A Dragonfly In The Sun – Muneeza Shamsie

Then she added with venom: ‘Someone should pull your hair so that you would know how painful it is.’ ‘I didn’t pull his hair,’ Shahrazad cried out. ‘He pulled mine.’ ‘Now you’ve become a liar as well. How many times must I tell you that lying is a very low despicable habit, that only the servant’s children pick up?’

Shahrazad wore a yellow satin dress with frills and bows and a pair of white shoes and white socks. At that hour of the day it was hot, even though it was November. Shahrazad longed for her comfortable cotton clothes. ‘Now behave yourself at the party,’ her mother said. ‘Here is Malcolm’s present. Don’t forget to wish him Happy Birthday and say How Do You Do nicely to his mother.’

Shahrazad wondered what was in the enormous package for Malcolm. Malcolm ruined all his toys. She had told her mother so, over and over again, yet they always gave Malcolm such nice presents. Better than anything she had ever received. Except for her Leopard. Malcolm was always pushing her, spoiling her clothes (she always had to wear her best to visit him) but his ayah never said a word. His huge, blonde mother with her large hats and long white gloves, liked to dismiss his unruliness with the words, ‘Boys will be boys.’

Except once, when Malcolm had twisted Shahrazad’ s arm around her back, thrown her down and kicked her in the stomach. Mrs Carter had caught him and sent him up to bed. ‘Never, never let me catch you behaving like that,’ she reprimanded him. ‘And don’t ever hit a girl in the stomach.’

But Shahrazad’ s mother had not been annoyed with Malcolm at all. ‘I am sure Malcolm meant no harm,’ she said to Mrs Carter with her sweetest smile. ‘He is such a nice boy. Shahrazad must have provoked him.’ Of course Shahrazad had protested. But her mother pinched her and scolded her and made her apologize to Mrs Carter and Malcolm.

Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press © Oxford University Press, 1997 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Printed in Pakistan at Mas Printers, Karachi. Published by Ameena Saiyid, Oxford University Press 5-Bangalore Town, Sharae Faisal P.O. Box 13033, Karachi-75350, Pakistan. In memory of my father Isha ’at Habibullah (1911-1991) with love A Dragonfly in the Sun afternoon’s light is caught in the dragonfly’s wings where transparency permits no reflections and yet will not give free passage to the sun, preserving the surface brightness of delicate webbing as a fragile brilliance of gleaming points which make the wings nearly invisible and the diagonal markings appear as tiny irradiations of very faint pink and blue when the dragonfly darts up against the sun as if it plucked colours from the air and immediately discarded them: this is the moment of intensity, of the afternoon’s light gathering in the garden in a brief flickering of a dragonfly’s wings just above the red blossoms of the pomegranate.

Zulfikar Ghose Thanks There are so many people who have given me invaluable help in putting together this book. I would particularly like to thank Ameena Saiyid, the Managing Director of OUP, for her unstinting support throughout; and to my editor, Yasmin Qureshi: she has helped me at every step and taken great pains to locate rare books for me.

Source material was often a problem. Pakistani English work has such a low profile in the country that it’s often hard to find.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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