The House of Bilqis: A Novel [Hardcover]

Azhar Abidi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 16, 2009

A haunting novel about a mother and son and the emotional consequences of leaving home

Bilqis Ara Begum, an aristocratic widow, is dismayed when her only son, Samad, marries Kate, an Australian girl, and settles in Melbourne rather than returning home to Pakistan. Though Samad attempts to persuade his mother to join them in Australia, she insists on remaining in Karachi even while Pakistan is facing turmoil. It's 1985. The mullahs and the generals are in control, and an insurgency is beginning in Kashmir. Meanwhile, Bilqis's servant girl, Mumtaz, enters a relationship with Omar, a young man caring for a neighboring house. Omar is an intense man who resents Pakistan's class system, and his frustration leads him to the freedom movement in Kashmir. But Mumtaz is in love and willing to sacrifice her honor to be with him.

The intertwining stories of Bilqis, Samad, and Mumtaz offer a powerful and nuanced portrait of Pakistan in the modern era-a place of conflicting loyalties, rich with history and culture, and plagued by violence. Abidi's precise and elegant prose illuminates the struggle between a mother and son to reconcile their love for each other with their love for home.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Abidi's second novel, set in the mid-1980s in his homeland of Pakistan and his adopted home of Australia, focuses on past traditions and familial expectations. Bilqis Ara Begum, widow and head of the imposing Khan clan in Karachi, Pakistan, struggles to comprehend why her son, Samad, defies her wishes of an arranged marriage and marries Kate, an Australian lawyer. Shunning the importance of his family name in Karachi, Samad and Kate opt to live in Australia, leading Bilqis to believe traditions and etiquette that had flourished for generations would come to an end with her. It was akin to slow and gradual extinction. Although Bilqis remains ensconced in her beloved mausoleum of a family home, where everything is carefully preserved, Samad's decision sends ripples through her life, including her servant girl Mumtaz's unexpected future plans and Pakistan's own political and social turmoil. Abidi (Passarola Rising) evocatively depicts Pakistan's descent into brutality with protagonists who struggle to determine what is most sacred. (Apr.)
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About the Author

Azhar Abidi is the author of Passarola Rising. He has been published in SouthWest Review and the Australian literary journal Meanji.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 215 pages
• Publisher: Viking Penguin; 1st edition (April 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670019410
• ISBN-13: 978-0670019410
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,318,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Does a mother not ultimately concede everything?", April 16, 2009

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The House of Bilqis: A Novel (Hardcover)

This novel reads as a paean from a son to his mother, an old woman who cannot embrace the changes forced upon her, neither the marriage of her son to an Australian or her country's devolution in the mid-1980s to militarism and powerful Islamic fanatics that seek to impose Sharia law on all. Living in Karachi, Pakistan, since the Partition, when she came to her new country from India, Bilqis Ara Begum is entrenched in tradition, of a comfortable class with servants to meet her every need, a large home, an educated woman whose recent loss of her husband has left her somewhat adrift. When her only son, Samad, breaks with tradition to move to Australia with his new wife, Bilqis is left with the façade of a formerly full life, her servants the only remaining family, save a brother and sister.

Age has put its stamp on Bilqis' life, a gradual wearing away of energy and the familiar landscape of matriarchy, a hollow existence without her son to care for her in her old age. Even the shocking affair of a close family servant with an unsuitable man, a Pakistani freedom fighter, illustrates Bilqis' increasing distraction. Time passes, a vivid life fading with each passing year, Bilqis treading water as the world moves on, fueled by the youthful appetites of other factions, other interests. All that is left for a mother is to make peace with failed expectations. Her son faces his own demons, his anger with a troublesome woman who makes demands he cannot meet, a woman who holds his history in her bones.

The geography of place lends this intimate novel its particular identity, the changing face of Pakistan in the mid-eighties; but the story goes beyond the political. Faced with a country in upheaval, Bilqis must come to terms with that reality, but it is her internal struggle that is so carefully rendered, a growing irrelevance to family, to the world at large, the slow attrition of time that infects an ageing woman with a slow malaise. When Samad leaves Pakistan to live elsewhere, the old traditions Bilqis has relied upon crumble, her fragile expectations for old age suddenly meaningless, she powerless to change anything. This is a tale of passing, of regret and forgiveness, of a country and a mother mourned. Luan Gaines/2009.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An immigrants challenges with his new life, July 23, 2009

By 

TiredMama - See all my reviews

This review is from: The House of Bilqis: A Novel (Hardcover)

this book is a great story that connects a mothers heart and her departing son to a foreign country and a foreign wife with a grandchild she will never truly know. It is a great read and combines the wonderful descriptive language of a city that comes to life for those of us who will probably never get the opportunity to see the city in its glory. The political aspect of how the militants have come to power is also an added bonus of the story. I recommend the book for a child who has gone against the grain so that they can understand their parents perspective. Especially the love of a mother. Enjoy!