MEATLESS DAYS
Women, Nation and Diaspora
Outline
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Diaspora aesthetic: 1) associational; 2) images of fluidity (fluid
among different semantic levels) and loss
Women and Nation
(1) “Excellent Things in Women“ (Dadi, resilient but gradually
forgotten)
(2) “Meatless Days” food a) its excess, b) its transmogrification
(3) “Papa and Pakistan”
(4) Mother
(5) Ifat
Diasporic Construction of Home thru’ Writing
Narrative Logic
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Pay attention to the associational logic of Meatless
Days.
e.g. p. 9 from Dadi --mother --we the children (Shahid,
Tellat, Nuzhat, Ifatt, Sera, Irfan).
e.g. p. 14 – Dadi’s recovery juxtaposed with the others’
stories -- Mamma—Irfan – Tillat and Sara (a summary)
I. the personal and the national
Are her stories allegorical? Or in what sense are they?
Images of Fluidity, Loss and Mending
The fluid – words (4)
 Dadi – patched herself together (15)
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semantic level: "My audience is lost, and angry to be lost,
and both of us must find some token of exchange for this failed
conversation." (2)
diaspora-- "Our congregation in Lahore was brief, and then
we swiftly returned to a more geographic reality. "We are lost,
Sara," Shahid said to me on the phone from England. "Yes,
Shahid," I firmly said, "We're lost." (19)
”third world” vs. Home-- "When I teach topics in third world
literature, much time is lost in trying to explain that the third
world is locatable only as a discourse of convenience. Trying to
find it is like trying to pretend that history or home is real and
not located precisely where you are sitting." (19-20)
"Excellent Things in Women"
A. National History – directly influences women (e.g.
Dadi’s being burned and forgotten), parallels what
happens in their lives on the literal level and
metaphoric level (e.g. “being meatless”)
 "the middle years" pp. 7-8--1947-1971
 "the trying times"--civil war (Yahya Khan -Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto )around and after 1971, when
East Pakistan became an independent nation
 General Zia; Islamization (16-17) the summer of
trials by fire
Nation and Women (1) – Dadi
A. Dadi's burning and dying experience
 her words: "The world takes on a single face" (7);
"Keep on living" (8)
 her strong personality:
-- her religion (Satan and God pp. 2-3)
-- her use of "food"(3)
-- the combination of religion and food (the goat episode;
3-5)
-- her loneliness and secrets (6)
-- her "feminism" (7)
-- her fight with her son (7-)
-- her death & her views of death 19
Dadi, the Family and National History
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Middle Years -- her isolation--stop talking to her son;
smell death (8); being carried
Trying Times (civil war) -- family problems (9); Dadi
oblivious of the proliferation of her grandchildren;
quickening of time
Trial by Fire -- Irfan (11-12), mother's going back to
Wales, the daughters’ part (powerlessness, violence,
lack of innocent love) in history (14);
Dadi's being burned in April (10-11; 14)--stopped
praying
General Zia; Islamization (16-17) -- children left,
mother buried, Dadi died in the same week when
Bhutto was hanged (17-18); Ifat died (18)
“Meatless Days”—parable of
extravagance and transmogrification
Food:
 Trickery (contamination) of food and feeding – the
list of gastronomic wrongs pp. 21-26  already
knew it 27  emotional trickeries in Pakistan 28-29
 Food—connected with life and death: excrement
(kidney) and burial (“fresh chicken) 33
 its restraint and excess –pp. 30-32
 Food’s parable 34
 Food – birthing (breastfeeding)
 Death and being “meatless” 42, 44
"Papa and Pakistan"
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How is the daughter, Sara, related to her father in her
attempts to know his history?
Sara as his audience 110
 his idealism 112-13
 his focus on newspaper 118
 General Ayub’s decade 119
 Ifat’s death 124-25  father’s getting another daughter
 Hands twitching at night
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How is the daughter related to Pakistan's history?
her description of partition on p. 116,
 how the daughters' spirits broke in the war of 1971. 122
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the mother –as a migrant –
Mother vs. Father
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Her taciturnity – 35, 41 “Honestly” “I see” (159)
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Mother silenced– untalking, Dadi unpraying (16)
Mother vs. father:
 Reading
her husband’s frontpage writing -- 158
sympathy as “the daily necessity of sympathy”
 Gives up changing him 159
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mother’s values and “voice”
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"greatest thing" in her life 158 – her children
 Defy Pakistani stereotypes: both sweet and cold 166
 Her successive transformation (history seep, language
around her as a scarf) 168
Women (2)– the mother as a migrant
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Language: (Mair Jones--Surraya Suleri) the mother's
experience of displacement (9-) cannot tell stories in Urdu
 can sometimes speak idiomatic Urdu 41
Homeland: As a migrant p. 12 (gives up on familiarity with
Wales)
Diffuse influence: her views of race and skin colors 160-161;
Fluid Position: not fit into the two women’s positions 166
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Retreat -- away into her Welsh childhood 161;
relocate herself – thru’ several new syllables, allows her body
colonized? 162-63
a Pakistani with a disembodied Englishness 163; learning to live
apart; 164  “child, I will not grip”
Sara -- can not lay hands on "the body of her water" 159
the mother –detached, reserved
and her influence on Sara
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Her detachment: leaves interstices around her (154);
Silent concentration 155; apparently absentminded 156
Mother and Daughter
 Mother
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as a literature lover/teacher
Loves Jane Austen (151)  Sara’s sensitivity to language
and her identity thru’ name (151-52)
 Sentence  plot: Mother (unplot yourself 156;
Mamma, marmalade, squirrel 169)vs. Sara 154-55
 Mother and the other children 167 (a missing child?)
 Word
Ifat – a woman’s immersion into
Pakistan
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After Ifat’s death, Sara thinks of her “as a house
[she] once rented but which is presently inhabited
by people [she does] not know.” (42)
Active – twoness (137; 145) , multiplicity(132; 139)
Her wrist 133
Takes after the father (139)Mother’s response to
her “gay excess” 134
Her entering Pakistan, becoming the land 140-42
 the war in Bangladesh and deaths 143-44
 Sara “unpronounceability of [her] life” 138
Ifat – home and body
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A woman lives in bodies 143
A woman can’t come home 147 a tiny spirit in the
body
Always with the sisters 150
Diasporic Construction of Home thru’
Writing
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“Saving Daylight” –
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time relative, can be moved forward or background
170;
 (2) seasonal changes – summer – us stripped to the
bone 171;
 (3) unclear boundaries between daylight and night
(darkness a hiding place 175)  living between two
languages 177  living in language (reconstructed
memories)
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mourning (prolonged astonishment) vs. memory (as
a catalog) 171 The remembered: pains (173)
Diasporic Construction of Home thru’
Writing (2) –emptiness invention
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image of flesh/meat: the goat (5), Dadi's 14; Ifat
and Mamma's bodies 19
ideas about writing (name, syntax and plot) and
identity: reading titles and mother's face 151; "how
can syntax hold around a name?" (155)
p. 173 "For whom are you writing, David asked
me..." --the idea of "hollow" names, p.177-178
To write as invention, to write not in a structure of a
secret 175 -
Writing – collective
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The grace of habit in a theatre 178In a mode of distraction like the mother 179
With a sense of place  Ifat as her geography 182
Mother’s writing thru’ her children
Sara’s co-writing with Ifat
 Adam’s
bone "Living in language is tantamount to living
with other people. Both are postures . . " --the idea of
bailing out significance and peeling it; turning habitation
into habit,
 the idea of breaking bodies, hiding the Adam's rib and
having a re-birth