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Twilight
In karachi, bilqis ara begum, proud custodian of her family’s traditions, prepares for the wedding reception of her son samad the family has gathered, the servants have been given their instructions, the invitations sent to pakistan’s upper crust but bilqis is restless—this is not what she had planned for her only son: kate, whom samad has recently married, is australian and middle class while bilqis struggles to reassure herself of her son’s commitment to the family, their customs and, most of all, to herself, pakistan is facing turmoil having fortified his dictatorship through a sham referendum, general zia is now set on imposing orthodox muslim law on the country, and news from the border is of an imminent insurgency in kashmir yet, against the threats to the liberal space she has always accepted as her privilege, bilqis stands firm—drawing strength from the values of her aristocratic parents and memories of her carefree childhood in undivided india—and refuses, with characteristic obstinacy, to join samad in australia then she stumbles upon her servant girl mumtaz’s secret affair with a kashmiri freedom fighter—a reckless tryst that threatens to destroy the girl’s honor but for which she claims to have no regrets—and bilqis is left to examine the convictions that have so long determined her life and her faith in those around her twilight confirms azhar abidi’s stunning talent for nuanced storytelling and vivid, evocative prose it is a captivating novel about love and loyalty, exile and conflict, and ultimately about the inherent comforts and trials of the mother–son bond
215 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
3 people are currently reading
113 people want to read
About the author
Azhar Abidi
6 books7 followersAzhar Abidi was born in Pakistan and lives in Melbourne, Australia. His work has been published in The Guardian Weekly, the Australian literary journal Meanjin, and in The Best Australian Essays 2004.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
October 29, 2018
The House of Bilquis (originally published as ‘Twilight’ in Australia) is a sort of pointless book, in that its plot doesn’t seek to do much beyond give the author space to hold forth on the decline of the times and so on and so forth. As a commentary on the times it’s faintly interesting, but because its characters feel purposeless and there is no central conflict hooking you in, it was hard to remember why one should keep reading.
An abyss was opening in her heart. It was not just her son’s wedding that made her unhappy. I was a succession of events, all interconnected and related, a pattern of setbacks, rebuffs and hindrances, both within and without, that had formed the fixed idea in her mind that her illustrious family had run out of luck.
The plot had lots of space to be cool, but unfortunately didn’t manage to quite elicit any of the charm required to set it apart from other books. Set in the 1980’s in Pakistan, it tells the story of Bilquis Begum, a matriarch living in Karachi who is finding it very hard to accept her son Sarmad’s marriage to an Australian woman. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t really seem, to me at least, that times have really changed, because I can pretty much imagine my own mother’s reaction if my brother brought home a foreign wife from his studies, and I’d expect the same disappointment and distrust to surface. In retrospect, what the author does well is give enough complexity to Bilquis so that she’s not just a stereotypical evil mother-in-law. As the head of a wealthy family, widowed and dependant on a swarm of servants, Bilquis’s trepidation stems not only from the fact that her son has refused to allow her to make a suitable desi match for him, but also about the fact that he himself will be living in Australia, leaving her without any support in her old age. This commentary on the times, which feel so relevant even in this day and age, might be the only thing the author managed to do well.
Most well-to-do families sent their young men to good universities abroad with the expectation that they would pay attention to their studies. It was also assumed, in an unspoken sort of way, that they might sow their wild oats and do the things that young men must do before settling down. As long as they kept their peccadilloes in the West, no questions were asked. They returned home to sterling careers and arranged marriages and no one was the wiser.
In keeping with this theme of interpretation of society, another important part of the story was the introduction of Kate as Sarmad’s wife, an outsider who could observe the lifestyle of the rich in Pakistan from a wonderfully refreshing eye. As a Pakistani, I’ve always been slightly aware of how privileged certain aspects of our lifestyles are: even in my middle class upbringing, we had five part-time maids, one gardener, one errand boy, and multiple more workers who frequented our house for smaller, more random chores. In the family I’ve married into, we have a full-time help who lives with us, one part-time babysitter for the one single child at home, three maids, one driver, one gardener, and so on and so forth. For Pakistanis who exist in the upper middle class to elite range, this is the reality we live in, because poverty is so rampant, and unions which protect the rights of workers are so non-existent, and people are desperate for work. And so for me, this wasn’t something extraordinary until I realized the obvious lack of such people on my foreign trips. In London, I found out that a family shared one common bathroom. For me, who had always seen one bathroom per room back in Pakistan, the idea of a shared bathroom is amazing and frankly alarming. Which is why it’s fascinating to see this kind of decadence, even in middle-income households, through the eyes of someone who hasn’t lived here.
It was her first trip to Pakistan and everything was foreign. While she had heard Sarmad talking of servants, and she knew about babysitters and cleaners who were still familiar and middle-class figures in Australia, of even the butlers and scullery maids of Victorian novels, she had never experience a life where people did not have to wash clothes, cook meals or clean the house because their servants did everything for them, from the moment they awoke to when they went to bed.
On the flip side of all this great commentary was the plot, which was the primary reason this book didn’t rate very well. Besides Sarmad’s marriage, Bilquis also spends her time worrying about her maidservant, an efficient and hardworking girl named Mumtaz, who is having an affair with the guard next door. Omar, who has come from Karachi and has ideas of Jihad he would like to try out, is also a product of the times, what with the Islamization that had gripped Pakistan in that decade. He spends his time dreaming about fighting for a great and noble cause, and meanwhile being both conflicted and happy about his relationship with Mumtaz.
What made some women wicked and other women virtuous? Was it possible to seduce a virtuous woman? If a man seduced a woman, then didn’t she have to be fundamentally wicked anyway?
The problem was that I didn’t really care what happened to Mumtaz and Omar, or for that matter to Sarmad and Kate. And a book which can’t make you connect to the characters can only survive through the force of its writing, so brilliant as to reduce everything else’s importance. Unfortunately, since that isn’t present here, all we can concentrate on are the other things the book tries to point attention to, such as the social and political climate of the 80’s, and how the wealthy operated in those times. Bilquis’s resentment of her sister’s marriage to a man whom Bilquis considers below their social class is pretty much representative of this system. Modernism, as represented by the wealthy in this book—with their English-speaking habits and their affinity for alcohol—is very disdainful of the poor and the religious, which mostly overlap. So this story operates on two levels: of the idea that time was destroying values, but also how the boundaries between social classes were blurring.
The process of gentrification, Bilquis could see, had begun.
Beyond this lamentation of the changing times, it got increasingly hard not to roll my eyes at the romanticization of the past that prevails throughout the book. In all the conversations I have with my elders, I usually have very little patience for the statements which seek to show how wonderful life was, and how horrible it is now (oh these millenials/this internet/this technology, ruining us all). This book is a sort of summary of all those conversations into one: a sad, whiny little complaint that stretches over 200 pages. The only redeeming quality is that the author makes it clear that it is our protagonist who feels this way, thus keeping it out of the overall narrative.
“I was thinking that soon there won’t be anyone left except us old people.”
“And our servants,” Bilquis smiled.
“And what will become of us?”
“Why, my dear, we’ll rot.”
Another reason why I liked this author (or publisher, depending upon who decided this) was the fact that not a single word was italicized, in a book filled with mentions of bhujias and koftas and millions of other specifically desi dishes and plants and clothes. Most books by international publishers which are written by Pakistani writers make it a point to italicize words that their expected audience of Western readers would not get, as if to say, here’s something from a culture you don’t recognize, so you don’t necessarily need to understand it. Some will even go so far as to provide glossaries at the end of the book, long lists of words for the anglophile reader. And while the argument of whether this is necessarily a good thing or not can be kept for another day, in the here and now I believe it’s fine to leave it unitalicized, and was glad to see that this book agreed with me.
Overall, this wasn’t the best thing ever. It passed my time, and it didn’t waste it. Some of it was interesting, and a greater portion of it was pointless. Maybe read it if you’re interested in Pakistan in the 80’s? Hesitantly recommended.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Oh my god my list of 'reviews to come' is getting longer and longer by the day!
An abyss was opening in her heart. It was not just her son’s wedding that made her unhappy. I was a succession of events, all interconnected and related, a pattern of setbacks, rebuffs and hindrances, both within and without, that had formed the fixed idea in her mind that her illustrious family had run out of luck.
The plot had lots of space to be cool, but unfortunately didn’t manage to quite elicit any of the charm required to set it apart from other books. Set in the 1980’s in Pakistan, it tells the story of Bilquis Begum, a matriarch living in Karachi who is finding it very hard to accept her son Sarmad’s marriage to an Australian woman. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t really seem, to me at least, that times have really changed, because I can pretty much imagine my own mother’s reaction if my brother brought home a foreign wife from his studies, and I’d expect the same disappointment and distrust to surface. In retrospect, what the author does well is give enough complexity to Bilquis so that she’s not just a stereotypical evil mother-in-law. As the head of a wealthy family, widowed and dependant on a swarm of servants, Bilquis’s trepidation stems not only from the fact that her son has refused to allow her to make a suitable desi match for him, but also about the fact that he himself will be living in Australia, leaving her without any support in her old age. This commentary on the times, which feel so relevant even in this day and age, might be the only thing the author managed to do well.
Most well-to-do families sent their young men to good universities abroad with the expectation that they would pay attention to their studies. It was also assumed, in an unspoken sort of way, that they might sow their wild oats and do the things that young men must do before settling down. As long as they kept their peccadilloes in the West, no questions were asked. They returned home to sterling careers and arranged marriages and no one was the wiser.
In keeping with this theme of interpretation of society, another important part of the story was the introduction of Kate as Sarmad’s wife, an outsider who could observe the lifestyle of the rich in Pakistan from a wonderfully refreshing eye. As a Pakistani, I’ve always been slightly aware of how privileged certain aspects of our lifestyles are: even in my middle class upbringing, we had five part-time maids, one gardener, one errand boy, and multiple more workers who frequented our house for smaller, more random chores. In the family I’ve married into, we have a full-time help who lives with us, one part-time babysitter for the one single child at home, three maids, one driver, one gardener, and so on and so forth. For Pakistanis who exist in the upper middle class to elite range, this is the reality we live in, because poverty is so rampant, and unions which protect the rights of workers are so non-existent, and people are desperate for work. And so for me, this wasn’t something extraordinary until I realized the obvious lack of such people on my foreign trips. In London, I found out that a family shared one common bathroom. For me, who had always seen one bathroom per room back in Pakistan, the idea of a shared bathroom is amazing and frankly alarming. Which is why it’s fascinating to see this kind of decadence, even in middle-income households, through the eyes of someone who hasn’t lived here.
It was her first trip to Pakistan and everything was foreign. While she had heard Sarmad talking of servants, and she knew about babysitters and cleaners who were still familiar and middle-class figures in Australia, of even the butlers and scullery maids of Victorian novels, she had never experience a life where people did not have to wash clothes, cook meals or clean the house because their servants did everything for them, from the moment they awoke to when they went to bed.
On the flip side of all this great commentary was the plot, which was the primary reason this book didn’t rate very well. Besides Sarmad’s marriage, Bilquis also spends her time worrying about her maidservant, an efficient and hardworking girl named Mumtaz, who is having an affair with the guard next door. Omar, who has come from Karachi and has ideas of Jihad he would like to try out, is also a product of the times, what with the Islamization that had gripped Pakistan in that decade. He spends his time dreaming about fighting for a great and noble cause, and meanwhile being both conflicted and happy about his relationship with Mumtaz.
What made some women wicked and other women virtuous? Was it possible to seduce a virtuous woman? If a man seduced a woman, then didn’t she have to be fundamentally wicked anyway?
The problem was that I didn’t really care what happened to Mumtaz and Omar, or for that matter to Sarmad and Kate. And a book which can’t make you connect to the characters can only survive through the force of its writing, so brilliant as to reduce everything else’s importance. Unfortunately, since that isn’t present here, all we can concentrate on are the other things the book tries to point attention to, such as the social and political climate of the 80’s, and how the wealthy operated in those times. Bilquis’s resentment of her sister’s marriage to a man whom Bilquis considers below their social class is pretty much representative of this system. Modernism, as represented by the wealthy in this book—with their English-speaking habits and their affinity for alcohol—is very disdainful of the poor and the religious, which mostly overlap. So this story operates on two levels: of the idea that time was destroying values, but also how the boundaries between social classes were blurring.
The process of gentrification, Bilquis could see, had begun.
Beyond this lamentation of the changing times, it got increasingly hard not to roll my eyes at the romanticization of the past that prevails throughout the book. In all the conversations I have with my elders, I usually have very little patience for the statements which seek to show how wonderful life was, and how horrible it is now (oh these millenials/this internet/this technology, ruining us all). This book is a sort of summary of all those conversations into one: a sad, whiny little complaint that stretches over 200 pages. The only redeeming quality is that the author makes it clear that it is our protagonist who feels this way, thus keeping it out of the overall narrative.
“I was thinking that soon there won’t be anyone left except us old people.”
“And our servants,” Bilquis smiled.
“And what will become of us?”
“Why, my dear, we’ll rot.”
Another reason why I liked this author (or publisher, depending upon who decided this) was the fact that not a single word was italicized, in a book filled with mentions of bhujias and koftas and millions of other specifically desi dishes and plants and clothes. Most books by international publishers which are written by Pakistani writers make it a point to italicize words that their expected audience of Western readers would not get, as if to say, here’s something from a culture you don’t recognize, so you don’t necessarily need to understand it. Some will even go so far as to provide glossaries at the end of the book, long lists of words for the anglophile reader. And while the argument of whether this is necessarily a good thing or not can be kept for another day, in the here and now I believe it’s fine to leave it unitalicized, and was glad to see that this book agreed with me.
Overall, this wasn’t the best thing ever. It passed my time, and it didn’t waste it. Some of it was interesting, and a greater portion of it was pointless. Maybe read it if you’re interested in Pakistan in the 80’s? Hesitantly recommended.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Oh my god my list of 'reviews to come' is getting longer and longer by the day!
April 26, 2009
Set in Pakistan, this is not a novel of war or politics or religion or oppression. It’s the story of families and relationships, told in the wistful, knowing voice of one who cannot change the course of events.
Bilqis, an aging widow and professor of literature, is alone — save for her servants — after her son, her only child, marries an Australian woman and settles there. Samad has invited his mother to live with him, but she can’t bear to leave. She tries to persuade him to move home, even though they both know he never will.
At the same time, Bilqis’ servant girl is carrying on a clandestine love affair. She confesses to Bilqis, who has the chance to save her from the ruin that would certainly ensue were her family to find out.
Azhar Abidi, himself a native of Pakistan living in Australia, exquisitely tells the story of this woman facing both the twilight of her life and the twilight of her way of life. His storytelling is understated, never melodramatic, as he explores delicate family relationships in the context of cultural intersections: not so much clashes as chasms between Pakistan and the West, and between aristocrats and servants within Pakistan.
Bilqis, an aging widow and professor of literature, is alone — save for her servants — after her son, her only child, marries an Australian woman and settles there. Samad has invited his mother to live with him, but she can’t bear to leave. She tries to persuade him to move home, even though they both know he never will.
At the same time, Bilqis’ servant girl is carrying on a clandestine love affair. She confesses to Bilqis, who has the chance to save her from the ruin that would certainly ensue were her family to find out.
Azhar Abidi, himself a native of Pakistan living in Australia, exquisitely tells the story of this woman facing both the twilight of her life and the twilight of her way of life. His storytelling is understated, never melodramatic, as he explores delicate family relationships in the context of cultural intersections: not so much clashes as chasms between Pakistan and the West, and between aristocrats and servants within Pakistan.
June 27, 2010
When a young Pakistani man marries an Australian woman his mother opposes the union since he moves away to Australia. Much of the story centers around the mother, Bilqis, who loves her homeland so intensely that she is blind to its turmoils and violence. The son's conflict is a universal one as Sayad struggles with his roles as son, husband, and father and the demand that each of these roles make.
February 19, 2015
i read it 1st paragraph its looked v nice ... further comments will after finishing this novel
October 26, 2016
I truly enjoyed this lovely tale set in Pakistan.
September 5, 2017
Bilqis is a recently windowed middle-aged lady in Karachi and the matriarch of her extended and fairly noble family. However, her son has emigrated to Australia and shows no signs of moving back to a country that's increasingly under the thumb of the twin repression of the military and religious fundamentalists (the book is set in 1985). She is thus forced to confront the dissolution of traditions and familial obligations that bear increasing importance as she ages alone.
It's a book that dwells effectively on the mother-son relationship, without getting either sentimental or cynical in handling a familiar storyline about a son rejecting arranged matches in favor of a western woman (and life in Australia). The theme of modernity and generational change is universal, whatever the specific Pakistani touchstones invoked here are. It's a haunting, and read in a certain mood, depressing, insight into how every human gradually loses meaning and connectedness as they age.
It's a book that dwells effectively on the mother-son relationship, without getting either sentimental or cynical in handling a familiar storyline about a son rejecting arranged matches in favor of a western woman (and life in Australia). The theme of modernity and generational change is universal, whatever the specific Pakistani touchstones invoked here are. It's a haunting, and read in a certain mood, depressing, insight into how every human gradually loses meaning and connectedness as they age.
June 17, 2025
Im stunned and lost in the pictures, scenarios, thoughts and feelings created by the author!
A true piece of elaborate work. Absolutely engrossed in the beauty of characters and their journeys.
One of those books that made me think deep into every description. Each character has been wonderfully crafted, expressed and closed.
It resonated with my own experiences at several times and I couldn’t agree more of how we all go through the similar experiences in life yet feel them uniquely.
A true piece of elaborate work. Absolutely engrossed in the beauty of characters and their journeys.
One of those books that made me think deep into every description. Each character has been wonderfully crafted, expressed and closed.
It resonated with my own experiences at several times and I couldn’t agree more of how we all go through the similar experiences in life yet feel them uniquely.
January 26, 2019
A quaint novel of the inter generational conflict, growth, culture, and change. Though the narrative seemed disjointed at times as it followed various characters without an obvious structure, the underlying message prevailed in each plot line.
Read
September 18, 2025It was passable.
July 23, 2013
"This book is excellent on so many levels. There are no wasted words, book is full at only 200+ pages. Conflict between European educated Muslims and Islam, parents and their children- how tightly do we hold them, how do we stay close when they are adults. I don't say this lightly, when I say that this book will stay with me. I thought that I was tired of the Muslim/Islam conflicts, but this book is real and personal."
January 19, 2015
Noioso e mediocre. Dovrebbe essere un affresco di una classe sociale che sta scomparendo in Pakistan con dei risvolti legati ad un certo periodo storico, ma il risultato è molto scadente secondo me (alla fine l'autore non conclude niente su nessun fronte: personaggio principale, secondari, background politico, etc). Non so se poi tradotto male, ho scritto male, ma è stato di una noiosità unica e troppo ordinario (un cliché dopo l'altro).
January 10, 2010
Not a terrible book but at times I found Abidi's dialogue a bit preachy. I did appreciate the look into the gradually decaying world of late 1980s Karachi that I myself lived through, but even with that background I did not find myself that moved by the characters with the notable exception of the servant Mumtaz.
February 10, 2014
I knew nothing neutral about Pakistanis before reading this novel. It felt like it explained a lot of things about the islamic culture which has its own unique flavor. The characters, I thought, were all compelling in their degrees of loyalty, if that's the right word, to the hold of tradition versus the pull of change.
June 30, 2014
Bel libro, un punto di vista di una madre pakistana sulle abitudini che stanno cambiando nella società e nello specifico all'interno della sua famiglia. Scorrevole, fa pensare in certi punti, soprattutto quando c'è la contrapposizione tra il pensiero "tradizionale" della madre e quello più moderno del figlio.
September 5, 2009
Strange story, as told mostly from the perspective of the mother who lives in Karachi, and how she feels left behind when her son moves to Australia. Nicely written, but I did not like the mother at all.
March 7, 2013
I stopped reading this about halfway through. Well-written, I just didn't care to read about the young romance that develops at this point in the book. Crude language kept me from continuing. ('Read' because I'm not 'Currently Reading' it and I don't plan 'To Read' any more of it)
August 6, 2014
A beautiful and sensitive portrayal of the struggle when an only son immigrates from Pakistan to the west. The writing is lyrical and distinctive and never boring. I can't wait until Azhar Abidi writes another novel.
May 17, 2010
Interesting enough but kind of simplistic.
March 30, 2014
Decent book about mothers
April 4, 2015
A simple and exquisite portrayal of family relationships.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews