UNDER THE TAMARIND TREE

Women’s choices, shaped by history, desire, and obligation, drive a debut novel set against the backdrop of Pakistan’s violent past.

Dilemmas abound in both the “Then, 1964” and “Now, 2019” interleaved timestreams of Alam’s novel, set in Karachi and focused on a group of four friends, three of them refugees who arrived after the brutal Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. Son of a wealthy business family, Haaris is the only one who always lived in the city, while Rozeena, Aalya, and Zohair endured the shock and pain of the transition, Rozeena losing her brother, who died saving her from the mob. Aalya and Zohair are attracted to each other, but the secrets of Aalya’s past oblige her to marry someone with better prospects. Rozeena and Haaris have feelings for each other, too, but also face impediments. Rozeena’s uncle wants to force her into an arranged marriage, but as a qualified pediatrician, she wants to support herself and her widowed mother. Women’s self-determination in a traditional, class-bound, sometimes corrupt society is a strong theme of the book, reflected in the problems and options of several female characters, Rozeena in particular. Circumscribed by loyalty, financial needs, guilt, and a wish for freedom, she makes choices on the night of and also after Haaris’ Welcome Home Ball that will determine several outcomes and reach decades into the future. Serious in tone, slow to start, and increasingly forced in its plotting, the novel works hard to deliver sympathy and suspense. Its warm evocation of place is a strength, but the sense of authorial machinery at work as the characters repeatedly face intractable options handicaps this first work.

A vibrant portrait of a place and time lends richness to an overdetermined storyline.