I'm working on a story about a young woman from a tiny village in Pakistan. She is working for pennies a day as a seamstress in a textile factory in Lahore, when fire destroys the factory. She is gravely injured jumping from a fifth floor window. When she recovers, no one will hire her because she is disfigured. "Become a beggar," they say, thinking it is friendly advice.

She is a person of tremendous resolve and character. But given her birth, her gender, all the circumstances that hold her and pull her downward, I wonder whether she can have a decent life; whether anyone could in those circumstances. She is my creation, so her fate is up to me