New
Delhi: (IANS) Hira Mandi, the traditional red light quarter of Lahore, lives in
the popular mindscape through its stories of longing, loss and 'mujras' after
the Pakistan government clamped down on prostitution in the 1970s, says noted
French writer Claudine Le Tourneur d'lson.
Her
fictional biography, 'Hira Mandi', based on the life story of Iqbal Husain, the
son of a Hira Mandi courtesan, has connected to the English-speaking world with
its first-ever translation by the capital-based Roli Books.
The
novel, originally written in French in 2006, went on sale in India this week
after an informal launch at the Alliance Francaise in the capital Monday. It
will debut in Pakistan at the Karachi Literature Festival starting Saturday.
Claudine
describes the book "as her love affair with the people of Hira Mandi, with
whom she had spent weeks in Lahore as if she was a part of them".
"The
book has been inspired by Iqbal Hussain, son of a Hira Mandi prostitute, whom I
had met in 1988. Iqbal is an artist - perhaps the only one of his kind - and a
restaurateur. He owns an eatery, Cuckoo's Den, in Hira Mandi where he serves
traditional Lahori food," Claudine told IANS here.
Iqbal
is a misfit of an artist in Pakistan, where "even talking about
prostitutes is a taboo", the writer said.
"Iqbal
is not very comfortable among people though he has been drawing Lahore and the
world to Hira Mandi with his food," Claudine said. Cuckoo's Den is a
mandatory stopover for tourists in Lahore.
Iqbal
uses the dancing girls of Hira Mandi as models for his impressionistic
paintings "of figures and landscapes without expressions of sex", the
writer said.
"In
his leisure, Iqbal spends his time helping the dancing girls. He is very
human... Iqbal says, 'I am a man before a Muslim,'" Claudine recalled.
Iqbal
in Claudine's novel is the hero Shanwaz Nadeem, who narrates his life story in
first person.
Shanwaz's
earliest memories of Hira Mandi are of his beautiful 20-year-old mother Naseem,
who lives in her Mughal-style "haveli" with her aunts, cousins and
her five-year-old son in the narrow crowded bylanes in the old walled city of
Lahore.
Naseem's
quarters are partitioned and Shanwaz wakes up every night to the "cries,
moans and sighs of his mother in the bedroom on the other side".
Shanwaz's
life charts Pakistan's turbulent history from partition to the Bhutto years,
Zia-ul Haq's repressive regime, fundamentalist violence and the years of
"The Satanic Verses".
Hira
Mandi gradually disintegrates around Shanwaz, leaving him with memories of its
once-forbidden grandeur - and unrequited desires - amid aging courtesans and
confused novices.
"The
residents of Hira Mandi had hoped that the 'Bhuttos' would bring in democracy
and free them of repression and blind police atrocities...But Benazir Bhutto
had failed to do much for women. I suppose they were disappointed in the
end..." the writer said.
The
Hira Mandi of the courtesans does not exist any more.
"The
dancing girls (the prettier ones) have either moved to Dubai where the business
is good while the others are spread across hotels in Lahore," Claudine
said.
Segregated
as a red light area during the British Raj for "the benefit of the
soldiers" in the old Anarkali Bazar overlooking the Badshahi mosque, Hira
Mandi was known for its "refined courtesans with impeccable manners,
accomplished in performing arts, music and traditional gastronomy".
However,
the tradition of dancing girls in the old Lahore city - a walled settlement -
dates back to the reign of emperor Akbar whose son, prince Salim, once fell in
love with Anarkali, a dancing girl from Lahore.
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