Lovebirds by Hananah Zaheer — A Compilation of Human Emotions’ Rollercoaster

The term ‘Lovebirds’ gives the instant impression of a sickly-sweet sentimentality between relations, however, don’t let this word association be the source of your impression of Hananah Zaheer’s debut book.

Lovebirds is a compilation of twelve stories of flash fiction that range from a grieving mother clutching a dead bird, a jealous lover watching his house burn to the ground and, a vision of God in a chicken coop. These stories explore the human emotions of banality, loneliness and unravelling of various relationships an individual is surrounded with. Zaheer through these stories has also pried open some of the taboo subjects of desi culture.

In exploring these sensitive and complex emotions she has also in some stories experimented with multiple states that go beyond the typical physical boundaries and has included the mental and spiritual ones as well. Hananah writes and edits for her day job as well and through Lovebirds deliberately experimented with her writing style. With each story she decided to break one of the standard rules of her usual storytelling style and found her current interests to be writing out of mythologies. “Willow Tree Fever”, of the stories in the book is the closest to that format for her.

I got to talk to Hananah about Lovebirds and her work in general.

I’ll start with a typical question, how and when you decided that writing is something that you want to do professionally, given that it is still not considered a stable source of income in a desi household?

“To be honest, I was pretty young when the suspicion that writing could be something more than a hobby entered my mind. I was paid for my first published piece of fiction when I was 14. The check was miniscule, maybe 200 rupees, I think, but that feeling of depositing that check into my account was the first time that I had an inkling that this might be where I end up. To be fair, I was premed for a while, then halfway trained to becoming a psychologist and then realized everything I have ever studied and found fascinating about the human mind and body is most intriguing in words on a page. Now I teach, edit, and write and could not imagine a life better than one where words are my primary occupation.”

What made you opt for flash fiction as your first book. You have been working as an editor and usually the trend is that editors end up writing full length books as a career extension?

“Flash fiction, for me, was a fantastic accident. A few years ago, a friend and I set ourselves a challenge to write a short story every week. Pretty soon, it became clear that to actually finish a draft, we would have to start shortening the lengths of all stories. I had always found flash fascinating but intimidating-there’s so much packed into such a small space-but a year or so later, as I started work on two books-a traditional length collection of short stories as well as a novel-I found myself turning to flash fiction both to relax and remind myself that I love to create stories, but also to work on the brevity of language and ideas. Last year, during the process of putting my other collections together, I realized I had enough flash to make its own book and thought I might try my luck at reputable, small presses. Luckily Bull City Press decided to give my work a home!”

The stories compiled in Lovebirds revolve mostly around emotions of sadness and personal struggles, is there a story behind why you picked these broad themes for the compilation?

“These are themes common to the human experience, and what often makes both fiction and real lives worth studying, but I’d like to think that these are jumping off points for a deeper look at other things we all hold important: love, power, respect, death. In other words, I think sadness and struggle are symptoms of the ways human beings exist around each other in the world. I am especially intrigued by the idea of how these interactions impact women’s relationships with power and violence, and what the cost of existing is, given these interactions.”

What are your own personal favourite(s) from the Lovebirds collection?

“Each of these stories tracks a moment of growth for me as a writer and I am fond of all of them, but I do have to say that I am particularly proud of Willow Tree Fever, Lovebirds, and Things I say to My Son as He Sleeps.”

Is a new project in the pipeline?

“I have a collection of short stories that is in revision with my agent, and a novel that is driving me quite thrillingly insane these days.”

All the stories in this collection have a lot of depth despite being told in a very limited word count and I believe her interest in photography plays a role here. As she herself shared in another interview, ‘Seeing things go in and out of focus, how the world around me somehow became even more defined in seeing it through the viewfinder. Even now, I write with a visual in mind, which is to say, I walk through the story as if with a camera in hand, looking at corners of doors, loose threads on shoes, a missing button on a shirt. The connection between that and narrative prose seems very deep and immediate to me. In photography, I feel I look for the story of a moment with the suggestion that there is a before and after — the same sort of skill I use for a short story or a piece of flash”.

While this is not a big book in terms of the number of pages or words, the in-depth tense details of every story is going to make you read them by pacing yourself, taking a deep breath and wanting to not put it down as well.

Originally published at https://pk.mashable.com on January 17, 2022.