Written by Fauzia Rafique and translated from Punjabi by Haider Shahbaz, Keeru carries within it an unusually long and wandering gestation. Rafique first began work on a novel “with a protagonist called Keeru” in Lahore in 1975. When she moved to the UK the following year, the manuscript travelled with her. But on her return to Pakistan in 1978, it was left behind. Nearly four decades later, in 2014, Rafique rediscovered the manuscript and returned to it, resuming the interrupted conversation with her characters.
The narrative centres on Muhammad Hussain Khan Keeru, now living in Vancouver, as he anxiously prepares for his mother’s long-awaited visit after 17 years of separation. His anticipation is charged with nervous care: how will she react to the life he has built, and to the ultimate gesture of filial devotion—his business named after her, Haleema Bibi Enterprises Ltd. Keeru’s days are consumed with preparation and second-guessing, his attention at work drifting as he liaises with Aunty Naila, the assistant manager, to ensure everything is in place for his Bebe. He is grateful to Naila’s husband, Uncle Raheem, for helping him secure his first job in Canada, while Naila, in turn, recognises Keeru’s decency. These small exchanges, marked by mutual care, quietly anchor the novel’s emotional landscape.
Rafique deftly uses memory as a narrative device, allowing the story to slip between past and present, between Pakistan and Canada, illuminating her characters through carefully layered backstories. From adolescence onward, Keeru has been burdened by two enduring anxieties: his mother and his name. Growing up in Pakistan, whenever he asked his mother why she named him Keeru—a word that translates to “insect”—she offered a different explanation each time. Keeru’s struggles are shaped by caste, heteronormativity, and the dislocations of immigration, while his mother’s story unfolds as that of a woman doubly marginalised: a convert in a conservative Pakistani society, then a widow, increasingly isolated. In a world where exclusions multiply like amoeba, the only being she could truly claim was the “insect of her belly”—her Keeru.
Keeru himself is a poet, and the novel is framed by two of his poems: Kaal: Dearth and Haal: Ecstasy. Together, they trace an emotional arc from deprivation to abundance, despair to joy. Near the novel’s end, Rafique writes, “Joy transforms everything,” a sentiment that finds its fullest expression in Haal. “Life does not happen again/and again,” the poem urges. “Dance in ecstasy, friend/an ecstatic dance.” The spare intensity of the poetry mirrors the novel’s own stylistic economy.