are questions that surface, like, where do souls go? Are they around us? Do we ever get their support when we need them? Where is Barzakh and do we all live in it sometimes, caught in a state of limbo?

“And then there was the team. I had worked with Asim before, in Cake, and I knew that this story was particularly special to him. It dealt with loss and he had written it around the time he lost his own father. Mo Azmi was handling the cinematography, Aarij Hashmi for production design, the brilliant cast and the mountains as a backdrop — it was a recipe for magic!”

The actors’ enthusiasm for the series is evident in the way that they have gone about promoting it. Both Sanam and Fawad spent the weeks preceding Barzakh’s release sitting through multiple interviews with various media portals, Fawad having especially flown down to Karachi from Lahore for the promotions. “You have to stand by projects that you believe in,” Sanam points out the obvious.

Fawad says, “I read the script and it was love at first sight. Asim later told me that he had not expected me to want to play one amongst many characters in an ensemble cast and I reminded him that I had been part of many such projects.

“In a story like this one, with multiple characters, the actors act out dialogues rather than monologues and, for that, every character needs to be well-developed. Also, this is a web-series, which I feel is the perfect marriage between film and TV. The audience can watch it at their convenience, the budgets are bigger, so you can make what you want to make and you can take the time to build a character.”

He continues: “A subject like Barzakh really allowed me to sink my teeth into my character. Asim has a unique gift that he writes as well as directs. So, he knows exactly what he wants to create. He forms the story’s skeleton in the form of the script and then builds a world around it.

“There are so many details to the story. The characters are like onions, you slowly peel off the layers and discover so much about them. It’s essentially a family drama, where you see the collapse of a family before they find love again for one another, but the setting is a supernatural one. It’s a narrative that I find very interesting.”

It has its spooky moments, I comment. He takes the bait, as I had hoped, informing me, “There was some supernatural activity on the set of Barzakh. The house that we were shooting in would be vacated at night and once, when I was up on the roof, I caught the lights of one room going on and off randomly. It could have been fluctuation or maybe there was something there.”

What do you do when you find yourself working on a set that may be haunted? “Nothing! You’re already there, what can you do?” he laughs.

Fawad adds, “And there are actual fairytales inherent to the region. A local told me about fairies that live there and he described that their mouths open sideways rather than up and down!”

Are there any more interesting stories from the set? He recalls: “It was so cold. At one point, a piece of a glacier fell into the valley and it became insane. There were gale winds blowing, felling trees and electric poles.

“One night, the temperature was minus six Celsius and I was supposed to do a scene where I get into a tub filled with water in the middle of the forest. I backed out, and everyone else on the set agreed with me!”

Of course. A tub filled with water in the middle of the forest does sound like a scene you’ll see in Barzakh. And you will likely see more surreal imagery. The teasers have promised it and, by the time this story gets printed, two or three episodes will be available for streaming on YouTube.

There will be eerie occurrences, there will be flawed characters clawing their way through spiritual darkness, and there will be other fantastical, unnerving images. Certainly, there are ghosts in Barzakh, but they won’t be jumping out at you, their eyes gleaming red, shouting ‘Boo!’

Those are just not the sorts of ghosts you expect from Asim Abbasi.

Published in Dawn, ICON, July 28th, 2024