64 pages • 2-hour read
Heart Lamp: Selected Stories
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Stories 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual violence.
Story 10 Summary: “The Shroud”
Shaziya is a spiritually lukewarm woman. She has high blood pressure, for which she is medicated. One morning, she wakes up to the sound of crying and finds her son Farman consoling Altaf, the son of their neighbor Yaseen Bua. Altaf informs Shaziya that Bua has died, and he has come to ask for a funeral shroud for her.
In an extended flashback, Shaziya and her husband Subhan are in the midst of preparing for Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). Bua comes uninvited to a feast Shaziya and Subhan organize to settle old grievances with friends and family. Bua’s reputation was ruined after the death of her husband because she chose to work instead of observing the traditional grieving period expected of widows. She dedicated herself to the welfare of her children and retired when she found work physically challenging. Instead of preparing for her death, Bua funneled all of her savings to prepare for Altaf’s eventual wedding. Bua admires Shaziya and sees her as a fortunate woman.
Shaziya entertains many of her guests’ requests to pray for them in Mecca. Bua only comes to see her at the end of the feast, when Shaziya is exhausted. Since Shaziya saw Bua helping with the housework, Shaziya offers her a gift of money. Bua refuses and instead gives Shaziya money to bring her a funeral shroud dipped in holy water from the Zamzam Well in Mecca. Shaziya accepts the money, even though she considers Bua’s bills tattered and unsanitary. Shaziya is unsure if she has brought Bua’s money with her by the time she reaches Madina.
In Madina, Shaziya defies Subhan’s instruction to refrain from shopping. Before they leave for Mecca, Subhan reiterates his instruction, telling her that shopping will spoil the intention of their pilgrimage. He only allows her to shop after the Hajj is completed. The Saudi government treats the Indian pilgrims well, making their travel to holy sites as convenient and as comfortable as possible.
One afternoon at the Masjid al-Haram, Shaziya sees one of her companions, Zainab, filling a bucket with drinking water. Zainab explains that she is washing a shroud, but this upsets Shaziya because she believes Zainab is unfairly wasting their water. She soon realizes that Zainab is taking advantage of the water the Saudi government has installed in the Ka’aba complex because it is sourced from the Zamzam Well. Subhan urges her to dismiss the issue, insisting it is a common practice within their pilgrim group. Only then does Shaziya remember to buy a funeral shroud for Bua.
Shaziya and Subhan go searching for a shroud after they join the prayers at the Ka’aba. Shaziya gets distracted when she comes across a carpet shop and ends up negotiating a purchase. Subhan tries his best to stop her, but is disappointed when the purchase goes through. Afterwards, Subhan asks the carpet shop assistant if they sell shrouds. The assistant offers them a shroud that weighs as much as a corpse. The shroud’s weight discourages Shaziya from buying it. Subhan resentfully carries the carpet back to their accommodations. He refrains from losing his temper with Shaziya since they are on Hajj.
At the end of the pilgrimage, Shaziya is admitted to the hospital for high blood pressure. She insists that she is fine so that she can finally go on a shopping spree. Shaziya remembers Bua’s request, but pushes it away because she doesn’t want to feel sad during her shopping. She thinks of how she can explain away her failure to buy Bua’s funeral shroud.
The story returns to the present. Shaziya is distraught by the news of Bua’s unexpected death, knowing that she failed to fulfill Bua’s last request to her. Upon her return, Shaziya was preoccupied with unpacking and distributing the gifts she had brought for other family and friends. Bua attempted to visit Shaziya several times, but Shaziya was either too tired or too busy to see her. On the one occasion that Shaziya managed to accommodate Bua, Bua was overjoyed to be in the presence of someone she perceived as being spiritually pure. Shaziya gifted her a prayer mat and prayer beads, but Bua refused them, asking only for her shroud. To avoid explaining herself, Shaziya lost her temper with Bua, accusing her of being ungrateful for her generosity. To Shaziya’s surprise, Bua insisted on her request, already hinting at her impending death. Shaziya doubled down on her anger and threatened to give back an amount in excess of Bua’s money. Bua disappeared before Shaziya could give her the money. Ever since then, Shaziya has been affected by Bua’s defiance.
Shaziya wonders how she can make up for her mistake, knowing that she will be held accountable for it on Judgment Day. She does not know how to explain to Altaf that she never bought his mother’s shroud. The absence of a shroud will delay her burial, leading the mosque officials back to her. She starts calling up friends and relatives to ask if they have a spare shroud from Mecca, eventually reaching out to the mother of Saba, her daughter-in-law, who has a shroud to offer, provided that Shaziya uses it for herself. When Saba’s mother probes into the reasons for her inquiry, Shaziya abandons the call. Gossip soon spreads about Shaziya.
Shaziya resigns herself to her failure, believing there is no other way to fulfill Bua’s request. Farman finds her and understands the reason for her sadness. By the following morning, he becomes upset with her for taking Bua’s request and failing to keep it when it should have been easy. He urges Shaziya to move on, informing her that he personally helped Altaf to complete Bua’s pre-burial rituals. They used a simple shroud bought at Farman’s expense. He invites Shaziya to go out with him and attend Bua’s burial, even if he knows this will not bring an end to Shaziya’s guilt and grief.
As Farman predicted, Shaziya weeps endlessly upon arriving at Bua’s house. The other attendees are amazed that a rich woman would grieve so much for a poor woman. Shaziya feels that the last rites are not for Bua, but for herself.
Story 11 Summary: “The Arabic Teacher and Gobi Manchuri”
The narrator begins by declaring that people act irrationally whenever they fear responsibility. The narrator is a lawyer who has two daughters. The father of her children is not involved in their upbringing because his family secured a fatwa (judgment) exempting him from parental duties. The narrator ensures that her daughters receive a religious education and is helped by her family.
The narrator’s younger brother, Imaad, recommends an Arabic teacher for the narrator’s children. He offers to bring the teacher to her house at once for their first lesson, though the narrator is hesitant to receive him while she is away from home. The narrator and Imaad quarrel over this offer, during which the narrator specifies that she just needs the teacher to help the children improve their basic proficiency. She resolves the discussion by inviting Imaad and the teacher to her house in the evening.
Before she leaves work, the narrator is held back by a summons to the appellate court. She informs her husband about Imaad’s offer, hoping that he can receive and interview the new teacher instead. The husband reveals that Imaad and the teacher are already in the house. He refuses, however, to make any decisions that would overstep her responsibility as mother. By the time the narrator finishes her court arguments, she is an hour late for her appointment.
The teacher is younger than the narrator expected. The narrator interviews him in the presence of her husband and her two daughters, Asiya and Aamina. The teacher agrees to give lessons at the time suggested by the narrator, taking care not to meet her gaze in line with the Muslim tradition of purdah. The children start their lessons the next day, during which the narrator becomes anxious about her daughters’ well-being while she is at work. She requests her husband to supervise their lessons, but he refuses. To ensure that her children are receiving the best education possible, the narrator adds a premium to the teacher’s agreed salary. She admits to herself that this is also to compensate for the guilt she feels over being absent in her children’s lives.
Six months after the start of their lessons, the narrator’s daughters surprise her by singing a song about the struggles of Muhammad to commemorate his birthday at a public event. The narrator is proud of their performance and once again increases the teacher’s salary.
Three months later, the narrator goes home early from work because she is feeling sick. She is surprised to find her daughters preparing food for the teacher. The teacher is so embarrassed that he rushes out of the house. The narrator’s daughters explain that the teacher’s favorite snack is gobi manchuri. He spends much of his salary trying to satisfy his desire for the snack, but one day realized that it could be easily made in the narrator’s house. He conspired with the girls to prepare gobi manchuri, but the cook gave them a false recipe because she did not know how to make it. The narrator is relieved that the explanation is more innocuous than she feared. From that day on, however, the teacher avoids their house.
The narrator hears that the teacher is trying to court the daughters of people associated with the narrator, from her clients to the relatives of the narrator’s household staff. He uses the narrator’s name to make himself appear credible to the families of his potential spouses. The teacher is rejected for various reasons, including the fact that he is rushing the wedding arrangements without getting to know his spouse first. The narrator’s former cook informs her that all the teacher is concerned about is ensuring that gobi manchuri is served at the wedding feast. This leaves the narrator concerned about the teacher’s behavior, though she decides that she shouldn’t let thoughts of him bother her in the face of her other priorities.
Six months later, Imaad informs the narrator’s children that the teacher has gotten married. The narrator feels relieved, though she soon becomes curious about the family who married their daughter to the teacher. She is approached by a young man and a wounded woman. The man explains that the woman, his sister, is the teacher’s wife. The teacher physically abuses his wife on a regular basis. The mosque officials failed to convince him to change his ways and have fired him as a consequence. The man says the reason for the teacher’s abuse is that his wife does not understand how to cook gobi manchuri for him. The man urges the narrator to prosecute the teacher.
The narrator worries that the teacher will try to flee as soon as she files charges. Feeling responsible for the young woman’s well-being, the narrator starts looking up the recipe for gobi manchuri while calling Imaad.
Story 12 Summary: “Be a Woman Once, Oh Lord!”
The narrator, addressing Allah, asks if she can make a humble request. She recalls a time when her life was simple. As a young woman, the narrator is restricted from leaving her house. Her wonder for the natural world makes her obedient to the laws of her household. This makes it easy for her mother to supervise her.
One day, the narrator is taken away by her father and draped in precious jewels. She is married off, which redefines her identity so that she comes to know herself as a wife, the property of her husband. The narrator’s husband has an intense sexual desire, which he satisfies through regular sexual acts with the narrator with little regard for her feelings. Barely a week into their marriage, the narrator’s husband expresses his contempt for the narrator. He demands her to bring 50,000 rupees from her family at once.
The narrator returns home, bringing joy to her doting mother. The narrator cannot help but feel disturbed as she thinks of her husband’s demand. After three days, the narrator fails to ask her parents for the money. Her husband promises that she will never see her family again. The narrator retains the braid her mother made for her, fearing the loss of her mother’s love after her husband fulfills his threat. For some time, the narrator prays that her mother will break through her husband’s arrogance, but his restrictions hold, and she never sees her family again. The narrator laments the contradiction between her husband’s restriction and Allah’s assertion that mothers are equal to God. She wonders if Allah will grant her any resolution in life.
The narrator’s husband remains indifferent to her needs, indulging only his own sexual desires. It is during this time that the narrator’s parents sell their possessions and prepare to offer 20,000 rupees to the narrator’s husband in the hopes of seeing her again. On the road to the husband’s house, an accident kills the narrator’s mother. The narrator’s husband neither informs the narrator of this development, nor allows her to visit her mother during her funeral. The narrator only learns about it later and is consoled by the fact that her mother’s heart remained intact and that her eyes were open, as if expecting someone to bring her to paradise. The narrator’s father continues the journey and delivers the money to the narrator’s husband. Still, the narrator’s husband refuses to reunite her with her family.
The narrator gives birth to a daughter who reminds her of her mother. It isn’t long after that the narrator becomes pregnant again, her husband insisting that this is her duty. The narrator laments that her husband can never know the physical burdens of pregnancy and motherhood. Her second child is a boy, which brings her husband endless joy. Expecting that her son will grow up to become like his father, the narrator dotes on her daughter.
The narrator remains subservient to her husband as their children grow up. She also comes to fear life after his death, unsure of how she will live in the shadow of his absence. One day, the narrator is admitted to the hospital. The doctors need to perform surgery to remove a tumor in her stomach, which enrages the narrator’s husband. After the surgery, the narrator’s husband demands the neck chain that the narrator’s mother made from her own wedding gold to commemorate the narrator’s marriage. The husband explains that he will remarry and give the gold to his new wife. This upsets the narrator, who refuses to hand over her neck chain. Her husband elaborates that he is remarrying because he does not want to waste his life on a sick person. He continues to criticize her and expresses his dissatisfaction over their marriage, which turns the narrator numb with anger.
The narrator becomes disillusioned with society, believing they will accept her husband’s behavior. The narrator does not see her husband for three days. After she is discharged, she is forced to walk with her children back home. When they arrive, the house is locked, barring their entry. They wait outside the house throughout the day and night. Late in the night, the narrator’s son falls into an open ditch. She jumps down to rescue him, just as her husband is arriving with his new wife, fresh from their wedding celebration. The husband, his new wife, and the wedding party are admitted into the house at once.
Having lost her patience with her husband, the narrator finally makes her request: Should Allah remake the world, the narrator would like him to come to the world as a woman, so that he can better know how to make men and women alike.
Stories 10-12 Analysis
Mushtaq’s stories expose The Inextricable Link Between Patriarchy and Capitalism, which seeps into the dynamics between members of the upper and working classes. The last three stories of this collection underscore these dynamics, focusing specifically on the context of law and religion.
In “The Shroud,” the tension of the story arises from the consequences of Shaziya’s failure to fulfill her promise to Bua. Without the shroud that Shaziya promised to get her, Shaziya is under pressure to save face and prove that she is an honorable person, especially to the dead. The extended flashback of the story serves Mushtaq’s critique by drawing irony from Shaziya’s Hajj. Shaziya believes that by going on pilgrimage, she can prove herself a morally and spiritually pure person. This is precisely how Bua sees her after her Hajj, yet the purity she projects to Bua is far from the truth of her character: Instead, the Hajj is only for show, as Shaziya’s behavior throughout shows that she is lacking in the true moral values her faith espouses.
Shaziya’s Hajj is filled with moments of personal weakness, where she sullies the spiritual intentions of her pilgrimage by coveting material goods and prioritizing personal gain over the agreement she has with Bua. When Shaziya gets the chance to acquire a shroud for Bua, Mushtaq describes the shroud as being “heavy as a corpse” (174), foreshadowing Bua’s fate. Mushtaq is implying that Shaziya is being called to carry the burden of her promise to a woman who will soon die, yet she abandons this burden in favor of personal pleasure. She does not even take the responsibility of carrying the carpet herself, but gives it instead to Subhan, who has repeatedly reminded her of the true purpose of their Hajj.
In the present action of the story, Shaziya feels increasingly guilty over her spiritual bankruptcy. For all her attempts to prove that her spirit is clean, she knows that she did not behave as a truly devout Muslim would because she behaved callously toward Bua. The story implies that Shaziya’s moral emptiness is equivalent to death. When she asks for a shroud from Saba’s mother, Saba’s mother specifies that she may only use it for herself. Shaziya can hardly reconcile one fault by making another, which leaves her in a bind. By the end of the story, the onlookers mistake Shaziya’s outpouring of grief as genuine affection for a dear friend when in truth, Shaziya is crying out of self-awareness and expectation of the punishment she will receive for her performative spirituality.
In “The Arabic Teacher and Gobi Manchuri,” the tension of this story centers on The Problem of Gendered Violence in the Family. The story interrogates the problem of gender roles from its opening, highlighting the double standards that apply to fathers and mothers in patriarchal marriages. The narrator is preoccupied by her work as a lawyer, which she fears prevents her from being fully present in her family’s life. The narrator muses: “Perhaps this is the working mothers’ solution: trying to make up for the guilt of not being able to spend time with their children by giving them money and gifts” (188). Her sense of guilt and responsibility forms a stark contrast with her husband’s total passivity in family affairs, with her children’s father refusing to have anything to do with their care and—what is even more significant—openly receiving communal and religious sanction for his neglect. The father’s neglect mirrors the neglect of some of the fathers in the other stories, such as Usman in “Fire Rain,” with the narrator forced to shoulder bother the economic and familial burdens as she tries to earn and parent on her own at the same time.
The more subtle damage inflicted within patriarchal marriage by male domestic neglect is then contrasted with the overt violence that the teacher represents. The first key moment of the story comes when the narrator finds the teacher and her daughters in the kitchen, with the daughters attempting to please the teacher by making his favorite dish, even though it is the teacher who is supposed to be providing a service. Though he never comes back to the narrator’s house afterwards, he continues to orbit her world by engaging with the people in her community network. His insatiable hunger and his manipulative tactics embody a patriarchal greed for consumption—both literal and figurative—of female labor and caregiving. Similarly, his desire to find a wife as quickly as possible, without even first attempting to get to know his prospective bride properly, speaks to how he regards women as just another object of consumption.
The story’s end reveals that the teacher physically abuses his wife, claiming it is because she cannot cook his favorite dish. The lawyer’s worry that the teacher will flee as soon as she files charges once more speaks to the problem of male evasion of responsibility and the unequal gender dynamics in their patriarchal society. Instead of prosecuting him outright, the story ends with her looking for a recipe for gobi manchuri. The narrator’s attempts to help the young women therefore center on trying to accommodate the teacher’s desires, as there seems to be no other meaningful way of evading or resisting them.
“Be a Woman Once, Oh Lord!” is the most formally experimental story in Mushtaq’s collection, speaking to The Importance of Reforming Religion for a Modern Society. The story is written as an apostrophe to Allah, revealing the narrator’s innermost thoughts and feelings. Since the narrator is appealing to God to restore justice to gender dynamics, the literary device of the apostrophe allows Mushtaq to appeal to Muslim Indians to live according to the ideals of a sympathetic deity. The story’s title, which reappears in its final lines, is Mushtaq’s way of arguing that the patriarchy is a sign of God’s failure, rather than his glory.
The story harkens back to the opening entry, “Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal” by highlighting the near-religious dynamic between husband and wife: “You should be obedient, she said, he is God to you” (197). In this vision of marriage, however, the godlike husband is cruel to the narrator despite her subservience to his many transgressive whims and wishes. She only speaks up against him when he expresses his desire to use her inherited wealth—symbolized by her neck chain—to secure a second marriage.
This moment marks the greatest insult against the narrator, who, in spite of her devotion, has been told that it is not enough to satisfy him. Since he rejects her over her illness, what repulses him is the idea of having to love and care for her as though she were worthy in her own right. Instead, her husband only sees her as an object and a servant, someone who exists simply to serve him and whose own physical and emotional needs do not matter at all. In light of her husband’s unyielding cruelty, the narrator finally protests her subservient status openly, calling upon Allah to witness her pain and identifying her personal plight with the status of women more broadly.
The narrator’s prayer to Allah to become a woman and remake the world in a more just way thus speaks to the narrator’s protest of patriarchy and the way men like her husband abuse faith to justify their own cruelty and domination. In asking Allah to be a woman, the narrator suggests that a merciful and just faith involves treating both men and women with respect and compassion, not building relationships upon domination and violence.
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