A Golden Age

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So it is natural that Rehana’s one house and the her other house, Shona will be over a land of the size of few ‘Kathtas. I'm going to start right into the next book of this trilogy, The Good Muslim, while the characters are still fresh in my mind. The setting is East Pakistan, 1971, a year that began with the outbreak of civil war against West Pakistan’s rule and ended with Bangladesh achieving independence.

Right after the partition in 1947, when East Pakistan and west Pakistan was born, there was too much contrast between two parts of Pakistan in all shape and form, which gradually formed into a very chaotic political situation followed by unequal distribution of resources .I particularly wanted to understand her daughter, Maya, because Rehana herself seems baffled by her, and only her passionate rage over the fate of her beloved friend Shaheen gives a glimpse of her vulnerabilities. It revolved around one family; a single mother, her son and daughter, and how their life is affected by the war.

The death of her husband and her fight to keep her children, when her dead husband's brother and his childless wife claim they could take better care of them. This led to the 1971 Bangladesh genocide that caused millions of refugees to flee to India and the deaths of 58,000 to 3,000,000 civilians.Rehana's devastation and her obsession with regaining her children is the defining event of her life and shapes many of her later choices. Also, though Shona is at the back side of Rehana’s house, it is not situated at the end of a blind lane. As a young widow she fights to regain custody of her children after losing them to her late husband's brother and wife. However, the inclusion of unexplained vernacular terms does not detract from the enjoyment of a book, which I can strongly recommend, nor its comprehensibility. Sharmeen: Maya's Friend who was captured by the Pakistan army and kept at the cantonment in Dhaka and raped repeatedly.

e. the split between East and West Pakistan in 1971, the central theme is a mother’s efforts to save her children.But after having interviewed more than a hundred survivors of the Bangladesh War for Independence, I realised it was the very small details that always stayed in my mind- the guerilla fighters who exchanged shirts before they went into battle, the women who sewed their best silk saris into blankets for the reugees. It also effectively illustrates the strength of maternal love, and the lengths a woman will go to to protect her children. The language, the pace and the restraint from providing too much graphic detail added up to make this a surprisingly easy read for me. Anam is great on description of food, Rehana is an excellent cook and the feast is described in loving detail.