Maniza Naqvi writes fiction. Her novels are: Mass Transit (OUP, Karachi, 1998); On Air (OUP, Karachi, 2000); Stay With Me (SAMA, Karachi 2004; Tara Press, India 2005); A Matter of Detail (SAMA, 2008; Tara Press, 2008); Sarajevo Saturdays (SAMA, 2009). Her short story "An Impossible Shade of Home Brew" is included in the anthology And then the World Changed (Feminist Press, 2008). Her short story "A Brief Acquaintance" is included in Neither Night Nor Day (Harper Collins, 2007). Email: manizanaqvi195 [at] hotmail.com
By Maniza Naqvi Beyla o Beyla—-My precious Beyla! O meri lal-Beyla! Mubarak Beyla—Jiayanoon Beyla! See, didn’t I always say to you –Keep your courage—Keep your faith–So what if your man is no more? We are here for you—my lali Beyla. Don’t I always say to you we will take care of you–my woman and I…
By Maniza Naqvi ‘This is the new Bosnia,’ Rahima says bitterly, looking around her with apprehension at the people crowded in the restaurant. Her fingers push back hair the color of a passing storm, all silver and mercury, just before the sun breaks through over the Adriatic. Rahima has emerged from the labyrinth of casualties…
by Maniza Naqvi “Last night I dreamt I went back to Manderley.” I muttered. Sadaf seemed smaller, diminished, no longer the huge imposing mansion within a sprawling compound of the splendid gardens of my childhood. The scales of time, experience and perspective had taken their toll. We had driven around the neighborhood several times looking…
by Maniza Naqvi One perfect morning over several hours and cups of Tomoca macchiatos, under a clear blue sky and a sun whose warmth is like the perfect heat of a clay oven—I sit listening in at a café to the conversation at the table next to mine. Impossible not to, the short story which…
By Maniza Naqvi “Say: Just think: If your water were to dry up in the morning who will bring you water from a fresh, flowing stream?” A sunflower yellow plastic container caught my attention as my cab weaved its way through morning traffic in DC. Exactly the kind carried every day of the year on…
By Maniza Naqvi Separated for now, from Ami, in this journey of life and death, I feel myself displaced: trying to find meaning in everything, wanting to be able to express her being in everything that I do and struggling to not feel muted and exiled. I feel her touch each time that sorrow becomes…
By Maniza Naqvi I laugh now, at how, as a child, I understood the narrative of Moharram and still (I think) managed to get the point of all the fuss. I was left to understand the narrative of Moharram mostly on my own—because my parents, while observing its essential features for the first ten days…
By Maniza Naqvi On the way to Elderidge street to view Saul’s work on, well, as later we discuss at the gallery, over beer and wine and under fluorescent light: Man’s Hegemony–Anyway—On the way there, changing from the One to the D to meet Ali at 42nd street, speeding, hurtling downtown —reading poetry, MTA’s overhead,…
To be able Just to be Present With Without Want Of Possession. Is it possible? This nothing? Is that the space Of not That space? That refuge? Is it possible? This nothing? Where nothing, is. After journeys of Need, Want, Loss. This addition Of shedding is Nothing. The place arrived. Build me a space where…
By Maniza Naqvi Out of sync by six hours and seven years, this ancient country's, age old way of marking time. A half century completed, mine. I find, here years gained, time lost, at the end of the Meher rains, and the festival of Meskel—in the month of Meskerem. I am here. Fire and water…
By Maniza Naqvi A woman folds her copy of the paper, looks around at all of us and exclaims: “What an evil opportunist! He was virtuous for her when she took the diamonds from him, and now he’s evil because he’s on trial at The Hague?” Then she pauses—“Well, I suppose really—what is good and…
By Maniza Naqvi For weeks now the crescendo of bigotry has been steadily rising in volume and vitriol on the issue of whether mosques, Muslims and their faith Islam are legitimate in America. In this rising temperature in a country at war with itself and the world, in the season of elections, the practice of…
By Maniza Naqvi Like sugar in tea. It’s all good. Top kills and static kills, concrete and chemicals—have fixed everything, blocked it all, dissolved it all. It’s all good. Like sugar in tea– like blood in my veins– like the heroine in my blood-like the enemy in my head and like the prayers on my…
By Maniza Naqvi When the sun sets over the river turning its waters the color of molten gold and then liquid black, like the uninterrupted, robust, gush that flows at the gas pump— then, —when you are alone in the confused maze of your thoughts of hatred and hubris –then— now that you have time…
Part One: Hosed. By Maniza Naqvi It’s hard to keep one crime in focus when so many others scream for attention. But every story which has the capacity to wound deeply is a hit. And because someone beloved is killed it lives on. Such a story is usually about a crime and its perpetrators. The…
By Maniza Naqvi A time arrives when circumstances dictate that there is no choice. “Of course the choice is yours”— said the nonchalant and gentle voice—typically urbane, typically sophisticated— of a seasoned diplomat in the Embassy of Pakistan. His thinning hair jet black and a sliver of mustache equally gleaming above his lips curled into…
By Maniza Naqvi Bibi did you know? Were you just trying to go home? Were you tired of the wilderness and the roaming? Were you fatigued of that long journey ahead? Were you afraid that memories would erase and that history would fade your name from its page? And so, instead, did you court and…
By Maniza Naqvi A puck planted on the right ear a pucch pressed in on the left. The sound still explosive in my head, I close my eyes as the full body search begins. Arms stretched, legs apart, I assume the first step for the warrior pose. And now there lodged behind my eyes like…
By Maniza Naqvi Ringed in by swirls of rope, I train for that golden fight. Without power, now, yes, yet, the night is lit up by a winking star within my reach. I stretch, I practice and I meditate. This, till Fajr’s first light. The sea breeze washes over Lyari at this time and as…
By Maniza Naqvi This is about fat and no-fat Generals. But before I get to them here’s a little gem about a way to catch wild monkeys: The trapper takes a glass bottle with a long neck and a wide body. You know, like a good old vodka bottle. Then he finds a nut that…