November 21, 2004

Margarett Mirley is the pen-name of Margarett Mirza, the well-known headmistress of the British Overseas School (BOS) in Karachi and the recipient of an MBE for her work as an educator. Now retired, she has written a trilogy of historical novels, Journey into Eta set in ancient Greece. She has drawn on the experiences of her wartime childhood in England, her marriage to a Pakistani and her multi-layered experience of both countries, to bring the era to life and provide insights into her characters.

“I was raised in a place steeped in ancient history, with pre-Saxon and strong Celtic influences,” she said. “This was south of Iceni country, where Boadicea lived. The Romans, the Vikings, all came there. So the roots of my interest in the past began then. And if you are a teacher, you absorb this history, love it and transfer it to your pupils. People talk about ‘The Greeks’, as a collective term, but if you take Homer in 800 BC and Alexander in 350 BC, it’s a tremendous span of time, development and change. My story is set in at a period of transition, when Xerxes was planning to attack Greece — and Athens became powerful after this.”

The first book in Margarett’s trilogy The Leave Takers, begins in 480 BC, 10 years after Darius the Mede was defeated by the Greeks, at the Battle of Marathon. Milos, the Chief High Priest at Delphi sets on a long and hazardous journey from Athens, in search of the woman who is destined to be the High Priestess, the Pythia-Elect of Delphi. Her exceptional clairvoyant powers are needed to interpret and guard the great Oracle at Delphi and save Athens from the revenge Darius’s son, Xerxes, wants to unleash on her. The Pythia-Elect he searches, Iphegenia of Epirus, has taken on another name and another identity, as the warrior, Hagio, commander of a band of free women, living in forests North of the river Ister (Danube).

“The name Hagio is from Hag, a witch I played in a pantomime, while Io is the woman who watched Demeter enter Hades but didn’t follow. Io was on the brink of hell and could look into it. I couldn’t find short classical names for my characters, so I invented them.”

In Hagio’s world, men and women are equal, unlike patriarchal slave-owning Athens and other Greek city-states. The terrain is harsh, however, and daily living a struggle but theirs is also a community where abused women, such as Hagio, find refuge and self worth. Hagio also teaches the young, skills of survival and self-defence before she inducts them into the wider world, as young adults: these are her ‘Leave Takers’.

“I was able to imagine how people lived in the forests and relate to them, because much of this is based on my own childhood,” Margarett said. “I was an only child. My parents were both involved in the Second World War. I brought myself up, almost. At five I was wielding an axe to cut wood. I was sent to spend a holiday with relations in a village on the edge of a wood near Henley, with no electricity, no water and no facilities. If you wanted to cook, you collected firewood. You drew water from a well. For milk, I had to walk a mile and a half, past geese and bullocks. One of my great passions is boats. I built a racing dinghy with friends at 14 and I took up sailing, which riveted my life. It was a wonderful childhood.”

In The Leave Takers, Hagio and her pupils, fearing Xerxes’ advance, leave the forests for safer regions. They are accompanied by Phyldatus, a rich man from a distant city, who has come in search of his daughter, Xanthia, a rape victim. Through their travels and their stories, the novel highlights the many different cultures in region ranging from Macedonia, Athens, and Thrace to Persia — some more autocratic, tribal, or feudal than others. The most fascinating aspects of this vivid narrative are the details and description of Delphi, its sacred Oracle and the training of the Pythia-Elect, though the novel could have been much tighter and minor characters reduced or condensed.

An intense and articulate woman, Margarett Mirza spoke with great passion about her many interests, including the paintings and archaeological artefacts in her Karachi home, the shells she has collected, or her fascination with birds, wildlife, stones. Her writing is clearly central to her existence, but she told me that three years before she even thought of her novel, she was in Istanbul on holiday, and became fascinated by two religious relics from Delphi brought by Constantine. One was the stone Omphalos which stood in the centre of the Oracle and was regarded by the Greeks as the Navel of the Earth; the other was an immensely powerful monument with three writhing snakes, nine feet tall, which had been built to thank the three Pythias for the Oracle, revealing the forthcoming defeat of Xerxes. “What Hagio says in my novel about the war with Xerxes, is word-for-word from the real Oracle,” Margarett said.

Before her Istanbul trip, Margarett had not known what a Pythia was, but once she embarked on her trilogy, she read extensively, scouring libraries and second hand bookshops. She also researched food, clothes, boats and ships in Ancient Greece and became particularly interested in Pytheas of Massilla who circumnavigated Britannia. “I had read about him when I was 11, and was enthralled that he came past the East Coast of England where I lived.”

Margarett says that her “rich and free childhood” impelled her to become a primary school teacher, because she wanted “to open windows and doors” for young children by sharing her experiences. Throughout her career, she worked with 10-11 year olds, the age when children absorb the most. She says however that she really does understand children who don’t want to work, because she avoided as much reading and writing as she could, in her own schooldays and discovered early that she could rely on a very good memory. “I was slightly dyslexic anyway,” she said. While she was doing her A-Levels she realized this was her opportunity to get into a more intellectual world. She went on to a teacher’s training college, affiliated to Cambridge University, run by Maude Wingate, sister of the Second World War hero, Orde Wingate and which encouraged trainees to relate to the modern world and learn about art, architecture, music and drama, with visits to museums and theatres in large cities.

Soon, Margarett met a Pakistani student, Barbar Mirza, who was training as an engineer. After their marriage, she taught in London. In 1962, the couple moved to Karachi. Of course Margarett was instantly captivated by Pakistan’s archaeological sites, particularly Taxila, its link with Alexander and the Greek influence on Gandhara Art.

En passant, she mentioned that she was homesick for many years, though her supportive father-in-law encouraged her to find a job and her husband gave her space to develop her own interests. As “a speed-reader” she resolved to read one book a day — and still does! During the 1965 war with India, through a chance conversation at the British Women’s Association, Margarett discovered that the BOS for children of British expatriates, was desperately short-staffed because many had been evacuated. She was promptly taken off to the school at Ingle Road, to meet the head teacher.

“I taught there for the next 28 years and was headmistress for 26, “ said Margarett. “By the end, I wanted something new, though I had no intention of writing a novel on the Greeks, or any book. I was going to paint, as I am also a sculptor, but one day, I went to the computer and thought it would be nice to write. I had been six months out of teaching by then, and I thought what had been the most difficult part? I realized it was when the children left — and a part of you goes with them. I had also been reading about the rape of Bosnian women. I thought of women and war and that this has gone forever.

“How did they cope in ancient times? I wrote the first chapter and never changed a word. From that point I knew who my central character was, what her problem was, and where the story was going. I had it all in my head from right from the beginning. “ Her pen-name Margarett Mirza, is a combination of Mirza and her maiden name, Rowley. The second book in her trilogy, The Dream-Thoughts, which takes the reader to Ancient Britain, is now available locally too. The third will be out soon. She is now working on another trilogy and has also written a book for children, Survival Day.

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