Customer Reviews

The House of Bilqis: A Novel

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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.

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!