Fahmida Riaz (–2018)

Riaz is a well-known feminist poet in Pakistan, although her work is completely new to me. She writes in Urdu and is renowned for her command of the language, but of course most of that is lost to me since I don't speak Urdu and don't know anything about its classic poetic forms.

But what does come through in translation is her fury and frankly her physicality -- it was wholly unexpected. She's not one to make her thoughts more palatable by masking them in a metaphor, she's right out there: show more poems about menstruation, about sexual pleasure, about freedom and joy and pleasure felt by the female body. And poems of sharp scorn of the demands men make on women, the way society cages women, smothers them. Honestly, she reminds me a little of Adrienne Rich, believe it or not. So on one hand there is the ruthless ridicule in a poem like Vital Statistics:

You
have measured me,
waist, hips, breast,
and all the rest

The curves
held a heart
and the round skull
a brain.

If I'm valued
just by the inch,
why do you shrink,
from tit for tat,

When I start
to measure
some of your
parts?

But then there is also the sort of burst of joy you get in a poem like The Laughter of a Woman:

In the singing springs of stony mountains
Echoes the gentle laughter of a woman
Wealth, power and fame mean nothing
In her body lies hidden her freedom
Let the new gods of the earth try as they can
They can not hear the sob of her ecstasy.
Everything sells in this marketplace
But her satisfaction
The ecstasy she alone knows
Which she herself cannot sell.

Come you wild winds of the valley
Come and kiss her face

There she goes, her hair billowing in the wind
The daughter of the wind
There she goes, singing with the wind.

There is always a question, reading in translation, of what comes through and what is lost. Especially for poetry. But Riaz comes through for me. Despite the obvious cultural differences, I recognize the woman speaking in the poems, and I recognize the feelings she is seeking to give a voice to. It made a deep impression on me. show less

Overall, an interesting quick read but a novel that unfortunately fails to drag you in due to its lack of characterization and very limited imagery. However, the language is powerful and there are some great anthropological tidbits as far as forgotten Zoroastrian and Mazdaic customs are concerned. One can only wish that there should have been more references to Zend-Avista and intricate narrative building. Author tried not to compromise historical authenticity but ended up compromising show more literary expansion. A sad lost opportunity. show less