Pakistani writer Sabyn Javeri’s debut novel was a pulpy political thriller, though few in South Asia would contest that our politics is anything but pulpy. If it weren’t that the consequences of the machinations of politicians were inevitably tragic, you might even enjoy the drama, a wild soap opera with twists at once cliched and surreal. For Javeri’s follow-up, a collection of short stories, she settles on the hijab as a unifying motif, a protagonist/ antagonist looming over her characters’ lives.
The hijab, Javeri shows, is a garment intended to erase women, to deny their particularity, their individuality. But that very invisibility can be enabling, subversive. Frequently, though, the consequences for revealing some flash, some kindling spark of spirit are devastating. In one story, a young girl gets a sexual…
