Thinner than Skin by Uzma Aslam Khan

Previously published in The Herald magazine. 

‘Where are the beggars and bazaars or anything that resembles your culture?’, asks a potential employer of Nadir, a young Pakistani photographer in San Francisco who is trying to make ends meet selling close ups of ancient marble belonging to his mother. Unable to sell out in that way, Nadir wanders the American landscape, taking photographs of unfurling cactus flowers and deserts. He’s already bereft when he is introduced to Farhana, a young half-Pakistani graduate student who is able to tether Nadir but who still believes that he hides behind his lens. Nadir believes they love each other for the opposite reasons, setting the tone for a relationship that seems tenuous from the very start. Farhana convinces Nadir to take her to the north of Pakistan, ostensibly to study the glaciers there, but also to show her the places he loves. It is during their detour in Kaghan, by the shores of Lake Saif ul Maluk that things spiral out of control and into life changing disaster. 

In Kaghan, two very different worlds care made to collide, like the local ritual of mating glaciers that Nadir describes to Farhana. A family of Gujar herders are camped by the lake, and are immediately hospitable to the tourists. Unfortunately, neither group is able to understand the motives of the other: Maryam, whose child is taken for a boat ride on the lake by Farhana asks her husband, ‘Where do they come from? Is it a place where a child is pulled from her family for amusement?’ Farhana’s insistence at trying to be involved with the locals and her strange belief that she knows what everyone around her wants results in a horrible, sad accident that will burden the remaining lives of everyone there in ways they will never entirely understand. 

Maryam’s story is the strongest in Thinner than Skin. Her childhood, her life as an adult ‘pagan wife’ living in the mountains, her beliefs, her rituals and her strength is what really shine in the novel - here is a woman who is true to her heart, no matter what adversity she faces, whether it be religious or even from government officials restricting the usual nomadic ways of her tribe. Her savior is the mysterious Ghafoor, who ‘was the air that teased the braid circling her face, the cloud that yawned apart in the lake. He was a door to the other world, the world outside the mountains.’ Ghafoor himself has a colourful past, but it is his connection to Maryam that changes the course of the narrative. 

That Khan writes with grace and confidence need not be said - this was evident in Ice, Mating the excerpt from Thinner than Skin that was first published in Granta’s Pakistan issue. She uses language skillfully, sensually - in fact, the one thing that very strongly sets her apart from other Pakistani writers is her attitude towards sex and sensuality. She does not hold back from exploring her characters’ physical relationships, and neither does she ever self-censor. Even nature is often eroticised with the Nanga Parbat described as a ‘naked white spear towering high above the Queen, breathing down the nape of neck, the slope of her thighs.’  The physical aspect of Nadir and Farhana’s relationship is the only one that is clear - theirs is a complicated, barbed and constantly strained love, with motives for Farhana’s actions and attitude often unclear. They do not even understand stories in the same way, with Nadir explaining ‘the jinn is an evil spirit that cannot experience love or happiness, but is tormented when others do. The cave is copulation. It’s our only hope.’

This is the story of loss. It is heavy with sadness; many of its characters are people whose lives are slowly moving towards emptiness and despair. The landscape around them is cold and unforgiving, echoing their treatment of each other. To succumb to the obvious metaphor, Thinner than Skin is itself a glacier - stark, poetic and with masses hidden below its surface.