Why are the Women of “Heart Lamp” so Helpless ?

Why are  the Women of “Heart Lamp” so Helpless ?

The plight of women in these stories reminds me of the story of the baby elephant tied to a tiny stake with a thin rope. It struggles and cannot break free, and eventually gives up, believing it cannot escape. As the elephant grows, even though it is now big enough to easily break this same rope and stake, it doesn't try because it does not recognize its own strength.  It is the story of learned helplessness.  

Is it possible for a man to cherish his wife and keep her happy? In “Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal”, Shaista is the wife of Iftikhar, a well-to-do worker in a factory.  He appears besotted with his beautiful wife, always making exaggerated declarations of love for her.  He would even build her a Taj Mahal, so pure and eternal was his love, he announced.  They had six children.  Shaista tells her friend Zeenat, “ ‘What to do Zeenat, I did not do any planning.  Before I even turned round to see what happened, I had had six children.  And your Bhai Saheb came in the way,’ she said, cocking her head at Iftikhar, ‘ when I thought of getting an operation done.  Now I will certainly get it done after number seven’.” With each pregnancy, she gets progressively weaker and dies after her seventh child.  She is complicit in allowing a chain of events that ends in disaster, fully aware that she is responsible for ruining her own health, her daughter’s life and the future of her seven kids.  Their daughter Asifa has to quit school to take care of her siblings.  Ifthikar “made her stop studying because girls do not need much education.” (10) However, Shaista feels she is helpless without the support of her husband.  And the husband who wanted to build a Taj Mahal for her,  marries an 18yr old girl soon after the appropriate mourning period the society mandates.  He is well on his way to ruining a few other lives. 

Husbands can do no wrong.  “Come to think of it, for us, that is, for us Muslims, it is said that, other than Allah above, our pati is God on earth.  Suppose there comes a situation where the husband’s body is full of sores, with pus and blood oozing out from them , it is said that even if the wife uses her tongue to lick these wounds clean, she will still not be able to completely repay the debt she owes him.” (8) And husbands do not owe wives anything.  In “Black Cobras” Aashraf’s husband Yakub leaves her because she gave birth to her third daughter and he was hoping for a son. She appeals to the local religious leader, who ignores her repeatedly because he has other work that takes priority.  The lady she works for tells her to stand up for herself and promises help, “People like you will not get justice if you don’t demand it.  Give a petition to the masjid, gather a panchayat around and call me.  I will tell your man, and that mutawalli, what the Sharia is, what justice is.  Twisting  the Qur’an and Hadiths the way they want in front of a helpless woman is not justice.”(54)  However, even this method did not get her justice.  All the wives of men in the community sympathized with her but were powerless to help her. They longed to comfort her; the mutawalli’s wife had food for her but didn’t want to be seen handing it to her.   Back at the mosque, the sight of his wife appealing to the religious leader further angered her husband. “Yakub burned with uncontrollable anger even in that cold.  ‘Lei! If you who squats to pee has this much arrogance, how much arrogance should I, who stands to piss, have?’ he screamed, in his very dignified manner.” (57).  It’s nothing short of cruelty for a man to treat his wife and children with such anger and contempt, to ignore his own flesh and blood’s obvious illness and instead to declare himself a victim.

What keeps these women shackled so effectively?  There is no punishment more effective than public shaming.  They are constantly threatened with social disgrace and any protest would be a moral transgression. In ‘Heart Lamp’, Mehrun goes back to her parents, tired of her husband’s deception and infidelity. The first thing her parents want to know is if she informed anyone she was leaving.  “Why didn’t you tell them before leaving? It seems like you have made up your mind to bring us dishonor.” (100) She tells her parents her husband was seen with another woman and accuses them of not confronting her husband.  “And what should we do after we come and see him? Say we catch hold of him and ask him about it, and he says, yes, it is true–what can we do then?...What can we do if he says, I don’t want this woman called Mehrun, I will give her talaq?”(101)  The thought of divorce and the public humiliation their married daughter would heap on their heads is enough for them to scold her for her selfishness and escort her back to her errant husband.  Back at her house, she feels she has no choice but to give up her life and it’s only the thought of her helpless children struggling without her that she abandons that idea.

Who do they turn to then?  Only Allah can save them.  “Be a woman once, oh Lord!” is the cry of a helpless humiliated woman.  For only a  woman is forsaken by everyone and God. In her life, as in her death, she is enclosed within walls that she cannot break. “There were four walls around me at all times, and freedom, in the form of a breeze, that marvellous product of your pure imagination, touched my face only when I opened the window.” (199)  

Mushtaq’s women are isolated.  They do not benefit from being in a community.  They can rely only on their husbands to care for them and are most often abandoned by their parents who consider daughters a burden.  Religion, tradition and society allow Muslim men to remarry and not provide for their first wife and children. Not even other women bother to help.  Everyone preys on the vulnerable.  

Banu Mushtaq’s writings were part of a literary movement in Kannada in the 70s and the 80s called the Bandaya movement which challenged social injustices and protested against the discrimination of certain social classes including dalits and women. It was very important to use language that was colloquial, and contained the nuances of their dialect. Deepa Bhasthi translated these short stories taking into consideration the tone, the drama (the “haava-bhava”)  and the cultural knowledge of the original Kannada.

Mushtaq, Banu, and Deepa Bhasthi. Heart Lamp: Selected Stories. Penguin, 2025.

Read more »

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Maame, a housegirl in Cobbe Otcher’s home, sets the woods outside of the compound on fire and escapes from slavery leaving behind her illegitimate daughter Effia.  And so begins a troubled lineage of the Fante tribe. Otcher knew then “that the memory of the fire that burned, then fled would haunt him, his children, and his children’s children for as long as the line continued” (3) The novel spans 250 years narrating the story of Effia and Esi,  two half-sisters and their descendants.

It is the story of West Africa which engaged in trade with the Europeans–human lives for guns.  The Asantes and the Fantes were complicit in the slave trade that destroyed the lives of countless people for so many centuries. Even today, descendants of those slaves have no roots, no home, no connection to their culture, language, family and values. It is the story of illegitimacy–ripping people away from their homes and families by those with illegitimate power, exercising illegitimate authority. The illegitimacy is in the abuse by Europeans, their disregard for human dignity, their indecency towards women and their greed for gold.  They robbed entire nations of their identity.  They continued the abuse long after slavery was abolished.  Quey predicted that “they would just trade one type of shackles for another, trade physical ones that wrapped around wrists and ankles for the invisible ones that wrapped around the mind.” 

James knew that the British had no intention of leaving Africa ever.  They wanted control over the people and the land.  They wanted power.  He himself wanted no part of his family business for he felt the weight of the guilt of his ancestors.  His daughter Abena who always thought him weak and ineffectual, deserving of his nickname “Unlucky”  finally understood what drove her father away from his family.  He told her, “My father was a slaver, a wealthy man. When I decided to leave Fanteland, it was because I did not want to take part in the work my family had done.  I wanted to work for myself.  I see how these townspeople call me Unlucky, but every season I feel lucky to have this land, to do this honorable work.”(153) The war between the Asante tribe and the British continued, but Effia’s lineage had had enough.  They were too ashamed of their role in the slave trade and in letting the Europeans disrespect their people and their values.  The British were the interlopers, they forced their culture on the Africans calling them barbaric and forced Christianity on them calling their religion black magic.  They even changed the names of the women (wenches) they married because they couldn’t pronounce them properly.  “The need to call this thing “good” and this thing “bad”, this thing “white”, and this thing “black”, was an impulse that Effia did not understand.  In her village, everything was everything.  Everything bore the weight of everything else.” (23)  Effia had to forget the folklores and accept her white husband’s ways. The white man was Abro Ni, the Wicked One, the illegitimate ruler.

Maame’s second daughter Esi became a slave and was housed in the same castle as Effia except Esi was in the dungeons.  She was starved, beaten and raped repeatedly.  Only her daughter knew her sorrow. Nothing cut the roots of an entire race like slavery in America.  They were stripped of their identity, family, language and religion.  They did not know who their ancestors were. The loss of the black stone necklace symbolized the loss of heritage. They were made aware of their illegitimacy  every second of their existence.  When Ness sang songs from memory, they were in Twi and she did not even know what they meant till another slave recognized the language. H’s girlfriend complains to him when he disrespects her, “The day you called me that woman’s name I thought, Ain’t I been through enough? Ain’t just about everything I ever had been taken away from me? My freedom. My family. My body. And now I can’t even own my name?...My mama gave me that name herself…All I had of her then was my name.  That was all I had of myself too.  And you wouldn't even give me that.”  With illegitimacy came impotence.  When Sonny was on the housing team with the NAACP taking surveys of living conditions at Harlem, a young boy asked him for help but immediately resigned himself to the inevitable commenting, “You can’t, can you?...You can’t do a single thing, can you?” This is the legacy of slavery in the United States.  Ness was impotent in saving Sam or keeping Kojo, Kojo/Anna was impotent against the Fugitive Slave Act, H against the Convict Leasing System.  Willie was part of the Great Migration which took her to Harlem but nothing had changed over the hundreds of years.  Black people were still illegitimate, impotent and whites held all the power.

How does history treat these slaves? “We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.”(226) Black people in America continue to feel the effects of slavery.  Like Sonny, they are angry because they would never be able to choose their life unlike the whites who could always choose theirs.

The fire that raged outside Otcher’s compound eventually spread over the entire African continent. It could not be doused by the tainted water in the ocean that the slave ships sailed on until Marjorie (Effia’s descendant) met Marcus (Esi’s descendant)  and the two branches of Maame’s family could come to terms with how their past shaped their present.

Gyaasi, Yaa. Homegoing. New York. Viking Books. 2016.

Read more »