Items related to The Story of a Widow
“One day when she looked at the portrait, she considered how blessed she had been in life. She contemplated her good fortune in finding an upright man like Akbar Ahmad as her life partner and felt grateful for his bounteous legacy, which released her from all financial cares. Akbar Ahmad looked back at her, his face cast in an expression of long suffering. Mona’s eyes welled up with tears.”–from The Story of a Widow
After the death of her husband Akbar Ahmad, Mona finds herself settling ambivalently into a new life. But the calm rhythm of her days–gardening, cooking, time with her neighbours and family in Karachi–is upset by the appearance of Salamat Ali, the new tenant in her friend Mrs. Baig’s house. Vivacious, friendly, and at times almost impertinent, Salamat Ali is both a breath of fresh air and a disconcerting new presence in Mona’s life, and their awkward meetings always seem to end in embarrassment or misunderstanding. When Salamat Ali, encouraged by Mrs. Baig, presents Mona with a marriage proposal, she is forced to consider what kind of future she wishes to make for herself–and what her past with Akbar Ahmad really means.
The possibility of Mona marrying Salamat Ali shocks her grown daughters Tanya and Amber, and scandalizes her extended family, according to whom Mona’s happiness comes second to what people say about widows who remarry. As Mona negotiates the complex web of tradition-bound in-laws and gossiping, interfering relatives, she finds Salamat Ali waking her to the pleasures of life that thirty years with her dour first husband all but smothered. But if Salamat Ali helps her discover something essential, he also exposes her to new risks, and new dangers.
The Story of a Widow is a beautifully observant novel, one that pays careful attention to the delicate movements of the heart in romantic and family life. But it is equally concerned with the mores of a society in which traditional roles both support and constrain men and–particularly–women. Gently humorous and profoundly perceptive, The Story of a Widow is the moving tale of a woman’s discovery of her voice, and herself.
After the death of her husband Akbar Ahmad, Mona finds herself settling ambivalently into a new life. But the calm rhythm of her days–gardening, cooking, time with her neighbours and family in Karachi–is upset by the appearance of Salamat Ali, the new tenant in her friend Mrs. Baig’s house. Vivacious, friendly, and at times almost impertinent, Salamat Ali is both a breath of fresh air and a disconcerting new presence in Mona’s life, and their awkward meetings always seem to end in embarrassment or misunderstanding. When Salamat Ali, encouraged by Mrs. Baig, presents Mona with a marriage proposal, she is forced to consider what kind of future she wishes to make for herself–and what her past with Akbar Ahmad really means.
The possibility of Mona marrying Salamat Ali shocks her grown daughters Tanya and Amber, and scandalizes her extended family, according to whom Mona’s happiness comes second to what people say about widows who remarry. As Mona negotiates the complex web of tradition-bound in-laws and gossiping, interfering relatives, she finds Salamat Ali waking her to the pleasures of life that thirty years with her dour first husband all but smothered. But if Salamat Ali helps her discover something essential, he also exposes her to new risks, and new dangers.
The Story of a Widow is a beautifully observant novel, one that pays careful attention to the delicate movements of the heart in romantic and family life. But it is equally concerned with the mores of a society in which traditional roles both support and constrain men and–particularly–women. Gently humorous and profoundly perceptive, The Story of a Widow is the moving tale of a woman’s discovery of her voice, and herself.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Musharraf Ali Farooqi is an author and translator. His critically acclaimed translation of the Indo-Islamic epic, The Adventures of Amir Hamza, was published by the Modern Library in 2007. He has also translated the works of contemporary Urdu poet Afzal Ahmed Syed.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Prologue
AKBAR AHMAD was felled by a stroke one year before his retirement from the finance ministry and three days after being diagnosed with high cholesterol. He was fifty-nine years old. His wife and daughters blamed his untimely demise on excessive eating, his only acknowledged vice. The family remembered him in all other respects as a model of righteousness.
Akbar Ahmad acquitted himself in his posthumous affairs in the same methodical manner in which he had conducted his life. Ordained by the will, his death triggered visits by the lawyer, the accountant and the manager of the local bank. All matters of his estate were discharged before the forty days of ritual mourning were over, and for the first time, his widow, Mona, found herself in charge of finances.
While sorting a drawer of Akbar Ahmad’s effects, Mona discovered a photograph taken when he received a citation on the occasion of his twenty-fifth year in service. The portrait accurately captured Akbar Ahmad’s sombre persona. Mona had the picture enlarged and framed, then hung it in the living room where she often spent time. When she looked at the portrait, she felt Akbar Ahmad was still with her.
One day when she looked at the portrait, she considered how blessed she had been in life. She contemplated her good fortune in finding an upright man like Akbar Ahmad as her life partner and felt grateful for his bounteous legacy, which released her from all financial cares. Akbar Ahmad looked back at her, his face cast in an expression of long suffering. Mona’s eyes welled up with tears.
I
THE WIDOW
After Akbar Ahmad’s death, Mona became more conscious of her own health. She was fifty, and the doctor had warned her about the physical changes she must expect at her age. Her older daughter Tanya insisted that Mona start exercising, so Mona began going for walks in a nearby park every few days with her neighbour from across the street, Mrs. Baig. Often her back felt stiff when she woke up in the mornings, and her legs cramped if she sat in one place for too long. When she looked at Akbar Ahmad’s portrait, she was reminded of one of his favourite sayings: It’s all the toll and suffering of life!
Mona’s chief memories of thirty-one years of married life concerned caring for her husband, raising her two daughters and running a busy household. Akbar Ahmad’s steady rise through the ranks of the finance ministry forced him to spend more and more time at work; his weekends were taken up by visits either to his superiors
or from his colleagues in the ministry. Over the course of his career, Akbar Ahmad’s work engagements overtook his married life. During Akbar Ahmad’s last years, a month before the federal budget was announced, his whole office staff numbering six people moved into their house. Akbar Ahmad found it more convenient to work the extra hours from the comfort of his home. Mona and the cook, Habib, remained busy in the kitchen all day, making tea for the staff every few hours and cooking and serving food to them during lunch and dinner. Mona got respite only late at night when the staff left. Still, she had to wash and put away the dishes as Habib would leave soon after the dinner was served.
With Akbar Ahmad occupied by his work, Mona lavished all her attention and care on her first child, Tanya. Three years later their second daughter, Amber, was born, and Mona underwent a prolonged depression. Her older sister, Hina, who attended to her in those days, worried about Mona. She had had a similar episode once before, too, after their father’s death. Hina was greatly relieved to notice that despite her low spirits, Mona seemed ableto discharge her duties as a mother. However, Mona lost all desire to go outdoors and no longer asked Akbar Ahmad to take time out from work for an outing or a picnic as she had done after the birth of Tanya.
Soon afterwards Akbar Ahmad was posted for a year to Islamabad, a thousand kilometres away from Karachi. He decided that it would be best for Mona to stay behind in Karachi to look after the house and the children. Mona took stock of her circumstances and realized that she had to make an effort to cast off her depression and strike a balance between her needs and the needs of her family. When Akbar Ahmad returned, he apparently never felt anything had been amiss in the household routines. He found his shaving water ready in the morning as before, his office clothes on the bedside in the correct order with the socks on top, and the folded newspaper on the right side of the breakfast table.
Akbar Ahmad liked to have more than one freshly made dish at each meal, with a homemade dessert afterwards. His characteristic frugality lapsed only in the matter of food, so in time he told Mona that they could hire a cook. That was how Habib was hired–their first household help. Afterwards, it turned out that Habib had lied about his long experience. The only dishes he could make with any competence were rice and lentils. It took Mona several months before Habib was properly trained. But his job mostly remained limited to that of kitchen help. Mona was unable to entirely delegate the cooking part. The glimmer of delight in Akbar Ahmad’s eyes as she announced the menu she had prepared gave her a sense of fulfillment.
Mona’s daytime routine was hardly over when it was time for Akbar Ahmad to come home. Another set of routines would then start: bringing him a hot towel to wipe his face, making tea and pouring it for him after exactly three minutes of steeping, laying the dinner table, and placing three toothpicks and a small hand towel near his plate. When she left a task to Habib, something invariably went wrong, and Akbar Ahmad complained about it for days afterwards.
Mona followed the same household schedule with little variance until the day Akbar Ahmad died.
One of the first changes Mona felt was the sudden end to the daily duties she performed for Akbar Ahmad. After many months of feeling unsettled, she began enjoying her leisure. If she read a book, often she would become so engrossed in it that she forgot about her lunch. When Habib was away, she felt too lazy to prepare meals for herself. On those occasions, only if her daughters or sister dropped by did she make lunch or dinner. Some days she drank pot after pot of jasmine tea the whole afternoon, or ate only fruit. Such a lack of structure would have been unthinkable in Akbar Ahmad’s lifetime.
For the first time since her marriage, and at her sister Hina’s suggestion, Mona took up a hobby and began gardening. Mona’s reminiscences of her childhood home were inseparable from the memories of the courtyard flower beds tended by her mother. Her mother had taught Mona how to plant and care for saplings. Those memories remained with Mona even after more recent events of her married life were forgotten.
The garden was one place where Mona spent money freely and of her own accord.
Mona was shocked to find out how much money Akbar Ahmad had left behind. In her mind, she could not reconcile the amount with all those years of frugal existence and her losing battle against his arguments for balancing the income against an assortment of what he called “immediate necessities.” These turned out to be compulsory deductions for the savings accounts, insurance premiums, treasury bills, and stock exchange deposit accounts. It took Mona some time to become accustomed to the idea that she had ready access to that money and no longer had to consult her conscience or ask Akbar Ahmad’s permission to spend it.
Mona had the much needed repairs done to the cracking boundary wall of the house. The paved path that led through the garden into the rooms also needed fixing. Mona’s bedroom and bathroom, which were above the living and drawing rooms, needed some minor repairs to the roof, too. Akbar Ahmad had kept putting off these repairs. Finally, Mona also had a separate kitchen entrance made from the garden, so that the cook and the newly hired maidservant, Noori, could conveniently go in and out of the kitchen without disturbing her in the living room.
After paying the salaries of the household staff (a gardener was paid per visit), Mona was released from accounting for every small sum spent during the month. But even a year after Akbar Ahmad’s death, she could not spend money impulsively, but it happened more and more frequently that she bought something she liked–an ornamental bowl for the coffee table or new curtains for her bedroom.
One day, while shopping with her daughter Amber, Mona spent three thousand rupees on a small rosewood table with marquetry work. The furniture shop owner had told her it was the only one left and he could not guarantee that it would be there when she next visited. Amber, too, encouraged her to purchase it. After they returned home, as Amber helped her unwrap the table, Mona’s gaze unconsciously travelled up to the photograph. The expression on Akbar Ahmad’s face was one of shock and disbelief. Mona went out into the garden before his remonstrating looks became unbearable.
Akbar Ahmad still looked reproachfully at her when she was unable to account for an expenditure, but as time went on, his objections rang fainter and fainter.
II
THE MAN NEXT DOOR
A year after Akbar Ahmad’s death, Mona was well settled in her new life. She was enjoying gardening. With the gardener’s help, she had transformed the spacious lawn from a grassy desolation marked with a dozen or so potted evergreens into a luxurious stretch of rare flowers, creepers and shrubs. The morning glory slowly began to cover the walls of the summerhouse and Mona planted seasonal peonies and lilies.
The gardener dr...
AKBAR AHMAD was felled by a stroke one year before his retirement from the finance ministry and three days after being diagnosed with high cholesterol. He was fifty-nine years old. His wife and daughters blamed his untimely demise on excessive eating, his only acknowledged vice. The family remembered him in all other respects as a model of righteousness.
Akbar Ahmad acquitted himself in his posthumous affairs in the same methodical manner in which he had conducted his life. Ordained by the will, his death triggered visits by the lawyer, the accountant and the manager of the local bank. All matters of his estate were discharged before the forty days of ritual mourning were over, and for the first time, his widow, Mona, found herself in charge of finances.
While sorting a drawer of Akbar Ahmad’s effects, Mona discovered a photograph taken when he received a citation on the occasion of his twenty-fifth year in service. The portrait accurately captured Akbar Ahmad’s sombre persona. Mona had the picture enlarged and framed, then hung it in the living room where she often spent time. When she looked at the portrait, she felt Akbar Ahmad was still with her.
One day when she looked at the portrait, she considered how blessed she had been in life. She contemplated her good fortune in finding an upright man like Akbar Ahmad as her life partner and felt grateful for his bounteous legacy, which released her from all financial cares. Akbar Ahmad looked back at her, his face cast in an expression of long suffering. Mona’s eyes welled up with tears.
I
THE WIDOW
After Akbar Ahmad’s death, Mona became more conscious of her own health. She was fifty, and the doctor had warned her about the physical changes she must expect at her age. Her older daughter Tanya insisted that Mona start exercising, so Mona began going for walks in a nearby park every few days with her neighbour from across the street, Mrs. Baig. Often her back felt stiff when she woke up in the mornings, and her legs cramped if she sat in one place for too long. When she looked at Akbar Ahmad’s portrait, she was reminded of one of his favourite sayings: It’s all the toll and suffering of life!
Mona’s chief memories of thirty-one years of married life concerned caring for her husband, raising her two daughters and running a busy household. Akbar Ahmad’s steady rise through the ranks of the finance ministry forced him to spend more and more time at work; his weekends were taken up by visits either to his superiors
or from his colleagues in the ministry. Over the course of his career, Akbar Ahmad’s work engagements overtook his married life. During Akbar Ahmad’s last years, a month before the federal budget was announced, his whole office staff numbering six people moved into their house. Akbar Ahmad found it more convenient to work the extra hours from the comfort of his home. Mona and the cook, Habib, remained busy in the kitchen all day, making tea for the staff every few hours and cooking and serving food to them during lunch and dinner. Mona got respite only late at night when the staff left. Still, she had to wash and put away the dishes as Habib would leave soon after the dinner was served.
With Akbar Ahmad occupied by his work, Mona lavished all her attention and care on her first child, Tanya. Three years later their second daughter, Amber, was born, and Mona underwent a prolonged depression. Her older sister, Hina, who attended to her in those days, worried about Mona. She had had a similar episode once before, too, after their father’s death. Hina was greatly relieved to notice that despite her low spirits, Mona seemed ableto discharge her duties as a mother. However, Mona lost all desire to go outdoors and no longer asked Akbar Ahmad to take time out from work for an outing or a picnic as she had done after the birth of Tanya.
Soon afterwards Akbar Ahmad was posted for a year to Islamabad, a thousand kilometres away from Karachi. He decided that it would be best for Mona to stay behind in Karachi to look after the house and the children. Mona took stock of her circumstances and realized that she had to make an effort to cast off her depression and strike a balance between her needs and the needs of her family. When Akbar Ahmad returned, he apparently never felt anything had been amiss in the household routines. He found his shaving water ready in the morning as before, his office clothes on the bedside in the correct order with the socks on top, and the folded newspaper on the right side of the breakfast table.
Akbar Ahmad liked to have more than one freshly made dish at each meal, with a homemade dessert afterwards. His characteristic frugality lapsed only in the matter of food, so in time he told Mona that they could hire a cook. That was how Habib was hired–their first household help. Afterwards, it turned out that Habib had lied about his long experience. The only dishes he could make with any competence were rice and lentils. It took Mona several months before Habib was properly trained. But his job mostly remained limited to that of kitchen help. Mona was unable to entirely delegate the cooking part. The glimmer of delight in Akbar Ahmad’s eyes as she announced the menu she had prepared gave her a sense of fulfillment.
Mona’s daytime routine was hardly over when it was time for Akbar Ahmad to come home. Another set of routines would then start: bringing him a hot towel to wipe his face, making tea and pouring it for him after exactly three minutes of steeping, laying the dinner table, and placing three toothpicks and a small hand towel near his plate. When she left a task to Habib, something invariably went wrong, and Akbar Ahmad complained about it for days afterwards.
Mona followed the same household schedule with little variance until the day Akbar Ahmad died.
One of the first changes Mona felt was the sudden end to the daily duties she performed for Akbar Ahmad. After many months of feeling unsettled, she began enjoying her leisure. If she read a book, often she would become so engrossed in it that she forgot about her lunch. When Habib was away, she felt too lazy to prepare meals for herself. On those occasions, only if her daughters or sister dropped by did she make lunch or dinner. Some days she drank pot after pot of jasmine tea the whole afternoon, or ate only fruit. Such a lack of structure would have been unthinkable in Akbar Ahmad’s lifetime.
For the first time since her marriage, and at her sister Hina’s suggestion, Mona took up a hobby and began gardening. Mona’s reminiscences of her childhood home were inseparable from the memories of the courtyard flower beds tended by her mother. Her mother had taught Mona how to plant and care for saplings. Those memories remained with Mona even after more recent events of her married life were forgotten.
The garden was one place where Mona spent money freely and of her own accord.
Mona was shocked to find out how much money Akbar Ahmad had left behind. In her mind, she could not reconcile the amount with all those years of frugal existence and her losing battle against his arguments for balancing the income against an assortment of what he called “immediate necessities.” These turned out to be compulsory deductions for the savings accounts, insurance premiums, treasury bills, and stock exchange deposit accounts. It took Mona some time to become accustomed to the idea that she had ready access to that money and no longer had to consult her conscience or ask Akbar Ahmad’s permission to spend it.
Mona had the much needed repairs done to the cracking boundary wall of the house. The paved path that led through the garden into the rooms also needed fixing. Mona’s bedroom and bathroom, which were above the living and drawing rooms, needed some minor repairs to the roof, too. Akbar Ahmad had kept putting off these repairs. Finally, Mona also had a separate kitchen entrance made from the garden, so that the cook and the newly hired maidservant, Noori, could conveniently go in and out of the kitchen without disturbing her in the living room.
After paying the salaries of the household staff (a gardener was paid per visit), Mona was released from accounting for every small sum spent during the month. But even a year after Akbar Ahmad’s death, she could not spend money impulsively, but it happened more and more frequently that she bought something she liked–an ornamental bowl for the coffee table or new curtains for her bedroom.
One day, while shopping with her daughter Amber, Mona spent three thousand rupees on a small rosewood table with marquetry work. The furniture shop owner had told her it was the only one left and he could not guarantee that it would be there when she next visited. Amber, too, encouraged her to purchase it. After they returned home, as Amber helped her unwrap the table, Mona’s gaze unconsciously travelled up to the photograph. The expression on Akbar Ahmad’s face was one of shock and disbelief. Mona went out into the garden before his remonstrating looks became unbearable.
Akbar Ahmad still looked reproachfully at her when she was unable to account for an expenditure, but as time went on, his objections rang fainter and fainter.
II
THE MAN NEXT DOOR
A year after Akbar Ahmad’s death, Mona was well settled in her new life. She was enjoying gardening. With the gardener’s help, she had transformed the spacious lawn from a grassy desolation marked with a dozen or so potted evergreens into a luxurious stretch of rare flowers, creepers and shrubs. The morning glory slowly began to cover the walls of the summerhouse and Mona planted seasonal peonies and lilies.
The gardener dr...
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- PublisherKnopf Canada
- Publication date2008
- ISBN 10 0307397181
- ISBN 13 9780307397188
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages272
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