Deal with him like a psychiatrist... Review on My Feudal Lord - Tehmima Durrani

"If a husband behaves in a strange or unreasonable manner, you should treat him like a sick human being, like someone who needs medical care and treatment. Deal with him like a psychiatrist."

My Feudal Lord, like all Post Colonial Literature addresses the socio-polotical and personal independence of Tehmina Durrani, a Pakistani writer.

In her autobiography, Durrani writes of her turbulent and traumatic life as the wife of Mustafa Khar, a politician in the Bhutto Government. He later became the CM of Punjab.

The three parts called Lion of Punjab, Law of Jungle, and Lioness, aptly named, trace the development of the protagonist from an ordinary housewife to a woman struggling for emancipation and equality.

In the background we see the politically turbulent atmosphere of General Zia’s coup, overthrowing the Government of Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and establishing a military regime.

Like all women of her rank, she was expected to marry a wealthy Muslim, bear him many children and lead a sheltered life of air-conditioned leisure. When she married Mustafa Khar, one of Pakistan most eminent political figures, she continued to keep up the public facade as a glamorous, cultivated wife, and mother of four children. In private, however, the story-book romance rapidly turned sour. Mustafa Khar became violently possessive and jealous, and succeeded in cutting his wife off from the outside world. For the course of her 14-year marriage, she suffered alone, in silence.

To Quote Durrani -

"There was not a day that Mustafa did not hit me …. I just tried my best not to provoke him …I was afraid that my slightest response to his advances would reinforce his image of me as a common s*ut. This was a feudal hang – up: his class believed that a woman was an instrument of a man’s carnal pleasure. If the woman ever indicated that she felt pleasure, she was a potential adulteress, not to be trusted. Mustafa did not even realize that he had crushed my sensuality. I was on automatic pilot …responding as much as was important for him but never feeling anything myself. If he was satisfied there was a chance that he would be in better humour. It was at these times that I realized that prostitution must be a most difficult profession."

Towards the end, the transformed woman says -

"Silence condones injustice, breeds subservience and fosters a malignant hypocrisy. Mustafa Khar and other feudal lords thrive and multiply on silence. Muslim women must learn to raise their voice against injustice."

The novel won the Marrissa Bellasario Prize and has since been translated into various languages.Not without a good reason!