Originally published in 1962, Khadija takes us into the cloistered world of a family on a downward trajectory in The Women’s Courtyard. Aliya’s family was once very wealthy. Now, they cling on to the little that’s left to them. Aliya’s mother longs for the days of privilege and schemes to get a little bit of it back. Aliya’s father and uncle hope for independence from Britain. Her cousins have little hope for anything at all. In the middle of everything, Aliya slowly learns how some choices can trap you, while others can free you. This novel is beautifully translated by Daisy Rockwell.

Though the characters come and go, nearly everything that happens in this novel happens in the courtyard of a haveli. The courtyard of a haveli is a place where women cook, raise children, talk, read, eat, pray, and sleep on hot days. Only family or servants can go there. The homes Aliya and her family live in are far from the majestic ones that housed royalty and the very rich, but they still serve to provide shelter for Aliya’s family. Aliya’s family loses their first home just before the Second World War breaks out, when her father assaults a visiting British officer and gets a seven-year prison sentence. The only place they can go is Aliya’s maternal uncle’s home. We stay with Aliya and her relatives from the late 1930s through the Partition of India in 1947.

Outside events—Aliya’s father’s imprisonment, hunger during the war, Independence, and Partition—influence what happens to our protagonist and her family, but there’s more drama inside the courtyard than out. Much of this drama is the result of Aliya’s mother, who cannot let go of her bitterness, anger, jealousy, and pride. If I ever met this woman in real life, I would run. It’s a wonder Aliya isn’t poisoned by this woman’s toxic influence. Remarkably, Aliya’s intelligence allows her to observe and learn rather than let the adults in her life shape her in their images. She doesn’t grow bitter. She doesn’t become a revolutionary. Most unusual of all, Aliya even resists following the expected path of marriage and motherhood. The Women’s Courtyard is a fascinating bildungsroman, though some readers may struggle with Aliya’s mother.

I was thankful for the introductory notes written by translator Rockwell and author Kamila Shamsie. I usually skip these because I want to form my own impressions of a book before I read about what others’ think. Shamsie’s foreword provides a lot of useful background information about Mastur and the cultural, religious, and historical context of The Women’s Courtyard. Rockell’s introduction helpfully explained the names in the novel. In the original Urdu, most of the characters are referred to by their relationship to Aliya. Because English lacks specific words for maternal uncle, etc., Rockwell transformed Urdu words into names for English readers and then used them consistently so that we wouldn’t lose track of who was who. I strongly recommend reading these before diving into the novel proper.

Women Are Boring Because We Locked Them in a Courtyard…

“A feminist classic of Partition literature”: referring to the violence and trauma connected to the partition of India from Pakistan. “…A newly revised translation by Booker Prize-winning translator Daisy Rockwell.” Rockwell is an American translator (with a PhD in this field) who has specialized in translating Indian classics into English. She won the Booker for translating in 2021 Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand. Khadija Mastur (1927-82) is a Pakistani Urdu-language storyteller. Women’s Courtyard was first-published in 1962 as Aangan; it was the first of her two novels.
“Set in the turbulent decade of the 1940s, The Women’s Courtyard provides an inverted perspective on the Partition. Mastur’s novel is conspicuously empty of the political pondering and large national questions that played out, typically, in the arenas of men. Instead, it gives expression to the preoccupations of the women in the courtyard, fighting different battles with loud voices.” Oh, no… Whenever, women are silenced from addressing politics, this can’t be a humanitarian text. Women being happily isolated to a “courtyard” sounds like a Stepford Wives nightmare, rather than a “feminist” ideal… “Chapter 1” opens by hinting that this work is anti-feminist, or meant to bore readers: “She’s sleeping soundly…” Mentions of sleep in the opening paragraphs tends to make readers drowsy. “The novel follows a Muslim girl, Aliya, and her family, about and around the climax of the Independence struggle. While the national struggle rages on the street, Aliya and the other women in the courtyard are tethered hopelessly to their own problems of life and death… An experience in suffocation.” But this experiment is practiced on the reader, who is suffocated by the mundanity of the lives of these women, who are thus made repelling, and uninteresting. Such bored views of women are likely to convince men to avoid talking to women, assuming they would have nothing interesting to say. “Within the strict religious and social framework of a rigid Muslim family, there is a purdah between Aliya and the rest of the world. While the men in Aliya’s family wage politics, get beaten up, and go to jail in the unseen outside, their families back home are forced to wait in deteriorating conditions, trying desperately to hold up the social structure that confines them.” I searched for “beaten” to figure out if these incidents are dramatically portrayed. A couple dozen pages in: “the barber’s wife came to call, wondering what terrible deed Safdar’s father and grandfather had committed to be beaten with shoes in front of everyone…” Instead of explaining what this beating was about, the author mentions that it made “Salma Aunty” act as if she was “dead”, as “she stopped dressing properly and never touched a comb to her hair”. Women are only allowed to express their uniqueness through their outward appearance, so seizing grooming makes her as-if-dead. This is a depressing perspective. I would have been happy to read about the politics of the Partition. But it seems the Brits have censored books that honestly describe this event, in favor of this type of light coverage that focuses on Indian women being boring gossips. This is not what “feminism” should look like, and people should stop using such works to exemplify what this term means. This might be why guys tend to denigrate “feminists”, without having a clear understanding of this movement.
—Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Fall 2024: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-fall-2024