Grieving for Pigeons: Twelve Stories of Lahore

by Zubair Ahmad

In this poignant and meditative collection of short stories, Zubair Ahmad captures the lives and experiences of the people of the Punjab, a region divided between India and Pakistan. In an intimate narrative style, Ahmad writes a world that hovers between memory and imagination, home and abroad. The narrator follows the pull of his subconscious, shifting between past and present, recalling different eras of Lahore’s neighbourhoods and the communities that define them. These stories evoke the complex realities of post-colonial Pakistani Punjab. The contradictions and betrayals of this region’s history reverberate through the stories, evident in the characters, their circumstances, and sometimes their erasure. Skillfully translated from Punjabi by Anne Murphy, this collection is an essential contribution to the wider recognition of the Punjabi language and its literature.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Pakistan

128 pages, Paperback

Published August 30, 2022

Reviews

[cybill · Rating 4 out of 5]

god this took me so long that i'm torn between ratings but the prose in this book? phenomenal.

[Aatqa Arham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I maintain that if I ever got hold of a time machine, I would visit my grandparents in their youth; I think this collection of short stories might be as close as I'll get to that, and the feelings it would uproot. I picked this book up in a mall in Lahore in a bout of sadness, feeling homesick and untethered in a place that elicits feelings I don't really understand. Elements of that sentiment felt shared with Ahmad, albeit relayed through the lacklustre intermediary of English. Ahmad writes about the Lahore that my father knew. The imagery was beautiful, the prose enjoyable, and the work of the translator was appreciated.

ironically finished on independence day- a farce in my opinion.

[Saadullah]

I haven't read more than one story from this translated collection (which was wonderful), but I just finished both of the author's Dhahan Prize finalists, "Kabootar, Baneire Te Galian" and "Paani Di Kundh". They are also short story collections, but they do not have their own pages on this platform.

They were both wonderful reads -- and respectively, my first and second ever reads in Punjabi. I thought a dictionary was only necessary for my first few stories; mid-way through "Kabootar, Baneire Te Galian", I found that I had developed the ability to read Punjabi for pleasure. Quite a rewarding experience.

[fatema ! · Rating 4 out of 5]

some stories were better than others but overall i enjoyed this !! albeit repetitive at times, the writing was stunning and the translation was done so well

[Izza K · Rating 4 out of 5]

5/5 for ‘The Wall of Water’ <3

[Waqas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this collection of connected short stories appeared to fall somewhere between metafiction and memoir, which I'm not totally convinced was a positive thing in this particular case. The book offers glimpses of the sociocultural milieu of Lahore of the late '60s and 70s from the vantage point of a man in the neighbourhood of Krishan Nagar who is reminiscing about his childhood and youth in the mohalla and reflecting on people and lifestyles lost to time. The generational trauma of Partition, class aspirations, intellectual currents, political culture (vibrancy followed by disillusion), and economic transformations are elements the characters of these stories participate in or are subjected to, but the basic framework is provided by time, memory, and loss.

I found the first story (Waliullah is Lost) and last story (Wall of Water) in the collection to be the most impressive ones of the bunch, but throughout I got the sense that it was all one story - or perhaps not even a story, an experience; an "Unstory" as one piece in the collection is titled - told over and over again with little significant addition to the whole, which relegated the individual short stories to ordinary and reduced the impressiveness of the entire collection. Short story writing is a difficult craft and I think the stories in the collection offered novelty that quickly ran out.

The book's lasting contribution nevertheless is the archiving in English of Punjabi literature that might otherwise be inaccessible to the outside world and even to many locals. The charisma of Punjabi culture, for those so inclined to Punjabi fandom, shines through with the help of expressions, seasonal references, and imagery. At times I really wanted to read the original Punjabi text, which is a credit to the author and translator.

[Eman Asif · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took me back to the old Lahore , the stories were very demure :) ,but loved the one that had the army reference ,this book is filled with feelings and the author so beautifully describes them that you feel them completely.

[Rabia Ikram · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book Review: Grieving For Pigeons

-Missing places you've left behind, where you hold dear memories, can bring a flood of emotions that feel really strong. This feeling is at the heart of "The Grieving of the Pigeons," a book written by Zubair Ahmad and translated into Punjabi by Ann Murphy. This book has twelve touching stories about different people.

Imagine reading stories that make you remember Lahore - its old charm, the small streets of Krishan Nagar, times of getting ready for things, and a few stories from when Pakistan was just starting or during the PPP time. These stories show how people are excited about life, how love grows slowly, how winter comes bit by bit, and how friendships and ordinary people's lives are important.

These stories make you realize that whether you move to another country or live in fancy parts of Lahore, you still feel a strong connection to where you came from. This book really touches your heart and makes you feel a lot. Personally, some stories stood out to me, making me want to visit those special places before they change too much. I want to meet my friends there again before they get too busy with grown-up stuff and time passing by.

[Izza · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It’s only when a house finally falls down that a new one is built. Only then do the maps need to be
changed."
This quote by the writer aptly describes the displacement, the losses at both ends of the border, the partition and the post-partition woes, and the political evolution, revolution and eventual despair as regimes change. From a past haunted to a settlement as refugees, the author narrates a tale of struggles through a series of short stories. Starting from Walliullah's pre-partition to post ordeal, to a childhood loss and an attempt at its reclamation into adulthood as the series evolves into The Wall of Water was nothing short of a beautiful literary journey, lived by the author and re-lived by the reader through his word, literarily painted by the writer as,
"There, one story flowed, and then more, words cascading like a flood."
Although context gets lost in translation, this book retains the crux through almost poetic prose while the translator retains the beauty of narration, enabling comprehensibility of the series in a language that is otherwise still very much neglected and almost lost.

[Khayam Arif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grieving for Pigeons' by Zubair Ahmed is an effort to make sense of the loss and the resulting grief. It is an English translation of the short stories selected from his Punjabi books. The timeline of the stories is set between 1947 and the 1970s. The stories revolve around personal experiences linked with the loss of friendships, connections, age, and spaces.

[Ali Ather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haunting

[Shireen Waraich · Rating 4 out of 5]

melancholic and nostalgic

[Khadeeja · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading it slowing. A story a day. Stories are similar. I savored this book instead of rushing through it. A very nostalgic storytelling.

[Tehreem Amer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bittersweet