This is how one of the stories from Sabyn Javeri’s newly published book Hijabistan ends. And these three words are, as I believe, the manifestation of the book’s main idea. When we continue to make life hard for ourselves due to social pressures, it hardly remains a life.
The title of this book of short stories is open to a lot of interpretations. The first idea that Hijabistan invokes is of a book with stories probably revolving around women who cover themselves, etc. It can also be misconstrued as condemning some women’s choice of donning Hijab. However, it is when one reads all the stories in the book that one realizes that it has a lot more to it - just like the many colours present on its pretty cover. The hijab acts but as a symbol throughout the book, and behind it lies the fact that people in our society try to conceal far too many aspects of human existence. This suppression reaches an extreme which ironically results in a bold surfacing of the very thing that is suppressed - be it an ideology, an emotion, a phase in life or even sexuality. The act of covering the realities instead of facing them, or the act of putting a veil on them. is what has turned Pakistan into Hijabistan.
The most significant aspect of the book is its departure from Western symbolism and its original language that vividly describes Pakistan without looking like a forced metaphor or something translated from an Urdu description
“The Date” is a story that looks at how men often hide their hypocrisy by demanding piety from sex workers with whom they themselves wish to have sex without any hesitation. “The Urge” presents a desire to let out one’s real sexuality instead of trying to keep it totally suppressed in a society preferring heterosexual relations, no matter how lacklustre they may be. “Radha” is also a tale of the contradiction between people’s apparent behaviours and their real mindsets, hence the idea of Hijab between appearance and reality being in the background. “The Lovers” is a story of a typical eastern household trying to put love aside and preferring forced marriages over it. It also talks of a secret that could not be kept safe under the tongue’s veil. In this story, the idea of “parda rakhna” (keeping a secret) beautifully makes its way into the story.
In the stories “Under the Flyover” and “Fifty Shades at Fifty”, families become oppressors in an attempt to ask husbands and wives to keep their intimacies and natural desires covered up. In “The Full Stop”, the phenomenon of adolescence, specifically that of females, is presented as a stage that has to be concealed and not discussed. Thus, a Hijab also comes in between relations, when people are not allowed to interact even legitimately - verbally or physically - with the idea inculcated in their minds that their purity will be damaged. “The Girl Who Split in Two” is a story of a girl who suffers both literal and mental suppression in the way that her brutalized personality affects her attire – and in turn, her attire affects her movements.
The most significant aspect of the book - and one which makes it an important piece of Pakistani English literature - is its departure from Western symbolism and its original language that vividly describes Pakistan without looking like a forced metaphor or something translated-from an Urdu description. In this regard, an excerpt is important to quote. It is as follows:
“The half-constructed, demolished flyover on Sharah-i-Faisal looked as if it had been bombed during an air-raid, the iron spikes jutting out from the half-finished stretches on either side like the desperate outstretched fingers of two lovers reaching out to each other before meeting an untimely end. The broken columns on each end of the flyover pierced the sky with spikes that looked like thin needles gathering rust. And the blue sky trapped between these columns looked like an intruder who had been caught by the sun’s fierce glare.”
Sabyn Javeri at a book signing event
While the half-constructed flyover becomes Pakistani readers’ own and reminds them of their irresponsible governing authorities, the similes used, those of “desperate outstretched fingers of two lovers” and “an intruder”, come forward as imagery rooted deeply in Pakistani culture. Lovers’ desperation never ends, and their relationship hardly ever reaches a happy conclusion. Intruders continue to remain there, and they take many forms – from religious conservatives to annoying relatives, and at times, in the form of illogical cultural practices.
In a way, Hijabistan hits hard because it lays bare everything, and demands that hypocritical quietness be shirked. It challenges us to remove the Hijab from passions which we hold not because we are less pious, but because we are human beings.
The author is a lecturer in English at the Government College University, Lahore, with his research interests including Partition Novel, Classic and Contemporary Pakistani Television Drama, and South Asian Environmental Literature. He has written extensively on these topics for various local newspapers and has also presented on them at multiple platforms including Olomopolo and both national and international conferences. Recently, his research paper on identities shaped by water got published by Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada under the banner of ALECC (Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada). He can be reached at m.ali_aquarius85@yahoo.com.
