In 2015, after her visa to India was rejected, Pakistani author Kanza Javed launched her debut book, Ashes, Wine and Dust, in the country over Skype. A few weeks later, however, she did manage to attend the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF). She is now back with a new book, What Remains After a Fire, published by HarperCollins.
Asked if anything has changed in the decade since, she says, “I don’t think I can travel to India as of now, considering the dynamics.”
An anthology of eight beautifully crafted short stories, the book draws from Javed’s life across borders — Pakistan, which she calls a “mother: a little abusive, but loving,” and the United States, “a foster mother, who gives you opportunities and money, but keeps reminding you that you did not come from her home.”
In a Zoom interview with The WEEK, Javed speaks about her new book, her writing choices, and how both Pakistan and the US have shaped her writing.
Edited excerpts:
Among all your short stories, Stray Things Do Not Carry a Soul is quite exceptional. Here, you explore how patriarchy shapes men through the voice of a young boy. Why did you choose his perspective over that of the sister or mother?
We come from a suppressive South Asian society that subjugates women. Over the years, we’ve read a lot of stories, novels, and journalistic pieces that capture women’s voices, which is really necessary. Many stories in this collection do exactly that, including Rani and The Last Days of Bilquees Begum.
I wanted to do something very different with one story: Tell the story from a male perspective and show how a patriarchal father, who feels emasculated because the woman of the house is in-charge, who questions his finances, gambling habits, and how that father is grooming a young child of eight or nine, who’s the narrator. Gradually, the child starts to loathe the women around him, whether his mother or his sister.
I wanted to show the vicious cycle of how this is actually an inheritance problem – this patriarchy.
In It Will Follow You Home, you use second-person narration throughout, which reads quite interesting and fresh. Why did you choose this narrative voice?
Second person is a very challenging POV. It is very dissociative. And when you're reading the second person, suddenly it feels like there's a metaphorical finger pointing at the reader and saying, ‘you did this’. It’s very confrontational.
I wouldn’t call it autobiographical, but the stories draw heavily from observation -- fragments from real lives, of my experiences, and those of a lot of immigrant students I was studying with when I was doing my master's in West Virginia.
Shaped by my experiences and those of fellow immigrant students I met during my master’s in West Virginia and later during my PhD. I looked at a displacement through their eyes and mine.
And the story just arrived in the second person — writing about a collective student experience of running away from a country that no longer nurtures you, yet missing it because it is your mother: a little abusive, but loving. Then you go back to another country, like a foster mother, who gives you opportunities and money, but keeps reminding you that you did not come from her home.
I also wanted to experiment with elements like a diary entry, or talking to a therapist -- so a little bit of a figurative language here and there. And I thought the story would not work, but the response was overwhelming, especially from immigrant students from Pakistan and India who wrote back, and said they felt seen in the story.
In these eight stories, you move back and forth between Pakistan and the US. How did the two countries shape you as a writer?
So, for lack of a better word, most of my content comes from Pakistan, where I was born, raised and spent 90 per cent of my life.
But there isn't a publishing industry. There is a writer community, but it’s very elusive and elite. And coming from a middle-class family, I found it very hard to penetrate that bubble, no matter how much I tried.
So I was bumbling and fumbling in the darkness, writing by myself, draft after draft, and doing everything I could. My first book, Ashes, Wine and Dust, achieved a lot of success. But then I wanted to know more about the craft.
So while coming to America was creatively liberating, it was also quite isolating. When you're in your early to mid-20s, and you start anew, it's very difficult to find friends and a sense of semblance with the place. So that struggle gave birth to stories. Then I moved back home.
And in Pakistan, I felt an emotional displacement after a few years, because I was in an age where I should be married and having children, but I was on the self discovery path. So I was a leftover woman. And in America, I was of the wrong race, the wrong skin colour.
So both of these gave birth to this dissonance in my brain and to this book in particular. So in Pakistan, I have found my spirit and soul and my writing begins there. But with craft talks, MFA workshops, and meetings with mentors, the book took shape in America.
You’ve mentioned that Pakistan, in a way, lacks a formal publishing industry. What does the publishing landscape there actually look like?
There are a few smaller publishing houses, which are trying their best. But compared to other countries, we're still working on having larger market goals. For instance, making books available on Kindle, because we still don't have Amazon, and providing shipments to other countries.
While you write on various themes in your book, death runs as a recurring thread through the book. Why does it occupy such a central place in your writing?
I think it came very naturally, or maybe there's some dark element inside of me that I gravitate towards, such as finding the dark layers in society.
But I like writing stories about death of a belief system, or death of illusion of a good marriage, or the death of self, and then rediscovering who you. So I think it's just a theme that I'm naturally pulled towards.
You write beautifully about cities. You write: 'Lahore is a delicious city, a mottled mess of vanishing history and new regimes.' And for Karachi, you write: 'After a while, she began to believe them. She began to hate the city, the way it choked and smothered her.'
A setting is always a character for me. It’s not a dead creature but a backbone of my stories. They influence the way one feels and behaves. For instance, you’ll behave a certain way at your grandparents’ house versus your friend’s house.
So, a setting is something I enjoy. I enjoy it when it causes an emotional shift in the character. I observe how our immigrant communities behave in a very white setting or how the whites behave in a very brown setting at an Indian or Pakistani restaurant. So I like to notice these things and I like to play with these things. And, I like to also observe a complex dynamics between the main character and the setting.
When you came out with your first book – Ashes, Wine and Dust – you had to launch it at a literary festival in 2015, but couldn’t as your visa was denied. Hence, you launched it on Skype. Has anything changed between then and now?
Yes, I couldn’t attend then. But after a few weeks, I did go to the Jaipur Literature Festival. I got the visa then.
Coming to your question, I don’t think I can travel to India as of now, considering the dynamics. However, I’m still glad that we have these virtual platforms, and HarperCollins still picked up the book. I really hope like literature, art, culture, music can actually bring people closer.
