Lovers and Borders: SKYFALL author Saba Karim Khan on Pakistan, India, politics, and craft
Images courtesy: Saba Karim Khan
An interview with author Saba Karim Khan: “Skyfall illuminates the soul of a Sufi love song. It is underpinned by a longing for hope, a desperation to see the glass half-full, despite the bleakness we envision about the future.”
How does the weight of Partition and war sit on the shoulders of Indians and Pakistanis who fall in love with each other? This premise, which is seldom explored in contemporary South Asian fiction, is at the heart of Saba Karim Khan’s book Skyfall (2021), published by Bloomsbury.
Skyfall revolves around Rania, a Pakistani woman who is a tour guide, and her Indian lover Asher, a documentary filmmaker visiting Lahore with his friends. As Rania takes them around the city, she also lets Asher into her inner world. Rania and Asher are aware that their story could have no happy ending, because apart from being Muslim and Hindu, they are also Pakistani and Indian. Yet they persist, fighting to be together against all odds.
Rania lives in Heera Mandi, Lahore’s red-light district. Her mother, Jahaan-e-Rumi, and her sister Ujala, are forced to engage in sex work with high-profile clients so that her father, Sherji, can use this money to finance a madrassa and a terrorist network. Asher is embraced by these women, for they know that he alone can give Rania a life that is better than the one they have had.
Asher cannot stay in Pakistan forever, much as he wants to, but he knows that Rania is the one. He encourages her to participate in a music contest that eventually takes her to New York City on an academic scholarship, where he joins her. It takes incredible courage for Rania to step out of the life that is so familiar, and yet so brutal. However, matters at home complicate: Ujala is murdered when Sherji finds out that she has a lesbian partner. Rania vows to get justice for her dead sister, and Asher joins her in this mission.
They’re emblematic of a seething issue that’s always existed, which has now publicly emerged on our streets and squares: the mounting fetish for purity in the subcontinent—purity of religion, caste and color.
This action-packed plot is set against the backdrop of the love-hate relationship between India and Pakistan, religious extremism within both countries, and the racism that Muslims experience in countries with a predominantly white population. Khan—who grew up in Karachi, completed her higher education at Oxford, and now teaches at New York University in Abu Dhabi—builds these worlds by drawing upon on her own local and international experiences.
Here is an interview with the author, unravelling her politics and her craft.
The Chakkar: A love story involving a Pakistani Muslim woman and an Indian Hindu man is rare to come by in South Asian fiction written in English. What gave you the courage to write one?
Khan: Skyfall illuminates the soul of a Sufi love song. It is underpinned by a longing for hope, a desperation to see the glass half-full, despite the bleakness we envision about the future. In fact, it makes optimism almost imperative. So, starting from the title—“Skyfall”—means the last attempt you make against a group of people when outnumbered—that is the spirit which crystallises the world of this novel.
Photo courtesy: Saba Karim Khan
Against this backdrop, I wanted to explore an inter-faith relationship and see if it survives the ongoing politics; if it can outlive human frailty as stories often do. I recall, in a very early conversation with writer Bapsi Sidhwa, we spoke of revisiting an India-Pakistan love story, in a manner that doesn’t pander to the tropes. With the love story in Skyfall, I’ve experimented with this, to invite readers into a world where one doesn’t need to provide proof in a handbasket of their love for someone from another faith, another country, in order to avoid incarceration. Where you don’t have to fall in love only once boxes of religion, caste and creed have been satisfactorily checked.
But why did I want to reconnoiter this problematic equation, when vitriol sells so much better? Taking aim at this exclusionary context between India and Pakistan stems from a deeply personal mood board: first, I’ve grown up in Pakistan, overwhelmed by the constant panic of a border breakout—a tinderbox waiting to explode. Whilst there was a time that art and the human connection operated beautifully, and agnostic to border politics, in the aftermath of Kashmir, watching this neighbouring equation get steadily subsumed by vengeful politics on both sides, blossoming friendships spill into indiscriminate animosity, fueled soul-searching—forcing me to ask: how is it that seven decades on, not only have we made no progress from being at each other’s throats, we’re sliding southwards with menacing volition?
Second, unpacking love-jihad. It’s 2020 and we’d think the time for conspiracy theories—love-jihad—sounds primitive. Yet, we’re in a world where the crackdown against Hindu-Muslim marriages in India has reached an astronomically dangerous point. The rankling of the purists which we’ve witnessed in the aftermath of the Tanishq ad or the scene from Mira Nair’s mini-series A Suitable Boy aren’t standalone instances of violence and intimidation. They’re emblematic of a seething issue that’s always existed, which has now publicly emerged on our streets and squares: the mounting fetish for purity in the subcontinent—purity of religion, caste and color.
Rania and Asher’s love story vociferously pushes back against this fetish for purity and offers in its place, an ode to impurity. It compels us to find the courage to imagine love, in a world that is so rapidly filling up with hate; in order to tell that story, I first had to unearth the courage within.
The Chakkar: To what extent does the novel draw on your observations of desi couples at Oxford and in Abu Dhabi, getting to know each other outside the subcontinent?
It’s also important to acknowledge that I wanted to move away from polemic narratives about Pakistani women; either veiled and oppressed, or fast and file, and explore hues of grey instead. Real women can be chaotic, flawed, quietly fierce yet empowered, without screaming at men from rooftops.
Khan: My raw materials for shaping the fabric of the desi romantic liaisons in Skyfall stemmed largely from the years I spent roaming the streets of Lahore—not the sanitised, touristy version but the raw, rough-around-the-edges parts of the Old City—unlearning everything I thought to be true about people nestled in this neighborhood. Visiting Heera Mandi and Cuckoo’s Café and Shahjamal—I have distinct memories of those gulleys in the Walled City, the neon signs and light bulbs switched on in the dingy internet cafes, of spending hours talking to the dancing girls to learn about their inner lives, the angst and wonder, instead of settling for what we typically see and hear about them. It was a watershed moment, discovering dreams residing in this neighborhood that we imagine mainly deals in desire.
Those day and nightlong conversations have made their way into the novel and informed interactions, a constant reminder to not dumb down desi relationships. But even beyond that, love and relationships in Skyfall, operate agnostic to whether the couple had been desi or not. A street play based on Manto in the book captures this poignantly: “Love in Multan or Siberia, whether in the winter or the summer, whether among the rich or the poor…the crude or the refined, love is always just love.” That is emblematic of what I was trying to do with romantic relationships in the book.
The Chakkar: How did you come up with the idea of that scene wherein Rania from Lahore and Asher from Delhi make love in Kashmir? I found it both poetic and startling because the India-Pakistan conflict has only brought violence and death to Kashmiris.
Khan: I couldn’t have hoped for a more appropriate reaction than that reflected in your choice of words: poetic and simultaneously, startling. There was a symbolic significance attached to setting that scene in “no-man’s land”, that is Kashmir—in a single chapter, I was offering an elevator pitch for the entire book. Searching for a metaphor that could turn violence—which stems from the human pyramids and food chains that we’ve constructed—right on its head; to allow readers to imagine a world where coexistence can be the currency, and illustrate that souls are the same everywhere (Lahore, Delhi, Kashmir, Guantanamo Bay, as Asher says that evening in Kashmir). In order to powerfully (almost ironically) convey this invitation, I decided to juxtapose Asher and Rania’s intimacy against this backdrop of pathos and brutality to ignite the possibility that we can emotionally and physically coalesce, in synchronicity with the physical beauty of Kashmir, in ways that work agnostic to border politics.
The Chakkar: Let me confess that I was wondering how Asher, an Indian journalist and documentary filmmaker, manages to get a visa to travel to Pakistan Administered Kashmir. Given the visa regime between these countries, this is almost impossible. Your thoughts?
Khan: Great question! We toyed with that technicality for so long ourselves, especially because I was unwilling to change the Kashmir location at any cost. However, it became easier when I realised New York City would also be a major location in the novel; that’s when I decided Asher could not just be an Indian national, given he arrives in NYC fairly promptly and stays there for an extended length of time. That required him to have some sort of “passport privilege” and ease of travel. Perhaps I don’t mention his specific nationality status anywhere in the book, but that was the underlying instrumental logic I employed to allow for unrestricted movement.
The Chakkar: What kind of responses have you received from Pakistani readers as far as the relationship between Rania and Asher is concerned? Though I found myself rooting for them, I also felt uncomfortable about seeing Asher as someone who ‘rescues’ Rania.
Khan: A range of responses: ‘It’s aspirational, the love-equation! Reinforces our faith in men and the religion of humanity.’ ‘Thank God Rania didn’t need to be spouting male-bashing venom to be empowered.’ ‘It speaks to allyship, makes it real.’ I must admit that I was intending to produce the exact antithesis of rescuing—but it’s this range of interpretations which makes fiction storytelling so thrilling, I suppose!
I’ll try to explain. I wanted Rania’s character to surge against a deeply patriarchal tapestry and explore the possibility of transgressions, for her voice to be motivated by the question of what price you pay, as a girl or woman or “other”, in a society such as Pakistan, for unearthing your song, for having a beautiful, brown mind, for posing uncomfortable questions. In short, for being a “Troublemaker” with a capital T. Yet, I had to do this whilst keeping her vulnerable and imperfect and brutally real. She’s someone with a backstory of bitterness, violence, resentment—which has steadily calcified—and I couldn’t downsize how that has jaded her soul.
So, I see Asher as offering the less visible but indispensable gravity that reopens her heart to the prospect of love, for her to realise things aren’t all dark and dour. I read that as different from rescuing. Simply put, Asher reinforces the message inscribed on Jahaan-e-Rumi’s letter to her daughter: “You, Rania, are a little bird, who will raise a single flag: of possibilities.” In a dark, gritty world, Asher enables Rania to imagine the movement from darkness to light—a metaphor repeatedly referenced in Skyfall. But right from the get-go, she’s a force within herself (having had her fair share of exposure to books and letters during childhood and very early on in the novel.) Well before she meets Asher, we hear that her mind is made up: (“That night, I decided I would choose differently. It could be explosive but I needed to make some changes in my life”). To unearth some of these possibilities, Asher simply works as a catalyst, he keeps a glimmer of hope constantly alive; the literal transition and hard work, however, is spearheaded by her.
It’s also important to acknowledge that I wanted to move away from polemic narratives about Pakistani women; either veiled and oppressed, or fast and file, and explore hues of grey instead. Real women can be chaotic, flawed, quietly fierce yet empowered, without screaming at men from rooftops. Allyship doesn’t make them weaker and they welcome it (which is how I read Asher’s role), without the need to be redeemed or rescued by someone else. The fact that Pakistani women genuinely don’t need “saving”—whether by the West or by men—is a clarification that I wanted should ricochet on almost every page in Skyfall!
The Chakkar: Could you talk a little about the characterization of Rania as a tour guide in Lahore, and how that gave you an opportunity to write about women’s negotiation with public spaces?
Pakistani literature needs to move away from defensive posturing and instead, take readers backstage, zoom into the uncomfortable close ups, offer a peek into the raw materials that we use for our stories.
Khan: In Lahore, much like elsewhere in Pakistan, women are constantly battling a “male gaze”, especially when operating in public spaces. It never leaves you, irrespective of how much privilege one might have, yet it can seem so intangible, that it’s often hard to call out. Characterising Rania as a tour guide made a couple of things possible: first, for a Pakistani girl to try to reclaim agency in a context where we imagine there is none (that is, in open, unrestricted physical purviews), without trivialising the obstructions, the trials and encounters this may pose. Her choice of occupation signals more than a professional pursuit, it speaks to a buoyancy and resilience within her, to take the road less travelled. She could’ve chosen anything else as a day job, but opting to carve out space in public arenas, to fight those daily battles, helped position her at a distance from the regular expectation we have of Pakistani women.
Second, I wanted place (Lahore), to work as a protagonist in the book, to open up windows into parts of the city which normally remain shut off. Rania’s role as a tour guide allowed for that to happen, such that didn’t it appear super-imposed. It let the exploration of the non-sanitised, inner alleys of Lahore, alongside the mesmerising tourist hubs and architecture, be woven much more seamlessly into the narrative.
The Chakkar: Breaking stereotypes about Pakistan is a central theme in the book. Why is that important to you? What kind of stereotypes have you encountered within the publishing industry itself, since you chose to publish in India?
Khan: It was front-and-centre, not least of all because how we get represented by others and how we present ourselves, both incessantly try to fit Pakistan into a neat, cookie-cutter template. As a result of both these portrayals, when you think of Pakistan, you think all things combustible: bearded terrorists, veiled and oppressed women, ragged children threading through the streets, and that’s it. Of course, those elements exist, but there is so much more to the country. Hence, unapologetically stripping open these boxes, elides nicely with rejecting some of the convenient tropes levied against my home country. It’s the only way we can present Pakistan as an “equal” in literature.
I wanted to show how the caricature of the bearded terrorist has morphed into something less visibly threatening, who can engage with discussions on designer brands and beautification techniques, and is hence masked much better than the man with the gun in his hand.
Moreover, South Asian writers get a lot of flak for pandering to these tropes, for revisiting the same thematic terrain, writing about issues that feel publishable or important to the West. I don’t think there’s a problem with staying on that terrain, given those issues are salient to our lives in South Asia. The more important question is: now that we have begun digging this well, how do we deepen our exploration? For instance, when it comes to stories of gender, are we probing into women’s inner lives, moving beyond sensationalism that Pakistan is either the sixth-most dangerous place for women, or that its women have unfettered agency. Are we showing vignettes that aren’t so black and white? Pakistani literature needs to move away from defensive posturing and instead, take readers backstage, zoom into the uncomfortable close ups, offer a peek into the raw materials that we use for our stories. And hopefully, by the end of it, your audience learns to embrace the ambiguity, fluidity and chaos and distill from it, the simplicity of a folk song.
Coming to the publishing industry, it has surprised me; when I first pitched Skyfall, my agent replied within a few minutes to request for the complete manuscript and henceforth, he’s championed every step of it. Subsequently, for Bloomsbury to take a shot on a debut author, who isn’t a social media celebrity (!), despite the book ban that followed between the two countries, and to not fiddle with the story structure in any major way; for instance, to not coerce me into sensationalising the India-Pakistan narrative, which would’ve been a much easier sell—I greatly respect that kind of creative independence. I’m not sugarcoating this but overall, the probability of first-time publishing in fiction is dangerously low. I found the experience to be a steep learning curve and continuously encouraging.
The Chakkar: Did you worry that your sub-plot woven around the murder of two lesbian women in Lahore would reinforce the image of Pakistan as a country that is hostile towards homosexuality? How did you strike a balance between challenging perceptions about Pakistan, and also addressing what bothers you in a country that you grew up in?
Khan: Yes, it made me nervous. First, because it involves a delicate dance between writing about issues that are real, that make us seethe, yet without cashing in on them and reinforcing sensational press for Pakistan. But second, also because being courageous as an artist, holding up a mirror to society and pushing back against issues that are only spoken of in whispers, often doesn’t come without a price.
I tried to arrive at a sort of hybridity; acknowledging how dangerously normalised the silencing of sexual minorities is, yet working in a subplot that didn’t appear to be a flash-off-the-pan, glossed over, or tokenistic portrayal of two lesbians. The last thing I wanted was to offer window-dressing diversity to the debate around sexual orientation. This obviously meant crafting a more nuanced portrayal of what it means to exert sexual agency in a hushed environment, for the lesbian characters to drive the narrative in indispensable ways, albeit with a subtle and quietly fierce treatment. Every chapter didn’t need a homosexuality plug. Instead, I kept asking myself the bigger picture question: will the story work if these two women aren’t lesbians? When I kept hearing a “no”, it made me more confident in inching towards equilibrium and authenticity.
The Chakkar: Describe the research went into your depiction of Heera Mandi, the history of the place and the people, and the recent shift towards gentrification.
Khan: My undergraduate years were spent discovering Lahore and I instantly fell in love with the city; it was like a 24/7 food and music festival, grainy, deeply fickle, surprising you at every corner, and all that has made its way into the empirical basis for Skyfall. But your power as a storyteller can feel liberating and onerous at the same time. You’re opening up a window into your homeland, often to readers who are being oriented to it for the first time, so you have to ask yourself, what vignettes of Heera Mandi do I want to show to audiences at this time? How do I tell this story without superficially exhibiting Lahore to a “western gallery”, without dumbing down the dancing girls, not showing them as “cut-up dolls”? I didn’t want to milk Rania’s world as a mere sex prop to garner global attention for my book and so, avoiding the dangers of that voyeuristic, exotic lens remained a constant fear. That’s why establishing “place” almost as a protagonist and developing real characters in flesh and blood was crucial for Skyfall.
Image courtesy: Saba Karim Khan
I drew upon immersive research I had done with the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, not just watching them perform but involving “deep listening” to stories of how they feel and think, whilst registering the sharp shift in how we now look at women from neighbourhoods such as Heera Mandi. Tawaifs have gone from being emblems of culture and etiquette in the past, to symbolising lust and commerce; we view them with disdain, as prostitutes selling their bodies and nothing more. Most of us leap to judgement fairly quickly: “How can they sell themselves?”, without examining the patterns that keep them trapped. In reality, breaking free seems incredibly complicated—there’s stigma (who is willing to accept these women within the folds of “normal society”?); there’s also the relationship to power which recycles oppression, not least of all because this business is patronised by wealthy influencers in our society, albeit behind the closed doors and manicured lawns of private mansions. Who might dare to rebel? And finally, there are some women who are savvy entrepreneurs and exerting choice to be in this trade. My time in this neighbourhood—which stands at such a departure from my own—allowed me to open up a window into this world without laying out normative expectations or reaching value-laden conclusions.
The Chakkar: I am curious to know how you developed the character of Humera Sultana. She seems a lot like Sherji in the novel and Prime Minister Imran Khan in the way they reprimand Pakistani women for becoming too Western in terms of clothing and ideas. Your thoughts?
Khan: Sometimes less can be more in artistic treatment. Despite giving her minimal air-time, I wanted to unleash a character who represented the dangers of organised religion (2.0), of chasing this mounting fetish for purity. I wanted to show how the caricature of the bearded terrorist has morphed into something less visibly threatening, who can engage with discussions on designer brands and beautification techniques, and is hence masked much better than the man with the gun in his hand. Sherji and she are definitely cut from the same cloth, epitomising the hypocrisy characterising dogmatists and gatekeepers of religion.
I don’t see her as analogous to the Prime Minister necessarily, though; her big agenda is to peddle the religion of hate which is so relevant to our current global climate and she’s using moral policing as one ploy to do so. Imran Khan speaks philosophically to peaceful coexistence and the religion of humanity. With Humera Sultana, I wanted to show how dangerous such individuals can be everywhere, but especially in a country like Pakistan, which is three square meals from anarchy.
The power of words on paper, complemented by the human imagination is limitless. It’s an act co-creation, an invitation to dance, between readers and the story, you are welcoming people into this world you have created, without telling them how to interpret it, how to make meaning of it.
This idea of the madrassa as economic saviour—when millions go to bed hungry—is like tossing a lit match into a powder keg. I wanted to spark a conversation around the hypocrisy that characterises this business, to show that there are many others like Sherji and her, with skin in the game, who are peddling this commercial machinery of young minds, guns and faith, whilst simultaneously sermonising about purity. It’s time we started calling out these factions, no matter how jittery that makes people.
The Chakkar: You reframe the conversation around purity by untangling it from virginity and highlighting the various political forms it takes: India’s Citizenship Amendment Act that restricts pathways to citizenship for Muslim refugees, and Pakistan’s persecution of Christians through blasphemy laws. How did you protect your story from getting overwhelmed by your politics?
Khan: Chasing purity, in multiple shapes is intricately bound to the world of Skyfall: purity of women’s bodies, sexuality, desires, religion, colour, caste. Virginity, too, along with the other dimensions, is intimately bound with this fetish for purity in the book. The book, on the contrary, is an ode to impurity.
Coming to the politics this ignites: With Skyfall, I’ve gravitated towards issues that spark curiosity within me, which make me seethe, which are healing and rhapsodic too, but without holding a placard to register my protest. The garb of storytelling, “literary fiction” in particular, offers a powerful treatment to do this. To deliver a cavalcade of piercing truth about the most pressing global issues of our time—in a way that breaks through the clutter of our newsfeed or talk shows—but in ways that feel less preachy, without talking at readers or peddling an agenda.
I think that’s where the novel really holds weight versus other forms of storytelling, such as journalism. The power of words on paper, complemented by the human imagination is limitless. It’s an act co-creation, an invitation to dance, between readers and the story, you are welcoming people into this world you have created, without telling them how to interpret it, how to make meaning of it. You want to touch their lives by telling a story, not by waving flags and singing anthems. Writer Mohsin Hamid said this to me once and it’s true: The novel feels even more important now than it did before. Not least of all because it offers fiction that can be truer than reality.
The Chakkar: What made you set up New York City as a place that would set Rania free and also disappoint her quite deeply?
Khan: The colonial hangover has you imagine the West as the glittering, liberal, first world, our saviour. And it positions us as being “in need of that saving”. You grow up mortified of your green passport, veiling it publicly, afraid of who might pull you into an interrogation room at some airport and mistake you for an extremist. That currency of fear, whether preemptive or realised isn’t mythical; hence, the scrambling to shed one’s country of origin. Its associated identity takes on pronounced urgency in our lives.
In Skyfall, I wanted to show a complex, coming-of-age story of a girl who grows up in the choked slums of Heera Mandi, ashamed of and loathing her homeland for those very imperfections and chaos, until she comes full circle and reclaims it. On one hand, the journey to NYC sets her free of the chains she has forged around herself, from the throes of violence and quiet desperation in Heera Mandi, and her right to dream without being shackled by her reality. But it also allows for a reclamation of home, through two things: by opening a window into the West from the eyes of people who’ve been “browned-out”, who have been made to feel half-human, so they may experience the immigration apocalypse first-hand, so that their illusions about a place they always thought represented the “American Dream” can get shattered.
Second, by ripping open this caricatured mould Pakistan gets trapped in to say, yes Pakistan is frenzied and faulty, just like most real people and places are, and we need to begin embracing that mess: often it’s the chaos, vulnerabilities, and contradictions that make it resilient and a place worth calling home. In short, that geographical trajectory all the way to NYC was crucial, in order to spark the realisation that things can be broken yet beautiful—just like Pakistan is—and there is a way to reconcile the two.
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Chintan Girish Modi has an M.Phil in English Language Education, and has worked with the UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development, the Kabir Project, and the Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange. His writing has appeared in Bent Book: A Queerish Anthology, Fearless L.ove, Clear Hold Build, Borderlines Volume 1, and more. He can be reached at chintangirishmodi@protonmail.com and found on Instagram: @Chintan_Connect and Twitter: @Chintan_Connect.
