Hard Days
Mirza, Hassaan
0000-0002-5941-5193
:
2021-07-15
Abstract
The stories in this thesis inspect the lives of Pakistani characters as they journey between worlds of differing privileges and social rules both within Pakistan and abroad, and the fragmentations of identity and relationships that result because of these journeys. Set in the near past, the three short stories employ a homecoming narrative in which protagonists return to Pakistan from the US, where they had moved for College, and, through the lens of their global and other identities, grapple with their family and a country embroiled in instability due to politics and globalization. In the novella, a woman relives a particularly tumultuous time in her life when she was negotiating her agency in a polygamous marriage while the country enters civil war. Homecoming in this novella is a navigation of memory that returns the protagonist to a community lost to time. As can be gleaned, the theme of temporal and geographic displacement as well as the interplay of the personal and the political is of critical interest to these stories. In ways, these stories offer counterpoints to the wave of Pakistani writing circa 2008. While not denying the political context of people’s lives in a patriarchal community that has increasingly been impacted by global politics and terrorisms, the thesis attempts to decenter the large and impersonal and focus on the minutiae of characters’ lives and relationships. By doing so, the narratives increasingly pit a sense of collectivistic duty against individual desires, negotiating which characters gain self-awareness and opportunities to resolve some of the internal and external conflicts of their lives.