Sylvia Plath questioned and wrote the most beautiful poetry, writer Iffat Navaid wrote her biography marveling on her husband’s body-mind – a whole functioning human being reduced to the whims of wits – and wrote such a poignant yet powerful autobiography. This article reviews Pakistan fiction writer Iffat Navaid’s biography.
Arguably, the book can be a testament to what Dr. Kenneth Atchity calls “Dealing with Type C Minds” – C for Creative and C for Crazy. Dr. Kenneth Atchity writes about psychology of creativity: he divides creative productive people into two domains, happy and unhappy. Happy are the ones that know the curve ball a creative process throws: that after completion of one project, the doer is destined to fall into depression like a mother who goes into postpartum depression after that being is out of her womb. In fact, heavily productive people know that this digression into depression will happen, so they keep a steady supply of projects. They happily finish one to get into another and avoid the blues. Unhappy productive people are baffled by the psychology of creativity. This is the reason why you see writers like Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf finding themselves there in the end.
I was mentioning this in a video interview that I gave for Lahore International London along with my pledge writers to end stigmatisation of diseases like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Listening to this, Mr. Tariq Rahman, Director of Fazleesons Publishing who also honoured me by publishing my first novel, send me several books to quench my creative thirst. One of them was an autobiography by writer Iffat Navaid, mainly revolving around her poet husband Mir Ahmed Navaid making a name in the Subcontinent like his ancestor poet Mir Anees.
This autobiography is a living embodiment of accepting a life entangled with the psychology of creativity, and dealing with a psychologically ungifted but more creative person. She opens up quite beautifully yet articulately how she spent her life with a poet affected by Plath affect.
Her first encounter with her husband’s episode was of disbelief, and the display of naivete was from her end. When his parents and siblings told her that her husband is sinking down into his schizophrenia, she was a little apprehensive. But things went out of her hands, and her husband’s condition worsened so much then she had to run to admit him to the hospital. Soon afterwards, she saw a vehicle intended to transport hardcore criminals taking her husband away, who only lost the status of having a sane mind –with no fault of his own, purely down to fate.
And when she went to see her husband, the receptionist told her that her husband wouldn’t be spared of his wrongdoings. He looked at the writer, winked and let out a wicked laugh. Now her husband, being agitated, was whisked away by two strong men and into the general ward of the mental hospital. She was told there can’t be any home-cooked food or visits for the first four days.
Disillusioned by the system, she got him discharged, and went for personal monthly administration of injections. Her life story is chaptered into her husband’s monthly injection deadline. Lose that deadline and lose your beloved falling into an abyss and losing the only thread that a relationship survive on –communication.
It wasn’t the lack of metaphysical connection, but a physicality as well. She had to endure whenever her husband start sinking into his schizophrenia. Iffat Navaid is a survivor and a hero; standing above all in empathy and taking care of a person many would not sign up for. And most importantly, she helped her beloved not only survive and sustain, but succeed. Mir Navaid is today one of the recognised poetic voices of the Subcontinent. His progress only shone through because Iffat Navaid didn’t give up.
Another chapter of her life that starts with the whooshing sound of her husband’s injection deadline is about how Modicat injection was in short supply in the market, so their psychiatrist recommended some other (I really wish she would have named the injection). Habitually reading the cautionary notes on the bottle, she remembers the phrase that one in a thousand might feel adverse effects like tongue convulsions, trembling legs and high fever.
She writes that the probability of being affected by the injection was one in a thousand, and even with years passing by, that thought does not leave her mind.
Fast forward to when her boys took the responsibility for the monthly dose of injection. Their father convinced them that those injections are just a hoax and part of their mother’s wicked ways. Several months passed by and not only their mother but a lot of other people also noticed his condition. He had shaved his head, wore one earring and in his quest to look sane, exuded insanity.
Iffat Navaid’s book is a work of courage; she opened up despite people piling shame on her as to why she wrote about Mir Navaid’s mind in this candid way. She survived valiantly – moving through rented homes, being the actual breadwinner and fighting many demons in marital bliss and sectarian harmony, for a span of three decades. But she stayed true to her first love –the research officer at the Karachi office of the National Book Council, Pakistan.
She fell in love thirty years ago. Iffat Navaid’s autobiography is the “True Love” of David Whyte:
There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.
I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.
Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,
and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them
and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love
so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don’t want to
any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.
