How it Happened by Shazaf Fatima Haider

Previously published in The Herald magazine. 

The latest Pakistani writer to be published in India is Karachi local Shazaf Fatima Haider. I wanted very much to like her book How it Happened for what it is - a warm, funny little story about families and family feuds, foibles and relationships. It’s about arranged marriages and marriages that arrange themselves, tradition and change - but somehow, that just wasn’t enough. 

The story is told by Saleha, the teenage daughter of a family of traditional Shia Syed Pakistanis living in Karachi who are immediately familiar: they could easily be your cousins, your neighbours or my best friends’ family. The household is ruled by Dadi, a matriarch of ‘steely resolve and … a uterus made of the same material, having given birth to six daughters and three sons’, who ‘believed in a few basic things: spices, prayers and arranged marriages’. How it Happened follows the the Bandian family as Dadi attempts to find a suitable girl for her beloved grandchild Haroon, and following that a suitable boy for her beautiful, statuesque granddaughter Zeba. In slightly stilted stuttering prose, How It Happened examines what it is like to be part of the great cattle market that is the arranged marriages scenario in Karachi, as the family takes a look at potential brides before finding one of their own being paraded much in the same way. Following the pattern of Pride and Prejudice, Zeba finds herself approached by inappropriate ‘rishtas’ and even encounters a haughty man who embarrasses her with his pointed remarks about mothers and grandmothers throwing their eligible daughters at him. 

Saleha recounts the events that come to pass with great honestly and detail - perhaps a few too many details and repetitions for less patient and more critical readers. None of the wide array of characters in the novel have anything more than a single facet, including Saleha or the much talked about Dadi, who may hold forth on a great variety of subjects but ultimately remains nothing more sympathetic than a classic geriatric manipulative virago. 

There are a great many Jane Austen references at play here (some horribly unsubtle), as Haider explores what it is to be a young person living in a traditional family in an educated, urban community, where so many marriages that take place are arranged by older relatives who come armed with a checklist of requirements and very little in the way of an actual connection between potential spouses. That Haider writes with warmth and good humour can not be denied, but sadly, there is little insight here in the exploration of situations and relationships very familiar to most South Asian readers, and while the book is very readable (and refreshingly not politically inclined), there is nothing here to really marvel at. The story itself will appeal to a great many women who have experienced the local rishta scene, but probably not to those with imagination enough to spot and laugh at the idiosyncrasies of their own families. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a simple, sweet, warm and funny story. These are all things that How it Happened is. But there’s something wrong here, because even feel-good, for entertainment-only stories should never be predictable.