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Review: Dark Hours of the Night by Salma
Translated from the Tamizh by GJV Prasad, the novel presents how women in a self-isolating religious community endure oppression
Admirers of Banu Mushtaq’s International Booker-winning Heart Lamp will enjoy Salma’s Dark Hours of the Night, translated from the Thamizh by GJV Prasad. Originally published in 2006 as Irandam Jaamangalin Kathai, Dark Hours portrays the lives of women in a small self-isolating Muslim community in Tamil Nadu. This new translation transports readers back to a time when news spread through villages and towns without any telephonic communication and community meant the actual daily gathering together of people.
The author Salma, an MP in the Rajya Sabha, who is also a Tamil Muslim, writes about her own community. As with Heart Lamp, here too, the reader wonders how much has changed for women across India over the decades.
The novel tells the story of a teenager’s family. Rabia is yet to come of age, and is often out with her friends — Mathina, Uma, Ahmad, Ilias — playing till late in the evening, sneaking off to the cinema, walking to the library, and going to school. Her mother, Zohra, disciplines her at every opportunity and the girl finds relief in her periyamma, her father’s brother’s wife, Raima, who often saves her from her mother’s wrath. Rabia enjoys spending time with Raima’s daughter, Wahida — educated in town and yet set to marry to a person of her father’s choosing. Rabia knows that her freedom will last until she comes of age and on attaining puberty, she too will be confined to the home. When we meet her, she is excited as the preparation for the month of Ramzan will bring together the women of the community as they cook sumptuous meals. They are also preparing for Wahida’s wedding.
After she is married, Wahida moves to the home next to Rabia’s maternal grandmother’s place. Rabia’s younger maternal aunt or chitti, who has separated from her husband, has returned. An unfortunate series of events causes disharmony in Rabia’s home and leads to the breakup of the joint family — something that the child witnesses but cannot fully comprehend.
Female desire takes centre stage in this book about women’s oppression. Firdaus divorces her husband because she doesn’t find him attractive. It is blasphemous for a woman to not only separate but also express her lack of desire. This is a community where women don’t have a voice, where their only job is to soundlessly provide an heir. When Wahida marries, she imagines her husband to be like cinema heroes, sensitive and caring. Unaware of what awaits her, she is shocked when the village women gather around to ask her about her wedding night.
When the book was first published, it was controversial for its depiction of women’s lives. These women discussed their sex lives in vulgar, words. The author shows women comparing and judging the sexual performance of their men, joking, watching pornographic cinema and reading risqué stories to educate themselves. Raima and Zohra mostly disprove of it. In translation, the crass conversations capture the class difference between Rabia’s family and the rest. The author presents caste difference and shows too how all women — wives and mistresses alike — are oppressed by religion and patriarchy.
The portrayal of the rituals and festivities that bind the community together can be read as a critique of the men who are the flag bearers of religion. When a Muslim woman elopes with a Hindu man, the young men recommend that all the women and girls be confined to their rooms. In general, while a woman is bound to her husband, a man is free to have as many mistresses as he wants and marry again at his pleasure. Irrespective of communal tensions, a man’s actions are never questioned. Despite all this, the author manages to create a character who is sympathetic towards women and respects their opinions but feels compelled to assert his decisions on them by the larger patriarchal community.
Some of the women whose husbands are abroad are waiting for them to return, some wish for them to leave. Each comes to realise that they are valued only for their reproductive capacity. A man desires multiple women but from his wife, he only wants a son. The author’s description of the sometimes playful and sometimes vengeful discourse between women further emphasises the freedom that they experience in the absence of men. In the midst of all this, the names of the different characters, who are all neighbours, can be difficult to follow. By the end, though, their individual personalities are in full bloom.
Dark Hours of the Night captures both the world of a teenager at the cusp of maturity and the untold grief accepted by those around her. A testimony to the ways in which women endure oppression, it is also an expose of how girls are kept away from men and sex only to be suddenly pushed into the pit where men are allowed to do as they wish. It portrays crushed dreams and the suppression of desire, for rebellion could lead to death either by suicide or at the hands of other women who believe death is better than being humiliated by righteous men keen on upholding community and religious purity.
This is a grim novel. Yet, the affectionate banter between Rabia and Ahmad, leaves the reader thinking that perhaps they might have a better fate than others in their village.
Akankshya Abismruta is an independent writer.
