THIS is with reference to the review by Asif Noorani of my book Siren Song: Understanding Pakistan Through its Women Singers (Eos, Sept 6).

I must confess to being nonplussed by Mr Noorani’s main observation. Obviously, he did not bother to read even the preface, wherein I state unequivocally that mine is not a book about the lives of individual women singers, “great” or otherwise. Yet Mr Noorani wishes again and again that I had written in detail about individual “great” singers such as Nayyara Noor, Shahnaz Begum and Ferdausi Begum. One might ask him why just these, and not many others?

Had Mr Noorani tried to grapple with the book on its own terms he would have understood that the group of singers the book discusses has been chosen as heuristic devices — because they highlight a particular method of reading/understanding Pakistan’s cultural history, a method derived from academic disciplines such as women’s studies, cultural and performance studies, and post-colonials studies.

The subtitle of the book ‘Understanding Pakistan through its women singers’ should alert anyone picking it up that it is an attempt to analyse the evolving history of the Pakistani nation-state through the prism of its music culture, specifically the contributions to and negotiations with this patriarchal culture, by its women singer-citizens.

Yet, Mr Noorani begins his review by asking the question: “At first sight, one wonders why there is a gendered view” in the book. Anyone who begins his review with such an observation shows his hand clearly — his point of view is itself always-already gendered (coded male, which to him is universal).

But he doesn’t even see his own imbrication in gendered ideology. My book is written precisely as an answer to such patriarchal understandings of Pakistani culture and of women’s role. He just doesn’t get the complicated argument of the book.

Mr Noorani is pining for the proverbial apple, whereas I am offering him an orange.

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
New Jersey, USA

Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2020