Trespassing

‘Standing in a room with eight thousand tiny creatures, witnessing them perform a dance that few humans even knew occurred; this was life. Everywhere she looked, each caterpillar nosed the air like a wand and out passed silk. They sashayed to the left and swivelled to the right. They bobbed and undulated, dotting the air in figure-eights. They worked ceaselessly for three days and nights, with material entirely of their own, and with nothing to orchestrate them besides their own internal clock. Each, a perfectly self-contained unit of life. When Dia watched one spin, she came closer to understanding the will of God than at any other time.’ Dia is the daughter of a silk farmer, Riffat—an innovative, decisive entrepreneur. Like her mother, Dia seems at first sight spirited and resourceful. She seems free. But freedom has its own borders, patrolled by the covetous and the zealous, and there are those who yearn to jump the fence. Then Daanish comes back to Karachi for his father’s funeral, all the way from Amreeka, a land where there are plenty of rules but few restrictions. When Dia and Daanish meet, they chafe against all the formalities. It is left to a handful of silkworms, fattened on mulberry leaves and slipped inside a friend’s dupatta, to rupture the fragile peace and plans of both their houses, to make the space—noisy like the sea in a shell—in which Dia and Daanish can create something new, all over again. Meanwhile, around them, new ways drive out old, as new hatreds are manufactured and old ones revived, and new rules are posted and then broken. Trespassing is intricately and delicately made. Its characters—and their destinies—are utterly clear before us and the reader is driven hurriedly through the book seeking shelter—for the characters they have come to love as much as for themselves.