'I the Eny the great'

It's the season for Pakistani writing in English, and India is devouring what may be a little more difficult to digest in Pakistan. And yet, as in India, the writing is emerging from the particular social climate of the country, its restrictions and freedoms, its oppressions and snobbery. The journey from Bapsi Sidhva in the past to Sara Suleri in the last decade and the more contemporary, altogether intellectual Mohsin Hamid currently, has been knitted together by women's tales, usually self-indulgent and railing against men/customs/nation. Ask Tehmina Durrani (My Feudal Lord) or Jemima Khan, or, now, Salma Ahmed, aka Eny.

Eny's book is about as self-indulgent as you can get. Born into a family of bureaucrats that travels around the world and moves among the rich and the powerful, bright and beautiful Eny is married soon after she turns sixteen. The husband, a career professional from a middle class family, doesn't measure up to her fairytale approximation, so two children later, she divorces him and moves on...

...to husband number two, the children left behind with husband number one. In time, she will renew acquaintance with her by then teenager children, who will make the first attempt to meet "Eny auntie", almost as if they were someone from her past with whom she was renewing acquaintance. But husband number two, despite an aristocratic lineage and enough money and more to indulge her, is too much of a philanderer to last, so Eny realises, and not for the last time, "My marriage was over".

Fortunately there is a cricketing star complete with a sports car waiting in the wings in London (where she has a home, naturally), and before you can say "I do", she is wife to Saeed Ahmed, both indulging and being indulged by him. Many more children later, of course, she will realise that Saeed is as much a cad as the others, and even the mention of her socially backward in-laws embarrasses her, so he too must go. (Tellingly, there are several pictures of Eny with important people but not one of her three husbands.)

But clever Eny (or poor Eny, if you're the kind to sob over her attempted suicides) is a survivor. By this time we know her friends, like her, are into serial marriages, her father had affairs as well (but not her mother), and all of Pakistan's high society seems to spend more time in others' bedrooms than in their own. Tch tch.

Eny uses her social standing to manipulate things, sets up an industry (using friends and cousins to organise the licences) with an ease not forthcoming to others in Pakistan (which seems saddled with the same obdurate bureaucracy as India). Though part of the elite, Eny considers herself almost poor, and is therefore grasping. She meets for instance: "I asked him for two things: one, that the duty on Mercedes cars be lowered as I was unable to pay the 200 per cent customs levy, and secondly, that Saeed should be considered for captaincy of the cricket team". What Eny wants, Eny gets: "The captaincy came through, as did the reduction of duty on all Mercedes cars."

In between three husbands and a proposal for marriage (which lapses...), Eny, concededly, works hard, gets involved in the ship breaking industry, travels around the world, but: "I started to feel restless. I had been stagnant for too long. There was a thirst that had not been quenched. I had children, I had money. I had made my way to the top again but there was no excitement in my life."

The new potion is politics. And just as with the rest of her life, the transition is almost as seamless. And now Eny is drawn headlong into everything from international jetsetting to meeting ministers and prime ministers, arranging fundraisers, and becoming a lookout for General Zia-ul Haq, whom she defends. Alas, politics is a cruel game, and Eny finds herself outmanoeuvred, suffers losses in business""and faith.

In the interlude, Eny makes friends in India, becomes a frequent visitor here and at the end of the book discloses that she would like to be buried at Dargah Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia in Delhi. But before that, the glamorous grandmom, whose autobiography was first launched in Pakistan, promises: "Barely a month after the launch, a bizarre series of events started to unfold leaving me dumbfounded with shock. All I could do was helplessly watch in silent horror as my world crashed around me. These dreadful events will form part of a sequel to my autobiography which is now underway." More high society shenanigans? I can hardly wait.

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Cutting Free
The Extraordinary Memoir of a Pakistani Woman

Salma Ahmed
Lotus/Roli
Price: Rs 295; Pages: 262