Sorry it's a Girl

A.A Khan

Description

Lahore, 2018: In a city teeming with gossip and rumours, where the spoken word is as sharp as a whip, five women lead extraordinary lives.Born into wealth and opulence, Maya and Arzoo are best friends, achieving everything that is expected of them, from top grades to entry into the exclusive Ivy League schools. Gliding through Lahore's glittering soirees, Ariyana is the picture of perfection. Charming Laila is married to a business tycoon, living a life of luxury that others could only dream of. But life is rarely perfectIn this world where image is everything and tradition prevails, these women struggle to negotiate friendships, family and society's expectations. Beneath the designer clothes lie hidden scars and secrets that cannot be told. And in amongst it all, love blooms.

Sujets

• Lahore

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 juin 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838598549
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright © 2019 A. A. Khan

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 978 1838598 549

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Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
Contents
PROLOGUE
DON’T BET ON BOYS
A WOMAN AMONGST MEN
MAYA, ARZOO, NILE (AND A VERY UPSET FADHI IN BURJ’S EYE VIEW)
HOP ON, HOP OFF
PEOPLE DON’T SCARE ME… TRAINS DO
FLIBBERTIGIBBET
THE INSIDER VIEW ON THE OUTSIDER
UNSTABLE RELATIONS
HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A HAND SCORNED
THE RETURN OF THE TIME OF NO CALM
THE CEREMONIAL REGALIA OF CONTENTIOUS EMBLEMS
A DREARY VENTURE
TOUCH ME NOT
THE RESOLUTION
THE LETTER THAT MARKED THE BEGINNING OF THE END
THE APPLE FOUND IN PALO ALTO’S EDEN
OFF TO THE CITY
EPICURES
A MIRAGE OF COLOURS
BITTERSWEET GOODBYES
A LIFELONG ACQUAINTANCE
PUPPY LOVE
THE INVITATION
BODY BLITZ
KITES AND SPRITES
THE QUEEN’S COURT
ALL GONE WRONG
A MOST RATIONAL CASE OF MANSLAUGHTER
MOTHER DEAREST
TO BE CARRIED BY SIX
BITCHES AND SLUTS
WHEN YOU ARE CAUGHT SEXTING
DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL
THE AGE OF LOSING INNOCENCE
A GOSSIP STEW
THE MOULIN ROUGE EFFECT
AND EVERY LEVEE BREAKS
MISFITS AND MISTAKES
SAFA, MARWA, AND LOVE
MARHABA DUBAI
A LOVE SQUARE
A MOMENT OF TRUTH
TABLES TURNED?
WINE AND CHEESE
WORDS MAKETH A WOMAN
THE VILLAGE SOLACE
WHY DAUGHTERS?
LAILA JOINS NILE IN THE VILLAGE
SPICES AND BULLETS
THE CALL
UNLIKELY HELPING HANDS
MASSAGES AND ENDINGS
TO BE MARRIED TO MYSELF
EIGENWELT (ALL ALONE – WHEN YOU LOSE AND FIND YOURSELF)
MULTIFACETED LOVE
ELYSIUM TO TARTARUS
CATASTROPHIA
A WORLD BECOMING FLAT
THE THREE FATES
NO MORE CHOICES
FORGIVENESS
SHADI GHAR
THE WEDDING DAY
EPILOGUE
NOTES
PROLOGUE
In my country whenever a girl is born, the doctor heaves a sigh, the nurses all look at each other despairingly, relatives plaster on fake smiles, and the new parents are given the news as an apology.
It is as if the lack of a male organ has cursed their tiny little baby for the rest of her life. Indeed, where I am from, being born without a penis is tantamount to being born with a disability. Except there is no therapy for this handicap – the child can never be fixed because at the moment of that discovery she ceases to be a full human. From the moment her gender is revealed, she becomes a commodity.
But that is only half the story.
You see, marriage in my country is a not-so-subtle means of exchanging, fortifying and attaining power. Women, or more specifically potential brides, are the commodities used in these exchanges. Owing to this tradition, women have themselves become players in our convoluted power game by suggesting this pairing or that, establishing who is or isn’t worthy of a certain dowry price, and even wholly excommunicating families from the incestuous circle of marriage based on the most mundane of social faux pas. All this occurs in a bid to claw their family’s way to the top of a ziggurat that is quite obviously falling apart. In the running of this societal rat race, it is often, surprisingly, the women who are most wicked to one another.
And so this story isn’t so much about how men treat women, but about how women treat one another.
You see, dear reader, when a person has no option but to succumb to a lower status of existence, this lesser state of being, perpetrated upon them by society (not by the rules of Nature or God), tends to form the rules to which the afflicted person becomes accustomed. The individuals plagued by this system pass its iniquities on to their children and their children’s children, and the never-ending cycle continues until we are left with a mere shrill husk of a society.
Indeed, this is where Pakistan is today.
When you think of where I’m from and where a good part of this story takes place, there is no doubt that the first thing that will come to mind is Osama Bin Laden. And reader, I do not blame you. Indeed, by now, two movies and numerous books on the hunt for the terrorist mastermind have been released. Those tomes no doubt tell you the story of Pakistan as an impenetrable hinterland of the Hindu Kush, filled with scimitar-bearing Islamic radicals hell-bent on destroying the West. Those books will tell you of glorious battles and spine-tingling espionage by heroic individuals who contributed to the demise of the world’s most wanted terrorist.
What those stories won’t reveal is the complicated way a society makes its bed upon a mountain of hypocrisy, sheets thrown up and cracking in corruption. Ordinarily, when societies descend to this level, history tells us a person comes along who heroically strives to rectify it through the stinging judgment of the written word. This is part of our promise as human beings, our God-given tabula rasa, I suppose. After all, the French Revolution had its Hugo; Russia its Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn.
But let’s get one thing straight.
I am not that person.
Nor does my tale have Navy SEALs or scimitar-wielding Islamic radicals. What it does have is a bevy of bitches who in many ways are just as lethal. Exchange the Oakley sunglasses and M-4 battle rifles for Versace tints accessorised with Fendi handbags, swap the Qurans and scimitars for copies of Fifty Shades of Grey and shopping trips to Dubai, dear reader, because the world we are about to enter promises to turn your traditional definition of Pakistan on its head.
I am here to tell you about a whole different kind of war.
First and foremost, let us establish that, despite my duties as teller of this tale, I am most certainly not a hero. As you shall see, our journey shall require us to pick at the carcasses of failed romances and broken spirits rather consistently.
So if what I am about to tell you becomes the chronicle of a time, a class of people, even a nation, then let me be the first to surrender myself to history’s judgment: I’m just a twenty-year-old and I’d never be caught dead without my Prada, Jimmy Choos, or iPhone. I consider myself a part of the problem and I have no clue to the solution. Therefore, what I am to you is a spy in the most literal sense, as in many cases you will be hearing quite intimate details of characters who would die before revealing them. As the poet Anne Sexton said, ‘A writer is essentially a spy. Dear love, I am that girl.’
I will also use this occasion to apologise about the fact that I will seldom mention names in this book. It is an attempt aimed at protecting the identities of the guilty. I truly hope that my censure of their actions, and that too public a one such as this, will prove enough of a punishment, and will perhaps lead to a mending of their ways.
This tome is a great deal of reflection on the real-life events that I, or those near me, have experienced. Where my discourse departs from events as they have actually occurred, or where I appear to have intended to exaggerate or create a situation, trust me when I say that it is not fantastical but an actual portrayal of the lives of many that inhabit – or rather, lord over – my homeland of Pakistan.
With all that said, rest assured that I could spend an eternity telling you of the hypocrisy and the injustice that has insidiously charmed its way into the hearts of a beautiful people, but my characters and, even more so, my inner narrator are getting impatient.
They wish to be free to tell their stories and I will no longer hinder their rising passion to make you intimate with their musings.
DON’T BET ON BOYS
Her hands clench and unclench in spasmodic rhythms matching the senseless beating of her heart and the subsequent impatient collapse and rise of her diaphragm. Beads of sweat profusely trickle down her forehead as her panting reaches an escalation. Her cries and moans get sharper now and she finally grabs onto the nearest object and clutches it with a frenzy, which makes the blood rush to her eyes and blot out everything from her vision, everything from her widely parted legs to the wall opposite her.
A woman’s screams as she pushes forth a newborn represent both her pain and the realisation that she will get little, if any, sleep for many nights to come; that in effect, her soul is now halved, shared between herself and this new being – that little bundle of problems-to-be. Yet, when she holds her baby in her arms, a woman realises she has received her life’s greatest calling: she is a mother and is no longer just responsible for herself and her own life. The mother looks down at the blotchy-pink diminutive, helpless creature she holds and immediately feels a rush of warmth as she realises that she has the ability to start from scratch, to help aid this delicate expatriate and to shelter it from all those ills that have befallen her. Her fondness stems less from the fact that the child has bee