Book review: Nazneen Sheikh’s I Left You Behind encapsulates the complexities of being alive

What does it mean to leave parts of yourself behind?

Pakistani-Candian author Nazneen Sheikh’s latest short story collection I Left You Behind offers a profound exploration of what it means to exist, to be alive, and, ultimately, to move on.

Through 17 evocative stories — seemingly disjointed but coming together like a complexly woven spiderweb — Sheikh takes readers on a journey that spans what it means to be human, to be a woman and in one delightful instance, to be a luxurious Afghan carpet.

Spanning decades and continents, the book indeed dwells “unsentimentally on shifting homes and lost ancestral homelands, distant memories and fragmented family ties,” as the excerpt describes. Our unnamed protagonist takes us on her journey from her childhood home in Murree to losing motherhood in Belleville, Ontario. Throughout, Sheikh refuses to shy away from both the mundaneness of the everyday and the grim realities of life.

In ‘Death by Remote Control’, we see the protagonist wake up in the middle of the night and quietly sneak around her daughters’ room. The restlessness in her actions foreshadows that something is about to happen, and it does. At “precisely 4:30am”, she is woken by a telephone call that reveals her firstborn, a premature child who suffered a haemorrhage and lived in a medical facility, had passed away.

Unlike the movies, there is no flurry of activity, rather “she felt as though she had been lifted by an unseen typhoon and gently lowered into a meadow filled with wildflowers.”

The vivid description of every scene, placing the reader dead in the centre of the emotions and happenings, leaves no doubt that the majority of these stories are autobiographical, taking us through the highs and lows and often intimate details of her life.

The protagonist, simply called “the girl”, is first introduced to us in her Murree home but is soon uprooted to Karachi, then America, then Lahore and finally Canada. Throughout this journey, her headstrong, fiery personality is a constant beacon, dimmed at times — when she forsakes higher education for a love that fails her — but never extinguished. Her resilience shines as she navigates cultural shifts, tragedies, and the weight of her decisions.

Through it all, the most prominent theme is womanhood, the very act of being a woman. As the protagonist steadily transforms from “the girl” to “the woman”, the reader grows with her. Perhaps, the lack of a name for the main character makes her a vessel for the reader’s own introspection, thereby making her journey universally relatable.

The girl is made to learn the Holy Quran without understanding it until adulthood, she observes racism in a segregated America, visits a teenage royal bride who doesn’t have the luxury of an education, gets married, loses a child she keeps hidden from the world, and gets divorced.

Her experiences as a woman in vastly different sociocultural landscapes — be it witnessing inequality, or enduring personal loss — showcase the universal struggles and triumphs of womanhood. Each chapter of her life peels back another layer, revealing not only the expectations placed upon women but also their resilience in fighting back.

The protagonist refuses to go down without a fight, from girlhood to adulthood, from navigating the history of a lost carpet to extramarital affairs — she is a fighter, through and through. What her unnamed identity further cements is the ability for readers to project their own realities onto her, bridging cultural and emotional divides. The ordinary woman must undergo the ebb and flow of life, like Sheikh so beautifully depicts.

For consumers of writing by Desi diaspora writers, who predominantly focus on ideas of displacement and identity, I Left You Behind initially feels like standard migration literature — something that caters more to the white gaze with vivid descriptions of Pakistan’s landscape. However, this illusion is soon shattered as the details within her stories evoke an almost visceral reaction in the Pakistani reader. Take, for example, the “pungent and unpleasant” smelling Master Sahib who comes to teach her the Holy Book — a description that immediately transports most Pakistani Muslims back to their own childhoods.

Foreign audiences fear not, however, because the detail with which Sheikh writes — excruciatingly deep yet stunning — would allow any reader to clearly picture the scene described. The devil here isn’t just in the details, it’s also in the impeccable depiction of emotions that transcend all boundaries — loss, grief, love, curiosity. As the girl learns the word “resistance” for the first time and the woman feels bittersweet relief at the death of her child, Sheikh captures the conflicting nature of these emotions with such precision that they resonate universally.

And there is no questioning her masterful writing, as she anthropomorphises a carpet in ‘The Carpet’ and details its travels from Kabul, where it helped smuggle out a young girl so she could escape the clutches of marrying an older man, to Karachi, where it’s the pride of a woman’s living room, and finally to the protagonist’s Canada home. Throughout the tale, the reader experiences each of the carpet’s emotions, from feeling “safe and loved” to being a “prisoner in solitary confinement.” The carpet’s journey appears to reflect the human experience, lives of contrasting states; love and loss, belonging and displacement.

The carpet’s migration and continuous new homes mirror the protagonist’s own trajectory, and both ultimately find rest and reprieve in Canada. “I am in a strange land but at least I have not been left behind. I am kept warm and protected,” the carpet narrated.

One of the pitfalls of short stories as a literary form is perhaps the lack of fully developed arcs for background characters. I Left You Behind hosts wonderful characters — the girl’s revolutionary father, charming uncle, friend turned husband, stoic professor and many others. The reader meets these characters only in passing and most of them have formed personalities, however, it is clear that each individual leaves a deep impact on the protagonist, slowly moulding her. Each interaction, however brief, illuminates her path.

Throughout the book, it is as if the reader grows older with the protagonist, learning from her choices, her mistakes and the people who surround her. The collection’s wisdom lingers long after the last page, offering new ways to think about home, woman-ness and identity.