January 22, 2002

“She didn’t look like an insane person. Yet if anyone had asked her, ‘Dilshad what did you do with your son?’
‘Sold him,’ she would reply.
‘For how much?’
‘For one anna.’


AN excerpt from Zaitoon Bano’s short story “Ek annai ka baita” (Son for a coin), the narrative of a woman who was sold by her father for Rs2,500 when she was expecting her son. Her husband had been murdered earlier. She was rendered homeless and had to face enormous problems in a hostile society.

I met Zaitoon Bano, a renowned contemporary Pushto writer, at her home during my visit to Peshawar last August. A fellow journalist who has been her admirer since his childhood escorted me to her residence. In fact he is not the only one but one of the many of her readers in northern Pakistan and in parts of Afghanistan where Pushto is the language of the people. Her first book of short stories Hundara in Pushto appeared when she was only a matric student and received a royalty of Rs250.

A writer by temperament, she was also prompted by her father’s authoritarian behaviour at home during her childhood to turn to the pen. Both her father Pir Sultan Mahmood, who was Assistant Director in Radio Pakistan, and her grandfather Abdul Qadoos Tunder were writers. In the beginning her father did not approve of her aspirations to be a writer but reconciled to it later.

“It was at a literary evening with me that someone asked me why I wrote for men and not for women. On this my counter question was: are your women literate enough to read and understand my short stories? Obviously the reply was no. So I explained to him that I try to convince men that women are also human like them. Therefore they deserve to be treated as a human being who should be given their due rights.”

“Women from all over the world are the same inside. They have similar problems and almost the same aspirations to be recognized as a person,” Bano said

“Once there was a conference in Lahore and I recited my poem ‘I am a woman’. The theme of this poem was that when Adam took out Eve from his left ribs, he actually took her out of his heart, which is also on the left side of the body. Since that day the woman has been searching for his love and she appears in various disguises like Azra Wamiq, or Cleopatra or Bano,” she recalls.

In one of her poems “Meeras” she addresses her son. This is actually a road map for the younger generation, to help it learn from her past experience and be brave to face the world. Whereas in a poem dedicated to her daughter, Bano warns her to be careful of the pitfalls in her path. “Although I have picked up the thorns to clear your way, yet you have to be courageous. Don’t wail about the unfavourable circumstances and don’t feel miserable, because you are not the only one destined to cope with them.”

Bano is a poetess by instinct. Her tone in poetry is intimate and sober and she uses the feminist polemic. On one occasion she said:


Men are crowned with honour
And Bano deserves only a wrapper.


Once she gave birth to twin poems in a day. “It was Eid and I was busy preparing food, welcoming guests and doing all sorts of domestic chores when verses started flashing into my mind. I felt tormented to give shape to the poetry. I worked till late in the night, when I woke up my husband to tell him that I had delivered two poems simultaneously,” Bano described the episode with great emotion.

Zaitoon Bano is married to Taj Saeed who is also a writer and columnist. The couple have two sons and two daughters.

Surprisingly Bano hasn’t had a collection of her poetry published. When asked the reason, she said, “It’s just a private expression of the feelings. In fact this land is very fertile for poetry. It is not only written widely but also listened to and sung popularly. Poetry books of Rehman Baba are found almost in every house of Peshawar. My mother and sister were also poetesses. They used to write letters to each other in verses. Even our illiterate watchman is a poet and his book of poetry has been published. But there is a dearth of prose writings in Pushto so I try to fill that gap.”

Like many other contemporary writers, Bano also laments the absence of a Pushto journal where she would have liked to get her writings published.

“Pushto newspapers and journals never received the patronage of the government. The official apathy can be attributed to the government’s aversion to nationalistic writings which Pushto writers produce. For example the issue of renaming NWFP as Pakhtunkhwah has been a sore point for the successive governments. The issue still remains unresolved, though the suggested name of this northern province is often used unofficially in the handbills and posters issued by different nationalist parties and activists for democracy and human rights. There used to be some good publications in Pushto, which were widely read in Afghanistan. They were closed down because of persistent unrest and the war in Afghanistan,” she says.

Bano relished recalling, “Some years ago when Afghan migrants started pouring into Peshawar some young Afghan boys came to see me. They told me that they had been looking for me for the last seven years and that they learned to read and write through my short stories and poems which were published in some Pushto magazines.”

She also related another episode when a young doctor was overwhelmed on meeting her. He has been her ardent reader ever since. “He knew too much about me,” she remarked.

Bano concedes that she has received wider recognition and acclaim after her books were translated into Urdu. That encouraged her to write more in Urdu. She has the distinction of being the first woman producer in Radio Pakistan. Her novel Barg-i-Arzoo was televised under the title “Dhool”.

Aware of the gross violations of women’s rights in traditional societies, Zaitoon Bano says, “Most of the conventional Pashtuns don’t recognize daughters as their offsprings. If they have three daughters and four sons, only the four sons will be mentioned as children. Girls don’t receive any inheritance and their wishes are not taken into account when their marriage partner is being chosen.”

George Elliot, the distinguished English writer of the nineteenth century, was in fact Mary Ann — a woman, but social traditions of the age precluded her from revealing her real identity and sex. Zaitoon Bano faced almost the same situation in twentieth-century Peshawar. She started writing under different pen names such as, Shakila, Surriya Khanum, Shahnaz and Khalila before she mustered courage to write under her own byline. Now she is a source of inspiration and courage for the young female Pushto writers. She has been a pioneer in breaking the shackles of conservatism through her expressive poetry.

When she was at an impressionable age, Bano preferred to read Manto instead of Deputy Nazir Ahmed or Rashid-ul-Khairi. She was condemned by her peers for that. Bano’s characters and the situations in her short stories are real and indigenous. She writes of the privileged men with sarcasm. For example in her short story “Tamasha tamashay” men are condoned for enjoying themselves at a marriage ceremony in the company of alluring dancing girls. It is a stag party and women are not supposed to join them.

In “Faslain” the dominance of the male members of the family and their control over the household is depicted. It is a society where women are not permitted to pick up the ringing telephone. Most women are confined behind the four walls of their homes. Their only contact with the world outside is through the leftovers they get to eat from the men they know. The author has no sympathy for such women and looks down on them with contempt.

Hitherto her power of inventing characters seems to have been intuitive. She derives her material from the limited resources that are traditionally structured. Yet she delivers with confidence and determination. If she had had wider exposure in life, her writing would have been more reflective and diverse.

Bano deserves to be called ‘the first lady of Pushto literature’. She has received highly appreciative comments from distinguished men and women of letters for disproving the pre-conceived notion: frailty thy name is woman.

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