An exquisite weave of two historical threads

Book Review of Five Queen's Road

Book author: Sorayya Khan

This gem wouldn't have reached my bookshelf if not for Barbara. She told me about Sorayya Khan and her books. If you know me, you know that the name ‘Five Queen’s Road’ took a place in my heart right after hearing it. I was eager if not obsessive to have the book. Well, it was nowhere to be found. The soft copy didn’t come to kindle so there was almost no chance that the hard copy  would  make it to my country as only popular books are imported here. Finally after a passionate search I found the paperback in Amazon.in and pre-ordered it to my local book shop who takes custom orders and brings them from India. After waiting a month, it reached my hand, a book with a cover containing the golden yellow afternoon sky of Lahore. A light paperback which I read with my morning tea and which I closed and left beside my pillow before closing my eyes to sleep.

Five Queen’s Road is a house at Lahore built by an Englishman in the 50’s. Independence was declared in India. The British packed their bags and left the country after dividing it into two- India and Pakistan (which is again divided into two). The house Five Queen’s Road was left to Dina Lal. Soon a wall of partition would divide the house into two sides- back house where Dina Lal lived and front house where his tenant Amir Shah started to live. Two neighbors who got distant day by day, avoided each other, saved each other, blamed each other, peeking through the wall of partition at each other’s lives. Two neighbors, both of them claiming that Five Queen’s Road belongs to him only.  Whose house is this actually? No one’s?

Five Queen’s Road ultimately came into my view as the Indian subcontinent with a partition. I have read books about the partition of my side of the border, shared by India and the former East Pakistan. Five Queen’s Road took me on a journey to the other side of India’s border that she shares with Pakistan. I discovered, the incidents were more or less similar there. So what was the difference we were fighting against? We, the Hindu Muslim of the three countries that was once free from the aching mark named ‘border’ before the British parted with it.

When Rubina buried the bag more deeply in the dirt, it resembled how the Hindu-Muslims of this subcontinent carry empathy deep inside their hearts for each other, yet each time they want to dig the empathy up, they end up burying it more.

The book was rich! It showed the colors of Lahore and made it so alive to the readers. Amir Shah and Dina Lal’s complex characters and even more complex relationship perfectly symbolized the two countries India and Pakistan. The exceptional relation Amir Shah shared with his daughter-in-law Irene was a catchy one. Amir Shah wouldn’t look at his war, not from this close. But he would look at it only from a distance which Irene brought with her to Lahore. Irene who embraced the blazing sun of Lahore, who would look back at Europe as a dark continent even though the sky is just a sky. The two people who couldn’t open up the wound they carry inside suddenly become very easy to open it up. A loss of a dear one who only lives in the breast pocket of one, a memory of a dark room that from time to time haunts the other. Soon the two people developed a common language between them.

Javid had never been close to his father, but watching him and Irene cement their bond made him wonder how his wife had reached his father in ways he could not.

In this richly jewelled book, runs two threads with the survival from world war 2 and from partition. An exquisite portrait of two historical threads crossing each other.