How It Happened By Shazaf Fatima Haider Download
3 years agone I was invited to hash out my novel on arranged marriages at a cultural centre in Karachi. In the oversupply was a middle anile gentleman impatiently drumming his fingers on a briefcase. Afterwards the Q&A he approached and laid open up a large folder, overflowing with newspaper clippings, written notes and photographs.
He told me proudly that his parents were role-High german and that in many ways, his family had lived a life of epic proportions – the details of which he had assembled. He then handed them over to me and announced that he had deemed me worthy of writing this ballsy. I would exist given some time to exercise the "writing-shiting" and then he would see if my piece was practiced enough for publication. (I'm bold the task to get it published was too to fall on my grateful shoulders.) When I declined his generous offering, he scowled and walked away, making a comment about women writers and their inflated egos.
I remember this person keenly, not only because of his blackness ring binder and silvery moustache, nor because his attempt to bludgeon me was terribly funny. I remember him because this one run across seemed to encapsulate all the attitudes I encountered equally a woman writing in Islamic republic of pakistan.
I was once talking to a Man Writer (I shall call him that because it sounds just as ridiculous as Adult female Author), bemoaning the number of people who had asked me for a complimentary signed copy of my novel How It Happened. He was somewhat perplexed because this was not a request he often came beyond. It makes sense though. When a man writes, it's a career, when a woman writes, information technology's a hobby. 1 is serious, the other is not.
To be a woman author is to exist ready to receive several back-handed compliments.
"Oh, you wrote a book? And then nice that y'all're finding the time to do something artistic."
"So fantastic that you wrote a volume? Does anyone read it?"
"Wow. You lot wrote a book. Does it sell? Has it fabricated you any money? How much? Exactly how much?"
"Salam ma'am. I honey your novel. Can you tell me where I can download a free PDF copy?"
Intruded on
I soon learned that a woman's personal life as well every bit her writing becomes fair game for all. And this is done almost unapologetically. The first question I was invariably asked in interviews was whether I was married. And when I dithered about the issue, people got more than and more curious.
The truth is I deliberately hid my divorce from the larger public. I was witting that my marital condition was relevant to how the book would be received – and this is a trouble that all women face. Had people known that I was divorced, the comedy of manners I had attempted to write would be called the rant of a mad chocolate-brown woman.
And and so there was this one telly interview where I forgot to tell the talk show host that I didn't want details of my personal life to be discussed. Pretty before long I was existence grilled over which of the men in the book was based on my ex-husband. It was vulgar, this intrusion in what purported to be a literary interview.
Stalked relentlessly
This desire to invade the personal also manifested itself in the form of a lot of online and existent life harassment, which is common to all women, not merely writers. My earliest fan mail service comprised beneficial messages such as "Hello dear, yous are gorgeous," and "Wow you're so beautiful, I need a prescription – my heart is stopping." Then a man-reader told me how much he enjoyed my novel and would I marry him? When I politely declined, he sent me a picture of his penis and a "fuck you lot" in capital letters. I blocked him and he created three different accounts to ship me pictures of the same deadening penis.
Stalkers in existent life were harder to bargain with. I was dreadfully uncomfortable when a famous painter bought 300 copies of my novel at a literary festival and made me distribute them to his friends. And and so he showed upwardly at my house. And so left me well-nigh 100 missed calls a day – leaving messages that I was young and naïve and that he would help me find myself. This was the not so funny part of being published, this insidious attempt to appropriate my body through my writing.
Mansplained at
To be a woman author is to be mansplained at every plough. I was told by a local human being-agent that novels about love and bundled marriages were done to expiry and that I should find another, more than "sexy" topic because that was what publishers were looking for. (This, of course, was in a political atmosphere where laurels killings were rife and a famous morning talk-show host was chasing paw-property couples out of parks and shaming them on public television.) Or the human being writer who, at a literary gathering at a poet's house, said that it was harder for him to consummate his novel than information technology was for me to finish mine. "If I besides wrote about family unit weddings I'd churn out a volume a year," he laughed.
And then a man-bookseller told me that my novel wouldn't sell because I was an unknown, so he would only order l copies to begin with. I arranged a meeting and tried to get him him to accept me seriously. Just over again I was told that while my excitement was sweet, it was misplaced. Merely when I promised to purchase whatever extra copies myself then that his store would not incur a loss, he ordered 50 more copies.
And when these were sold out in v minutes at my book launch, he merely shrugged his shoulders and said "Haan, we seem to accept underestimated you. Would yous heed doing a free reading for children at our shop next month?" (The book being read, I might add, was not mine.)
And what of the book?
What rankles nearly, however, is that very little attention is given to the writing itself. Our work is simply not reviewed plenty or given the kind of attention that it deserves, primarily because information technology is relegated to the trivialised category of "women's writing" that is unremarkably considered unimportant.
Example in signal: In a recent commodity on Qurratulain Hyder, 1000 Asadduddin says that there is aught "feminine" about Hyder's works considering her preoccupations accept been epic, common and universal. And then at that place you go. A woman has to write unlike a adult female to be taken seriously. Or, she must negate her identity (only to have it vulgarly exposed as was the case with Ellena Ferrante), or pretend to exist a human (like George Eliot and then many others did.) Otherwise, chances that she will be taken seriously are slim at best.
Shazaf Fatima Haider is the writer the novel of How It Happened.
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