Awesome Asherville author adds magic
Saleem Badat
I am an Asherville, Durban boy. It is where I spent the first two decades of my life before, in the words of a cousin, I “abandoned” Durban for 38 years. Imagine my delight when I discover that the young author that I think is just awesome is an Asherville lass.
After scholar and author Ashwin Desai thrust her books into my hands at Ike’s Bookshop recently, my bedtime reading has been regaled by Shubnum Khan’s How I Accidentally Became a Global Stock Photo and other Strange and Wonderful Stories (2021) and The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil (2024).
Written in a “magical realism” genre, Khan ingeniously unfolds a riveting story that features a motley cast and is set in Akbar Manzil, a sprawling early twentieth century mansion on the Durban beachfront custom built by a wealthy Indian entrepreneur, Akbar Ali.
The captivating narration with its lovely twists and turns builds up to a moment you know is coming but you are dreading. At least, I dread because I am thoroughly enchanted by Meena, the intelligent, ebony-skinned factory worker that Akbar takes as his second wife, who, as Shubnum affectionately unfolds her personality and qualities, just grew and grew on me. Meena is my hero, without doubt!
No doubt, other readers may express solidarity with the fair-skinned first wife, from Mughal nobility, Jahanara Begum who yearns to return to India and/or with Akbar’s mother Grand Ammi. There are villains for sure, but no winners and losers, just tragedy in bizarre circumstances revealed more than 80 years later in 2014.
Khan brings the protagonists in Akbar Manzil to life marvellously ‒ and they are a quite a group of characters, each with his and her history of love, tragedy, burdens, desires, needs and wants.
Fifteen-year-old Sana, the key protagonist, the single child of a widowed father, is the connection with the hidden world of Akbar Manzil, a place and space of djinns and fellow travellers. It is she who unravels the terrible calamity and associated heartbreak of Akbar Manzil. In the process, she confronts her insecurities and remakes herself. Is Sana based on a young Khan, I wonder? Are there autobiographical elements in the character of Sana?
Khan’s Razia Bibi is uncomfortably familiar. Every family likely has her equivalent and Razia Bibi could be a composite. The one whose comments and actions transform a promising, sunny day into a dark, wintry one, who holds shamefully racist and patriarchal views and considers them the natural or perhaps God-given order of persons and things.
The one who yearns to go back to the good old pre-1994 days when everyone knew their place, who constantly asks you when you are getting married and when you are having children. And, heaven forbid, if you are still unmarried at 25, passionately paints for you your unbearable, lonely and horrid future.
Being alone is mistaken for loneliness, and the worth of life and happiness is reduced to marriage. Khan thinks “marriage is a wonderful and beautiful thing” for the right people. But for her, “marriage is not the definition of life. How can it be when partners die or divorce? Marriage is not the answer to every problem and it is problematic that we portray it as such”.
Since reading The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil, I have become much more attuned to the movements and sounds of my apartment. Once you start tuning in, you realise that Khan’s likening of a house to an old car is an apt metaphor.
Please buy a copy of The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil. Khan needs the royalties; how else is she going to continue to stimulate our minds and to entertain us?
The cover is beautiful, so the book adds lustre to any coffee table. Visitors will be impressed. But please read it.
Saleem Badat is Research Professor in the Department of History at the University of the Free State. He is the former vice-chancellor of Rhodes University. He lives in Durban and considers it the best city in the world.