This Is Where the Serpent Lives

Set across several decades of Pakistani history, the novel traces the intertwined lives of landlords, servants, and strivers bound together by the feudal estate system of the Punjab. Told in four interconnected sections, it follows characters whose fates revolve around the powerful Atar family and their ancestral lands at Ranmal Mohra in central Punjab.

The first section, "The Golden Boy," opens in the early 1950s. A boy of three or four sits alone outside a tea stall in Rawalpindi, clutching plastic shoes. In the upheaval of the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan, children have been abandoned across the subcontinent. Karim Khan, the Pathan stall owner, watches the boy all day, then takes him in and names him Bayazid after a Sufi mystic. Yazid, as he comes to be called, grows large and strong, teaches himself to read, and masters baking flatbread. As a teenager, he befriends boys from a nearby school. His closest friend becomes Zain Awan, the son of a grocer. When Kamran Khokhar, a brash bully, insults Zain and mocks Yazid's orphan origins, Yazid grabs him by the throat, stabs himself in the thigh with a penknife, and throws Kamran out, deepening his bond with Zain.

Yazid begins visiting Zain's home, where he falls in love with Yasmin, Zain's younger sister. When Mai Viro, the family's fierce old servant, catches Yazid pressing his lips to a glass Yasmin has used, she accuses him of sorcery and drives him from the house. Devastated, Yazid leaves Rawalpindi.

By 1979, Yazid is chauffeur to Colonel Khuda Baksh Atar, a wealthy landowner. On a visit to Rawalpindi, he learns from Zain that Kamran, now a figure in the local land mafia, had his men abduct Yasmin and that she later tried to cut her wrists. Yazid arranges an alibi for Zain, then shoots Kamran dead. The killing is dismissed as gangland violence.

The second section, "Muscle," set in 1988, follows Rustom Abdalah, the American-educated heir to the Dunyapur estate in South Punjab, orphaned by a car crash during his first year at Columbia University. Since his return, the neighboring Chandio clan has been stealing property and has beaten his childhood caretaker. When the local police prove useless, Rustom summons Sheikh Sarkar, patriarch of a gangster clan that has served as enforcers to the Abdalah family for six generations. Sheikh Sarkar departs, leaving his grandnephew Sheikh Sharif and armed men.

Sheikh Sharif raids the Chandios and has his men savagely beat the offending clan member. Rustom, horrified, turns to his cousin Hisham Atar, a politically connected landowner. When Hisham visits Dunyapur, Sheikh Sharif describes carrying out an extrajudicial killing at police request. Shahnaz, Hisham's wife, storms out in disgust, and Sheikh Sharif departs insulted, leaving his armed men behind. Later, Sheikh Sharif and the local police officer visit Rustom's Lahore home at night, appraising the property. Rustom reflects that the old power of his family's position could be his, if he is willing to pay the price.

The third section, "The Clean Release," unfolds as a frame narrative. In 2005, after a wedding, Hisham shows Rustom a lithograph his estranged brother Nessim has sent from New York, depicting Jacob stealing Esau's birthright. Hisham recounts their past: As boys, he was the dominant elder while their mother favored Nessim. After her death, their father, Colonel Atar, ran them against each other. Both ended up at Dartmouth College, where Hisham thrived socially and Nessim studied seriously. There, Hisham meets Shahnaz, a Pakistani sophomore who becomes Nessim's girlfriend.

Back in Lahore for the summer, the couple struggles to meet privately. The brothers plan a camping trip to the Kaghan Valley with Shahnaz and Bayazid. One night, after Nessim retires to his tent, Shahnaz kisses Hisham by the dying fire. Nessim sees them from the tent flap and withdraws silently. The next morning, Nessim delivers his verdict: He will leave Pakistan. He tells Hisham to take Shahnaz, to have everything, and to choke on it. Nessim departs permanently, eventually becoming a partner at a prestigious New York law firm. Hisham and Shahnaz marry. On his dawn flight to Karachi, Hisham reflects that his marriage has become a social partnership. He has everything, yet Nessim seems to float clean above the clouds.

The fourth and longest section, "This Is Where the Serpent Lives," follows Chaudrey Mohammad Saqib, son of the head gardener at Ranmal Mohra. As a boy, Shahnaz notices him and gives him a kitchen job. At 14, he is summoned to the Atar mansion in Lahore, where he apprentices under Bayazid. Slight, tall, and eager, Saqib earns Shahnaz's trust through discretion. Around 2003, at 15, he accompanies the Atars to a party and discovers Hisham in a sexual encounter with their hostess, initiating him into the hidden world of his masters' transgressions.

When Hisham announces plans for a vegetable tunnel farm on fertile land by the Indus River, Shahnaz maneuvers Saqib into charge of the venture, with Yazid as nominal supervisor. His first season yields roughly 10 times what the main estate earns. He courts and marries Gazala Abbas, the proud and secretly educated granddaughter of the estate's disgraced former manager. Shahnaz helps arrange the match.

After a second successful season, the equipment supplier proposes a fraudulent scheme: use cheap Chinese materials while billing the Atars for expensive Dutch imports, with a kickback of 1 million rupees. Saqib agonizes but commits, seeing it as his one chance to rise beyond the role of a munshi, or estate functionary. Gazala, now pregnant, warns him to be careful, invoking her grandfather's downfall.

The inferior materials fail. Saqib grooms his account books and has the equipment dismantled before inspection. When Yazid visits, Saqib offers a story of crop failure but carelessly reveals an expensive iPhone at the bus station. Yazid, watching from the bus window, understands instantly.

The Atars confront Saqib in the baithak, the old ceremonial hall at Ranmal Mohra. Yazid declares that the boy stole the money. Hisham kicks Saqib's prostrate father, the harmless old gardener, and orders Saqib locked up. That night, police take him to a remote outpost by the Indus, where an officer known for extrajudicial killings interrogates him. After torture with electric shocks, Saqib reveals the hiding place of his 1.25 million rupees. The officer keeps the entire sum.

On the third night, Gazala walks alone to the farmhouse carrying her sleeping infant. She finds Shahnaz and leads her to the swimming pool, inside a wall Saqib himself had built. Gazala argues that the Atars shaped Saqib's ambition, that they showed him what was possible and sent him back to earn it. She falls to her knees, lays the child at Shahnaz's feet, and cries out: What fault is hers, what fault is the child's? Shahnaz touches the infant's forehead and promises Saqib will not be harmed.

The next morning, Yazid retrieves Saqib. Driving through the countryside, he weeps, saying that 39 years of service and all he has is his belly. He tells Saqib that the Atars did not intend the severity of his treatment. At Saqib's house, Yazid dismisses him with a touch on the shoulder. Saqib watches the jeep drive away, understanding that he has lost his money, his position, and his mentor, but that he still has his wife, his child, and the knowledge of all he has seen and learned.