The Upstairs Wife : : an Intimate History of Pakistan

Locations
Call Number: 929.9 Zakaria, Rafia
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	929.9 Zakaria, Rafia	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Prologue -- The Return -- Birth of a Nation -- The Scent of Other Cities -- A Suburban Wedding -- Half a Wife -- The Woman in Charge -- The Graveyards of Karachi -- Loving and Leaving -- A Return to the Original -- Epilogue.
"A memoir of Karachi through the eyes of its women. Rafia Zakaria's Muslim-Indian family immigrated to Pakistan from Bombay in 1962, feeling the situation for Muslims in India was precarious and that Pakistan represented enormous promise. And for some time it did. Her family prospered, and the city prospered. But in the 1980s, Pakistan's military dictators began an Islamization campaign designed to legitimate their rule--a campaign that particularly affected women. The political became personal for Zakaria's family when her Aunt Amina's husband did the unthinkable and took a second wife, a betrayal of kin and custom that shook the foundation of her family. The Upstairs Wife dissects the complex strands of Pakistani history, from the problematic legacies of colonialism to the beginnings of terrorist violence to increasing misogyny, interweaving them with the arc of Amina's life to reveal the personal costs behind ever-more restrictive religious edicts and cultural conventions. As Amina struggles to reconcile with a marriage and a life that had fallen below her expectations, we come to know the dreams and aspirations of the people of Karachi and the challenges of loving it not as an imagined city of Muslim fulfillment but as a real city of contradictions and challenges"-- Provided by publisher.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

The saga of a women in the shadow of the Pakistan-India conflict and the steady Islamization of Pakistan submitted by sVfGI7Glt2pz7GZgVB90 on June 15, 2020, 7:58am Aunt Amina's husband Uncle Sohail falls in love with an officemate and takes her as his second wife, which is permitted under Quranic law in Pakistan. Pairing episodes from Pakistani’s history with events from Aunt Amina's family life, the author explores how her fate tracks with those of women across the country and how entwined her family’s fate is with that of Pakistan.