In TS Eliot’s The Wasteland, Phlebas the Phonecian has died by drowning.

He passed the stages of his age and Youth

Entering the whirlpool.

As he surrenders to water, Phlebas leaves it all behind, “who was once handsome and tall as you.”

Eliot’s concern here is mortality as a human experience. But the clamour of a young woman being dragged to the nearby river by an angry mob of mostly men and young adults, humiliated and abused, for committing adultery is about honourable death for everyone, except herself. Instead of willingly submitting to the will of the society, this woman is drowned in water, because the land she breathes on, can’t have her.

Honour killing captured popular Pakistani imagination and becomes mainstream media fodder especially when the victim is played by a leading actress. Before the entertainment media stepped in, we had a profound cultural moment for Pakistani social documentary with Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s, Girl in the River. Honour killing, or honour, has ensured success for many TV and film projects. Some might remember the success of ’90s PTV drama Maarvi. Linked to this fascination with honour, is its punitive nature for women, for their sexual freedom and the dishonour such freedom brings.

Awais Khan’s novel No Honour unravels the imbalance of power struggle where the male is both an accomplice and the judge. Khan’s book has all the elements of Pakistani pop; it is an intense mix of personal pain and social demands. It’s a domestic drama that turns into a social call for the society’s apathy.

No Honour is the story of Shabnams and Abidas of Pakistan’s rural Punjab: young women whose bodies give away their secrets. First we meet Shabnam, who has just delivered a baby girl, pleading with her brother to return the baby he is about to drown, “in a bucket of milk. What else? Exactly what she deserved.” The protagonist is Abida, a ‘dishonoured’ young woman who loves and sleeps with a local boy and is left alone to bear the consequences of their relationship. Concerned about finding the ‘right’ match for their daughter, her parents’ foremost concern is to marry her off to the local Peer’s son with more, than “fourteen years of education.” The discovery of pregnancy leaves the family shocked. Abida’s father, Amjad, a butcher by profession, goes to every length to follow her daughter’s footprints from their village to the big-bad-city of Lahore, where she is sold and resold. As he follows his favourite child, resolute to help her escape, Amjad sees the world from the eyes of a father, not a chauvinist, whose daughter is forced to carry her body from one hand to another.

Amjad’s views about women and their freedom resonate more with what most readers might associate with Western liberalism. Here’s probably the only instance of Khan defying stereotypes. He is a man constantly fighting a culture that keeps pushing both genders along the peripheries of what’s permitted. No Honour unveils the moral dishonesty in a society that prides itself on its upkeep of an imported culture.

Khan tries to strike a balance as we meet ruthless men and vile women, the ugly face of humanity. The balance is ostensibly between men like Peer Sahib and Jamil, a religious fanatic and a proud misogynist versus a father who’d go to any length to prove them wrong; powerful corrupt men like Rana Sahib and their wives with the Stockholm syndrome; the rural landscape of unchecked abuse and class-based exploitation in the cities. While the village is more violent and blatant in its punishment of women for forming ‘improper’ relationships outside of marriage, the city exploits their financial insecurity.

Abida’s entanglement with the power struggles of a cosmopolitan is interesting. As a prostitute, she is handed down from a father to his son, from one powerful man to another.

Khan is unpacking a lot here in the frameworks of honour, foeticide, class struggle, religious exploitation, prostitution, police abuse and corruption. What we end up with is a strong engaging plot, moving with the impulses of the characters that keep playing hide and seek with the oppressive system. There are no angels here though - personal vendettas, social and religious biases, moral and sexual corruption abound.

The narrative moves like Abida’s life - unfortunate and violent events recur through a tight network of overlapping situations. A few television-inspired stereotypes stand out - small town girl turning sex worker, puppy love with violent end, politics of the brothel.

Literature, like most of the world, is going through a reckoning. Issues once unpopular are now seen as necessary to deal with. Awais Khan’s is a direct and familiar one. He keeps it within a geographical frame.

From the whirlpool of characters and events, No Honour, despite its predictable plot, allows the reader an immersive read into an important issue through interesting characters.

No Honor (2021)

Author: Awais Khan

Published by: Orenda Books

Pages: 276

Price: Not mentioned

The writer is a freelance writer based in the US. She can be reached at sikandar.sarah@gmail.com