The danger is therefore both professional and personal. Her notebook is also a record of what might happen to her, her colleagues and the women whose stories she is determined to tell. This tension gives the book its particular force. Published in this July and co-written with British-American journalist Amie Ferris-Rotman, The Vanishing Girl of Kabul combines the intimacy of memoir with the discipline and urgency of investigative journalism.

Joya’s story begins with a deceptively simple need: she wants to go to school. During the Taliban’s first rule in the 1990s, that meant becoming someone else. Her family allowed her to live for years as a “bacha posh”, a girl dressed and treated as a boy. She became Mohammed so that she could move through a world in which education was available to boys but forbidden to girls.

This transformation is not presented as a clever childhood adventure. It is an early lesson in the absurdity of a society that makes basic freedom dependent on gender.

When Joya eventually returns to school as Zahra, the emotional cost of that earlier life becomes clear. Boys still call her Mohammed. Girls recognise her as Zahra. She remembers wanting to “escape, disappear in a cloud of magical smoke”. The image is striking because disappearance will become one of the book’s central ideas. Joya spends her childhood hiding in order to exist, and later watches millions of Afghan women being pushed towards a different kind of disappearance, from schools, workplaces, streets and public life.

Yet the book refuses to turn Afghanistan into a story of unbroken darkness. That is one of its most important strengths. After the fall of the first Taliban government and the US-led intervention, Joya experiences education and professional opportunity on a scale that had previously seemed impossible.

She becomes the first woman in her family to attend university and eventually becomes a journalist determined to expose corruption and abuses against women. For her and many other Afghan women, those years represented real possibilities, whatever the failures and contradictions of the foreign intervention.

This history matters because the book is not simply arguing that Afghanistan was once free and then became unfree. It is asking what happens when people are encouraged to build lives around the promise of progress and then watch that progress disappear. The Taliban’s return in 2021 therefore becomes more than a political event. It becomes a personal rupture.

Joya had built a professional identity that was almost unimaginable during her childhood. Now she was forced into hiding and eventually exile.

Her journalism gives the memoir another dimension. Joya’s encounter with Sahar Speaks, the initiative founded by Ferris-Rotman, is especially significant. Ferris-Rotman had noticed a glaring problem in international coverage of Afghanistan — foreign journalists were regularly writing about Afghan women, often presenting Afghanistan as one of the world’s worst places to be female, while Afghan women themselves were largely absent from the foreign press corps.

Joya arrived at Sahar Speaks with limited English and asked simply, “Could I sit in a corner? I won’t bother you, I just want to learn.” She had crossed Kabul to get there.

That encounter eventually leads to Rukhshana Media, the women-led organisation Joya founded to report on Afghan women and girls. Its significance becomes even clearer after the Taliban takeover. The work is no longer simply about giving women a place in journalism. It becomes a way of documenting what power wants hidden.

Some of the book’s most disturbing passages come from these investigations. Joya and her colleagues documented dozens of cases of women who were killed or disappeared after the Taliban returned.

Among them was Khatera, a teacher found strangled with her own scarf, whose death was dismissed by the Taliban as an armed robbery. In Mazar-i-Sharif, the murders of two teenage girls sent a chilling message to other young women about the price of pursuing an education. Frozan Safi, a 29-year-old economics lecturer and activist, was eventually identified in a morgue by the clothes she was wearing.

These episodes demonstrate why The Vanishing Girl of Kabul should not be read only as a memoir. Joya is not simply remembering what happened to her. She is investigating what is happening to others. Her personal experience gives her access to the emotional reality of repression, while her journalistic training makes her attentive to names, evidence, patterns and omissions. The two forms strengthen each other.

The book is also unusually clear about the limits of Western narratives. Joya challenges the idea that Afghan women who fled simply abandoned the struggle. When a Western commentator suggests that Kabul feminists should have stayed and fought, Joya responds with the reality of what Afghan women were already doing under extraordinary pressure.

She came from the provinces, built a media organisation and continued to report when doing so could put her life at risk. Her anger is directed not only at the Taliban but also at the Western governments that negotiated with them and then failed to reckon with the consequences.

The writing itself is strongest when it moves between the intimate and the political without forcing either one to dominate. A suicide bombing is not merely another statistic because Joya’s body has learned its rhythm. The 2016 attack on a Tolo TV bus, which killed seven staff members and injured more than 20, becomes part of her understanding of what it means to work as a journalist in Afghanistan.

Later, watching footage of 17-year-old Zaki Anwari falling from an American evacuation aircraft turns the chaotic withdrawal into something painfully human: a young life, and all the possibilities attached to it, disappearing before the world.

Exile does not provide an uncomplicated ending. In London, Joya and her family initially live in a hotel before making a home in North London. They arrive with one shared backpack and diapers, and gradually acquire books, clothes and suitcases. “Without meaning to, we made a life again!” she writes. The sentence captures both relief and loss. Making a new life is possible, but it does not mean recovering the old one.

That is ultimately what makes the book significant now. The Vanishing Girl of Kabul is not a story in which rescue arrives from outside. Its central achievement is to place Afghan women inside the narrative as witnesses, journalists, investigators and political actors. Joya does not ask readers to pity Afghan women. She asks them to listen to them.

The title suggests disappearance, but the book works against it. The girls who are denied classrooms, the women who are silenced, the journalists who are threatened and the families forced into exile are all at risk of being reduced to statistics. Joya’s answer is to record their names and circumstances, to investigate what happened and to insist that their lives remain part of the historical record.

That is the quiet power of this memoir. It does not pretend that journalism can immediately defeat repression, nor does it offer easy optimism. Instead, it shows that recording the truth is itself a form of resistance. The Taliban may try to make Afghan women vanish from public life. Joya’s work makes disappearance harder. She writes so that the world cannot say it did not know.

A little backstory for context: I’ve spent years in India being loved by grandparents and great-grandparents, felt the pain and tears in unrelentingly long hugs of separation and braved the heartbreak of not being there when sickness and death came to them.

In Pakistan, I’ve seen both parents suffer debilitating illnesses, one from rapidly advancing dementia. So, in every sense, I am Imtiaz Ali’s main audience. MVA, therefore, should have broken this writer. Only, it made me reach for the fast-forward button. A.R. Rahman’s soundtrack didn’t help either.

Ali, the co-writer and director, is immovably stuck in his own circle of thought. His films are still about journeys, as he told Icon and this writer in 2015. Unlike his earlier work, this film is chock-a-block with superficial emotion, feigned sensitivity and an irksome flatness that one cannot merely blame on Sylvester Fonseca’s flatter cinematography.

Imtiaz Ali’s Main Vaapas Aaunga reaches for a bittersweet tale of love, loss and Partition, but its emotional journey never quite lives up to its destination

Nirvair Grewal (Diljit Dosanjh) — Nivi — is a young software engineer with British citizenship who has chucked his well-to-do career to pursue a living as a stand-up comic. That’s the film’s first big joke.

Nivi neither has the timing nor the material, confidence or natural instincts for comedy. In the film’s last leg, he literally takes the title to heart, deciding to use his software skills to benefit India… a country with nearly six million software engineers. No matter how well-intentioned, that’s the second joke of the film.

Nivi is a commitment-phobe, whether it’s with his job or the woman he’s involved with. When his live-in partner Kaveri (Banita Sandhu) pushes him to accept their boyfriend-girlfriend status, he throws a tantrum. He then runs away to India to see his dying grandfather, Ishar Singh Grewal (Naseeruddin Shah), a self-made man with apathetic offspring — the kind who have already given up on a parent’s failing physical and mental state.

Ishar has advanced dementia — in which he believes he can travel to his birthplace in Sargodha (now in Pakistan) by walking across the border. When he suffers a stroke at the Attari-Wagah border, the family all but starts counting his last days.

However, Ishar is resilient and Nivi deduces that his grandfather is clinging to an old memory. This is where Imtiaz Ali rolls back to the pre-Partition era, when a young Ishar (Vedang Raina) fell in love with Jiya (Sharvari) — a Muslim girl. No need to tell you how that story goes.

Bollywood is not new to moving, harrowing, perhaps even brave stories set during the Partition era — Deepa Mehta’s Earth (1998), the screen adaptation of Amrita Pritam’s novel Pinjar (2003) and Hey Ram (2003) (the last because I watched it a few months back) — immediately come to mind. These are well-defined films, in which the characters’ deep personal motives support seemingly simple stories. MVA simply falls flat in comparison.

Anchoring the story on Jiya and Ishar — both depthless, one-tone characters — slows the film’s pace and emotional momentum, especially as bigger stories loom in the wings. One realises early that the young couple’s story has as much weight as Nivi’s in the present, and that both narrative anchors have much growing up to do.

Think of how rich a playground the core premise provides: Nivi represents Gen-Z, who have less of an emotional connection to the past than Millennials or Gen-X, while Ishar could have opened up a story that does not feel like an unimaginative version of Love Aaj Kal.

Instead, the film uses Nivi as a peg for the past to lean on, while the young Ishar only sees the loss of a girl and refuses to grow up.

Is romance, then, the only thing in life, especially as the world one knows collapses on itself? Apparently, in Ali’s film, it is!

Two chunks do help keep one’s interest at the tail end. First, when Ishar is forced away during Partition, and then, when Nivi finally understands that his grandfather’s story has an end in Pakistan. Duh! It’s an end one sees coming two hours and 45 minutes away.

Although it’s the bittersweet ending the film deserves, getting there requires a belief in love that never quite feels convincing in MVA.

Streaming on Netflix, Main Vaapas Aaunga is rated suitable for ages 16 and over, who need to see better films about romance and the Indo-Pak Partition

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, September 6th, 2026

As the title of her new novel suggests, The Things We Never Say offers a searing exploration of the role of silence. Conventional wisdom would have us believe that some degree of solitude inspires contemplation and, thereby, facilitates our emotional well-being. However, some forms of silence can be destructive, pulling us into an endless spiral of despair and leading to a sense of alienation.

Strout’s compelling new work examines this motif with sensitivity and grace. The novel’s epigraph, which features a quote from Carl Jung, echoes the theme of loneliness. Interestingly, the Swiss psychiatrist didn’t view this condition as the mere “absence of people.” Instead, he likened it to an inability “to communicate the things that seem important to oneself” and the willingness to hold beliefs others find objectionable and “inadmissible”.

Incidentally, Strout’s protagonist, Artie Dam, encounters a similar form of isolation, which urges him to ponder Jung’s view on free will. His loneliness stems from a silence that has cast a shadow over his marriage and other intimate relationships, but he continues to maintain his composure.

From the novel’s outset, Artie is advised by his friend on a sun-kissed, mid-June day to remain “jovial”. Yet, his chances at happiness have been eclipsed by a constant spell of despair, much of it beyond his control. Past and present uncertainties threaten to weigh him down in equal measure.

A moving novel by an acclaimed American author grapples with how politics affect our daily well-being and the dual-edged nature of silences in human relationships

Artie is haunted by the memory of losing his working-class family, from whom he had grown distant after marrying the relatively well-to-do Evie. The intervening years haven’t subdued the effect of this tragedy, even though he has carved out a new life for himself since then. Artie’s marriage ushers him into the comfortable distractions of an affluent social circle as well as the joys of fatherhood.

The present, too, offers little consolation. Traumatic events have steered his son, Rob, away from his parents. The emotional distance between them may not be as intense as Artie’s aloofness from his own family, but it still leaves a lingering ache in his heart.

At the same time, Artie has to confront the terrors and ambiguities of a fractured, post-Trumpian America, where divisive politics is the order of the day. As a high school history teacher, he recognises how oppressive phases can irreparably alter the destiny of a nation. His students’ anxieties about the changing times confirm his suspicion that the future is bleak and threatening.

Disillusioned by the state of the world, Artie briefly contemplates death, only to discover that his growing pessimism hasn’t thwarted his will to live. Amid all these challenges, he discovers a secret that has the potential to shake the foundations of the fragile world he inhabits.

Any attempt to delineate Artie’s predicament in spoiler-filled detail will only prevent readers from experiencing for themselves the richness and poignancy of the novel’s plot. Suffice it to say, the life-altering secret isn’t treated with a gossipmonger’s eye for scandal in Strout’s capable hands.

The Things We Never Say doesn’t promise melodramatic confrontations or sizzling revelations. The carefully constructed calm of Artie’s life is shattered with a whimper, not a bang. Stripped of the stereotypical air of drama, the novel views silence as a balm of sorts. At one stage, readers may begin to appreciate the beauty in what has been broken and find an almost perverse comfort in the characters’ reluctance to address the resulting chaos.

The author is by no means advocating silence as a remedy to an emotional crisis. She intends to reveal how it settles into relationships and, if allowed to linger for too long, erodes their essence. In Artie’s case, silence acts as a temporary shield until it envelops him like a slow, insidious poison.

Strout doesn’t depict the spiritual and emotional disintegration of the protagonist’s world in a dark, depressing vein. The Things We Never Say doesn’t pull readers into the emotional turmoil plaguing its cast of characters. As a result, the novel benefits from a deceptive air of levity, even though it is a haunting evocation of our times. At times, the story may offer a glossier, more palatable version of some unsettling realities, but that doesn’t make it any less subversive.

The author should be commended for revealing the extent to which a populist, right-wing agenda can alter the rhythm of our lives and affect people’s emotional well-being. Even in these harrowing times, she urges us to search for the hidden traces of humanity. While Artie succeeds in finding them, a few isolated acts of kindness aren’t sufficient in buoying him through the darkness.

The strength of the novel lies in its deft, realistic characterisation. Most of the characters possess an honourable streak, making them all the more likeable, irrespective of the choices they make. Even characters who would have seemed despicable in ordinary circumstances are redeemed through a fair, nuanced portrayal. Through this technique, Strout reminds us that people harbour some semblance of humanity, even when they are influenced by the suffocating air of oppression surrounding them. Be that as it may, the author doesn’t actively endorse any of their misdemeanours in an effort to achieve objectivity.

The novel is loosely based on a linear arc, but occasionally deviates from it to pursue the emotions that tug at the characters’ heartstrings. Following these emotional threads lends a meditative and wistful quality to the text. However, this might seem a tad jarring to readers who are accustomed to a more plot-driven approach to storytelling. Fortunately, Strout handles these transitions with flair and never flags in her effort to present a compelling, tragic and quietly disturbing portrait of our times.

Seeded with refreshing insights into how anxieties surrounding politics influence our choices, The Things We Never Say critiques the nature of the world as we know it. The criticism isn’t intended to be deliberately oppositional. Through her vivid and realistic portrayal of existing tensions, Strout aims to find a pathway towards cultivating a different world for future generations.

Indeed, it is a relief to see a fiction writer holding out the promise of hope amid the doomsday scenario that holds sway.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 30th, 2026

Some of the restrictions include administrative barriers, such as the requirement to obtain a No Objection Certificate from city authorities, who routinely withhold or delay it; police violence against protesters; and the refusal or delay of permits for public gatherings.

In 2019, the provincial assembly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa adopted a resolution against the Aurat March and labelled its demands as “shameful and un-Islamic.” In terms of public backlash, there have been reports of petitions being submitted before the courts to ban the march, along with blasphemy complaints and police cases filed against organisers over doctored videos.

These repeated attempts to restrict the Aurat March highlight the relationship between feminism and state power that Durba Mitra examines throughout her book The Future That Was: A History of Third World Feminism Against Authoritarianism.

A recent book documents how women in the Global South utilised knowledge production and built transnational networks to challenge authoritarianism, patriarchy and neocolonialism

It illustrates what Durba Mitra argues: women claiming public space and a state using force to stop them. The authoritarian state in the post-colonial ‘Third World’ often resorted to violence and detention to bar women from seeking their rights; the same phenomenon can be observed in the resistance against Aurat March participants in Pakistan.

This book was published in March 2026 to commemorate 50 years since the first UN International Women’s Year in 1975. The author explores the history of ‘Third World’ feminism in the face of state authoritarianism and global economic inequality in the 1970s and the decades that followed, leading women to collaborate across borders to secure their fundamental rights.

A significant contribution of the book is its examination of how global economic inequality and neocolonialism gave rise to authoritarian governments in postcolonial states, and how women in the Global South challenged authoritarian state repression. The key factors that led to the emergence of authoritarian states in the ‘Third World’, argues Mitra, were the new development programmes and debt infrastructure spearheaded by institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

These programmes exacerbated global inequality. In response to that, there emerged reactionary politics in the form of religious populist movements, such as some parts of the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and even Pakistan’s ‘Islamisation’ in the 1980s, although the latter was more top-down. Some states employed authoritarian, patriarchal laws that denied women fundamental citizenship rights.

The United Nations introduced International Women’s Year in 1975 and then the UN Decade for Women from 1975 to 1985 — all this to expand research on women around the globe. Mitra calls this a very important feat for women and argues that the “international research on women as we know it would not exist” if it were not for these two events.

However, Global South women also faced the burden of aligning their research work to the international development paradigms to get funding. ‘First World’ women, on the other hand, dominated global research on women and attempted to depoliticise the theories developed by ‘Third World’ women against neocolonialism and global economic inequality.

In response, women in the Global South initiated a transnational solidarity project of knowledge production to document their experiences and get their voices heard. One example is women’s participation in international conferences across Asia, Africa and Latin America, which happened with the backdrop of nationalist politics and imperialism. Another example of transnational solidarity was the creation of the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD), as a pan-Africanist organisation to decolonise research in Africa and challenge Western methods of research deployed in African societies.

Women from the Global South also created Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) as a transnational feminist network, connecting scholars and activists to challenge conventional development methods and to push for gender justice. Through all these platforms, ‘Third World’ women expressed solidarity with each other against patriarchal and neocolonial oppression.

Another profound contribution is the book’s organisation around genres of knowledge production. These include the conference, the report, the organisation, the book, and the protest. These genres highlight the ways in which ‘Third World’ women used various avenues to produce knowledge rooted in their experiences of authoritarianism and neocolonialism. By discussing these, she shows the challenges and promises of feminist thought in the Global South.

The order of these genres highlights how each form of knowledge-making process generated the conditions for the next. For example, the chapter on the book (research) is followed by the one on the protest. Through this order, she explains that women’s transnational research networks of the 1970s and 1980s were foundational to their taking to the streets against authoritarian states, since that research not only documented abuse but also provided knowledge, setting the case for protests.

Women employed protests, research, legal advocacy, and knowledge production to challenge authoritarian governments that restricted women’s rights. Through this work, these women laid bare the equality promises made during anti-colonial struggles. For example, women stood alongside men during anti-colonial struggles and were promised equal citizenship, but this promise failed after independence, with laws that made women’s status subservient to that of men. One example of women’s response to those failed promises is their protests against the authoritarian family laws in countries such as Algeria, Morocco and Pakistan.

At the end, Mitra leaves readers with three key lessons from ‘Third World’ feminist history: One, ‘Third World’ feminism was essentially anti-authoritarian; two, transnational collaboration was integral to the feminist project; and three, feminist knowledge infrastructures are fragile, since many of the institutions built by earlier generations have been threatened by authoritarian governments. The opposition to women’s current activism in Pakistan is a depiction of Mitra’s analysis: even after decades of organising, feminist gains remain vulnerable to authoritarian political structures.

One of the limitations of this book is its emphasis on the struggles of elite, educated, upper-caste women in Pakistan, India and other ‘Third World’ countries, paying little attention to the initiatives taken by other grassroots or feminist rural movements. However, Mitra acknowledges that these elite movements challenged many forms of state oppression, but failed to address religious, caste and minority oppression.

It is also worth noting that elite women had access to political and economic infrastructure through which they could influence the knowledge-making process, while rural feminist movements did not have access to these options. Still, it would have been significant to note how the exclusion of their voices affected the overall feminist project in the ‘Third World.’

Overall, Mitra tells the story of how women from the Global South built a global movement out of very little: no funding, no institutional backing and, often, no safety. This book also reminds readers that this story is not finished.

The Aurat March activists in Pakistan are raising the same demands today as those raised by ‘Third World’ women for over half a century: that women be heard, be free to organise, and be treated as full citizens.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 16th, 2026

Her writing style is incisive and leaves room for the reader to reach their own conclusions. Her work explores the many internal shifts that women experience as they juggle roles that they are expected to play. They are mothers, wives, daughters and sisters all at once. The unifying factor in these roles is not any sort of identity crisis but a quieter and relentless weight of responsibilities.

The most prominent feature of Qadeer’s stories is her protagonists. They are vibrant, modern women facing the challenges of everyday lives. Like her, they are also Pakistani-Canadian, raised in a world different to the one their parents grew up in. Unlike their parents, for them, Canada is not an adopted country. Qadeer makes this distinction clearly, and allows her readers to understand that these women don’t think of themselves as outsiders.

The ‘othering’ — the act of making someone feel like an alien — is an external event, not an internal condition. This is because, here, the female protagonists feel at home in Canada — it is other people’s perceptions that make them feel like strangers in a place where they already belong.

A debut collection of incisive short stories by a Pakistani-Canadian author focuses on women negotiating identity, relationships and the expectations that shape their lives

Take the case of Amira in ‘Feeling Good Vibrations’, who grapples with her own insecurities as she finds herself befriended at a therapy course by Celine, an almost otherworldly, beautiful and confident woman. Amira feels ‘seen’ as she and Celine — two women from completely different backgrounds — bond over the overwhelming demands of children and family life. Celine is an “urban-hipster Toronto mom.” She is everything Amira is not — effortlessly confident and a product of her white, suburban privilege. Amira lulls herself into believing that their friendship has meaning. She describes feeling validated as the two women find common ground.

It doesn’t last long, though and she discovers this the hard way: “At what point, Amira wondered, did privilege and ignorance intersect and transform into wilful racism?” Qadeer is precise and direct, forcing the reader to pause and feel Amira’s discomfort. A passing remark, the retelling of an anecdote peppered with normalised stereotyping and racism is a moment of instant connection for anyone who has experienced being treated as an outsider.

‘Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil’ is Rehana’s post-mortem of a life lived within the throes of guilt, shame and regret. “We carry shame differently… You can’t lump all shame together… The shame of a white woman at not feeling pretty enough is not the same as the shame that comes from being told that you will never be pretty because of the colour of your skin. You can change how you look. But you can’t change the colour of your skin.” Qadeer’s words are a powerful reminder of the weight carried by South Asian women who are made to feel isolated in their relationships and their surroundings by offhand remarks and the expectations of a deeply flawed society.

Hanna in ‘Love Me a Coconut’ grapples with the unique challenges that come with raising biracial children. “My half-Pakistani daughter didn’t recognise the brown she was also painted with, what it meant to be a female of colour, how her ancestors had carried her legacy long before she was born, that she had a mother who would never be pink like her.” With great sensitivity and nuance, Qadeer describes the dynamics of an inter-faith marriage and the accompanying baggage it brings.

A deeply poignant conversation underlines the importance of a stable childhood, during which parents instil confidence within their child and prioritise their welfare without holding on to unrealistic expectations. In this short story, Qadeer shows her readers the difference between two women, each of whom experienced different childhoods and how they impact their adult lives.

Qadeer writes about domesticity not always as a comfort or constraint but as a slow erosion, and the disconnect it leaves behind as the woman searches for herself in the midst of running mundane errands. In ‘Shakey Fakey, Okay, Lady’, Sabira carries out a forensic audit of her marriage as she faces the prospect of a divorce that has been suggested by her husband. She realises that the marriage had been over for some time. Complacency had hollowed it out gradually, leaving no room for mourning.

Similarly, in ‘Gelatin’, Inaya and Greg also find themselves at a crossroads in their marriage. Inaya has done it all — the coveted list any South Asian family would be proud to see their daughter tick off: multiple degrees, marriage and children. However, she still finds herself blunted by a lack of purpose, feeling invisible in her marriage. Qadeer slows down the pace of the narrative to mirror Inaya’s increasing disassociation from her relationship and the fading away of any real sense of intimacy.

In the midst of this fog, Qadeer introduces Soraya, Inaya’s confidante and older sister. There is something to be said about her depiction of the South Asian older sister: the voice of reason, carrier of burdens and truthsayer. The South Asian older sister is a breed unto herself: often overlooked and perpetually under stress as she tries to steer her younger siblings towards calmer shores and finds herself as the designated parent.

Qadeer’s Soraya hits home when she writes, “You were the youngest and you never learned about responsibility. What it takes to stick with something even when it’s not ideal. Very few people have ideal. Why do you get to sit back and cry that it didn’t work out for you? We all have to reckon with reality. It doesn’t mean we abandon our lives.” Soraya’s frustration is palpable and leaps off the page.

Qadeer’s intuitive and judicious use of language is one of the driving forces behind each story’s narrative. She is irreverent and audaciously funny when she needs to be. In ‘Momxiety’, Yasmeen knows the stakes are high as she navigates the tumultuous terrain of school backyard politics. Finding the right clique and being accepted by them is the source of what she calls “Social PTSD”, an experience most mothers can relate to.

Sima Qadeer’s collection sheds light on the daily battles that women fight with themselves, as they renegotiate the terms of their individuality. She doesn’t fixate upon the grammar of suffering, nor does she undermine it. She relates the lived experience of second-generation Pakistani-Canadians, reminding the reader that the women in her stories are not navigating between two worlds as much as navigating a world that keeps insisting they should be.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 16th, 2026

Her short stories have been featured in American Literary Review, The Punch Magazine and Salamander, as well as in In the New Century: An Anthology of Pakistani Literature. The last one was edited by Muneeza Shamsi and published by Oxford University Press, Pakistan.

What Remains After a Fire is a collection of eight of Javed’s stories. The book gives the reader a taste of the author’s prowess. Javed writes with clarity. She knows what she wants to convey and she weaves the tale to project exactly that. Her stories have an agenda, but that does not mean they are dull or sermonise.

The running thread found across the eight offerings in What Remains After a Fire concerns subjects familiar to Pakistani readers. They encompass patriarchy, the low position of women in society and the fact that it is generally accepted, hypocrisy — especially in overtly religious settings — and marital problems. Javed contends that these issues plague every stratum of society. The rich are not exempted.

The stories are not peopled with happy characters. They have angst, discontentment and a yearning for a better or, at least, a different life. Javed deals with such human emotions with a light touch and deep understanding. She makes her characters’ feelings seem relevant and justified.

A collection of eight compelling short stories examines the quiet devastations of women’s lives, family relationships and social prejudice with empathy and remarkable narrative control

Two stories, ‘Rani’ and ‘The Last Days of Bilqees Begum’, have a great affinity. They are both about women who are facing imminent death. They are cared for by women as well, females who are in that position not by choice but by circumstance. Even though the dying women are not fully lucid, an act of betrayal from their past keeps impinging on their memories, because the perpetrator is someone they loved and trusted. When the wound to the psyche is sufficiently dire, it can never be forgotten.

There are many similarities in the tales titled ‘Stray Things Do Not Carry a Soul’ and ‘Ruby’. They are both about families who are abjectly poor. The narrator in each story is an adolescent who is also a helpless victim. ‘Ruby’ addresses the treatment of minorities in Pakistan as well as the stark contrast between the rich and the poor. On the one hand, there is over-abundance and plenty of waste and, on the other, penury and hopelessness. Yet, the women in both situations are equally dissatisfied.

‘Stray Things Do Not Carry a Soul’ depicts a father who cannot control his demons and is thus unable to set a good example for his son. The young lad hero-worships his father but finally spots his feet of clay. The narrative ends with a whisper of hope, unlike ‘Ruby’.

Three stories which are set in the USA target disparate topics. ‘It Will Follow You Home’, one of the shorter offerings in the book, touches upon mental health issues. It points out that if a therapist and patient are from dissimilar cultures, treatment may not be effective. The heroine struggles with loneliness and death and concludes that the challenges confronting her are fundamentally different from those that immigrant men face.

Like the previous story, ‘My Bones Hold a Stillness’ is also set in an American university. The wanton killing of a young Pakistani student brings out the hidden mental traumas of two friends, one a Pakistani and the other an American. The tale shows that no place is safe and that bad things can happen to anyone at any time. The guilt, the grief and the final release from fear are beautifully limned. This story also deals with paedophilia and the cycle of denial it often sets off in Pakistani homes.

Personality is truly destiny in ‘Worry Doll’, the third story set in the USA. Two women are in analogous situations, yet their responses differ. Are their reactions so diverse only because one is more rooted in tradition? And could the other one be happy elsewhere, or is her restlessness a part of her make-up? These are dilemmas that Javed chooses to probe in this tale.

‘Carry it All’, a very short story, portrays the lot of women in Pakistani society as perceived by the author. Happiness is considered an elusive goal for women. Marriages are fraught with misery and women are blamed for things beyond their control — even among the educated. The ending of this story is ambiguous and borders on the supernatural.

Death, suicide and the sad lot of women are recurring tropes. Even obedient and self-sacrificing wives suffer and females who are divorced or childless are especially punished. Men, on the other hand, are characterised as excessively macho, two-faced, unfeeling and even evil. The reader may not agree with all that the author has to say. However, her writing style cannot be faulted.

Javed is at ease with words. Language soars like a symphony in her hands. She uses ordinary vocabulary to extraordinary effect. In one place, a recently widowed woman “…emerged like an Amaltas tree in full bloom.” Relationships are described as “…paper thin, easily ripped and discarded.”

What Remains After a Fire is easy to read yet impactful. Each story is constructed so that its layers peel away like an onion to get to its heart. The reader gets totally engrossed in the coils of Javed’s imagination. It is Pakistan’s good fortune that another talented young voice has been raised to cement its position on the global literary stage.

We will rely on Kanza Javed to relay our stories to the world. She has done so remarkably well already and her art can only improve in the years to come.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 26th, 2026

Contrary to popular belief, the Gothic is an incredibly difficult genre of writing to master. While a respected tradition of Gothic writers, ranging from Ann Radcliffe to Isak Dinesen, have produced texts that are genuinely entertaining mixtures of horror and romance (the two major linchpins of the genre), plenty of charlatans (both in the Subcontinent as well as overseas) have attempted to create Gothic pieces, with results that are laughable at best and ghastly at worst. Ava Reid succeeds in creating a mixture of grotesque horror and surprisingly plausible romance.

The heroine, Agnes, hails from a period in a fantastical universe where necromancy, though formerly rampant, has been severely suppressed by the efforts of a conqueror named Berengar. Agnes belongs to one of seven major houses, all named after parts of the body — the House of Teeth, the House of Blood, the House of Eyes etc. One does not need to look very closely in order to perceive the parallels between Agnes’ grim world and that of Westeros in Game of Thrones. However, the psychosis and gore underlying Reid’s universe give even the hit show a run for its money!

The author pulls out all the stops in Innamorata when it comes to underscoring the most evil of human instincts — lust, gluttony, cruelty, sadism and violence, to name just a few. While her writing is elegant and clear, Reid makes an undeniable impact on her readers by means of her vocabulary and nomenclature — medics, for example, are called ‘leeches’ in the book. The writing is visually striking throughout, and uncompromisingly graphic at times. The love scenes are sensual without being obscene. However, the violent episodes are very disturbing, and more sensitive readers may benefit from perusing trigger warnings prior to engaging with the novel.

A richly imagined gothic fantasy novel blends necromancy, court intrigue, forbidden love and visceral violence into an unsettling tale

When the reader first encounters Agnes, one finds that the heroine is mute, although that is by choice rather than because of a speech defect. She is portrayed as being especially close to her cousin Marozia. On the passing of their grandmother Adele-Blanche (whose remains, per custom, are brutally desecrated in order to prevent her being resurrected by means of necromancy), Marozia becomes the head of the matriarchal House of Teeth.

She is wed to Prince Liuprand, the son of King Nicephorus. Liuprand’s father, a thoroughly detestable character who delights in the pain and misery of others, rules over all the seven kingdoms in the city of Drepane. The name of Nicephorus’s late wife, Philomel, conjures up images of the ravaged wife of King Tereus in Greek mythology, who was left mute and mutilated by her fiend-like husband.

We are told that Liuprand’s mother was driven to insanity by Nicephorus’s machinations. While Liuprand is a much kinder and far more ethical individual than his cruel progenitor, his marriage to Marozia is doomed from the outset. Agnes and the prince fall hopelessly in love with each other. Although, unlike the mythological Queen Philomel, Agnes eventually regains her ability to speak, it is only after undergoing great trauma — first at the hands of Nicephorus, and later due to other despicable individuals in the tale.

Marozia is no fool and catches on to the fact that her husband has little to no interest in her romantically or sexually. The book repeatedly underscores that the very highest echelons of power mandate that royalty and nobility marry for considerations other than love or passion. Agnes herself is married off to the ruler of another of the noble houses, but her marriage, too, is doomed from the very outset.

Moreover, unlike Marozia and Liuprand’s union, it is short-lived, since her spouse is murdered on their wedding night by an insanely jealous member of his family. Despite Liuprand and Agnes sharing several gentle, sensitive and beautiful moments, these simply serve as fleeting glimmers in what is a very dark and bleak novelistic landscape. Reid does an especially fine job of enabling the reader to access Agnes’s thoughts, a point that is especially important given that she is silent for about a third of the novel.

Despite being over 500 pages, the book is a fast-paced and engaging read. While there are many ugly scenes, including torture and bloody brawls, there is never a dull moment in the novel per se. The chapters are short, ranging from about three to 10 pages each, and Reid’s pace never flags as she leads the action towards a breathless cliff-hanger.

The reason for this ending is that Innamorata is the first part of a duology and, while I will not spoil the reader’s experience by spelling out what happens to the unfortunate Agnes, those readers who appreciate that the violence of the first book is not gratuitous will be left hungering for more.

What is most disturbing to me about the plot of the book is not that Agnes simply suffers trauma due to the actions of depraved strangers. Her own grandmother, Adele-Blanche, who was a very powerful and formidable queen in her own right, subjected Agnes to intense trauma, in order to train her in the dark arts of sorcery and necromancy. But unlike the old queen, Agnes is a fundamentally decent and gentle young woman who chooses the path of love over and above that of power and self-aggrandisement.

Therein, however, lies Agnes’s tragedy. Her love for Liuprand, while fully reciprocated, cannot shield either character from the strictures and demands of royal life, which tend to twist, distort and often destroy those who come between those who are power-hungry and their nefarious goals.

Be that as it may, Reid is to be commended for being able to describe the vicious and the virtuous with an equal degree of skill. Some of her other (more minor) characters, such as a nonagenarian wet-nurse named Waltrude and a wise leech named Pliny, act as rare, calm voices of sense in an otherwise chaotic and cacophonous world. Only those with no capacity for empathy would refrain from sympathising with Lady Agnes’ predicaments.

However, let us hope that the second book will enable one to see whether she manages to triumph against all odds. I’ll settle for a pyrrhic victory for Agnes, if nothing else, simply because I am aware that hardcore Gothic novels tend to add layer upon layer of terror and despair — rather like Pandora’s box in Greek mythology.

Nevertheless, the spirit of hope did emerge from the box once all its evils escaped into the world. Let us hope, therefore, that Reid has a couple of optimistic tricks in mind when it comes to the sequel to Innamorata.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 2nd, 2026

I come from Pasni, a coastal city in Balochistan where life is inseparable from the sea. From my own family to nearly every household around us, livelihoods depend upon fishing. The sea is therefore more than a landscape: it is a source of sustenance, hope and, at times, devastation.

I had not begun reading Nazuk with the intention of reviewing it. But the memories stirred by its dedication — and later by its portrayal of the sea were too powerful to ignore. The novel understands what the sea means to a fisherman: when calm, it offers relief and livelihood; when violent, it can sweep everything away.

I remember returning home from school one day, my bag still perched on my shoulders, and finding an unusual number of vehicles outside our house. Confused, I stepped through the door and saw a crowd of both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Panic rose within me as I searched for my mother. I threw down my schoolbag and found her sitting with her head in her hands, grieving and cursing a fish — the Indian mackerel, known in Balochi as seem and bangda.

I bent down beside her. My cousins were crying. Then I noticed my aunt sitting silently, her head lowered beneath a large chadar. My mother told me that her cousin, who was also my Amma’s brother-in-law, had gone to sea to fish for the seasonal bangda. All the fishermen aboard were lost, except for one man who knew how to swim and was later rescued by a larger fishing launch.

From that day onward, bangda was never cooked in our home again, and my aunt and her two daughters never returned to the sea. Her sons eventually did. They became fishermen because, despite all they suffered, the sea remained their only livelihood.

That is the cruel paradox of coastal life: the sea that takes away a fisherman may still be the sea to which his offspring must return.

Published in 1976, Nazuk is widely regarded as the first novel in the Balochi language. Its author, Sayad Zahoor Shah Hashumi (1926–1978), was a major figure in modern Balochi literature. Nearly five decades later, the novel has reached a wider readership through Fazal Baloch’s English translation. A writer, translator and academic, Baloch primarily translates Balochi literature into English. His translation of Nazuk was featured as part of the Himal Fiction Fest 2026, bringing this foundational work to readers beyond the Balochi-speaking world.

The novel appears to be set along the Makran coast, with much of its action unfolding beside — and in — the sea. At its centre is Nazuk, who is married at the age of 15 and by 28 has been widowed thrice. Each of her husbands is a fisherman; each goes out to sea and never returns. When her third husband dies, she is labeled a ‘husband killer’. When she agrees to marry again, she sets a condition: her future husband must not go to sea. Her life is therefore shaped by the repeated cycle of departure, societal stigma and loss that defines many coastal households.

Although Nazuk remains the novel’s central figure, Hashumi ensures that the surrounding characters are never reduced to mere background. Each is given enough space to breathe, speak and contribute to the social world of the narrative. Divided into 19 brief sections, the novel gradually reveals different realities of Baloch society: domestic tensions, local gossip, economic hardship, communal bonds and the quiet endurance of women.

The familiar claim that literature mirrors society feels especially appropriate here. Reading Nazuk as a Baloch reader, I felt as though Hashumi had moved from house to house, listened carefully to conversations ordinarily dismissed as gossip, and carried those voices onto the page. The novel is brief and outwardly simple. It offers neither the machinery of a mystery nor the suspense of a thriller. Its power lies elsewhere: in its ability to make everyday life feel immediate, as though a lived reality were unfolding before the reader’s eyes.

Throughout the novel, Hashumi places two sharply contrasting figures alongside one another: Nazuk, a woman defined by dignity, endurance and resilience, and Gazabek, the town’s powerful master, whose authority is marked by corruption, cunning and sexual predation. Nazuk survives repeated incidents of personal loss without compromising her moral strength, while Gazabek exploits his social position to manipulate those around him.

Their parallel presence creates the novel’s central ethical contrast: one character possesses little power but great integrity; the other commands influence yet remains morally impoverished. Through them, Hashumi exposes the distance between social authority and genuine human worth.

Much of Nazuk unfolds through dialogue and conversations. Rather than interrupting the narrative with explicit social commentary, Hashumi allows the prejudices of the community to reveal themselves through the language its characters use. 

This becomes apparent as early as chapter two, when Nazuk and her first husband, Meeran, are introduced. One night, Meeran’s crew arrives to take him fishing despite the violent wind. The men suggest postponing the journey, but Meeran, the boat’s captain, dismisses their caution by declaring that their hearts are “as weak as a woman’s”. He sails out, and neither he nor his boat return. 

The following chapter widens this criticism. As families gather by the shore, anxiously waiting for their loved ones’ boats to return, a man from Gazabek’s household appears to be scanning the sea through a telescope. The crowd assumes he is searching for the missing fishermen when, in fact, his gaze is fixed on the women whose clothes have been pressed against their bodies by the strong wind. The scene exposes how easily women are reduced to objects of observation, even at a moment when they are themselves confronting grief and uncertainty.

The same chapter turns gossip into an anatomy of patriarchal honour. One man claims that Gazabek fears his wife because she knows enough about his misconduct to expose him. Another replies, “A man who fears his wife has no dignity left.” Through such exchanges, the novel reveals the contradictions of this moral order: a man’s corruption may be tolerated, yet his wife’s knowledge of it threatens his dignity; honour is presented as a family possession, but its burden is placed overwhelmingly upon women.

The pattern repeats in chapter 11, when Nazuk urges her second husband, Jami, to listen to his crew and avoid sailing in dangerous weather. He replies, “You’re a woman, so I don’t blame you for saying that.” Like Meeran, he mistakes caution for feminine weakness, leaves for the sea and never returns. Elsewhere, a grieving man is mocked for “crying like a woman”. Ordinary human responses to danger and loss are repeatedly degraded through their association with women.

Chapter nine extends this critique through the story of Gulok, a woman divorced merely for attending a friend’s wedding without her husband’s permission. As the women discuss her fate, one remarks that “men are always suspicious of women”, while another observes that, with time, a woman learns that “whether she is innocent or guilty, she will be blamed”. Their conversation reveals a social order in which accusation itself becomes a form of control: a woman’s conduct is judged not by evidence, but by the suspicions projected onto her.

The dialogue becomes even more revealing when the women explain that a husband may begin to regard his wife as modest and virtuous simply because she has stopped questioning him or answering back. Yet the conversation also exposes how the patriarchy is sustained through denial. Rather than holding the husband accountable, someone insists that “he is not like this” and that another person must have “poisoned his ears”. His cruelty is treated as an external influence, while the woman is left to bear its consequences. Through Gulok’s story, Hashumi shows how women are not only judged by men’s suspicions but are gradually trained to silence themselves in order to survive them.

Yet Hashumi does not present women solely as victims of a patriarchal order. Alongside their vulnerability, he emphasises their resilience, labour and economic importance. From the opening chapters, women are shown selling food along the shore, participating directly in the informal economy that sustains coastal life. Their work may appear modest, but it forms an essential part of the community’s survival.

Nazuk becomes the strongest embodiment of this independence. Widowed and responsible for three children, she not only resists Gazabek’s sexual advances but also acquires a fishing boat of her own. The boat supports more than her immediate household: the fishermen who work on it and their families also depend upon the income it generates. Nazuk’s economic agency therefore extends beyond self-preservation and becomes a source of collective livelihood.

The novel similarly portrays marriage as a form of shared economic labour rather than a relationship sustained by men alone. Jami’s father is an experienced fisherman, yet Jami’s mother supplements the family income by selling fried kingfish. Similarly, when Nazuk is first married, her father gives her a boat, which Meeran later takes out to sea. 

When she subsequently marries Jami, who possesses little of his own, Nazuk sells her gold so that he can acquire a boat. These details quietly overturn the conventional image of the man as the sole provider. In Nazuk, women repeatedly finance, support and stabilise the very households in which their authority is often denied. 

This resilience, however, exists beside a darker reality. Not every woman is able to escape Gazabek’s power. A young woman is manipulated, becomes pregnant and is then married off to one of his associates, allowing him to conceal the consequences of his abuse. Other women are exploited through financial dependency: Gazabek assists them or their husbands, only to demand sexual access in return. 

Through this contrast, Hashumi shows that economic vulnerability and sexual exploitation are closely connected. Women’s labour sustains the community, yet the structures of power surrounding them frequently deny them security, dignity and protection. Nazuk’s independence is therefore not merely a personal achievement. It is also a form of resistance against a social order that allows men such as Gazabek to turn wealth and influence into instruments of coercion.

At certain points, however, the author’s hostility towards Gazabek becomes very explicit, such as when Nazuk’s cousin Omar brings her complaint before Gazabek, he summons her and listens to the case while “fidgeting with his fingers, at times licking his lips or blinking rapidly like a bitch”. This description reduces him to a restless, almost animal-like figure, making his predatory intentions visible yet the comparison is also troubling. By using “bitch” as a term of degradation, the narration relies upon the same gendered vocabulary that the novel appears to criticise elsewhere. 

The novel’s concerns also extend to corruption and misrule. The Vali’s sycophants engage, with his approval, in smuggling and other illicit practices that inflate prices and create shortages, pushing fishing families towards hunger. They also seek out women for his private pleasure. Justice fares no better: the qazi demands bribes for favourable verdicts, protecting those who can pay and condemning the poor. Political and judicial authority thus reinforce, rather than restrain, exploitation.

Ultimately, Nazuk derives its power from recognition. Through the sea, Hashumi captures the precarity and endurance of coastal life; through Nazuk and Gazabek, he sets dignity against corrupt authority; and through everyday conversation, he reveals how injustice becomes embedded in ordinary life. Decades after its publication, the novel remains unsettling because many of the realities it records still endure.

It’s a novel that refuses the long shot of history in favour of the close-up, tracing what it meant to be an Afghan woman when the world decided the war was over.

The prologue opens like a thriller. A dozen women are crammed into a stifling room on a hilltop outside Kabul, the settlement known as Zanabad, the City of Widows. Their leader, Kobra, fixes her gaze on Marjan, a newcomer with a soldier’s bearing and a daughter to protect. “Marjan,” she says, “You have not been honest with me.” The sentence hangs. An infant swallows a cry. Bodies press against clay walls. Then Marjan’s teenage daughter, Hawa, steps forward and speaks: “My mother has made a lot of enemies in her life. … But I’m the reason we are in danger.” In a few compressed pages, Hashimi establishes the novel’s central truth — that survival depends on the stories women tell, and on whether those stories can hold up under pressure.

The narrative moves between two timelines. In the present, August 2021, Marjan is a former operative of the Female Tactical Platoon, an elite unit trained by American Special Forces to conduct night raids. She knows that the Taliban will hunt down soldiers like her. She needs visas, safe passage and a way out for Hawa.

Interwoven with this race against time is the story of her past: a girl named Rahima, who was married at 13 to a warlord and escaped his compound while pregnant and rebuilt herself as Marjan, borrowing the name from a wounded lion at the Kabul Zoo. The dual structure asks a hard question: what safety is possible when the institutions meant to protect women — the shelter, the military, the foreign forces — dissolve overnight?

Hashimi’s prose is at its most devastating when it fixes on the body in pain. Early in the novel, teenage Rahima is examined by a doctor who confirms the pregnancy forced upon her. “Rahima let out a howl that slipped under the closed door, out of the clinic, and into the street, where it caused two women to pause their steps, but only briefly. As if they had heard a car honk or a door slam. The cry of a girl wronged by the universe was hardly remarkable.”

The passage is remarkable precisely because it refuses to amplify the scream. It notes how quickly the world absorbs a girl’s grief and moves on. This documentary restraint is sustained through the novel’s most harrowing set piece, the Abbey Gate bombing. Hashimi describes a dead child with clinical precision: “Brown curls cling to her forehead. Her hair is spread on the earth.” She does not tell the reader what to feel. The flatness becomes its own accusation.

In contrast, the 2021 sections sometimes labour under the weight of explanation. When characters debate visa categories or dissect the mechanics of the American withdrawal agreement, the dialogue flattens into information. I found the novel most persuasive when it trusted objects and gestures — a half-dozen bangles, a plastic water bottle twisted in nervous hands, a notebook with a ledger for a rubab — to carry the political argument. These small things speak louder than the speeches.

Music is the novel’s most carefully sustained motif. Hawa studies the rubab at a Kabul institute, and her lessons with Ustad Rafiqi are among the book’s finest scenes. When Hawa stumbles over a passage, her teacher stops her: “The only thing worse than a shoddy note is no note at all. … Do not sacrifice an entire song for one wayward note. The music you are playing is older than our years combined. It has survived wars and drought and fickle hearts. It will survive your choppy renditions as well.”

The lines double as an artistic credo for the novel itself, which insists that flawed, persistent creation matters more than the silence the Taliban would impose. When Hawa later plays her flute to catch a marine’s attention at the airport, music becomes survival in a literal key.

The mother-daughter relationship is the novel’s emotional core. Marjan’s love is rendered as a ferocious inventory: new sneakers, a winter coat, a bar of lavender soap left behind. Yet the intimacy sometimes stays at arm’s length; we see Marjan’s devotion more through her budgeting and her vigilance than through sustained, unguarded exchanges with her daughter. The exception is the prologue, where Hawa’s declaration earns its force through everything the novel has withheld.

What Hashimi understands with terrifying clarity is that the end of a war is not the end of danger for women; it is simply its reconfiguration.

This insight pulses beneath every scene. When the Americans withdraw, the threat Marjan faces is not new. It is the same patriarchal violence she fled a decade earlier, now wearing the legitimacy of state power. The Female Tactical Platoon, which offered the brief illusion of institutional protection, evaporates. The shelter that once saved her can no longer guarantee anything. Hashimi refuses the consolations of rescue. The airport sequences are suffused not with the romance of escape but with the grinding logistics of survival, the slow accumulation of small betrayals and sudden losses that define humanitarian catastrophe.

In the context of Hashimi’s career, City of Widows marks a maturation. Her earlier novel, The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, explored the tradition of bacha posh with evident research that sometimes sat uneasily on the surface. Here, history is absorbed into character and scene. The closer, more fragmented third-person perspective mirrors the characters’ precarious hold on safety and identity. The reader is never entirely comfortable, and that discomfort is the point.

If the novel has a weakness, it is a tendency to name its own themes.

Words like resilience and resistance appear with a frequency that risks dulling their edge. Hashimi does not need them. When Soraya, Marjan’s fellow soldier, defends her right to wear lipstick on a night mission — “if I die, I die pretty” — the politics are unmistakable without commentary. I wished the novel had allowed more such moments to speak for themselves, trusting the reader to recognise rebellion in a tube of lipstick, defiance in a rubab string.

The epigraph is drawn from Rumi: “Ever since I was cut from my bed of reeds / My song can elicit human tears.” Hashimi treats separation as a formal problem. Her characters are severed from names, homes, families, countries, and the novel’s fractured timeline enacts that severance at the level of structure. It is an elegant solution, though it occasionally slows the narrative.

City of Widows is a novel for readers who believe fiction can engage with contemporary crisis without abandoning its obligations to art. It will resonate with those who admired the moral sweep of Khaled Hosseini’s work but longed for a more granular immersion in female interiority. Hashimi offers no easy redemption. She turns her characters into allegories of nothing. I closed the book not with a tidy political thesis but with a sensory residue: the grain of a rubab’s note, the scent of lavender soap, the weight of a water bottle twisted in a soldier’s tired hands. These are small things, but in Hashimi’s hands, they are enough.

Heck, even Pakistan, the very pro-Palestine state, helped with a staggering Rs25 crores in the three-day debut. That’s more than most successful films’ business in their lifetime here. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), in comparison, made Rs20 crores in 10 days, and Rs34 crores in its entire run.

After The Odyssey’s Rs5.83 crores weekend debut — and its $922 million worldwide gross — at least according to the latest accounts — who says cinema is dead? Especially when the year ends with the pre-destined blockbuster Avengers: Doomsday, where Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth and Robert Downey Jr are presumably returning for one final bow. And of course, as we’ve known and now see from the post-credit scene, “Spider-Man will return” as a part of Avengers.

Few can argue that Spidey’s narrative dependencies are tightly webbed into the tapestry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). When you look past the hype of interconnectivity and marquee cameos, one needn’t even squint to see that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies have one slowly developing angle and one absolute consistency: the personal growth of a teenager and his dependence on other heroes.

Spider-Man:Brand New Day delivers exhilarating action and heartfelt emotion but, despite its strengths, functions more as a bridge to Marvel’s next chapter than as a truly standalone Spider-Man story

In Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Peter Parker wants to grow up but learns that he must first be a local hero to make a difference. In Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), he struggles to live up to the memory of Tony Stark and looks for a new mentor to trust. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, he tries to fix his problems with a magic spell. In every movie, Peter is reliant on an Avenger — be it Stark, Doctor Strange, magical incantations or tech.

In Spider-Man: Brand New Day — the title is inspired by the titular comic book arc — there was an opportunity to web-up some of the baggage on a ledge for a rainy day.

At the end of No Way Home, Peter, with a fresh start on his freshly wiped identity, was set free from overbearing Stark-tech, fan-servicing and money-making crossovers by uniting all three Spider-Man actors in a grand finale. Liberated, he finally swings over New York like in the comic books, the way he was always meant to.

When Brand New Day opens, he is already New York’s friendly neighbourhood wall-crawler, helping the local police take down bad guys (Liza Colón-Zayas plays detective Jean DeWolff, and villains Tombstone, Boomerang and Tarantula get one or two shots each).

Most of this backstory is dumped in a montage of changing seasons, where we also see him regularly visiting his late Aunt May’s grave, and watching Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) and Michelle Jones Watson — MJ (Zendaya) — via their social media feeds.

Peter also has headaches and pretty soon finds himself webbed up in the air. His body is evolving, but not in the way any comic book fan expects (no six-armed arachnid mutations here). However, his actions are aggressive.

Peter seeks Dr Bruce Banner’s (Mark Ruffalo) help to curb this new persona, while a new villain hacks into people’s consciousness, jumping from one body to the next, in search of a location called V-Max.

While not exactly shoehorned, Peter’s dual-personality arc has minor echoes of the Hulk’s own destructive, out-of-control inner demons. Thus, in a way, the Hulk’s long shadow falls squarely on a Spider-Man picture — in one action scene in the climax, quite literally. Other Marvel side-characters are Yelena Belova’s Black Widow (Florence Pugh) from the ‘New Avengers’ (last seen in Thunderbolts) and the Punisher (Jon Bernthal).

Bernthal’s Frank Castle, in an expanded and thoroughly compelling role, is the film’s moral counterweight. By the third act, you’re rooting for the Punisher as fervently as you’re rooting for Peter. That is either a great compliment to Bernthal, or a damning observation about the thinness of Spider-Man’s emotional arc.

Strip away the Avengers, the Banner tech, the Punisher’s gunfire, and what remains of Brand New Day’s story? Two beats in a two-and-a-half-hour movie!

The first is Peter’s gradual maturation — his acceptance of himself despite what his evolving genome has done, or tried to do to him. The second: mustering the courage to ask his friends to simply remember him and allowing himself, finally, not to carry the burden alone.

These are meaningful moments, sure — and a good anchor to the plot — but then, what is the plot itself and where are the villains?

Consider Tobey Maguire’s trilogy, or even Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Each had rich plots and tonnes of forward-driving conflict.

In Brand New Day, the known Spider-Man villains are the Scorpion (Michael Mando) and the ninja-assassin group the Hand, in a capacity so minor they both barely register as a footnote.

The real antagonist is — spoiler alert! — Jean Grey (Sadie Sink), an X-Men. A character whose presence, however effectively deployed, functions less as a narrative endpoint and more as a junction. It is a throughline that routes traffic towards Avengers: Doomsday and the incoming X-Men integration. The post-credits scene confirms what the story barely (if at all) disguises — that Holland’s fourth solo film as Spider-Man is a mere relay point without a destination.

None of this makes Brand New Day a bad film. Far from it. There is no question about the production values or the allure of Michael Giacchino’s theme and score. The web-slinging sequences are among the finest committed to a Marvel production. The emotions move you, particularly in the quieter moments, and Holland remains one of the most instinctively sympathetic actors working in the superhero genre.

However, cinema, at its core, is measured by what a film accomplishes. Brand New Day accomplishes the following: it tugs at your heartstrings in ways better than Homecoming and Far From Home, delivers action sequences worth the IMAX premium (at least, I hope it does — we don’t have the IMAX luxury in Pakistan), and deposits Spider-Man tidily into the Marvel machine’s next cycle.

What it does not accomplish is a solo Spider-Man story. Not in the way the name on the poster promises.

Released by Sony Pictures and HKC, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, is rated U and suitable for everyone.

That is why everyone is headed to the cinemas

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, August 9th, 2026

The question does not apply equally to adaptations and remakes.

Adaptations can be from a myriad of sources: books, articles, short stories, real-life events — each domain carrying its own particularities that clash with the medium of film and its own constraints. Remakes are new versions of older films, and if Disney has taught us anything, they’re more or less a copy-paste job.

The list is maddening: 101 Dalmatians (1996), Alice in Wonderland (2010), Maleficent (2014), Cinderella (2015), The Jungle Book (2016), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Aladdin (2019), Dumbo (2019), The Lion King (2019), Lady and the Tramp (2019), Mulan (2020), Cruella (2021), Pinocchio (2022), The Little Mermaid (2023), Snow White (2025), Lilo & Stitch (2025), and now Moana.

Disney’s live-action Moana faithfully recreates the 2016 animated hit, but offers little reason for its own existence

Some I’ve seen, most I’ve ignored, a few I’d forgotten even existed, but most (with the exception of Alice in Wonderland and Maleficent) should not have been made at all.

I mean, what’s there to appreciate when the exact story beats, the exact frames and the exact acting cues — yet somehow, with a slightly slower pace and a little longer runtime (animated films are designed to move faster and snappier) — are revisited?

So, what’s the appeal here? Especially when the original — in the case of Moana — came out exactly 10 years ago? That’s not really a long time. Especially when you have the main co-lead returning.

In case there’s any mystery (and there isn’t), the returner is Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, the original voice of the animated, full-of-himself demigod Maui, who is stranded on a tiny island. Where Maui was animated, The Rock mostly plays a rock. The stiffness, an added layer of seriousness, though not a bad thing in the right context, does not help the character or the performance.

Moana (Catherine Laga’aia, not as good as her animated counterpart), the young daughter of her tribe’s chief (John Tui), rescues Maui after leaving her island. She, like everyone there, was forbidden to leave their perfect island life. But the call of the sea, and the water’s enchanted beckoning (a magical wave of the sea calls and guides her), is too much to ignore.

Her quest is twofold: find a way to calm Te Fiti’s violent anger — Te Fiti is a living island that brought life to the ocean — by returning her heart, and to end every island tribe’s fear of oceanic exploration.

It’s a noble cause that we’ve seen before, with the same cast (Jemaine Clement returns as the voice of Tamatoa, the giant crab), the songs (by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Opetaia Foa’i, returning), the same screenplay (screenwriter Jared Bush returns with Moana 2’s co-director Dana Ledoux Miller, now co-writing) and much the same direction (Thomas Kail, the director of stage musical Hamilton, in his live-action debut).

Direction, mind you, that feels as if one is playing and pausing scenes from the original before shouting: ‘Lights. Camera. Action!’

Released by HKC and Disney, Moana is rated PG. Parents have no need for caution: the few minutes of scares by Te Fiti aren’t even as scary as those in the animated film

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, July 26th, 2026

It purported to be “Rooted in Pakistani myths and folklore”, which immediately made me think of the stories old servants used to tell in my childhood. In those days, they held my attention but, looking back, they just seemed to be bundles of nonsense. Now to have to read a whole book of similar stories was not going to be easy. As it turned out, I was wrong.

Maliha Rao, the author of Dark Tales of Wonder, is based in Karachi. She is a digital communications expert with two decades of experience in copywriting and brand storytelling. Some of her stories have been published in other anthologies. She has made horror her genre of choice and is a member of a thriving community of fantasy, horror and science fiction writers. Dark Tales of Wonder is made up of eight stories. The tales are short, concise and full of suspense. Almost from the first sentence, the reader knows something unacceptable and unexplainable is about to happen.

Interestingly, when supernatural activity is suspected, Rao’s characters turn towards Allah, but in oblique ways. The help of maulvis [clergymen] is sought, Zamzam holy water is sprinkled, tasbeehs [rosary beads] are rotated and the recitation of the Quran is listened to on phones. Rao states: “The world is full of impossible things.” This seems to be the common denominator of all the stories she writes. But even sceptical readers are hooked by the themes she explores and want to find out what transpires next.

A debut collection blends Pakistani folklore, supernatural beings and psychological dread into engrossing and suspenseful horror stories

In most cases, the demon, jinn or the otherworldly creature that is invading the mind and life of its prey is either huge in size or very small, like a dwarf. But all are frighteningly ugly and sometimes even emit a foul smell. The endings of the tales are also consistently the same. If it were not so, much greater tension could have been generated.

The first story, ‘The Rice Paddy’, features a man who has a genuine gift of engaging with the supernatural but, every time he exorcises an evil spirit, he feels depleted. His life is lonely and itinerant but he finally finds fulfilment when he helps a supernatural being wreak revenge.

In ‘Crumbs and Creatures’ we meet both a huge monster and a child-sized one, who both love eating biscuits. Before much harm is done, they are appeased and it is impressed upon the reader that every preternatural being is not malevolent. ‘The Wrath of the Boyo’ has only short-statured demons but they also love sugary stuff. When two preteen boys get into trouble with the boyo, it is a good spirit who saves them from harm and leaves her mark on one of them.

Small monsters who are lovers of sweets also make an appearance in ‘The Haunting of Taj.’ Here, the protagonist just wants to make sure that the hotel he has inherited remains financially viable. He neglects all warnings of supernatural presence in his single-minded endeavour to make the hotel regain its past glory. Only when he actually sees his daughter threatened by runty, dessert-gobbling demons does he become a believer. Again, in this story, it is two good spirits who help to save the young human girl.

Family dynamics come into play in the stories ‘It Lingers’ and ‘Unholy Ties.’ In the former, a family moves into a house with a dubious past and is confronted with strange happenings. Things disappear, lights dim of their own accord, and residents are attacked during sleep. Finally, a seer is brought into the picture to deal with the miasma invading their home. ‘Unholy Ties’ spins a really good yarn about a family which has gone through familial trauma and public censure. The daughter becomes possessed by an evil spirit that is egged on by a resentful relative. The final scene is satisfyingly gory.

These initial stories have minor errors in the syntax and in the narratives. Yet, the stories themselves are gripping and their plots are well-constructed.

The last two stories of the collection are written with a sure hand and flow smoothly from the author’s pen.

The first of the two, ‘Fear and Loathing in Karachi’, is centred round a young woman, Rania, who has been crippled psychologically because of a frightening experience in her adolescence. Ten years later she is still in treatment. Her two best friends manage to coax her to face her own demons and also the gigantic monster who threatens to annihilate all that she loves. Rao develops the character of Rania expertly and with a great deal of insight. The ending is ambiguous. Did Rania really kill the monster or did she slay the demons in her own mind and so find herself again?

The last story of the anthology is perhaps the best. It is beautifully conceptualised and executed. The plot is eminently believable and the characters are delineated unerringly. The hero, Aazer, could be someone we have known or, at least, met. His aspirations and his weaknesses are familiar to the reader and understandable, given the circumstances.

When he inadvertently becomes a victim of a female spirit, his family rallies round to assist him. The personage of the pir [holy man] whose help is sought to rid Aazer of the spirit is quite unique. Rao dispenses with the stock type of exorcist and introduces instead a character at once distinctive and interesting. The whiff of romance that begins to perfume the air at the end of the story just adds to the mastery of the writing.

Even unbelievers of the supernatural can enjoy this anthology. Every anecdote features the paranormal, but Rao makes sure to infuse each one with the right ingredients for a satisfying read. It is clear that she has taken pains over writing them and that the genre is close to her heart.

The author is to be congratulated for producing such an engrossing debut collection of stories.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, May 24th, 2026

By the mid-1950s, the young man from Peshawar had done everything expected of him. He had studied at Lawrence College in Murree before gaining admission to Aligarh Muslim University, followed by stints at Columbia and then Harvard, training not as an artist but as an engineer. Gulgee’s future appeared settled, respectable, even enviable. But if he had followed that course to its end, odds are he may not have found himself being written about in these pages.

Somewhere along the way, engineering had lost its lustre for him. He wanted to paint. But what now may seem like the inevitable path for him to chart — after all, as demonstrated by his corpus, how could this man be anything other than an artist? — was a decision fraught with tangible jeopardy at the time.

Upon hearing this confession about dreams of artistic grandeur, Gulgee’s father, Sher Ali Ismaili, was unconvinced. Before abandoning a profession for which his son had travelled halfway across the world to qualify, Ismaili instructed Gulgee to first seek the advice of Sultan Muhammad Shah, Aga Khan III. An appointment was arranged and a ticket booked for Cannes, where Gulgee explained to the religious leader that he wished to become an artist.

The Aga Khan’s response was measured rather than romantic and entirely befitting of a man who had played no small part in the fight for the creation of Pakistan: “Look, Gulgee, your country needs people like you — qualified, trained people. First, you give a few years — say five — to your country and, when you finish that, you can do what you like.” Gulgee obeyed.

A recently published coffee table book pieces together the remarkable life of the legendary late artist Gulgee through tales recounted by family and friends, critical essays and archival images, revealing a man every bit as fascinating as his art.

He returned to Pakistan and worked as a dutiful engineer on the design of the Warsak Dam in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. When the five years were over and his promise fulfilled, Gulgee resigned, declaring, “I will polish shoes, but I won’t do engineering. I will paint.” Hence, before the portraits of kings and presidents, before the explosive abstractions and luminous lapis lazuli mosaics, there was simply a young man at a crossroads trying to negotiate duty, expectation, vocation and ambition.

In many ways, it is precisely this sort of story that makes Gulgee Museum: The Handbook such a richly rewarding publication. Edited by John McCarry and developed alongside the opening of the Gulgee Museum by Gulgee’s son Amin Gulgee, the volume brings together essays by writers, critics, artists and family members alike.

But, having inevitably breathed in Gulgee’s art all throughout my life, in one form or another, I was far more interested in what personal insights this book had to offer into Gulgee the man. And I’m happy to report that it is Gulgee the man — his upbringing, humour, friendships, obsessions, discipline and contradictions — who emerges as the book’s most compelling creation.

As recounted by his brother Noorali in the book, Gulgee’s birth name was Abdul Mohammad Ismaili. “Gulgee” was simply an affectionate name given to boys in Peshawar, meaning flower. In fact, even the surname ‘Ismaili’ carries its own story. Gulgee’s father had abandoned the family surname ‘Rajput’ after Aga Khan III bestowed upon him the surname Ismaili.

In many ways, the book is at its strongest whenever those who knew Gulgee speak with candour about their memories of him. The artist Wahab Jaffer, who passed away just a few weeks ago, recalls first meeting Gulgee in 1972 through artist and gallery-owner Ali Imam, a stalwart of Karachi’s early art scene. Gulgee quickly became mentor, guide and, in Jaffer’s words, a “father figure.” But it is his description of watching Gulgee paint that lingers longest: “He was an action painter. He would run to the canvas and hit it with a broad brush… He would jump around, breathing heavily. It was quite the theatre for me.”

Years later, Amin remembers witnessing the same spectacle, only from the perspective of a son. Growing up, he writes, meant living with “the intense smell of turpentine and oil paints.” His father would indulgently prepare a canvas for him before becoming utterly absorbed in his own work. “I would witness his trance-like state as he danced in front of his surface.”

The book also reminds readers that genius is rarely a solitary enterprise. One of its most affecting essays belongs to the South Asian art historian Savita Apte, who restores Gulgee’s wife Zarine (Zaro) Gulgee to the story. While Gulgee immersed himself in the act of creation, she writes, it was Zaro who promoted his work, cultivated collectors, networked buyers and pursued payments whenever necessary. The artist’s extraordinary career rested upon an equally extraordinary partnership.

Elsewhere, the solemnity surrounding great artists is dismantled. The writer Nazeen Sheikh remembers Gulgee not only as an innovator but as “a madcap brimming with frolic and a great dance partner.” It is a wonderfully human detail.

Artist and art critic Quddus Mirza offers one of the book’s most persuasive reassessments, arguing that Gulgee approached abstraction “not with a Western eye, but through a mind that deciphered its context, impact and multiplicity in the art of Islam.” Mirza also credits Gulgee with freeing modern Pakistani art from the perception that it belonged only to elite audiences. His paintings, he argues, spoke to ordinary Pakistanis as much as to collectors and critics.

Equally illuminating is the writer Bina Shah’s essay on Gulgee’s portraiture. She traces how Ayub Khan understood portraiture as an instrument of cultural diplomacy, commissioning Gulgee to paint monarchs and presidents from across the world. Gulgee insisted on painting or sketching every portrait from life rather than photographs (the only exception being his portraits of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Iqbal). The studies of figures, including the Shah of Iran, Richard Nixon, Rajiv Gandhi, George H.W. Bush and Ayub Khan, reveal both vulnerability and power, transforming official likenesses into remarkably human studies.

Other contributors illuminate the extraordinary range of his artistic practice. We encounter the figurative paintings and sketches of the 1950s and 1960s, the striking yet unfinished portrait of Begum Salimah Aga Khan, the dazzling pietra dura works fashioned from onyx and lapis lazuli, the monumental calligraphic abstractions, before arriving at the haunting Void paintings and the Nuqta series. Rather than presenting these as disconnected phases, the handbook reveals an artist in perpetual motion, forever searching for another visual language.

Nageen Shaikh’s discussion of Gulgee’s fascination with stone is especially memorable. She recounts how he developed his interest in using this material while travelling across Afghanistan during the late-1950s, after being invited there by King Mohammad Zahir Shah to paint portraits of Shah and his family.

Gulgee himself explained the attraction with characteristic simplicity: “Stone has been lying in the bowels of the earth for millions and millions of years and it will not disintegrate or fade. That is why I use stone. It is almost everlasting.” The remark feels less like a comment on materials than on legacy itself.

The images throughout the volume are as eloquent as the essays. Full-page reproductions capture the physical richness of the paintings, while archival photographs construct another biography. We see Gulgee with heads of state and collectors, but we also encounter more intimate moments that remind us this was a life lived beyond museums and galleries.

By the final page of this publication, Gulgee’s paintings had undeniably acquired a new meaning for me because the man who made them had finally stepped out from behind them. In doing so, the handbook reveals a truth that every great artist’s archive ultimately seeks to uncover: that life can be every bit as fascinating as art.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 12th, 2026

This is the controversial line that begins Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey.

The controversy lies in the choice of the word “complicated” as a stand in for the original Greek word “polytropos,” directly translating to something along the lines of “of many turns” or “turning in many ways”. In translating a word that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways to the more digestible, understandable “complicated,” Wilson sacrifices the complexity of the original Greek in exchange for more direct, modern language.

It is this version that Christopher Nolan chose as his inspiration for his epic film, The Odyssey. And interestingly, “complicated” and “controversial” float around not just Wilson’s translation, but Nolan’s film as well. The difference is, Wilson had 600 pages to explore the storytelling and character depth in ways beyond language. Nolan had three hours.

Now, don’t get me wrong, The Odyssey is a brilliant film in its own right. It is a Nolan film, after all, and while it never reaches the heights of Nolan’s best like Oppenheimer or The Dark Knight, it is still probably one of the best movies of the year so far. The reason I, and so many others, have such complicated feelings about it is because of a love and protectiveness surrounding the masterpiece that is Homer’s The Odyssey.

You see, when discussing a tale as old and complex as The Odyssey in modern day, especially in regards to Nolan’s film, there are three versions at play.

Of course, there’s the main one for today, Nolan’s The Odyssey. Then, there’s the original masterpiece, Homer’s The Odyssey. And, one that can simply be understood as the bridge between the two, Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey.

When you go into a movie you expect to be an adaptation of such a literary and cultural giant, I’m certain nothing could ever live up to your expectations. Especially when the film isn’t even trying to be an adaptation, in all honesty. Despite these expectations, this is very much an interpretation or retelling of The Odyssey more than it is an adaptation. But, once you understand that this is not Nolan adapting Homer’s The Odyssey, but Nolan’s The Odyssey built upon the foundations of Homer, the movie becomes a wonderful watch.

For those who have read the original, understand that this is an interpretation of it meant to align with Nolan’s own directorial vision, and one that is executed quite well. For those that haven’t, simply brush up on your Greek mythology and enjoy what is perhaps one of the most visually beautiful and consuming epic sagas of the year.

Centred around the Bronze Age collapse and the beast within, The Odyssey primarily focuses Odysseus’s own guilt and inner turmoil after the fall of Troy, and his struggles with facing a world after the sacred boundaries of humanity have been crossed. It’s quite relevant to today, I would say. In fact, The Odyssey almost feels like a companion piece to Oppenheimer in the sense of being quite personal to Nolan himself, and quite specific to the times. I’m trying not to get into too many spoilers, because it really would be an injustice to not see this film on the big screen yourself, but the character of Odysseus is treated with ample care.

The same can be said about the relationship between him and his wife, Penelope. In fact, I would say the scenes with the two together are the film’s highlights, with the scenes of them pining for the each other coming in close seconds. Those are the emotional beats carried over from Homer’s original work, and despite the omission of the legendary “olive tree” exchange, the core of their love is preserved.

In fact, every scene set in Odysseus’s home of Ithaca is a delight, perhaps because of Ithaca as a marvellous set within which the story is truly allowed to breath and unfold, as opposed to the sometimes rushed sea sagas, but primarily because Ithaca is the heart of the film. Not just in the sense of a home, but for everything it represents to those who reside there and to those who are trying to find their way back. In a movie where a significant portion feels rushed and underdeveloped, centring the story back on Ithaca allows for moments of both anchoring and boiling tension, all of which pays off in a classic Nolan ending.

As our titular character, Odysseus, this may truly be a career best performance for Matt Damon. Captivating, heartbreaking and fearsome in nearly every scene, he understands and plays to all facets of Odysseus’s character, with a performance that allows you to forgive the shortcomings of complexity as compared to his book counterpart. Similarly, Anne Hathaway completely dominates every time she’s on screen. The strength, fury, and especially grief she portrays is as near a perfect Penelope as can be, and both Hathaway and Damon together make the Penelope-Odysseus moments hit that much harder.

However, the standout performance has to come from Robert Pattinson, who proves once again he is currently the best he’s ever been, bringing a unique, cracking energy. Honourable mentions are Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, Samantha Morton as Circe and John Leguizamo as Eumaeus — all in all melting into their characters and bringing their sequences to life.

In such a brilliant cast, the weak links aren’t exactly… bad, but standing beside some actors at the top of their game isn’t a very good look. Tom Holland as Telemachus, while delivering a harmless performance, was simply that. Fine. The same is true for Zendaya’s Athena, although that might also have to do with the lack of depth and presence of both characters.

Nolan’s desire to choose style over substance in moments shows within the The Odyssey through plot sequences that are rushed in exchange for runtime that could have been spent on underdeveloped characters or concepts. It is not so heinous as to ruin the whole movie, but prominent enough to be noticeable, and to remove The Odyssey for being a contender within Nolan’s top five films.

With absolutely stunning cinematography that served the story, practical effects that absolutely paid off and immersed one fully within the world, and a musical score that revives ancient instruments, The Odyssey is undeniably an extraordinary feat, and, undoubtedly, a very good movie. Flawed, yes, as almost every film is, but any shortcomings are only amplified because of the fine craftsmanship surrounding it.

So, do yourself a favour and watch Nolan’s The Odyssey in cinemas while you can. I truly believe you would not be getting the full experience otherwise.

…and maybe, if you’re interested, pick up Homer’s The Odyssey for a read afterwards.

The immediately recognisable orchestral theme has been the backbone of every part since the first Enola Holmes (specifically the tracks ‘Enola Holmes (Wild Child)’ and ‘Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes’).

Regardless of whether a film features songs, the background score plays a major role in grounding the narrative and aligning the audience’s emotions with the story. The near-absence of a recognisable theme here is a let-down (it only briefly appears during the end credits). The rest of the soundtrack, composed by Aaron May and David Ridley, is just serviceable.

This serviceability isn’t limited to the soundtrack. The direction by Philip Barantini — who directed Netflix’s brilliant series Adolescence — and the screenplay by series regular Jack Thorne are also serviceable at best.

Enola Holmes 3 trades mystery and wit for a predictable romance, resulting in a sequel that feels competent but uninspired

The grandeur, along with any sense of mystery and intrigue, is lost in this next phase of Enola’s life — a narrative departure not found in Nancy Springer’s book series, The Enola Holmes Mysteries (the second film also took a sidestep from the books).

Here, Enola (Millie Bobby Brown, once again serviceable) agrees to marry the Duke of Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) in Malta. Before the nuptials, first Enola’s brother, Sherlock (Henry Cavill), and then Tewkesbury’s mother (Hattie Morahan), are kidnapped.

Since a Holmes does not simply disappear without leaving a clue for another Holmes to decipher, Enola, Tewkesbury and the series version of the nearly entirely useless Dr Watson (Himesh Patel) start a not-so-wild search that leads them to a lot of wrongful British doings in the Crown’s colonies (Malta was a British colony until 1964).

Enola, with some help from her rebel mother (played by Helena Bonham Carter), eventually finds a pirate treasure chest and the series’ uninspired villain, antagonist Moriarty (Sharon Duncan-Brewster). For those unfamiliar with the prior movies, this is a female-led story, so the villain, Moriarty, has been gender-swapped.

Duncan-Brewster is clearly a fine actress who hams her way through the role alongside the rest of the cast. While the overacting may not be that apparent with others, one cannot disregard it in the case of Cavill who, seemingly like everyone, is told to punch up the emotions a notch.

Cavill also seems to have spent very little time on set this time round. Notice how he is almost never in the same frame as anyone else, and rarely shares dialogue with anyone but Bobby Brown.

Thorne’s screenplay and the film as a whole are standard, unimaginative fare, banking on Enola and Tewkesbury’s romance and a plot point that puts her beau in the lead to pull the story through. Like many sequels, it gets the job done — though barely.

Streaming on Netflix, Enola Holmes 3 is rated suitable for ages 13 and over (equivalent to the PG-13 rating). Parents needn’t worry, it’s as PG-13 as it gets

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, July 19th, 2026

At its heart, Dr Bahu anatomises a controlling patriarch — a figure so common in our storytelling that we risk normalising him. But writer Sanam Mehdi refuses that comfort.

Dr Bahu is a masterclass in patriarchal trauma and the slow architecture of rebellion

She gives us Dr Shahnawaz (Shahzad Nawaz), a successful oncologist and owner of two private hospitals, who maintains family dominance not through overt violence, but through systemic socialisation, entitlement and the weaponisation of fear.

He is the sun around which characters orbit — and he ensures they never forget their place.

Coercive control as identity

Socialised entitlement is his primary tool. Patriarchal conditioning has taught him that his worth lies in dominance, emotional restraint and control. He views any questioning of his authority as a direct threat to his identity and hierarchy.

His behaviour is not random anger. It is a calculated system of dominance. In one searing scene, he taps his spoon against his plate, reminding the women they should know what he wants without being told. A reminder of where they belong: the kitchen.

Behind this aggressive exterior lies a fragile ego. In clinical terms, coercive control acts as a self-protective barrier against the terror of chaos, loss of status or emotional inadequacy. His perfectionist stance reflects a deeper inadequacy — a childhood wound he has spent a lifetime covering with authority and wealth.

He employs a cult of personality: divide and conquer, information hoarding, infantilisation and enslavement of his relatives. He chooses both daughters-in-law from modest backgrounds, extends favours to their families — matchmaking, waiving medical bills — and, in exchange, he gets social credit and control with impunity. He puppeteers the elder bahu’s (Hajra Yamin) career, disregarding her wishes and qualifications.

Roles in a rigid hierarchy

A controlling patriarch creates a highly rigid, anxious family system based on conditional love and performance. It is highly functional — but devoid of happiness.

1. The Subservient Partner: Dr Farheen (Saba Hameed) is a qualified doctor, but her husband has dictated her life, dividing it between household and a “suitable” professional choice: aesthetician. She absorbs his anger to protect her children and enforces his rules for personal safety. Her cancer is kept discreet because it could cause doubts in the patriarch’s professional authority. She is the buffer, the peacekeeper, until Dr Sania (Kubra Khan) — the new bahu — arrives and asks the question that threatens the entire system: “What about a woman’s individual identity?”

2. The Golden Child: Dr Faizan (Adeel Hussain) is the trophy son, a star oncologist and the sole professional heir. He enjoys praise and privilege, but only at the cost of conformity. When his wife is discovered to be infertile and adoption is denied by the patriarch, Faizan’s complex trauma deepens, pushing him toward an extramarital affair with Dr Amber (Mira Sethi). His cheating cannot be pardoned, but the suffocation of never having a choice in three decades deserves sympathy.

3. The Scapegoat: Salman (Shuja Asad) refuses to pretend the system is healthy. He is targeted, isolated and labelled “difficult”. Judged for choosing a passion-based career, his father still finds him a doctor wife, Sania, to compensate for his shortcomings. His marriage becomes a source of healing. The most striking wisdom comes from him when Sania suggests planning a family out of insecurity — he prefers to build a life based on trust and companionship rather than chain it with a baby out of insecurity… that’s trauma prevention.

The rebellion

Dr Sania faces the tension between her medical career and a patriarch who tries to curate her life: when to honeymoon or skip exams, where to do her residency and how to behave.

His subtle demeaning statements — such as “I trust your family’s upbringing” and “You are now part of a wealthy family” — are textbook gaslighting. When she insists on doing her residency with Dr Rubina (Atiqa Odho), he threatens to get her license cancelled. When she bypasses his approval in a welfare case, she is punished but endures the pressure despite the harsh impact on her life.

Rebellion is rarely sudden; it forms through cognitive dissonance, underground resistance and eventual systemic rupture. Every time Dr Sania asserts herself, something shifts. Salman supports her aggressively. Farheen and Mina hear their inner voices — experience hope, even if they do not actively support her. That is the architecture of change.

The patriarch’s own trauma

In a devastating twist, Dr Farheen overhears a conversation between her husband and Dr Rubina — uncovering a painful truth from the past. She confronts him with the quiet yearning of a woman who seeks the truth. She receives only silence.

That night she dies of a broken heart, of decades of erasure, of the slow poison of being diminished every single day by the man who was supposed to cherish her. Her final sleep is both a tragedy and a release from a prison. This revelation reframes everything. The persecutor is himself a hidden victim — rejected, insecure and driven by an ego that could not tolerate a woman’s ambition.

He pits family members against one another, rationing affection so they compete for his approval instead of uniting against him. It works — until it doesn’t.

The mental health takeaway: Lessons for everyone

Dr Bahu offers implicit guidance for viewers trapped in similar dynamics:

1. For the oppressed: Set strict boundaries. Prevent now, not cure later. Use assertive communication and avoid emotional escalation. Seek support from psychological resources such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) to cope with guilt and anxiety.

2. For the enablers: Recognise that silence is complicity. The victims are also participants in the system. Healing requires breaking the cycle, not maintaining it.

3. For the coercive controller: Healing is possible for persecutors, but only when they stop running from their wounds and confront their trauma.

Dr Bahu is not a show about villains and victims. It is about a family, engineered to serve one man’s ego, who slowly, painfully, learns to dismantle it from within.

Mehreen Jabbar’s direction with surgical precision ensures no scene is wasted. The performances are tours de force — especially Saba Hameed’s silent suffering and Shuja Asad’s simmering defiance. Kubra Khan brings a quiet steel to Dr Sania that makes her rebellion believable rather than preachy.

The drama asks the question we must all answer: what do we owe to tradition, and what do we owe to ourselves? The answer is a choice.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, July 12th, 2026

Scouting bounty hunters to track and disarm Krem, she enlists Supergirl. Superman’s cousin — though no less powerful — was out celebrating her 21st birthday by getting drunk under the rays of this planet’s Red Sun, which negates her race’s superpowers (there is no other way for Kryptonians to get intoxicated). Accompanying her is Krypto, the super dog, who is also nearly depleted of his god-tier powers.

Though Ruthye is initially told off, her quest is eventually taken up by Kara Zor-El (aka Supergirl) when Krem shoots Krypto with a poison that only he has the antidote for.

The two girls spend months chasing Krem across the galaxies, braving bad interstellar transits, corrupt alien populaces, space pirates, dinosaurs and two-bit aliens who want to kill Superman for putting their relatives behind bars. At one point, they even outrun a magical spell to the end of time itself while riding the super horse, Comet.

DC Films’ new Supergirl is only good enough to land a spot in the temporary nook of one’s prefrontal cortex, a wasteland reserved for memories that die fast

This is the story of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, a surprisingly low-key, critically acclaimed eight-issue comic by writer Tom King and artist Bilquis Evely that was good enough for an Eisner nomination — the Oscars of the comic-book world.

On the flip side, its on-screen equivalent, Supergirl, is only good enough to land a spot in the temporary nook of one’s prefrontal cortex — a wasteland reserved for memories that die fast.

Written by actress-turned-debuting screenwriter Ana Nogueira, this apparently “brilliant screenplay” — according to DC films’ co-chief James Gunn — is, I believe, ‘a masterclass in screenwriting’. A masterclass in how to make a unique comic book sound blatantly boisterous and banal.

While I am not the biggest fan of Tom King’s prose — Ruthye’s front-facing monologues can’t seem to decide between modern or classic prose — that story at least unfolded layers of emotion in the simplest, perhaps a tad too relaxed, narrative manner possible. Relaxed doesn’t mean bad, by the way.

The film mangled the same beats into something nearly unrecognisable. Teeming with uninspiring costumes, environments and character designs right out of a Sci-fi TV channel show, Supergirl’s creative mechanics think it is cool to emulate Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

A better, and perhaps more unique choice, would have been to use the slightly mellow pace and narrative of the comic, which already has its fair share of action sequences. (It is a superhero comic — why wouldn’t it have big action sequences?)

I’ve always believed that if a story doesn’t sound fresh on paper — and I am not just talking about how well the action or dialogue reads in screenplay form — there is a high chance it won’t be directed any better. Enter here director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Cruella).

His pedestrian choices in camera placement — opting for maximum coverage (ie basic angles) for the edit — remind you why a “director’s point-of-view” means squat in today’s world. Tone, pacing, emotion and the whole package of cinematic sense and sensibility are replaced by a visionless blur, where even a comic-book fan like me is bored to death.

The only slight saving grace comes from Milly Alcock as Supergirl — don’t buy into the internet’s negativity — who carries the weight of this dead enterprise quite admirably on her little shoulders.

But there is only so much she can do when bombastic blandness and cameos (Jason Momoa plays Lobo in two needless appearances) take un-super precedence.

Also starring Matthias Schoenaerts and Eve Ridley as Krem and Ruthye, Supergirl is released by WB and HKC with a PG censor certificate. Chances are, you’ll be bored

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, July 12th, 2026

Let me put a reminder on my phone for that.

Jokes aside (no matter how painfully real), it has been a good while since we’ve seen quality storytelling from Pixar that appeals to both four-year-olds and 40-year-olds who feel as if they are four. By the time Toy Story 5 ends, the chances are that you’ll want to unpack your old toys from their cardboard boxes. If, that is, you haven’t given them away.

The nearly forgotten “Pixar touch” is strong with this one.

Toy Story 5 uses a familiar adventure to explore how screens are replacing imagination, while reminding adults why they once loved their toys

While bittersweet nostalgia tugs at your emotions, technical brilliance seizes your visual senses. Look past the glorious images (courtesy of their in-house, industry-standard rendering software, RenderMan) and take note of the body movements and actions of the individual toys. That is a lot of work up there on the screen.

However, the film’s $250 million price tag is a little on the steep side. Especially for a film that is somewhat limited in scope.

As the middle entry of the second trilogy — the first three featured Andy and his toys, Woody and Buzz (voiced by Tom Hanks and Tim Allen) — we get Jessie’s solo show here (her voice, complete with the cowgirl drawl, comes courtesy of Joan Allen).

Jessie’s pride and joy is her human playmate, Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), though Bonnie isn’t Jessie’s first owner. Her past becomes an emotional crux that pushes her to the edge when she realises that Bonnie, now eight years old, might be outgrowing the days of carefree imagination.

While Bonnie still plays with toys, every other child in her vicinity (and perhaps the world) spends their waking moments on electronic devices. Bonnie’s days as an outcast with no friends change when her mother and father get her Lilypad (Greta Lee), a frog-themed tablet.

Lily gets to work as soon as she’s turned on, cutting short Bonnie’s childhood while piling societal pressures into the little girl’s mind. Playing with toys is a turn-off and socially unacceptable — no matter how hard it hurts the toys’ feelings. I’ll make sure my GI Joes, He-Man and Transformers action figures don’t hear that.

Woody, balding with a fat gut, and Buzz are afterthoughts in this one — perhaps even more so than in Part 4. Mr and Mrs Potato Head, Hamm, Rex and the others are nearly background decorations, with a few lines here and there.

The new characters — forgotten devices played by Conan O’Brien, Craig Robinson and Shelby Rabara (playing a toilet-training toy, a hippo GPS, and a low-megapixel toy camera) — share part of the spotlight in Jessie’s attempts to return to Bonnie and make her believe that toys still have worth.

A parallel track involving 50 lost Buzz Lightyears (updated ones who can really fly) and a girl named Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), who somewhat shares Bonnie’s predicament, supports the deliberately constricted screenplay co-written by Kenna Harris and director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Finding Dory, Wall-E).

Toys getting lost and returning to their owners is a surprisingly old trope that still works after five films, though one can feel that things have changed quite drastically in tone. Gone are the days of wonder and imagination. In their stead — since Part 3 — Toy Story has slowly become a tale of survival. Although it has worked well until now, I think the approach will definitely lose its appeal by Part 6, when Bonnie grows up and her trilogy concludes.

Till then, one hopes that Pixar continues to tell good stories — both for four-year-olds and 40-somethings who still want to remember what being four, and carefree, felt like.

Released by Disney and HKC, Toy Story 5 is rated U and is suitable for everyone

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, July 5th, 2026

Consistent in originality and unexpectedness. Consistent in tone that balances intriguing horror and absurdity, yet perfectly timed bits of comedy. Consistent in the Twilight Zone-ish, far-fetched nature of its premise. Consistent with the spirit of independent cinema.

Back in 1991, Francis Ford Coppola predicted that — and I quote (from the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse): “One day, some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart of a good movie, and the so-called professionalism will be destroyed, forever, and it will really become an art form.”

Obsession is the film Coppola was talking about. Written, edited and directed by a young YouTube filmmaker — the 26-year-old Curry Barker — whose experience was largely made up of skits and shorts; produced for less than $750,000; picked up by a major studio (Focus Features) for $15 million; and making (as of the time of this writing) $332 million worldwide. It will, perhaps, open the floodgates for aspiring filmmakers from YouTube who want to make films but end up making shorts and spec advertisements, doing corporate documentary work or editing someone else’s YouTube videos. It is a film that will make careers for everyone involved.

Obsession is the Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity of the internet generation

Obsession is the Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity of the internet generation, delivered in the off-kilter, independent-minded style of the Hollywood studio A24 (this generation’s Miramax, if you will).

It is a film that delivers solid storytelling and proves that one doesn’t need big budgets or big-name stars to make the audience take notice… though a few tens of millions in marketing didn’t hurt, I am assuming (the film wouldn’t have gotten this big without the big publicity spend).

The genre choice is trendy. A horror that banks more on the supernatural, ambience and disturbing bits of dark comedy than out-and-out horror.

The premise isn’t that original — an inspiration springing from The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror II (Lisa’s monkey’s paw segment), which itself is a homage to The Twilight Zone.

More than The Simpsons, though, the premise comes from a ’60s Twilight Zone episode, The Chaser. In it, a man, desperate to get the girl who doesn’t reciprocate his affections, gives her a love potion that makes him her ‘obsession’. In Obsession, the love potion and the light-heartedness get replaced.

Baron ‘Bear’ Bailey (Michael Johnston, quite good), a perpetually afraid, socially awkward, wimpy music store employee, fancies his co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette, excellent), and buys a novelty toy that claims to grant one wish per person. What he — and the audience — don’t foresee is the psychological after-effects of the ‘magic’. The divide between Nikki’s soul and her fractured present state makes for a fascinating watch though, by the end, the film takes the easy way out for both characters.

Unlike The Companion — another must-watch horror film — Obsession is very aware of its lack of budget, and chooses to keep the film contained to a bare minimum number of locations and actors. But chances are that most of the film’s audience won’t notice it because of Barker’s really steady, surprisingly assured hand as a filmmaker.

Now that he, his YouTube origins, and the film have gained notoriety, chances are things will get easier for hundreds — if not thousands — of internet-only filmmakers. I just pray that a significant percentage of these young filmmakers do not make horror their go-to genre.

Released by Focus Features and HKC (in Pakistan), Obsession is rated “A”. It is adults-only for a reason.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, June 28th, 2026

As his recent, brilliant novella, Something Might Fall, indicates, Flusfeder (who is of an Anglo-American background) holds his own against this backdrop, with a grace and sophistication that leaves one marvelling, especially since the novella genre is a slippery and difficult one to cope with.

Released and launched in May 2026, the novella is divided into two main sections. Its time span includes the years 1970 and 1974, and is set in New York, particularly the Upper West Side, where the main female protagonist, Emma Sawyer (her maiden name was Hoffman), resides.

The first segment deals with the inner angst Emma suffers at having to act as the consummate hostess and socialite for her husband, Nicholas Sawyer, an affluent doctor.

A deeply loving and dedicated mother to her six-year-old son, Nicky, Emma feels increasingly trapped by a world where the slightest breach of social etiquette, even if inadvertent or a genuine mistake, can result in resentment and consequences that can all too easily escalate into a social crisis.

An upper-class New York wife and mother in the 1970s finds herself suffocated by the demands of social performance and the loss of her own self in a brilliant new novella

More importantly, we sympathise even further with this “poor little rich girl” because she gave up a career as a writer in order to ensure that her husband’s domestic life runs on lines that are smooth to the point of being quasi-military in their efficiency.

Flusfeder’s major strength as a writer lies in his remarkably astute eye for detail.

Even Emma’s meeting with a friend, Nina Weiss, who is grumpy and peeved at not being invited to one of the Sawyers’ social events, is carefully choreographed. It takes place at a deli and I was impressed by the finely tuned use of language that enables Flusfeder to give clarity to what would otherwise be entirely mundane.

As a customer standing in line before Emma and Nina argues volubly with the man on the other side of the deli counter, reference is made to “lox and tongue” — which ostensibly refers to the meat being ordered — but the tongue-in-cheek joke implied by the author is that everyone (including Emma and Nina, not to mention the reader) hopes the woman will finally see fit to put locks on her tongue and move on. Nina lets go of her grudge and invites Emma to a party she is now deciding to host, but the exchange is socially awkward to the point of being painful.

One sighs as we are introduced to Emma’s life, which has gone from being that of a promising writer to one that consists of carefully calibrated social minutiae, which pile up until the protagonist feels nothing short of stifled.

I do not intend to spoil the novella by revealing the escape route taken by Emma in order to free herself from an essentially hollowed existence. Suffice it to say that even her deep love for her son Nicky, a well-raised and sensitive boy, cannot compensate for her utter exhaustion on both the physical and emotional levels.

Sad though it is, one understands why Emma takes leave of her family in a manner that leaves both Nicholas Senior and Nicholas Junior utterly bewildered.

But while they might be bewildered, the perceptive reader is not. Both Henry James and Edith Wharton were all too aware of how repressive affluent New York society could be. One only has to peruse The Age of Innocence or The Golden Bowl in order to realise that not only is life that glitters not gold, sometimes it is as dangerous as radium, metaphorically causing a cancer that eats away rapidly at one’s sense of self as well as one’s intrinsic dignity.

Emma must have done something right in raising Nicky, however, because on one of his birthdays following her departure, he befriends a homeless man named Chambers and brings him to his apartment (the pun on “chambers” is not lost on most readers) so that Chambers can take a shower and get something to eat. The building doorman does his job, however, and alerts Dr Sawyer, who sends along a brisk and snobbish nurse named Mary to get rid of Chambers, but not before Nicky learns to appreciate and demonstrate a sense of humanity. His mother would have been proud of him. So, too, is the sympathetic reader.

Regardless of whether he has us view life through the eyes of a mother or those of her child, Flusfeder never loses his grasp on maintaining the authenticity of tone. Emma’s internal monologues (redolent of extended streams of consciousness, occasionally even prose poetry) give one a more accurate sense of her inner frustration than a dozen different external viewpoints might have.

The moment where Nicky, strolling through a park in the Big Apple, comes across a couple of intriguing outdoor chess games, causes such a sense of wonder in the child that he uses some of his birthday funds to buy a pricey chess clock from FAO Schwarz. But both he and Chambers forget about the clock when they engage in a more important set of moves on the chessboard of life.

Densely packed though the novella is, at less than 100 pages, it is a fast and engrossing read. Flusfeder’s prose is tremendously engaging, and his command over character development is nothing short of flawless.

Even the detail that Nicholas Senior’s name was changed from the Ashkenazi Jewish “Seger” to the more WASP-ish “Sawyer” is loaded with meaning — since few characters conjure up an image of white American boyhood more vividly than Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer.

Something Might Fall is a novella that lends itself to repeated readings, because the language kaleidoscopically enables one to view a different set of images with every additional reading.

In its own quiet way, the novella is a work of pathos and sweetness, but I shall venture a step beyond that. In an even more subtle way, the book is a work of genius.

The reviewer is Associate Professor of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts at the Institute of Business Administration. She has authored two collections of short stories, Timeless College Tales and Perennial College Tales and a play, The Political Chess King

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, June 14th, 2026

He didn’t have He-Man in mind when he made this comment. He died in 1981, two years before the original cartoon’s debut. But he might as well have. (He was talking about the phallus, if you’re wondering).

It is difficult to think of a more quintessentially Freudian creation than Mattel’s hyperbolically muscular hero: a man who, in the words of his evil nemesis Skeletor in this new remake, draws his power from that “strong, powerful thing hanging between your legs”.

The central conceit of this take on Masters of the Universe is to make, in effect, a male Barbie movie.

Taking a similarly gendered toy product as its prompt, the film tasks itself with answering the question of what He-Man means to audiences in 2026. I suspect phrases like “fresh take”, “modern sensibility” and “toxic masculinity” were used with considerable earnestness at various pitch meetings in the film’s pre-production process.

What Masters of the Universe gets badly wrong is the assumption that the over-the-top masculinity of its campy hero needs to be explained or justified

The story unfolds as follows. A brief prologue introduces us to the young Prince Adam (He-Man before he becomes He-Man) of Eternia, not as a mighty warrior but as a boy struggling to live up to the manly prowess of his father’s expectations. At the bottom of his class in a militaristic world of combat, he is considered by pretty much everyone as a likeable but weedy young boy, ill-equipped to face the world as a proper man.

Then the evil Skeletor shows up, usurps his father’s throne and forces Adam into exile on Earth, where he must embark on a journey of self-discovery, so that he can one day return to the world of Eternia, where he belongs and regain his father’s throne.

The film treats the idea of a flawed, contemporary Adam with conspicuous sincerity, though the first act mines Adam’s embattled masculinity for comedy. We encounter him working in HR, specialising in conflict resolution. His work badge features pronouns. He attends seminars on consent, shares “his truth” freely, and listens compassionately to the truths of others. He is emphatically not the He-Man we remember. Yet, supposedly, he has power, or at the very least is going to.

The continuous jabs at the mismatch between modern society and the masculine ideals embodied in Mattel’s original He-Man toy are presumably attempting to offer a more nuanced, or at the very least more irreverent, take on the He-Man character.

This assumes that comedy always subverts things. It doesn’t. Instead, the humour acts as a kind of permission structure, signalling self-awareness as a means of excusing the moments it actually takes seriously.

There are endless jokes made at the expense of contemporary woke culture. There are some jokes made at the more absurd elements of the franchise’s mythology and iconography. But no jokes are made at anything fundamental to the franchise’s lore or logic.

The film does not invite laughter at the expense of the male physique, the importance of bravery or the combat-based rules by which this entire fantasy world is governed. Indeed, it is here where the humour dries up, choosing to find its “heart” at the moments of physical conquest and sacrifice as Adam returns to Eternia and, well… I shan’t spoil it, but I suspect you can guess the rest.

What Masters of the Universe gets badly wrong is the assumption that the franchise needs to be explained or justified, that He-Man’s phallic symbolism requires management and modernisation rather than, simply, play.

He-Man was never supposed to make sense to begin with. If he had a virtue, it was that the absurdly phallic franchise allowed young children of any gender to hold just a little lighter the gender ideals expected of them. He-Man’s bulging biceps and absurdly one-dimensional characterisation allowed him to embody masculinity in a way no actual man could. And, paradoxically, that made masculinity feel less real as a concept as a result.

The original 1983 cartoon was produced to sell toys, and it sold them most effectively when it was delirious, incoherent and utterly indifferent to the anxieties of adult interpretation. Even the original live-action film was confident enough to produce the camp masculine spectacle that the franchise represents.

This new film is too afraid of its shadow to simply let He-Man be what he is, and trust modern audiences to know what to do with him.

Republished from The Conversation

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, June 14th, 2026

Now let me ask you another question. If you did go exploring said halls, heard demonic screams, ran back to the wall you entered through and managed to return to the real world, would you go back into the void again?

Enter Clark, a struggling furniture salesman. There’s a few things you need to know about him: he has a drinking problem, his wife left him, she’s kept the house and he lives in his furniture showroom — Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire — which he advertises in a pirate costume.

All that to say, things aren’t really looking up for this guy.

That’s when, irritated by high electricity bills and voltage fluctuation, he decides to go down to the basement late one night to investigate. He sees a sliver of light shining through an otherwise solid wall — and when his hand manages to go through the wall itself, he leans in a bit too much and falls into the Backrooms.

Now, if you’re familiar with creepypastas (internet horror stories, not ominously placed lasagna), you already know what those are. But for the uninitiated, it’s a series of endless, empty corridors and rooms lit by fluorescent lights.

It’s supposed to feel just a bit uncanny to the casual observer, like an unlit hallway in a hospital that goes on a little too long or a mall after all the shops have closed, and it does. The film does a good job of capturing that unnerving feeling.

So, Clark enters the Backrooms, exits them and enters again, eventually making it his mission to try and map them out. He tells his therapist about this and wows to bring back proof when she — understandably — doesn’t believe a word of what he’s saying.

Enlisting the help of his trusty crew from the store, the captain embarks on a quest to film the backrooms and prove he hasn’t completely lost his bearings. But Murphy’s Law eventually kicks in and Clark does indeed end up losing his bearings.

I’ll spare you the details of what happens afterwards to avoid giving away any spoilers, but the film suffers from an unfortunate habit of taking itself too seriously.

The film’s score did a lot of heavy lifting when it came to building the necessary tension. The initial scenes inside the Backrooms really wouldn’t have been as unsettling as they were if it weren’t for the music — and the hum of fluorescent lights — in the background.

The setting itself was also well designed. Members of the film crew actually got lost in the 30,000 square feet of set built for this movie. It was almost Nolanian in a way, actually recreating an impossible space instead of resorting to green screens and CGI.

But for a film based on an internet legend, the legend itself doesn’t appear to be the main plot point of the movie. Instead, it seemed to focus more on Clark’s declining mental state — and maybe the whole film can be read as a metaphor for mental health.

The film starts with some ‘found footage’ style action that isn’t adequately explained at any point and maybe it would have been wiser to have continued in that direction. We also don’t get an explanation for what the Backrooms are, how they came to be or why — all we know is that they are massive and ever-changing.

We are also given hints of there being a major threat lurking somewhere in the halls, a threat we never actually come face to face with during the film — I personally don’t believe the pirate was the big bad.

If you’re familiar with this genre of internet horror — especially director Kane Parsons’ prior work on YouTube — you know this concept had heaps of potential, potential it didn’t really live up to in its pursuit of some sort of deeper meaning.

The truth is, the plot of Backrooms feels like a 20-year-old’s film thesis, not a major international feature. The fact that Parsons turns 21 this week doesn’t excuse this, he’s done better.

Overall, the film was not what I had hoped it would be as a creepypasta reader of yesteryear. It wasn’t terrible, and I still see some of the scenes in my dreams a couple of days after having seen the film, so it clearly had an effect.

The same formula — tension, disturbing visuals and a deeper meaning — would’ve worked well for some other, more straightforward internet legends like the Russian Sleep Experiment, but something as lore-heavy as the Backrooms demanded something truer to the source material.

Although far from entertaining, it is by far the most interesting scene in a film that starts from nowhere, dawdles aimlessly, chooses to tell half a story, and ends with a “To Be Continued” bumper.

One can’t help but feel that story writer, director and producer Imran Malik is insisting that the remaining, presumably better half, rests in a sequel. A sequel that may never come to pass.

When one views the film in that context, can one really blame the lead character for being sad?

For the purposes of the story, we learn the source of Zarshaan’s sorrow through low-quality, AI-rendered flashbacks. His parents (Usman Peerzada and Saba Hameed) were researchers who had everything — money, a mansion, and a thriving business in Thailand — but lost it all thanks to a bad investment.

In one atrocious AI flashback, we see them perishing in a highway accident. Zarshaan, being the driver, is ridden with guilt. Or is he?

Penniless, sensible and cheerful enough when not sad — though we never quite understand why a grown man chooses wallowing over taking charge of his life despite his hardships — he helps a disabled boy retrieve a kite. At the end of the kite-chase he ends up — again, with AI-assisted inserts — in an apartment where several young women live.

Presumably an astute, worldly-wise young man (probably because Saeed plays him that way), he fails to notice that there is something off about these women.

For starters, they have no elders in the house, dress conspicuously and strut home late at night from parties, claiming that they’re coming from a shrine. They’re also scared of the law — when sirens blare, they scramble to hide beneath the bed.

It is revealed late in the film (insert dull surprise here) that they are prostitutes. The film chooses to call them ‘Tawaiafs’. Given that he is from Thailand — a country where prostitution thrives with a $6 to $8 billion annual turnover — it is hard to excuse his naivety, or the screenplay’s insistence upon it.

As was bound to happen, our hero falls somewhat in love with Billo (Mamya Shajaffar), the spunky, wide-eyed heroine who doesn’t blink.

“Somewhat” is the operative word here. There is no build-up to the romance, even when 70 per cent of the film unfolds within the confines of two sets that function as Zarshaan’s perpetually messy apartment. The very apartment whose room he rents to the two women.

While the audience tries to make sense of the relationship between the two leads, three side-tracks are shoehorned into the running narrative.

The first is the comic relief, Sardar Happy Singh (Rana Ijaz) — a good-hearted, lascivious sleaze-bag who befriends Zarshaan and then asks him to spy on his cheating wife (Happy, by the way, was cheating on her as well).

The second track involves Sureet (Mehrunisa Iqbal), a Hindu girl abducted at a young age and forced into prostitution. Like Happy’s track, this does not fit naturally into the narrative.

The third — and just as ill-fitting as the other two — features the eternally, manically happy villain (Tabrez Khan), who lives off the prostitutes’ earnings. Apparently a pretty big deal, this unhinged bad guy is never given scenes that establish who he really is or what makes him tick.

These scattered ideas — one cannot even call them a fully mapped-out story — lumber along until the pacing collapses under its own weight. Then the unthinkable happens: screenwriter Wajid Zuberi and Malik flip the script 180 degrees by introducing Babar Ali.

Ali plays one of Luv Di Saun’s two “other” heroes. He is the bodyguard of a billionaire (Rashid Khwaja) searching for his empire’s heir.

No points for guessing that Billo is the heir. After all, as she herself says in a scene, she always felt she didn’t quite belong in the life she was living, even though she is often seen having a ball.

The other “other” hero enters just before the climax: Humayun Saeed. Pakistani cinema’s unassailable superstar plays an unassailable Dabangg-style police officer who holds a tasbeeh in his killer hands. The man frees kidnapped women, looks up to the Almighty for permission, and then saves Zarshaan after he is beaten to a pulp.

By now, Luv Di Saun has thrown Farhan Saeed’s character to the sidelines, abandoning the idea of a simple wrong-side-of-the-tracks love story and replacing it with a plot-line that makes little to no sense.

And yet the film is still not over. The aforementioned “To Be Continued” bumper hits the viewer like a sledgehammer, alluding to a far bigger story that’s left up in the air. A story worth, perhaps, 10 minutes of screen time.

One fails to see the bigger picture here. For a good two and a half hours, the audience is forced to accept an unmapped half-picture — one that is amateurishly edited, badly sound-designed, and constricted to a few sets — only to be told that even this minuscule story has been left incomplete.

One wonders if Luv Di Saun is worse than Imran Malik’s last film, Azaadi, starring Moammar Rana and Sonya Hussyn. It is definitely better acted — though only because of Saeed, who is on-screen for 80 per cent of the runtime; it is also better shot (the director of photography is Syed Faisal Bukhari), and has a decent song or two. But these few qualities do not equate to a better experience.

For the most part, the long running time desperately tries to build characters. Both Zarshaan and Billo have scenes that could have added dimension and emotional resonance; instead, they feel fake and superficial. After a while, the entire exercise grows repetitive.

Being boring is the least of Luv Di Saun’s problems, though. The bigger issue is its failure to figure out its own story — and without a story brimming with passion, conviction, conflict, and forward momentum, what is left in a film other than wasted hours?

The acting was fine, the plot was fine, the visuals were fine. Everything was just fine.

As a zombie media aficionado, I’ve seen just about every zombie TV show and movie there is to watch on Netflix and beyond. I love the genre. There’s something about how a zombie apocalypse changes human nature that I love examining. But there was none of that here.

The zombie lore was quite basic — the virus spreads through an extremely predictable mechanism. The zombies are sensitive to sound, but not the smell of human flesh. There is, of course, a final zombie boss who is extremely pumped up on steroids and revenge and lacks the singular flesh-eating motivation the other zombies have… inadvertently raising questions about how that came to be.

I guess that’s one of the most obvious plot holes here for me — and let me tell you, I’m not great at identifying plot holes, I usually like to turn my brain off and watch movies. I enjoy being entertained. Was I entertained? Mildly. Would I watch it again? Nah.

Anyway, now that you have some context, let me talk about the film a bit more. It’s directed by Nabeel Qureshi and Fizza Ali Meerza. They’ve both teamed up with Fahad Mustafa and Mehwish Hayat on at least four other films. The first of these films was Na Maloom Afraad (2014), which I also saw in the cinema, though Hayat only had a cameo appearance in a highly controversial item number. They both starred as leads in their next film together, Actor In Law. What both of these films got really right was the way you could tell they were shot in Karachi because the city was a main character.

Unfortunately, despite Zombeid being advertised as Pakistan’s first zombie thriller, there’s very little in terms of visuals that suggests the film was shot in a recognisable Pakistani city. That was probably the biggest let down for me. After watching a clever promo on Geo News (the film was produced by GeoFilms) where these two anchors go through a rundown of the daily headlines while zombies ravage the office behind them, I was really pumped to witness a zombie apocalypse within a local context.

Instead, most of the movie is centred around an unrecognisable, ugly, concrete block of a gym called Muscle Factory allegedly located in Karachi’s DHA Phase 8 but which may as well be floating in the ether for all we know. Hayat is Zara, a Zumba instructor at the gym, and Mustafa is Wali, a former Mr Pakistan winner whose bodybuilding career was cut short by injury. He asks for a job at the gym and is given a chance to get back into the fitness industry after some time away.

The bane of his existence is Marwan, his former bodybuilding partner, trained by the same (now-dead) ustaad. Marwan was disqualified from the Mr Pakistan competition because his drug test showed he’d been taking steroids. Since then, the man appears to have made it his mission to peddle steroids indiscriminately to insecure looksmaxxers at the gym. Interestingly, it was here that I began wondering… is Zombeid deeper than I’m giving it credit for?

Is it perhaps a commentary on the culture of commodifying and modifying our bodies, making them appear sculpted and perfect for the gazes of others looking at us through their phones? Is it suggesting that the ground zero of this culture are the gyms and bodybuilding competitions of the world? Could it be proposing that such a culture spreads like a virus through proximity to others who are infected with it? Are we all becoming mindless zombies, obsessed with looking a certain way, performing for others’ gazes a certain way?

I didn’t allow my thoughts to go any deeper than this because I thought I may be handing the filmmakers too much credit. There isn’t much else that pointed to any deep-seated motivations behind making this film.

Anyway, as you may have guessed by now, the virus is spread through a trial steroid that Marwan starts injecting desperate looksmaxxers with. What happens next is that the gym becomes infested with zombies. Of course, our leads all remain bite-free for most of the film. There are the usual shenanigans – sneaking around to find a way out of the gym, almost getting bitten, an influencer ludicrously going live to alert citizens about the situation in the gym, a police nafri that shows up hoping to bust a rave they can extort money and ‘confiscate’ drugs and booze from, and finally a throng of people gathering outside the gym, watching expectantly in exactly the way Karachiites hop over to Seaview the minute there’s a storm brewing. (There was a joke about this in the movie too, by the way.)

I won’t tell you how it ends, but I will say I enjoyed the little jokes and allusions to Karachi and Pakistani culture in the movie. The jokes were very current and cleverly written — for instance, there was one about “Strait of Hormones”. Ironically, there are scenes during Wali and Zara’s courtship where they watch a zombie movie in the cinema and then another where they get frisky while playing a zombie shooter game. The chemistry between the leads was good — after all the projects they’ve done together, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.

I enjoyed the character of Zara just a little bit more than Wali. Mustafa tends to play the same kind of guy again and again — a sensitive softboi underdog with something to prove. I’m not saying he’s not good at it, but it would be cool to see him in a different role at some point. The visuals of him buffed up as a bodybuilder were hard to stomach though — they definitely looked like his head had been superimposed onto an AI-generated body. I’m not sure how much AI was used in the making of this film, but I’m not a fan of the use of AI in creative disciplines. Why don’t we just save it for things that human beings DON’T want to do?

Overall, I’d give the film a solid 6.5/10. Go watch it with your friends and family and enjoy the jokes. It’s no worse than spending the evening Netflix and chilling at home — and hopefully you’ll get to collectively bond over the experience. Isn’t that what cinema is about, after all?

However, Psycho doesn’t fully lean into any genre or theme at all. The film hovers on the edges of psychological thriller, horror and comedy, but ends up using the most cliche elements of all to create a collection of scenes that are structured without a storyline.

Let’s talk about the elements of horror in the film. We see a woman dancing in a short, gold sequinned dress; a scene that is supposed to alert the viewers that she is not mentally well. There’s blood-soaked faces and bodies and many fight scenes. We get many murders and hangings. A huge array of crime happens. None of that, unfortunately, makes it horror.

The primary facet of horror is the shock factor. If done right, horror should make you want to turn away but it should be so captivating that you simply cannot look away. The gore in this film makes you want to look away but you do not care enough to want to keep watching. That’s why the film feels so drawn out.

Horror needs an element of mundanity. If we cannot relate to the characters in some shape or form, it is hard to be scared of — or for — them. In Psycho, the characters are not fleshed out. You cannot find yourself worrying about two-dimensional characters, but that’s all we get here.

The film centres around two romantic couples, both of whom have large age gaps, which makes you question the casting choices. We have Javed Sheikh (71) paired with Meera (49), and Shaan Shahid (55) paired with Sonya Hussyn (29). I was hoping the age differences would be used to drive a point home about age-gap love stories, instead, the film tries hard to pretend that the couples are in similar age groups. At a time when misogyny and ageism are rampant in our society and women are considered too old past their 30s, it was frustrating to see these pairings, no matter how refreshing it was to see someone in his 70s dance and sing in love.

It was different enough from the usual stereotypes of romance being reserved for people in their 20s or 30s. However, it was hard not to notice the age gap between Sheikh and Meera in those scenes specifically.

Overall, in terms of romantic scenes, the film tries to normalise physical affection in married couples, which was a good step forward. But when things go wrong, the same couples turn to violence against each other.

The basic premise of the film, from what I could decipher — even though the premise and the plot seem to be hidden far beyond what the naked eye could see — is about a mentally-ill woman, perhaps even psychotic. But we don’t get any background or context for why she acts that way. All the cliches of a ‘mad’ person get translated through Meera’s character.

The promotions for the film have widely discussed mental health as a key theme that the film explores. So, going into the theatre, I was hoping to see some conversation-sparking characters and themes that could advance mental health care in the country. However, it was disappointing to see that the mentally ill character was just a caricature. She didn’t get a background story and there was no context for why she acted that way.

For a film that promised to shed light on mental health, it did the opposite. The story, if there was one, just reinforced the idea that mentally ill people are dangerous and need to be ‘eradicated’ from society. After the film ended, I was left wondering: why couldn’t the mentally ill woman get a redemption arc similar to the one every man in the film somehow seemed to get? Even the big bad is killed in a dramatic scene that might make you feel bad for him.

If the caricature of a psychotic person wasn’t enough, the film also employs jokes in poor taste, introducing a character who is called “gay” for acting feminine and openly called a “khusra” as a joke. The transphobic slur is used to instil comedic undertones, or at least that’s what the intention seems to be.

In the opening scene of the film, a rape trial is used to introduce the two lawyers. Sara, played by Hussyn, is fighting for the rape victim, and Salman, played by Shahid, is defending the accused. Other than the court scene being unrealistically dramatic, all seems normal until we find out that the two lawyers are in a long-term romantic relationship.

That reveal highlighted the film creators’ ignorance towards the sensitivity of rape trials. Using a rape trial to establish how ‘cool’ the defendant’s lawyer is was something I did not expect to see in 2026. Our drama industry has seen huge advances in terms of sensitivity towards such issues in recent times, but it seems like our films are still stuck in the pre-woke era where rape was just a plot device, not a life-altering incident for the victim.

In the absence of plot and character-building, the viewer would hope to see at least some good dialogue, which we were also deprived of throughout the film. We see some good acting from the big names here but their acting skills are not enough to make up for the lack of storytelling.

There was so much potential to create a film that could spark real conversations on mental health, especially in our society where we clearly lack awareness regarding mental illness, but the creators chose to depict the same stereotypes that typify mentally ill people as insane and dangerous.

Abu Aleeha’s 10th (or is it 11th?) directorial feature — I’ve lost count by now — is a notch better than Taxali Gate, his previous big-screen venture produced by and starring Ayesha Omar.

Omar returns here as executive producer and actor, playing Behnaz, an ex-footballer-turned-national coach. However, unlike Taxali Gate, her presence is negligible, despite being billed as front-and-centre alongside the film’s lead, Dananeer Mobeen.

Dananeer is the glue — no, make that super-glue — holding together this exceedingly thin story of a girl from Lyari named Afsana, who dreams of playing pro-football and who ultimately gets selected. That is the entire gist. One wishes there were more — both in terms of the story and football.

Despite star Dananeer Mobeen’s valiant attempts to kick it into the stratosphere, Mera Lyari, which champions female empowerment and football, stumbles like all of director Abu Aleeha’s films

Surrounding Afsana is a familiar assortment of clichés. There’s her bad-but-good dad Arif Baloch (Nayyar Ejaz, delivering a hammy, over-the-top performance) — a bad-tempered rickshaw driver who lashes out because his backwardness opposes his daughter’s athletic ambitions. Then there’s her sympathetic mother Shakira Hussain (Samiya Mumtaz), who desperately wants a son and shares a bizarrely candid bond with her daughter — who doesn’t shy away from making uncomfortable, misplaced jokes about her parents’ sex life. A passing subplot also shoehorns predatory fake babas and taaveez (charms) meant to help women conceive boys.

Afsana’s best friend, Kashmala (Trinette Lucas), looks too refined, with model-perfect skin and make-up, to be from the lower-middle-class Lyari; like her bestie, she’s also a footballer and faces the familial pressure of being married off in her mid-teens to a much older man. Though her character suffers from the same superficiality as the rest of the cast, she gets a semblance of a happy ending that smooths things out — and thankfully, Lucas proves to be a genuine acting find.

The film loudly proclaims its theme of female empowerment and entirely discards romantic subplots. Men — with the minor exception of Behnaz’s assistant (Shoaib Hassan) — are largely portrayed as villains. To accentuate this, we get a nefarious neighbour, Faiq Khan (Adnan Shah Tipu), and Behnaz’s ex-husband (Paras Masroor), who shatters her leg in a flashback within a flashback — yes, really — that ends her career.

In those flashbacks, Behnaz lives in a modest Lyari home like Afsana. Yet, in the present, she resides in a posh house after returning from London. Unless the Pakistani government has secretly started handing out massive stipends to female footballers, a huge chunk of that story is missing. I suspect the latter.

Aleeha, a journalist-turned-filmmaker, has never been an astute screenwriter. Despite his staggering number of works, his scripts still feel like first drafts — good ideas hastily written and fed straight into the production grinder. His films always have one saving grace — Asrad Khan’s reliably strong cinematography — but are ultimately wrecked by the editing, music and sound design.

Here, apart from Asrad, there are two more technical pluses: the minimalist production design that suits the story’s naturalistic tone, and Ehtasham Mallick’s surprisingly dimensional surround sound mastering, even if the music cues fade in and out inelegantly.

Shayan Masood’s choppy editing is subpar and ineffective. The nested flashbacks and a disorienting 10-minute sequence — where four scenes with starkly different characters, emotions and tones happening simultaneously are mashed together — will make your head throb. It’s simply too much creative indulgence for a poor reviewer to bear.

Still, Aleeha has improved as a director. His aesthetic approach to blocking and performance has noticeably matured, and his greatest assets remain his actors. Mumtaz, Masroor, Lucas and (in a few scenes) Omar do genuinely elevate the material.

However, it is Dananeer who (pardon the pun) tries her valiant best to kick the film into the stratosphere. Despite occasional slips in her accent, her debut is a smashing breakthrough. She displays range, sincerity and a maturity that many actors fail to muster even after years on screen.

At times, she makes you believe the impossible: that the creative slip-ups and the glaring lack of actual football matches and training are trifling matters. She makes you believe there’s a better movie hidden inside this barebones production that boasts about as much (if not less) plot and production values than a standard telefilm.

Chances are you won’t find it, but watching Dananeer give the film her all, you can’t help but wish it were hiding somewhere just out of plain sight, behind the goal post.

Produced by Waqas Hassan Rizvi and Sania Sohail and released by Distribution Club, Mera Lyari is rated PG. It features loud, adult language and scenes that heavily champion female empowerment.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, May 17th, 2026

But that’s okay. This adaptation of Michael’s life — directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equaliser), written by John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator), and produced by Graham King (Bohemian Rhapsody, The Departed) — is a perfect recap-cum-balancing act.

A film that’s neither ‘Dangerous’ when it comes to pushing narrative boundaries, nor ‘Bad’ when it comes to storytelling, nor a ‘Thriller’ when it comes to keeping you hooked on unexpected plot turns, nor just ‘Black or White’. It gives you just enough “best of” moments to keep you engaged, but plays it safe by toning down the creativity.

Michael is a harmless, good enough film about a musical icon who didn’t care to be just ‘good enough’

For the most part, the way Fuqua, Logan and King tell the story suggests that their priority is to present the most dramatic, mellow and generally palatable representation of Michael’s life. It is a straightforward account of what people already know, presented in a way where the drama doesn’t shatter the ceiling, or introduce the kind of human frailty and fallibility that might sully Michael Jackson’s image.

Like I said earlier, it is a balancing act — one that only delves into the first half of the pop icon’s life; a story about a young man freeing himself from his father’s shackles. It is a hard sell, let me tell you, because the angle is all bark and no bite.

In 1966, we see Michael as a young prodigy (Juliano Krue Valdi) whose ambition is kept in check by his dad, Joseph ‘Joe’ Jackson (Colman Domingo). Joe, a steelworker from Gary, Indiana, is an enterprising, hard man who wants his children, The Jackson 5, to be a perfect music band. That means late-night rehearsals on school nights without a peep. When Michael, the shining star of the group, objects, he gets the belt.

The young Michael — though he loves his family — bides his time and, within two years, his charisma and talent lands the band at Motown Records, the biggest label for African American artists. Success comes quickly, and the family quickly moves from their small house to a mansion.

Michael grows up, now played by his real-life nephew, Jaafar Jackson, who blurs the lines between sincerity and parody with a committed performance. We see his quirks (he calls his pet giraffe, llama and his chimp, Bubbles, his friends), some human depth (he visits terminally ill children in hospital wards), his yearnings (he fancies the infantile escape from reality that Peter Pan represents), his technical and creative ambition, and his soft, diabolical side.

We see his ‘Smooth Criminal’ ways when he uses his new record label power to fire his dad. By the time the film nears its two-hour runtime, one wonders how it will culminate Michael’s journey, when there is just so much left to tell.

You won’t like the answer: with an ending card that reads, “His story continues.”

One film, in this case, isn’t enough. The better, darker parts of Michael’s life are definitely just around the bend in a sequel that has already been greenlit. Perhaps that one will have the guts to not be this sterile or merely stick to the surface.

Despite the lack of daring storytelling-wise, the production is top-notch, and the songs force you to involuntarily swing back and forth in your seat, but that goes without saying — this is a harmless, good enough film for a man who didn’t care to be just “good enough.”

Released by HKC and Universal, Michael is, unsurprisingly and perhaps amusingly — given the studio-rated ‘U’ (Universal) — suitable for audiences of all ages.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, May 10th, 2026

For the uninitiated, the drama centres around Zeba, who is stuck in a toxic marriage for over 20 years and has four children (how two people who can’t stand each other end up having four kids is a whole other drama for another day). The early episodes are set in the ’80s, if not the ’90s, before we’re suddenly brought to the present — where the kids are all grown up.

Warning: Spoilers ahead as this piece is mainly about the last two episodes.

When Zeba finally chooses to leave Jami (after what feels like an eternity), it should be a triumphant moment. Instead, you mostly just think: it’s about time. To give credit where it’s due, Sanam Saeed’s brilliant and nuanced performance makes you believe in her and root for her, even when the script falters. Such as when secures her khula — a major victory — around that time, almost on cue, Jami 2 (or is he Jami 1?) appears and proposes — while she’s still in iddat.

The good part is that for once, her children — especially her son — and even her mother and siblings urge her to consider the proposal. Zeba, however, stands her ground and says no, making it clear she refuses to leap into another marriage where she must answer to someone else. We’re mercifully spared the tired “how can a woman remarry?” clichés, which is a breath of fresh air. In fact, the fact that her remarriage is treated relatively normally says a lot about how audience attitudes towards divorced women remarrying are slowly changing. So far, so good.

But then, in what feels like the blink of an eye — after just one encounter with Jami 2’s late wife’s mother, whose acting is so awful that you’d expect the opposite effect — Zeba is suddenly persuaded to say qabool hai, qabool hai, qabool hai.

It’s a letdown, because this was the moment the story needed to pause and breathe. Zeba deserved time to reflect, to hesitate, to truly consider what a second marriage meant after all she’d endured. Instead, decades of pain are swept aside in a single scene. 

It feels less like a genuine and well-thought-out decision and more like the drama just needed her to say yes so it could quickly move on to the next wedding. (More on that later.)

Ultimately, Zeba’s journey, which should have been given the most importance, gets diluted in the rush to wrap everything else up.  

The same hurried logic hits Saif and Varda’s storyline. Varda, sulking at her mother’s house, suddenly has an epiphany because her mother leaves her a lone slice of bread to eat and heads out to dinner. That’s all it takes for Varda to realise how cherished she was by her husband and his family — so she returns to her hubby’s and indulges in sasu maa’s dinner. (Foodpanda, anyone?) 

Back to Zeba — she remarries, and suddenly her beloved son Subuk decides he can now marry Daneer, despite all his earlier detailed and lengthy protests about being poor and unable to provide for some of her ‘isstatus’. What changed? Did he just assume his new daddy-ji would foot their bills? And while we’re on that note, isn’t Gen Z supposedly delaying marriage and concentrating on themselves? Kafeel clearly didn’t get that memo!

Interestingly, writer Umera Ahmed later clarified that the original time lapse in the script was actually 27 years, with the children meant to be fully grown adults. According to her, casting changes compressed the timeline, which explains why viewers were left wondering whether the drama was marrying off people who still looked like teenagers.

What’s also missing is any reaction from Jami 1 — her now ex-husband. And honestly, after all his constant comments about how she’d end up alone, miserable, or “out on the streets” without him, the audience earned the right to watch him suffer a little.

We deserved at least one scene of him properly seething at the sight — or at least the thought — of Zeba happily remarried and moving on without him. Instead, the drama skips over his reaction completely, which is ridiculous given that he was ever present in all the previous episodes.

Ultimately, Kafeel falls into the same trap many Pakistani dramas do: dragging on for months, only to rush through the resolution at record speed. Characters spend episode after episode crying, arguing and suffering, but when the emotional payoff finally arrives, it’s squeezed into a hurried finale.

Roughly translated as someone who is mischievous or meddling, the term sharpasand barely does justice to Farasat because he is much more than that. He is intrusive, calculating, dishonest and manipulative — a man who interferes, schemes and consistently causes more damage than good all under the guise of someone who is moralistic and religious. He is married to Ruby (Nadia Afghan) and has three children — two daughters and a son — two of whom are reflections of him. 

At the beginning of the drama, a couple moves into the neighbourhood: Sanam (Hareem Farooq) and Fida (Affan Waheed). Farasat is quick to butt into their lives, and is successful as Fida is not particularly bright and is gullible enough to fall prey to Farasat’s machinations. Fida’s inability to see through him becomes central to the drama, making him the perfect target for Farasat’s manipulation. Sanam, meanwhile, is smarter and sees through Farasat. What adds to the deterioration of their marriage is the fact that the couple is unable to conceive.

Another important character is Shazmain (Hira Mani), a widow who lives alone and holds an important position at a bank. She quickly befriends Sanam and she too is one of the few people who sees through Farasat’s guise to the sleaziness beneath the surface. Unsurprisingly, Farasat badmouths her in the neighbourhood, painting her as an immoral woman who entertains men. The sheer ease with which this accusation spreads is both disturbing and, frustratingly, still relevant in this day and age.

Another household in this interconnected mohalla belongs to Begum Ali (also referred to as Shagufta), played by Seemi Pasha. She is a widow with two children: Wali (her son, played by Ahsan Afzal Khan) and Hafsa (her daughter, played by Sabahat Sheikh). Then there is Shama and her son Hammad (Hassam Khan), whose lives become entangled in the larger emotional web of the drama.

And then, of course, there is the soap element — because SharPasand is definitely a soap. Emaan, Naumaan Ijaz’s daughter, is in love with Hammad; Hammad, meanwhile, is connected to Hafsa; and Hafsa herself is emotionally tied to him as well. Wali meanwhile is the love interest of Farasat’s other daughter Minahil. Without giving away too much, Farasat, his wife Ruby, and to an extent his children, actively work to ensure that Hammad and Hafsa are not able to get married. At the same time, Farasat preys on Fida’s insecurities and slowly attempts to break apart Sanam and Fida’s already fragile marriage.

What follows is a tangled web of lies, deceit, emotional manipulation, and constant interference — all stretched across 52 (!) episodes. At that length, forward movement often feels extremely slow.

However, the drama does bring to the fore several important issues. It touches upon the way women are treated, whether married or widowed, and how easily their reputations can be controlled or destroyed by social perception. It also highlights the power — and danger — of uploading videos and how quickly they circulate within mohallas. Though, admittedly, it becomes slightly hard to believe that certain videos shared within the neighbourhood can suddenly become “viral” and cause a myriad of consequences, including suicide. Some of these transitions feel underdeveloped or unconvincingly handled, leaving certain story arcs underexplained.

Despite these misgivings, the performances largely save the drama. Ijaz, Afghan, Farooq and Mani all stand out, bringing weight and conviction to their roles. What is particularly interesting is that you end up not fully hating the villainous characters, despite their vile acts. 

Another strength of SharPasand lies in its refusal to flatten its characters into stereotypes. There is a noticeable lack of rigid gender stereotyping. Not all men are toxic — some are weak, some are foolish, and some are vulnerable. Similarly, not all women are portrayed as helpless or weepy — some are strong, some are intelligent, and some are emotionally complex. 

The way the stories interweave also keeps the drama watchable. Even when individual arcs falter, the interconnectedness of the neighbourhood ensures that something is always happening. 

However, there are moments of inconsistency that are hard to ignore. At times, continuity errors are quite obvious. For instance, a character claims she needs to go somewhere urgently in the middle of the night, yet when she opens the door of her house, sunlight seeps in. In another instance, a man arrives at his home’s exterior wearing a shirt, but in the next shot, he is suddenly wearing a coat indoors. These details might seem small, but in this day and age they are jarring, especially given the higher budgets of such dramas.

Still, despite these flaws, SharPasand manages to hold attention for the most part. It remains engaging, even when it is repetitive or stretched. The narrative momentum may falter at points, but the performances and interpersonal dynamics keep it afloat. And there’s always the option to fast forward!

The ending, however, feels almost deliberately cynical. Bad people do not necessarily get what they deserve, and people’s natures do not really change. There is no neat moral resolution. Instead, the drama leans into something more uncomfortable — the idea that interference, manipulation, and emotional damage often linger without clear consequences.

But then again, perhaps that’s a truer reflection of society — although it may not be the best for the moral police and those who believe that good always triumphs over evil.

We have been taught to consume such stories as masala — something to cry over and then forget once the next episode airs. But what if I told you that millions of viewers are not just watching the protagonists Jami (Emmad Irfani) and Zeba (Sanam Saeed)? They are watching their own fathers, their own mothers and echoes of their childhood selves. Kafeel is not a drama; it is a mirror of the dysfunctional family system hiding in plain sight across our homes.

At its core lies one narcissistic, self-absorbed, and irresponsible father — Jami. His emotional unavailability isn’t passive; it’s destructive. He doesn’t just make mistakes, he weaponises irresponsibility. His wife Zeba, a victimised mother trapped in learned helplessness, becomes the silent enabler. Together, they create a pressure cooker that warps each of their four children in profoundly different ways. From parentification to phobias, from internalised guilt to behavioural mimicry — let’s take a mental health deep dive into Kafeel.

The father – Jami (The malignant source)

Jami is the epicentre of the family’s pathology. He perfectly fits the archetype of the “covert narcissist” — lazy, entitled, deeply insecure, yet charming in public. His gaslighting is textbook: he blames Zeba for his own failures and makes her feel responsible for his inability to work and provide for his family. He doesn’t need to be physically violent; his emotional and financial abuse is enough to trap and damage the entire family.

But here is the nuance Kafeel bravely offers: Jami himself did not emerge from a vacuum. His own patterns are the result of a dysfunctional family setup that he was born into. His siblings used him as a caretaker for their ageing parents, while they provided financial support from abroad. He was never pushed to complete his education or pursue a career and this turned him into an entitled, stunted adult. This does not excuse his behaviour — but it explains it, which is the first step away from blind hatred and towards breaking cycles.

The mother – Zeba (the victim and the enabler)

Sanam Saeed’s portrayal of Zeba is heartbreaking because she plays her character not as weak, but as exhausted. Zeba was conditioned to be ‘sweet, obedient and naïve’ and her silence is not passive — it’s a trauma response called learned helplessness. After years of being oppressed, she has given up fighting back. Her decision to stay with Jami “for the children” is the very thing that damages them the most.

Yet Kafeel offers a quiet, powerful arc: her midlife enlightenment. This makes sense, as midlife is often when early-life trauma knocks again, begging to be resolved. Zeba’s slow awakening is a gift to every woman watching Kafeel who still believes it is too late for her.

The four wounded children – A psychological breakdown

Each child is a unique case study of how a child adapts to survive a narcissistic, abusive parent. It’s a masterclass in the ripple effects of a dysfunctional family system.

The eldest son – Subuk (Aashir Wajahat): the parentified child

Subuk was forced to grow up overnight and become the emotional and financial support his mother needed and the father figure his sisters lacked. His low self-esteem doesn’t come from failure but from the immense pressure of holding a broken family together. This is called role reversal trauma — and it often follows children into adulthood in the form of chronic anxiety, an inability to relax and a compulsive need to fix everyone around them. No one in the drama ever tells him that he is just a child or that he shouldn’t have to carry such a burden.

The eldest daughter – Javeria (Nooray Zeeshan): the blame sponge

Javeria has learned that the only way to feel safe is to over-control herself and take responsibility for everything. She blames herself for the family’s fights, financial problems and even her father’s moods. This is a classic survival mechanism: if she can fix what’s ‘wrong’, maybe the chaos will stop. She becomes a people-pleaser with zero self-worth — hallmark signs of growing up with a volatile, unpredictable parent. In therapy, we see Javerias everywhere: brilliant, kind women who apologise for existing and believe that love is something they must earn through suffering.

The middle sister – Zoya (Haya Khan): confident but phobic

Zoya shows us how trauma can become somatised — locked into the body’s nervous system. Her fear of sharp objects (aichmophobia) is not irrational; it is a conditioned response to her father, who threatens the family with a knife frequently. Her confidence is a mask. Underneath, her body remembers the terror. This is one of Kafeel’s most brilliant threads: trauma does not always look like sadness. Sometimes it looks like a strong, sharp, seemingly put-together daughter who cannot hold a kitchen knife without her pulse skyrocketing.

The youngest daughter – Tania (Hania Ahmed) — the mimic

The youngest child is the most chilling example of how abuse normalises pathology. Tania has learned that, in this family, there are no real consequences for bad behaviour, because her father models it daily. By using “my father does it too” as an excuse, she is not being inherently manipulative; she is mirroring the survival tactic she has observed. If the most powerful person in the house can get away with anything, why can’t she? This behaviour is a learned adaptation to a dysfunctional environment, and it highlights the danger of normalising toxic traits. Without intervention, Tania is at the highest risk of becoming like Jami in her future relationships — not because she is evil, but because she associates power with this way of being.

Intergenerational trauma

One of the most upsetting moments in the series is when we see Subuk begin to mimic his father’s aggressive behaviour. In that moment, we see the future. The abused becomes the abuser. The drama masterfully shows that, without intervention, children will carry their parents’ patterns into their own relationships, perpetuating the cycle for another generation.

This is why Kafeel is so important. It is not just a story; it is a warning. It is a call for self-awareness, for breaking the cycle and for prioritising mental health over societal pressure. We cannot heal what we refuse to name.

But here is the truth that Kafeel doesn’t show — or hasn’t yet — because dramas rarely do: the cycle can be broken. A narcissistic father does not have to define your future. A victimised mother does not have to be your blueprint. Parentification, guilt, phobias and mimicry are adaptations, not life sentences. With the right support — therapy, self-awareness and healthy boundaries — each of these wounded children can reclaim their mental health.

Intergenerational trauma is powerful, but not necessarily a destiny. Healing begins by naming the wound and choosing to stop passing it down. Kafeel warns us, but your life can prove that your story ends differently.

Why Kafeel is essential viewing

Kafeel is not a drama; it’s a psychological case study disguised as entertainment. It shows that abuse is rarely just a slap. It is the slow, silent erosion of a person’s will, and the insidious poisoning of the next generation.

This drama is a mirror for every household where one broken parent created four differently broken children. Kafeel exposes the mental health legacy of a toxic father. It forces us to ask a difficult question: how many of our “family dramas” are actually multi-generational trauma centres?

None of this analysis would be possible without the bravery of writer Umera Ahmed, the brilliance of director Meesam Naqvi, and the courage of ARY Digital for airing this raw and uncomfortable story. Mainstream Pakistani dramas often romanticise toxic relationships or resolve complex trauma with a single emotional scene. Kafeel refuses to take that shortcut. It trusts its audience to sit with the messiness, to recognise the subtle signs of narcissistic abuse and to understand that healing doesn’t happen in one episode.

This is not just good television. This is responsible storytelling. And it deserves recognition.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, April 26th, 2026