Book Review: Sorayya Khan’s Noor (2003)

What do you think is the greatest gift we have. Does something called Memory figure  anywhere in the list! Even if it is absent, hats off to the creator, the one with the capital C, it’s one lovely technology put in place to recollect the past. However, it does become a burden when some phases of that past are painful and the sapiens concerned have sharp memories!! The ingenious memory technology then becomes a torture! Even then, to remember good times and bad, we have this something installed in our brain. Kudos to you creator… and thank you, we do have that freedom to shout at them when things go bad!

I talked about memory in so much length as Noor is about that. Memory may not be a character in the sense of a persona but memories of the main characters play the vital part in solving the puzzles, for realizations, and tying loose ends. I would love to call it a thriller!

In short, Noor is a story of recollections through Paintings by a little special child called Noor!

 Noor |Sorayya Khan | Alhamra Publishing, Islamabad, 2003 |Penguin India, 2004|Style: leaning towards a documentary

The memories here are traumatic so much so that one character, Sajida, Noor’s mother has forgotten that she has memories of her childhood days during the cyclone of 1970. On the other hand, our war hero, Ali, who adopted her at 5 or 6 from Bangladesh, has shut everything linked with the war he was part of – the War of Independence fought by the people of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971 neatly into compartments in his brain. He locked them up and threw the keys into the Arabian Sea! Such is the story line. Sajida is oblivious, therefore, has no realizations until she is made to remember them all. Ali is a living trauma for he suppresses those memories consciously.

Noor acts as the catalyst. Each of her paintings is an image from their past. It acts as a trigger to remember the whole incident. Ali and Sajida come to terms with their respective pasts, are able to talk about it with some clarity….

What makes Noor special is that she is a child born with some form of chromosomal disability not named in the novel; and she is an artist.  Her ability to paint memories of her grandfather Ali,  whom she has no blood relation with is something bordering magic realism …. At some level, it can be looked at a reconciliation at the domestic level of what is played out at the national stage between Pakistan, East Pakistan and Bangladesh. Therefore, Melodramatic and Symbolic.

The story in a nutshell

We have a soldier, Pakistani by birth: Ali, filled with youthful patriotism, he enlists in the army to fight this war. Within a few days in the battlefield, he realizes that war is an ugly affair just like his Naanijaan had predicted before he left. But, since he was here, he had to obey orders, orders which he was forced to obey for he was a junior officer. Typhoid comes as a rescue, and Ali heads home. On the way to the airport, he finds a girl of 5 0r 6 on the road… He takes her along with him to his Naanijaan, they bring her up as their own daughter, Sajida… Noor is Sajida’s third child and she is magical…

Cross Posted @ BookReviews