WITH half a century of creative output behind it, Kishwar Naheed is a name that stands for itself. Anybody who has anything to do with Urdu literature knows what to expect when a new title bearing this name hits the market. There are many who buy the book just because of that and, indeed, there are many who don’t buy it just because of that. The lines are much more clearly drawn around her name than is generally the case with her peers.

Her latest offering, Aabad Kharaba, roughly meaning ‘Inhabited Wasteland’, however, has an element of the unexpected. It represents a sort of rekindled affection for the conventional form of poetry — the ghazal — and some of them are really good.

Naheed’s passion for the free verse format does have a practical underpinning. The constraints of conventional expressions apparently make it difficult for her to express the complex, and, perhaps more importantly, agenda-laden, ideas that she chooses to discuss, especially of the kind that are related to happenings in, say, Syria.

Part of the current collection are elegies on the victims of Lyari, the Hazara community in Balochistan, the Peshawar school massacre, the Karachi carnage on a community bus in 2015 and the many others. These are not subjects that may be treated with any degree of finesse within the domain of conventional poetry. These are contemporary, unconventional subjects that need unconventional treatment — and Naheed handles them like few else. The current collection is an extension of how she has done so all her life.

In her latest offering, Kishwar Naheed is what she has always been: an activist … but there is a slight twist in this tale

Besides, a conformist approach would make her throw in a rather heavy dose of idioms, similes and metaphors when Naheed prefers to be more direct and vocal about her feelings. There are times when she gets swept off her feet by the current of her thoughts, and the bluntness of approach, which together tend to leave her verses a little deprived of the poetic finesse that is otherwise not beyond her means. These are times when she prefers to be a better activist than a better poet.

Take, for instance, the nazm titled ‘Tender Notice’. The proxy war being waged on Pakistani land is captured in its cold brutality. Read this nazm with ‘9/11 … Amreeka, Hum Tumharay Ghulam Hain’ (9/11 … America, We Are Your Slaves), which was part of her previous collection; it completes the prevailing scenario in the country — at least as she sees it — and she is not in a club of one.

No idiom, no metaphor, howsoever strong, could have conveyed such a direct indictment of the national leadership. Besides, it also shows Naheed’s ability to feel the pulse of the nation which finds itself stuck in a wasteland — the inhabited wasteland, which is but a rationalisation of the title she has chosen for the collection.

Come to think of it, the debate about whether a piece of literature is a portrayal of the times and society in which it is created, or if it has the power to mould social norms, traditions and perceptions is an old one.

Naheed, the activist that she is, surely believes in such terms and her poetry is a true reflection of her belief.

What can also be seen through the pages of this collection is an undertone of autobiographical vignettes.

Creative fiction — poetry being just one of the many art forms — can never truly or wholly be autobiographical, but it is obviously here to the extent that it can. ‘Katba’, ‘Online’, ‘Andhairay Se Baatain’ are relevant examples of this, where the anguish of living alone thousands of miles away — both physically and emotionally — from her children is clearly seeping through.

The woman in her poetry who used to look forward to the evenings and the after-evenings is now plain and simple sick and tired of the whole fandango that marital existence entails. ‘Kirmak-zada Shaam’ and ‘Murgh-i-Giraftar’ deal with the agony of that woman. The most autobiographical of them all, however, is ‘Zindaginama’ where Naheed has taken the reader through the various stages of life, from the bloom and blossom of youth to the bruise and pallor of old age.

It will be a blunder, however, to take all such expressions as just autobiographical reflections. In their modern existence, human beings across the globe share many phenomena with varying intensity. And in giving expression to these thoughts, Naheed has only heightened the universal appeal of her poetry rather than limiting its scope. Therein lies her success.

Since the ghazal happens to be the bonus element in the collection for Naheed fans, it is in the fitness of things to bring the curtain down with couplets that are both autobiographical and universal.

The reviewer is a Dawn member of staff.

Aabad Kharaba
(POETRY)
By Kishwar Naheed
Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore
ISBN: 969-3529189
112pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 23rd, 2016