Daily Times

The immigration issue and its possible and inevitable outcomes are the essence of Nadeem Aslam’s novel Maps for Lost Lovers. One of these is the failure of the Eastern culture in meting out the challenges of Western hegemonic culture. The novel also claims to be a multi-love story as well. Many love stories start and end in the novel but the most significant about Shams and Kaukab survives. Kaukab, daughter of a mosque leader, is very religious minded housewife and so upholds the traditions and the culture of her mother country. She feels hurt when Pakistanis around her attempt to lose grip on their culture and instead negotiate with western liberal values. She feels upset even with her husband and wishes to live exactly in accordance with her inherited cultural values.

But everyone around her brings revolutionary and radical changes when they are introduced to the British culture and tradition. For example, Jugnu, who lives with a white girlfriend without marriage, plays the chief role in the story of accepting this change. This amounts to fornication for all the community and especially for Kaukab who had wished Jugnu to marry in a normal way.

Kaukab cannot digest this newness entering into her family from the Western culture. When her Jugnu brings his girlfriend at her home for a dinner, she was much upset and was not ready to accept the relationship. She simply thought and believed it a clear case of fornication and was even more upset because she was becoming a part of it.

But, ironically, the same novel projects the issues of rape, divorce and Hallala from within the Pakistani context. Surraya involves with Shams, the husband of Koukab, but very cautiously, to solve the problem of her family life. Her portrayal is that of a courageous and extraordinarily faithful woman who is forced by the social and religious norms to think of crossing the limits of morality. She has been forced into such circumstances where she has to sacrifice her fidelity and chastity. She is, therefore, fighting a desperate battle against herself and the society.

Her courage and concern for her family is evident from the worry she felt and the tears she shed because she had to undergo the tradition of Hallala due to her husband’s mistake, because he divorced her in anger without realising the consequences. But after divorce he insisted on reunion which was not possible without undergoing necessary requisite for a remarriage.

She could not tolerate this but she was forced to do so because of the social and religious traditions. Though she was very brave yet she felt broken at the thought of doing what she never wanted to do. She was sad on that. But whatever the case may be, she was forced to do so to save her son from any of the psychological and social trouble in case she does not go back to her husband.

According to a prominent personality of Pakistan, custom of Halala has been declared unnecessary by the government of Pakistan and so a wife can re-marry her husband without undergoing the custom of Halala. But in case of Surraya, as told in the story, her husband divorced her and the condition of Halala was to be met before he could re-marry her. Sorraya had to carry her cultural baggage to England and seek a temporary marriage there to save her family from embarrassment. This puts Sorraya in a very awkward situation because once a woman is married and has given birth to her children, her motherly instincts put her in conflict which prevents her from behaving like Nora in the Ibsen’s play The Doll’s House because of the social pressure of traditions and customs and her love for her family.

The story seems converging on the issue that women and men while migrating to Western countries feel happy; but when their next generation refuses to obey the culture, religion, and beliefs of their parents, they undergo incurable mental agony. The worst sufferers in this case are also women they have been brought up as the upholders of the culture they belong to.

The same has happens with Kaukab and Sorraya. This cultural baggage affects the diaspora doubly because on the one hand, it subverts their cultural identities and, on the other hand, they inability to adjust within the alien culture renders them racialized and othered.

The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson University, Multan. He can be reached at zeadogar@hotmail.com and Tweets at @Profzee