Book: The Women’s Courtyard
Author: Khadija Mastur
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 391; Price: Rs 490
British Poet laureate Sir Ted Hughes’ celebrated wife Sylvia Plath asks in one of her mordant poems: “Whatever we know of women/It’s through the biased quills of men.” So precisely true!
Dispelling the dark clouds of misconceptions, Khadija Mastur’s The Women’s Courtyard' appears on the literary firmament. The book is a succinct rendition of her original Urdu novel Aangan by Daisy Rockwell.
The Women’s Courtyard is a poignantly gripping tale of shattered times, pain and freedom of separation and the bitter nuances of life. The first section of the novel shows the protagonist Aliya, living in a household filled with commotion of nearly broken familial ties.
Aliya’s mother Amma is a dominating figure, somewhat of a shrew in Shakespearean parlance and mould. She can be termed as a Tervagant or Termagant. Mastur has flair with words and images. She creates women such as Amma who forces her daughter into forced marriage, critically hinting at the still prevalent (un)ethical honour-killings. Mastur binds the readers' attention throughout the novel through her vivid plot structure that is unbroken and keeps the readers absorbed till the very end. She has this Orwellian ability to unfold a plot gradually and O’ Henrian craftsmanship to create and retain readers’ suspense. The story skillfully sketches a patriarchal society that puts mockers on women’s intellect and cerebral pursuits.
Aliya finds herself trapped in the mundane confinement of the courtyard and seeks to pen down a destiny contrary to the women around her. To quote Parveen Shakir: Iss sahan se aage jaana hai / Iss sahan ki har eent ko batana hai (I need to go beyond this courtyard / I must tell this to every brick of this place).
The second phase presents Aliya as a braver young girl who foils the romantic advances of a passionate cousin Jameel. One wonders, how abominable men like Jameel can stoop to turn the helpless situation of dependent women to their own advantage as an opportunity to satiate their sexual appetite? But her treatment of a specific gender is not lopsided in the novel.
The male characters have been shown as fanatically absurd votaries of patriotism; spewing venom on the lives that surround them. But our Aliya is not the one to be tamed by the absurdities of her male counterparts as she has vividly witnessed the futility of immortal love of her sister Tehmina or the widow Kusum, Chammi, her Amma, her Big Aunty or Najma Aunty. She feels bewildered by the emotions of love and romance. So, Aliya is not the one to embrace the outrageous melodrama, but is brave enough to live a life she loves.
Like Charles Simic puts it-‘Inside her empty bottle she was constructing a lighthouse while others were making ships.’ Aliya can also be viewed as an undefined personality as the writer has created her as a flawless character who is always precise in her judgement about others. She has a tinge of fickleness when it comes to her admiration of her father like figures despite their unstable domestic relations. Finally, Aliya finds a newfangled capacity for thinking and understanding.
Though it’s premature to call it autobiographical, a few glimpses of personal manifestation can be discerned by the perspicuous readers. All in all, a good novel that establishes a female novelist’s credentials to handle a spectrum of emotions and a tsunami of upheavals adroitly. The English rendition is admirable and retains the quiddity of the original work in Urdu.
-Prof Shiv Sethi
