Book Review: Their Language of Love by BapsiSidhwa

Internationally acclaimed author BapsiSidhwa has been raised in Lahore, Pakistan and presently lives in Houston, Texas. The novels written by her have been translated and published in various languages. The author is also recognized for editing City of Sin and Splendor: Writings on Lahore in the year 2006.  

 The author met Sikander Khan at a party in Houston, and in their conversation they began recalling memories of Lahore, which left Sidhwa realizing and recalling her childhood age. In the book, Khan tells shares his childhood memories and tells about the situation and conditions during the riots of 1947. In the story stated by khan, he and his mother who was beaten and raped was left for dead, from where they made it to Lahore and started staying in an abandoned house near to the author’s home. This violent past has been made into a fiction in ‘Defend Yourself against me’. The story is among the short stories in her newly released book ‘Their Language of Love’, which states the life story of Khan which brought him to Houston.

In this short story the author has touched some of the fascinating truths as she has showcased the real picture when people of different faiths and religions live together, they jump the boundaries of animosity and how the behavior of foreign women when in Pakistan is overlooked and compulsions and religious resentments towards Pakistani women are forgiven when they are abroad.

The author has dexterously stated and showcased the humorous and witty observations on life; refugees, migration, and marriage along with the effect of partition on the people which has indeed make this read worth reading.

The traumatic story of the horrendous past is finely laced and nuanced with Sidhwa’s sharp comic observations, an astral collection of sagas, which has added as one of the greatest contributions in the chronicle of one of the subcontinent’s most significant and beloved writers. Extracted from the tale, “But this is what happens when one lives cheek by jowl with people of other faiths – saints jump boundaries and the barriers of animosity fall.” Such instants of abidingelegance shine out in this otherwise irregular collection of stories.

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