If a matrimony ad were to be written for Mustafa Zaidi at his peak it would read: Poet, Bureaucrat, Recipient of Tamgha-e-Quaid-e-Azam, Romantic, Suicidal.
Shahnaz’s ad would read: Fair, Beautiful, Claim to Fame is Afghan Royalty.
It is through this pairing of unlikely personalities that we have Society Girl by Saba Imtiaz and Tooba Masood-Khan, a multilayered, multidimensional story of two starkly different people as an insight into how lives despite socio-economic differences can intertwine to create webs of deceit and disloyalty in the name of romance that ultimately lead to double lives, the cost for which can be too much.
What should have been a mere love affair became a sordid scandal, yet Another Pakistani Tragedy that love as an ideal can only ever remain an ideal and rarely, if ever, experienced. Best to stick to the long and narrow.
Skilfully swimming through the narrowness of Lahore’s bloodlines to finding liberation in Karachi’s cosmopolitanism and glittering nightlife, this is a jigsaw galaxy made up of thousands of scattered pieces from different planets. Truly, Imtiaz and Masood-Khan have set the bar with their stellar investigative skills and proven to be master storytellers.
A masterclass in objectively telling the story without the temptation to judge, there is a kindness with which they reveal the two main characters - Mustafa and Shahnaz - a desperately needed form of reporting that is non-existent in today’s Pakistani media.
Solving a mystery in a country that thrives on ‘chaska’ is no easy feat and where politics, conspiracy theories, love affairs, bloodlines, power games, sex, slander and revenge come in with a heavy penchant for moralising, Imtiaz and Masood-Khan limit Sherlock Holmes’ techniques to Baker Street.
The trial scene alone is worth using to teach writing on how to navigate a potent but sensitive situation where two people’s lives are not just at stake but also national security, international economic trade and the revelation of the carefully crafted world of high society with all its debauchery and nobility.
Imtiaz and Masood-Khan grant Mustafa, a complex character, the space to be as he is and they view him with a kind lens that perhaps there was a mental health issue that kept cropping up especially during times of distress. Shahnaz is mostly explored through the lens of other women, perhaps in the hope they may empathise with a woman who for all her flaws was essentially mimicking high society in its behaviour but never realising how high the stakes are and not everyone can afford them.
A masterclass in objectively telling the story without the temptation to judge, there is a kindness with which they reveal the two main characters - Mustafa and Shahnaz
Mustafa for all his brilliance as a poet and intelligence toyed with life to see how far he could push it, till it finally retaliated. It could never tame his need to shatter every limit and so he kept getting away with it. Surviving suicide, lamenting a lost love to the extreme, mocking a Civil Service Academy as an asylum, referring to Jhelum as Jahannum, bringing home a mistress and seducing her in a bedroom with his wife standing outside, nothing was off limits for Mustafa when it came to tempting fate - he kept winning.
Masterfully toying with words as poetry and using couplets to manipulate friend’s minds when confronted about his infidelity and behaviour, Mustafa knew he could charm his way to everyone’s heart and anyone’s bed.
Yet, for all his identity as a poet, there was a pragmatic side and after a stint at teaching he joined the bureaucracy. From there on did he reach his professional high and low. It was at his lowest, Shahnaz entered, a sort of a lifeboat as he tread a sea of bad luck.
Often creatives transcend the mundaneness of life to explore the vastness of their minds. Was she a distraction from his career disgrace? Or just another piece that fed his hunger for sex? The fire in his loins for yet another conquest to counter the disrupted domestic life he enjoyed with his beloved wife Vera?
Shahnaz is beautiful, giggly and dazzled by the fancy Karachiites who accept that this ordinary couple, Saleem and Shahnaz, are harmless folk merely adding to the crowd of their appreciators. Uncultured, she is dismissed as being anything but a housewife who makes the most of her life after getting out of purdah in Gujranwala.
What could possibly have caused Shahnaz, married to stable, secure but old (30 years her senior) husband to fall for Mustafa? Could it also have been she was looking to counter domestic life with a dull husband? Or was she too simple minded to recognise Mustafa for who he was as he swept her off her feet with his silver tongue? Or was she never given the chance to bloom, viewed as a second tier socialite only and keen to move higher up?
As Imitiaz and Masood-Khan write:
“Mustafa’s young friends were fairly dismissive of Shahnaz. They thought she was just a pretty woman; charming, sure, but not Mustafa’s intellectual equal. This seemed like a relationship borne out of lust, not literature.”
Imtiaz and Masood-Khan critically analyse society’s initial understanding of the situation as “a homemaker who had fallen in love with a romantic, charming poet.” But sadly they were never really free from judgement which played out in the media. As Imtiaz and Masood-Khan note the media circus surrounding the couple: “she had had an affair despite being a mother of two was seen as shocking. It didn’t matter that Mustafa was also a father of two.”
As the investigation into Zaidi’s death picks up, a new dimension of crime, a desi favourite - smuggling - opens up. Here again, Zaidi’s manipulation and manoeuvring comes in leaving one horrified, not at the beings that lurk in shadows or the ones that operate in broad daylight but are strong enough to play with people’s lives even in death.
As Imitiaz and Tooba write, “In fact, no one would have connected a trip to London with smuggling in the first place, had it not been for the person who had spread the rumour – Mustafa Zaidi – who was now seemingly directing this investigation from beyond the grave.”
But the question is: did Mustafa ever know he had gone too far? As thoughts of Shahnaz moving on swirl in his head, he is reduced to a mere ex. How could she do this to him?
Career gone, family gone, no love interest - Mustafa decides to go for revenge. With the printing of Shahnaz’s nude as a flyer, had he finally broken every rule? And did she decide to take matters into her own hands? Did either one of them deserve the tragedies of fate they were dealt?
Having sunk to the lowest form of desperation, ultimately Mustafa couldn’t fight his own mind as dark as it became. Shahnaz chasing reflections in the water ventured out too far into the sea, never found the shore that was promised. Sand is never as solid as earth and actions speak louder than words. Tremendously expensive lessons for Shahnaz and Mustafa.