My Life as a Corporate Gypsy: A Memoir
By Rehana Alam
Paramount
ISBN: 978-627-310-660-1
122pp.
“Show, don’t tell” is a cardinal rule in almost every writing guide. Rehana Alam’s My Life as a Corporate Gypsy: A Memoir is a masterclass in the craft.
From the title, I initially assumed it would be the recollections of a woman battling her way through glass ceilings, in an era when women in the Pakistani corporate world were an anomaly. But the ‘corporate’ here serves as the frame for a much larger painting, a vehicle for a story that is part coming-of-age, part travelogue and, on the whole, a humorous and entertaining observation of human nature.
Starting with a short summary of migrating to Pakistan, within a few pages, Alam brings us to that moment so pivotal for the young women of her milieu: marriage. Until now, Alam’s life has revolved around the refrain “not until you’re married.” Make-up, high heels, “a whole host of delights were forbidden to me…” And so, as an 18-year-old who had “been brought up almost in a box… allowed to go nowhere on my own… met no one but family”, Alam acquiesces to a proposal from a young chartered accountant. After all, what else could she aspire to?
Man — or in this case, her mother — proposes, God disposes. Mother finalises the marriage upon being assured that the young man does not foresee any career moves out of Karachi. Alam herself has no grand delusions of adventure. She expects to lead a predictable life doing all that is required of a traditional desi wife, mother and homemaker.
A sheltered young woman expects a predictable life after marriage but instead finds herself travelling the world, discovering independence, adventure and a talent for turning the unexpected into a good story in a new memoir
“But I had not taken the plans of Allah into account.” Ah! Such is the power of He who writes the script! The husband changes jobs, starts working at the Singer Sewing Machine Company, and his young wife is soon packing the family’s bags for his first international posting to Turkey.
Over the next 27 years, they will move again and again — to Nigeria, the US, Italy, Kenya and Indonesia. And while Rahat, her husband, is satisfied that the workplace environment is much the same wherever they go, Alam throws herself into cultures that veer from the wildly alien to the pleasantly, and sometimes not-so-pleasantly, reminiscent ones of home.
She bribes Nigerian meat sellers, ventures into dubious Cairo alleys to buy currency, breaks traffic laws (with the policeman’s permission!) in Rome, climbs volcanoes in Indonesia and in Kenya becomes so well-known writing for newspapers that a Canadian visa for Rahat — who is now head of Singer Sewing Machine Company for Kenya and other East African countries — is fast-tracked after the embassy officer learns he is ‘her’ husband!
She plays innkeeper and tour guide for an endless stream of houseguests, attends parties where government officials mingle with former inmates of their prisons, tells us why the Sicilians, Indonesians and Turks have a soft corner for Pakistanis and is appalled by the prejudice of Asian settlers towards Kenyan natives.
She volunteers at libraries, gets elected to the school board of governors, helps record audio books for the blind and, when her own children have grown up and settled down, goes back to university to earn an international bachelor’s degree and teaching certification. When her husband retires, she packs up their foreign home for the last time, they return to Pakistan, and she writes her eminently readable debut novel, The Tea Trolley.
Alam’s writing is fresh and lighthearted and she drops one eventful bomb after another so casually that you often need a minute to digest what just happened. Married bosses run off with their firm’s travel agent a week after impressing the younger lot with passionate speeches about how much they love their wives; cheap Italian hotels turn out to be something else altogether; a gift must be accompanied by a note from the giver guaranteeing the giver hasn’t, in fact, stolen it; cooks narrowly escape becoming breakfast for river crocodiles; and people can be blissfully unaware their spouse might have been taken hostage abroad, because in 1976 news took its own sweet time getting around.
But while these episodes provide plenty of the book’s surprises, what makes the memoir absorbing is seeing how a sheltered young woman, believing a prosaic life of routine as her lot, blossoms into her own person when she has the autonomy to do so.
“In Karachi I had been known as someone’s daughter or sister and then someone’s wife…,” writes Alam. “Now my antecedents were unknown and mattered not a whit. It was a feeling at once of great freedom and of sickening apprehension.” She credits Rahat for being a “jackpot” of a husband, so secure in himself that he relishes telling stories of the times she was the reason things got done.
It is also poignant to see how powerful and respected the Pakistani passport used to be. As Alam and her family visit Singapore, Japan, Spain, France, Switzerland, Monaco and many more places with remarkable ease, I wonder if I have missed the part where she mentions taking citizenship of some other country. Almost as though she has read my mind, a few pages later she writes, “We handed over our green passports…”
Around the world on a Pakistani passport. Imagine that.
At 122 pages, you’d think My Life as a Corporate Gypsy would be a quick read. It’s not. Too many bits demand a second look, either because you can’t quite believe what you’ve just read or because the sheer dryness of the delivery makes them even funnier the second time around. Alam has a singular knack for making the most outrageous things sound perfectly ordinary and the perfectly ordinary sound completely unhinged.
The same unpredictability is also what makes life interesting: plans go sideways, circumstances intervene, and all you can do is roll with it. The detour may just be the better story!
The reviewer is a former staffer.
X: @Sarwat_Y_Azeem
Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 11th, 2026
