An Indian family losing the traditions that held them together.
Mirza is a middle-aged Indian college professor whose wife has left him. He moves out of his house into a tent in his back garden, where he sets up an outdoor classroom and serves tea to his kind but bewildered neighbors. He is visited by the irritable spirit of his long-dead teacher, Khan Sahib, who is befuddled by the dysfunctions of modern life.
In the north of England, Mirza's niece, Amal, is finishing up her last year of college before she is expected to join her parents in their new home in India. Asked by her father to talk her uncle back into his senses, she moves into Mirza's house, and they soon are connected by their shared loneliness. She meets Rehan, Mirza's student, and is intrigued by the path of certainty he has built over his own loss and loneliness--a certainty that is threatened by his growing feelings for her.
When Rehan disappears, Amal's suffering forces Mirza to face the world once more. Together, Mirza and Amal must come to a new understanding of what it means to be an immigrant family when the old traditions have unraveled.
A Deconstructed Heart is a novella that explores the breakdown and rebuilding in one immigrant family trying to adapt: how lines in families and cultures are forcibly redrawn, how empty space can be reframed by a tent into a new definition of home... but how, no matter how hard we may try to forget, the past refuses to be contained.
Excerpt
When Mirza awoke, his wife was picking lint from their bedspread, a small sheep gathering existence between her fingers. “I’m leaving,” she said, looking for the next flea-sized victim to wrest with her long nails. Mirza propped himself up on one elbow and sucked the air between his teeth. His long exhalation did not make a ripple in the fjords of his wife’s grey and black hair.
“Thinking…” he said, because he was, and did not quite know how to handle this moment. She snorted.
“Well…” he continued, wondering why his arms were not flailing like a man slipping on ice, “… what you want we should do about the cat?”
He waited for the slam, but the quiet click of the bedroom door was like a switchblade closing. He fell back on the pillow and pulled the covers over his nose and mouth, breathing the warm, humid air from his lungs. He closed his eyes tightly for a long time, until he saw bright flecks of color behind his eyelids, like shards of green glass. Finally, he rose. “That cat will need feeding,” he said to the pink roses on the wallpaper as he pushed back the covers and dug his toes into the carpet pile seeking his slippers. As he passed his wife’ dresser, he crossed his eyes when he saw the bamboo box where she kept her bangles, and the effort not to see it made his head ache.
He stopped at the bedroom door. There were noises from downstairs, drawers being rummaged in, a stack of plates sliding in the sink, the rattling of the glass panes in the front door as Naida left. He waited for the small cough of the Honda before he stepped out onto the landing and waited again, until the roar of the car’s engine faded. The square window above the stairs was usually a delight to him every morning, a postage stamp that framed the houses on the next street over with a winking blue eye of sky, a perfect brushstroke of trees. He stood looking for a long time, feeling like a bell had been rung in his head, the clanging reverberations fading now to a soft hum.
There was no milk in the fridge, so he filled a saucer with water and called the cat with loud kissing sounds. She poked her head around the sofa cushions and was with him in one leap. “Aaah, Moriarty,” said Mirza, rubbing her behind her ears as she lapped dejectedly at the water, “Le coeur a ses raisons, no?”
He picked her up and, trading his slippers for his outdoor shoes, he stepped out of the side door in the kitchen, not caring to change out of his kurta pajamas. It was cold and damp outside and Moriarty soon bolted from his arms, her tail flicking through the cat flap as she disappeared back into the house. The grass tickled his ankles as he strode to the middle of his lawn, but today he did not feel his usual dread of the lawnmower that waited in the toolshed like a neglected dog.
He settled in the small dip of lawn that rolled away from his house, his arms on his knees, and watched the ants weaving over and under the grass blades. At ten o’ clock that night, Mrs. Minton next door saw a white shirt in the gloom and told her husband that someone’s laundry must have blown off the washing line. She reminded herself to check if any of his vests were missing in the morning.
Chapter 2
Frank Minton fell over the side of the fence between his home and the Khan’s with a small whoop of panic. A former police-officer, he underestimated the effect that fifteen years and as many pounds took on his litheness, and when he straightened up his face was a shade of plum. Nobody witnessed his undignified descent, however; the form on the Khan’s lawn was still inert. Frank stepped around the dustbins and moved cautiously across the grass until he recognized his neighbor sleeping on the lawn, one arm above his head, another out to the front, as if he were directing traffic.
“Mirza, is that you?” he asked, shaking his shoulder.
“Are you locked out?”
“Yes, yes,” mumbled Mirza, “I told her myself,” he said, sitting up, his eyes still closed. The side of his face was indented with a thatch of grass blades and his nose immediately began streaming.
“What were you thinking, man?” asked Frank, not unkindly. “Where’s Naida? Your wife, where’s your wife?” he continued when Mirza did not reply. “You’ll freeze out here.” He gave him another hearty shake about the shoulders.
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Mirza, wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve and opening one eye. Frank looked around helplessly and spotted Ella, his wife, in her dressing gown at the window of their house, staring down at them. She shrugged a question at him and he shrugged back.
“Let’s get you inside.” He started to pull Mirza to his feet, but was surprised at the smaller man’s strength when he resisted. “For God’s sake, are you trying to kill yourself? You need to warm up!”
“Yes, what a good idea, I was very foolish,” said Mirza, locking his arms around his knees with one hand gripping the other’s wrist. “A blanket would be good. Also, I think I am out of milk, but perhaps a cup of tea...?”
Frank made a pouring gesture to his wife, and when she nodded, he strode into Mirza’s house to find a blanket. He returned with the scarlet and indigo duvet from Mirza’s bed (Naida’s taste) and a cellphone. As Mirza pulled the duvet around his shoulders, Frank waited, one large meaty finger hovering above the phone keypad.
“What’s the number, then?” he asked.
“Oh, no, not necessary,” said Mirza.
“Oho, trouble in paradise?” said Frank jovially. “We’ll she’ll be back here in a flash when she learns that you’ve been a proper Romeo for her. Hurry up, then.”
“There is no need,” said Mirza, his lips forming a tight line, “I’m quite comfortable here in my own garden. Anyway, who let you in?” he asked, looking at Frank for the first time.
“Listen, I’m calling someone. If you don’t give me a number where I can reach your wife, I’ll call the hospital instead. You would not sleep on the lawn all night unless you were drunk—”, here his nostrils flared slightly as he took in the mud and grass aroma of his unwashed neighbor, and continued, “—or locked out or, ahem, not feeling yourself.” He studied the toes of his Clarks and his voice became more gentle. “I would really feel better if you could give me the number of someone who might come over.”
They heard a china cup rattling on its saucer by the fence. “Think about it, there’s a good man,” said Frank as he strode away to update his wife.
Mirza exhaled deeply and looked at the house. The darkened windows were not yet touched by the morning sun, gaping eyesockets and yawning maws of glass among the brown brick. He imagined the cat inside, raising her head from under the sofa cushions when she saw him, the dark slits of her pupils narrowing in their pools of iridescent green. He turned to face the other way.
Ella Minton handed her husband a cup of hot, milky tea for their neighbor. “I put in an extra sugar lump,” she said conspiratorially, “he must be in shock. Did she leave him, then?”
“I don’t know,” said Frank, as they stood together on the small bank of well-tended front lawn that connected his house to Mirza’s. He smiled at his wife’s padded housecoat and housefrau slippers. She had eased into comfortable middle-age, but every now and then a cheeky giggle and a sly glance reminded him of his twenty-year-old bride, and he allowed his touch to linger as he took the teacup from her.
“He won’t let me call her and he won’t go back in. Having a ‘moment’, I think.”
“Poor dear. I always thought there was something wrong there.” Through the open gate to their neighbor’s garden they heard the door to the kitchen close.
“Sounds promising,” said Ella, arching her eyebrows, but as Frank darted through his neighbor’s gate, Mirza was already stepping out of the house and heading back to the garden once more.
“Change your mind, did you?” asked Frank when he reached him, nodding towards the house.
“A simple call of nature.” Mirza settled into the grass again and wrapped the duvet about his shoulders like a shawl. He inclined his head slightly. “Perhaps you would like to call my niece.”
Chapter 3
The first time Mirza met Naida, he was scraping off the remnants of a cowpat from his shoes at the front steps of her home in Lucknow. He was to be introduced to Naida’s elder sister for marriage and Bata shoes that signaled his prospects in life had been bought for the occasion. His father and uncle were offering dung-removing advice when Naida wobbled up on her brother’s bicycle and jumped off deftly as the wheels teetered to a stop.
She pulled her book-bag strap over her head, put her hands on her hips and flashed a gap-toothed smile at Mirza. He edged slightly behind his male relatives, still fervently wiping his shoes on the grass. “Uncle… uncle, assalamu alaikum,” she said, dipping her face into her cupped hand, then darting into the house, her light blue scarf the last thing they saw of her before the door closed. While Mirza and his male elders were still examining his shod feet, the door opened again and a slender brown hand placed a bucket of water, a bar of soap and a cleaning rag on the doorstep. “Put your best foot forward!” a girl’s voice declaimed in schoolgirl English. Naida’s face appeared around the edge of the door. Her long braid flicked in orbit about her as she turned away.
The house was warm and stuffy. Mirza’s father passed him a handkerchief to wipe off the sweat that was trickling down from his forehead to his shirt collar. Mehjabeen sat opposite him, staring at her lap, and Mirza looked at the long bridge of her nose and her eyelashes. The veil over her head was trembling.
As he stared down into his teacup, he heard his father recounting his success in his engineering studies. “First position,” said Kamal, whacking his son heavily on the back in congratulation, making the tea spill into the saucer. “Stiff competition, you know, but I told him “Now you are masterclass, you can go anywhere you want.” Naida’s parents watched, rapt, and even Mehjabeen looked up, as Kamal Chaudry’s hand floated in the air, inscribing the geographic boundaries that would be broken by his son’s excellence.
Mirza, however, was watching another hand, a slender-fingered one that held out a tray of samosas at the doorway. A small cough came from outside the room and Naida’s sister rose heavily, stepping carefully towards the outstretched snacks. There was a murmur as she took the tray and for just a moment, Mirza caught sight of a dark eye peering naughtily through the crack of the doorjamb. He dabbed his neck and forehead copiously.
“Our daughter has always wanted to see the world—after marriage, of course,” said his future mother-in-law and Mirza smiled uncertainly. She put a samosa on a plate and passed it to Mehjabeen, nudging her to offer the plate to the engineering suitor, who took it without looking. “So serious,” thought the future mother-in-law happily, “such a thoughtful young man.”
“But it’s the wrong girl,” she complained a week later when the proposal arrived. “We can’t marry you off before your older sister!” There was a moment’s silence, then: “What did you do?” she asked sharply, tipping her chin at the younger daughter who was biting into a sweetmeat sent by Mirza’s family.
“Hai, Ammi-jaan,” she replied, rooting around in the box for another treat to sample, “Its not my fault he got his sisters mixed up.” Mehjabeen sniffed loudly, her eyes still red-rimmed and puffy. She vowed to put her upstart of a sister back in her place by marrying the first physician who asked.
The negotiations over the wedding preparations had been long and unpleasant. “I leave it to the ladies,” said Mirza’s father, throwing up his hands at yet another blow and parry from the bride’s family. He grumbled however, when he saw the wedding invitations. “Elephants!” he bellowed, “There are elephants on the card!” he shouted, flapping the scarlet and gold cards in Mirza’s face like an incensed soccer referee. “We are not from the gao! Can you imagine me presenting this, this cartoon, to the Postmaster General of Lucknow? What a joke!” A batch of cream and pale green striped invitations were quickly ordered from Baapaat & Sons Printers and quietly dispatched to the Chaudry’s most honored guests.
Mirza flattened out the crumpled elephant invitation and hid it in the prospectus that he had requested from Birmingham University. When no-one was around, he would pull it out to trace the curlicues of the gold lettering that spelled Naida’s name, the fine powdery scarlet dye staining his damp fingers and sprinkling his lap like a dusting of pollen.
On the auspicious occasion of the wedding of Mirza Chaudry, honorable son of Kamal Chaudry and Nooruddin Khan, to Naida Behari, beloved daughter of Iskander Baig and Soofia Behaas on August 31st, 1983, the groom had both shoes stolen by the bride’s cousins. At the end of negotiations for the return of his footwear, which involved some energetic shoving and which cost Mirza 1,500 rupees, only one shoe could be found. “Sorry, man,” said Munir, his bride’s eldest male cousin, looking up from his share of the money and shrugging his shoulders. After the ceremony was over, Mirza led Naida out of the wedding hall in his stockinged feet. He sent a last sad look over his wife’s head at his younger brother Shuja, thinking of his Batas.
In the taxi-cab to the hotel where Mirza would spend his wedding night, he regarded the trembling gold and vermillion confection of silk that veiled his wife and wondered, if at the last moment, he had been tricked into marrying the wrong sister. But the henna-laced hands that held clutches of amorphous gauze were small and delicate. Taking a deep breath, he reached over to place his own hand over hers and only exhaled when she did not pull away. He did not let go of her hand until they reached their honeymoon suite, much to the glee of the fourteen-year-old porter who carried their luggage up to their room.
He knew very little of love by the age of twenty four, his ideas of women formed initially by movies and glimpses of the brightly dressed ladies on Pratap Road, who shook the ends of their scarves at him as he went past on the bus, making his mother choke and hiss with indignant rage.
When he had been fourteen, Mirza had fallen ill with a scorching case of tonsillitis that kept him in his bed for five weeks, delirious with fever. The doctor had been indulgent of the disease, writing script after script of weak antibiotics like love letters to the swollen tonsils choking Mirza and keeping him prostrate in his sweaty bedsheets. His mother ordered the cook to dream up all manner of hot dahls, floating with mustard and onion seeds, to burn away the infection. She would sit on the edge of his bed with large, worried eyes, rubbing soothing oils into his hair so that it stood up like the coxcomb of a rooster. He was dimly aware of his cousins, sitting on the stone floor, playing cards, singing the latest movie songs to each other, while he was rocked and buffeted on the train track of his illness.
He would have visions then, that they would tease him about later. “Arré yaar, who was she?” his cousin Mohsin wagged a finger in his face, “We were waiting for you to tell us more, but Choti Ma shooed us out, just when it was getting good.” He could not remember any details of her face, but he remembered the ache he felt as his vision held out a spoonful of delicious kheer under his nose, pulling it away at the instant his lips reached for it. He had made a kissing face in his delirium, much to the delight of his boy cousins and the disgust of the girls. After that day, he looked quizzically at each pretty face in the movie theatre, measuring her features against the vague memory of his sickbed vision. He was disappointed by the silence of his heart in his chest, thumping at no more than functional speed.
Now, alone with his new wife, he sensed his adolescent vision sliding perfectly over Naida like a traced outline. Sitting next to her on the petal-strewn quilt, he puzzled her by running his fingers over her face, pulling crushed jasmine flowers from her hair and inhaling their fragrance, his eyes closed for a long time, until he heard the bed creaking and knew that she was lying down, waiting for him.
Professional Reviews
A family of disconnections, 5 stars
When Mirza's wife one morning announces, to his apparent surprise, that she is leaving him, his immediate reaction is to ask who will feed the cat. His second, after she has departed, is to hide beneath the bed covers. Now, if you do not find this behavior somewhat strange, you will not be surprised by what happens next; namely, he pitches a tent in his backyard, decamps from his home to dwell in it, withdraws from his college teaching duties, and convinces neighbors and family that he has gone crazy. Fortunately, he belongs to a community, and others soon come to his aid. His niece Amal, a college student, moves in and brings order to his household. Soon she is joined by a young man named Rehan, a devoted former student of Mirza. Despite their presence, Mirza continues living in his tent, where he experiences visits from the ghost of a former teacher/mentor who berates Mirza and beats him at chess. Between visits from the concerned, chess games, and backyard seminars, Mirza reflects upon his ill-fated marriage, married life, family, and his sense of alienation. Meanwhile, Amal and Rehan form a relationship that seems to be going somewhere. The action in this novel is limited; contemplation is on equal footing. The point seems to be about replacing an old normal with a new one through a gradual process rather than a quick and simple fix. Mirza's old normal ends as the story starts and a new normal is achieved at the end; likewise, Amal's normal ends when she comes to Mirza's aid and a new normal comes at the end. All this happens at a leisurely pace, with no high drama, major conflicts, or other disruptions. Everything simply works itself out. The "deconstructed heart" of the title concerns the disconnection between a husband and wife, but could also be a stand-in or metaphor for the disconnection within a family separated from loved ones in a former homeland, or between old and new cultures. The author has a fine sense of style, with a wry sense of humor, rich images, and skillful use of simile and metaphor. Writing this good is rare.
Worth a read! 4 stars
A Deconstructed Heart is the story of two people - an uncle and a niece - who individually experience heartbreak and who, together, make the journey towards healing. The author unfolds the lives of these characters in an easy and engaging manner and you find yourself quickly invested in them and their personal struggle and rooting for their recovery. The pace is just right and all of the characters felt very real. The writing was colorful and descriptive without drowning in details. I really enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more from Shaheen Ashraf-Ahmed!
A Deconstructed Heart, 4 stars
A Deconstructed Heart
In her multifaceted novel Shaheen Ashraf-Ahmed weaves past and present events. Her cast of characters is large but their various personalities and actions are unified by their relationship to Mizra, who, when his wife leaves him, abandons their house and moves to the adjacent field.
Mizra is fortunate his neighbors are caring people and that a group of students from his college rally to provide aid and comfort. (Not an easy task!)
There's a splendid cat (named Moriarty), a ghostly visitor, and a "backstory" that gives some clues, helping us to understand unexpected influences of cultural differences.
Dreamin’ Dreams is more than a collection of stories; it is a celebration of Irish life, adventure, and the unforgettable characters who make growing up in Ireland a journey worth remembering.
