A glimpse into the lives of Tamil Muslim women in Rajathi Salma’s THE HOUR

PAST MIDNIGHT
 Salma is a writer of Tamil poetry and fiction. She was born in Thuvarankurichi in

Trichy, district of Tamil Nadu. Her bold writing about the taboo areas of Tamil Muslim

world has tagged her as a controversial as well as a mutinous writer. What makes Salma

an extraordinary writer is her upbringing in a rigorously conventional environment and

the way with which she spurted out as an inspiration for the contemporary Muslim

writers of Tamil literature. The village to which Salma belongs is a conformist and a

stereotypical Indian village where girls are confined in the four walls of their house once

they reach puberty. Salma was also barred to attend school after her 9th grade and was

ensnared inside her own house for almost nine long years. After that her parents tricked

her into marriage to a complete stranger against her wishes. Entrapped in the house for

those nine years, Salma had nothing else to do but reading. She read all whatever she got

from her village library including Russian literature, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and numerous

other authors and that sheer aloofness made her a vicarious reader. She started writing

poems at the age of sixteen covertly without her family’s knowledge.

Salma’s life before and after her marriage made a deep impact on her writings. It was like

moving from one dungeon to another; first she was the possession of her father and then

after her marriage, her husband ruled her. Her husband was a kind of man who would

fight everyday over any trivial issue and make her feel crumbled all the time. She was not

even allowed to cross the threshold to meet anybody and there was just a small window

with grills in the house through which Salma could barely see anything outside. Writing

poems was the only thing which used to provide her a sense of escape and solace. Her

tyrant husband warned her to quit writing so many times and once he even threatened to

mutilate her face by pouring acid on her. But Salma’s fervent love for writing forced her
to carve out new ways to persist her passion. Salma during a seminar in Singapore said,

“I did not stop. I just changed my name. My name is Rajathi Samsudeen. I started

sending my poems in under the pen name Salma.” (Deepika Shetty)

It was only through writing she could express the emotional crisis in her life, her curbed

yearnings and loneliness which she hadn’t ever shared with anybody. She would hide in

the toilet to jot down her poems on the bits of newspaper which were used to wrap

groceries. One day, she and her mother managed to smuggle all her poems to a publisher

Kanan Sundaram in Nagercoil. In an interview, Salma told how she managed to write

even after so much resistance:

At my parents’ home, I was free to read and write. But my husband and his

parents did not allow me. I used to read in his absence. If I wanted to write at

night, I would go to the toilet, stand there, write, and come back. In the toilet, we

had a small box for sanitary napkins; I used to hide my pen and papers there…

My mother used to help me. At home, we had servants and I never had to wash

my clothes. So she used to come and take my clothes. At that time, she would

keep those writings inside the cover and, later, send them to magazines. She got

the letters to me, which came from outside.

Salma’s poems were published under a pseudonym Salma for which she is famous till

date. Her identity was unmasked by a Chennai journalist, Arul Ezhiland who published

one of her poems with her photograph and name on the cover page of a famous Tamil

journal, Anantha Vikatan, in 2001. This revelation agitated her family and she was
rigorously opposed by the frantic male authority of her community. In an article on

Salma, Gopal Ethiraj writes:

When her outspoken thoughts were poured out in prose and poetry, she became

cynosure, followed by praise and brick-bats. That she is a woman and Muslim,

and that she was in her marital home did not matter—no stopping her views, her

‘literary fund’ breached the bund. That is women empowerment poet-writer

Salma hitch-hiked with (Gopal Ethiraj, Asian Tribune).

Salma’s perseverance and her unbending will made her an inspiration for other women

of her village and community. She not only became a renowned writer but also the head

of the village panchayat.

The appalling experiences of Salma’s own life made her to pour out the wrath of being a

woman and the feeling of being crippled in male dominated society. The fierceness with

which she has expressed her anguish towards the unfair patriarchal ideologies can be

vividly felt in her poems and fiction. Before her, Siddhi Junaida was the Muslim woman

who wrote fiction Kadhala Kadamaiya (Love or Duty) in Tamil in 1938. In 2003, Salma

along with three other Tamil women poets faced obscenity charges and threats as her

poetry was tagged as ‘porno poetry’. A.R Venkatachalapathy, Associate Professor,

Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), Chennai, writes:

Thoppil Mohammed Meeran is practically the only Muslim writer in modern

Tamil fiction. A Muslim woman writer in Tamil is even rarer. So Salma writing

an original novel in Tamil is a new and important literary development. She

writes elaborately and with a great sense of self-consciousness. (The Hindu)

Salma’s writings are intense in nature depicting the confined position of women in the

crude domestic setting. Her realistic approach and the circumstances which shaped her

into a writer, help the reader to understand realty projected in her writings. In an

interview she said:

NKR: Personal experiences delineated in your poems- especially, the narrow

decreed by domestic arrangements, loneliness, pain and sorrow embedded

in relationships, oppression of (male) authority … Does this affect you

writing in any way?...

Salma: Rather than characterizing the experiences expressed in my poems as

personal… my poems reflect what I sensed of the feelings and experiences

of other women who exist in similar life-situations. I gave resonance to

those feelings in my poems. Neither my pain nor my feelings are solely

that of an individual; they belong to all such women.

Recently in the year 2013, a famous British film maker Kim Longinotto made a film

(Salma) on the life of Salma. Salma’s unusual story was told to Kim by Urvashi Butalia,

head of Indian feminist publishing company Zubaan Books, which moved her so much

that she decided to make a film on her life. The film received enormous appreciation and

became a part of various film festivals including: Sundance, Berlin, Sheffield,

Documentary Edge Festival and ‘Movies that Matter, at The Hague. Kim Longinotto told

in an interview the reason behind culling Salma’s life for her film:

It made me incredibly inspired to know that there was a woman like Salma. We

read about Nelson Mandela smuggling his book out on tiny bits of toilet paper out
 of jail… he’s a huge hero. Then you learn that there’s a woman like Salma, who’s

a modern day hero and she’s just one of us. And she gone through years of being

kept away and never gave up… she kept fighting, and I think.. if she can do this,

it gives me strength. (In conversation with Kim Longinotto Part two)

http://www.thewinehousemag.com/in-conversation-with-kim-longinotto-part-two/

In 2007, Salma was elected as the Chairman of Tamil Nadu social welfare board.

Presently, apart from being a writer, she is running an NGO (Your Hope is Remaining)

registered under the trust act. The motive of this community is to create awareness about

importance of education (especially for girls), empower women and improve their status

in every aspect and to help oppressed and marginalized sections of the society. In an

interview, she talked about her thoughts and said, “When I was young, I dreamed of

Freedom.. I’ve fulfilled that dream, but I am still seeking happiness.” (Krishna Warries,

Three Faces of Salma). Salma could have chosen to coop herself up in the dark corner of

the room of her marital home and live life like a namby-pamby, but she chose to embark

on a journey to discover her real self and to be an example for those women who meekly

surrender themselves to their prescribed traditional roles. In an interview published in

The Hindu, Salma talked about her decision to be what she is today and said:

It was such a powerful emotion. Here I am, traveling the world alone, as an adult.

I think about that might have been, and it just chokes me… Most women in my

village are living the life I was mean to live. And that’s always in my

consciousness. I think I’ve been lucky, very lucky.

The rough and tumble experiences of Salma’s life could not halt her to effectuate her

dreams and all these facets and procurements of her life make her different from others.

The Hour Past Midnight (2009) is Salma’s debut novel translated from the original tamil

Irandaam Jaamathin Kadhai (2004) by Lakshmi Holmstrom(an Indian born British

writer, Literary critic and translator of Tamil fiction). The novel, churned out of her own

experiences, presents the searing realities of the lives of Muslim women in the villages of

Tamil Nadu and the problems faced by them in that milieu. During an interview with a

PhD research scholar Safia Begum, Salma lamented over the bitter reality of her own

society:

In my village life has not changed compared to life in cities, specifically for

Muslim women or women in general. In cities, girls can go out for education but,

in the villages, it is very different and specifically, Muslims do not want to send

out their girls outside. After 13, all women should wait for marriage… they do not

know about the outside world, what happiness and life is. Their happiness is all

about eating good food, jewelry, husband, clothes etc. They do not know their

husbands are dominating them. It is still happening everywhere… with educated

women also.

Salma’s novel The Hour Past Midnight is written with such a powerful expression that

the reader experiences intimacy with the characters and identifies with their pleasures and

pains. She has framed reality with her incisive observation and has fearlessly unraveled

the shrewd socio-cultural forces which demand a woman’s submission. The novel is

layered with numerous issues and Salma has scarcely left any aspect of Muslim women’s
life unheeded or uncommented. In other words, the novel is about women; their

friendship, their families and their familial relationships, their struggles, their

participation in the celebrations and their day to day lives surrounded by the intricacies of

a being a woman in a society where they are just the ‘other’ of men. Salma remarks about

her works:

In my poems, you will not see any identity. My poems only talk about women’s

issues. My novels are only about Muslim women’s issues. My poems deal with

universal issues. I write novels because I have experiences with Muslim women,

which I want to record. (Interview with Safia)

Presenting women in a miserable set-up, Salma has actually tried to question their

victimization at the hands of cultural and religious forces which render women the

secondary status and they are not even aware of their suppression. She has also

questioned the selfish implications patriarchal interpretations of religion which allow men

to punish women whenever they try to rebel, transgress or assert their rights. A review in

the Cafe Dissenus magazine writes:

‘The Hour Past Midnight’ is a story about women. Not the educated, emancipated

and economically independent city-dwelling women like us, but about those

women who’re still in this time and age, shackled to their homes and hearth, by

the notions of religion, by society and sometimes, by themselves. It’s a poignant

narrative of the lives of the women in a small south Indian town, of their everyday

struggles and worries, of relationships, of love and hatred, and of death.

http://thotprocess.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/hour-past-midnight/
The Hour Past Midnight is a work which reveals the authenticity of Salma’s thoughts and

her intentions. Being a Muslim woman, Salma knows how women of her community face

the daily bouts of subjugation in the name of religion and her writing is an effort to craft

social awakening among these women. In her writings, she presents a vivid picture of a

society where men are born to rule and she has keenly dealt with various issues related to

misinterpretation of Islamic injunctions and their implementation in the society to

subordinate women. For her writings, she had to face harsh resistance from the religious

and other leaders of the society. Salma once remarked in this regard:

My novel openly spoke about women’s issues, and for this religious people also

got angry with me, saying I was not a proper woman, a proper Muslim woman.

My writings never criticised religion directly. I only spoke about the system, the

culture and the tradition, about how our male-dominated society… They don’t

give any proper freedoms, rights, to them. Islam permitted something for women,

but the religious people in our place won’t give us those rights… They say that I

attack religion…but I am trying to write something about society… I want change

to happen. But people do not understand my writings, my views.

http://developmentinaction.wordpress.com/2013/12/04/interview-rajathi-salma/

The novel is a story about the lives of a group of Muslim families in a small Tamil village

which provide an insight into the Tamil Muslim world, their strict traditions and religious

beliefs and the impact of these conventions on the lives of women of the community. The

incidents of the novel take place over a couple of weeks during the time of Ramdan.

There’s Rabia, an innocent girl and her mother Zohra, her aunt Rahima, her cousin

Wahida, her best friend Madina and some other women (Amina, Firdaus, Sabia, Mumtaz,
Nooramma, Nafisa) who make up their small and intimate community and through their

lives, Salma exposes the unseen reality of the world of Tamil Muslim women.

Rabia, who is about to reach puberty, is a child growing up in a strict conventional

environment. Her mother Zohra is always over conscious about her behaviour and

conduct (as a Muslim girl) both at home and outside. Through the character of Rabia,

Salma wants the reader to understand the psychology of a child who is always realized of

her existence as a girl, the complexities faced by a growing up girl in a conservative

environment, the way a child perceives her surroundings, relationships and the ills of the

society. One day, Rabia and her friends slyly go for a movie after school and when she

returns home, she is harshly beaten up by her mother and male friend Ahmed is not even

scolded by anyone for doing the same. Rabia is unable to understand why her male

friends have the freedom to go to the cinema and why it’s considered a crime if she does

the same. It seems like Salma has taken this incident from her own life and through

Rabia, she gave a glimpse of her own childhood experiences. She narrated this real life

incident during an interview:

The four of us – three girls from my class and I – were studying in our favourite

library… In our eagerness, we decided to go to the matinee show without

informing our families…We did not even know the title of the film being

screened that day. Only when we went inside did we find out that it was a

Malayalam film with an “A” certificate (Adults Only).. It turned out that my

brother was among the audience inside the theatre. As the news of our

misdemeanor reached home before we did, we received a sound thrashing. From

 the very next day, we were forbidden from going to school. (My brother went to

school as usual; only I was punished.)

Many a times in the novel Rabia wonders about the norms of the society but she is unable

to find any answer. As a child, she is always in a playful mood and her mother is always

rebuking her and trying to make her understand what is expected from a girl. “Well said.

She is always running about everywhere, just like a boy.” (ibid 52) As a child, Rabia is

completely unaware of her mother’s worries. Once when Rabia comes back from school

after getting drenched in rain and seeing her condition Zohra says:

‘Is this the state in which you come back from school? Oh Allah!

Everyone must have seen this fill of you. Shouldn’t a female child have

some sense of shame? Do I have to teach you even this much? (Salma 3).

Ss! Your chest is showing, you know that? There’ll be any number of

people in a house of bereavement. Are you going to stand in front of all of

them, looking so disgraceful?... A girl must be modest you know? Do as

you’re told now.. (Salma 5).

Rabia’s journey towards womanhood actually highlights the gender biased chauvinism

related to upbringing and nurturing feminine qualities in a girl child. A girl is given

importance if she is beautiful and has a fair complexion and as a child Rabia is conscious

of this fact. She always admires Wahida for her beauty and yearns to be like her:
 How lovely her Akka looked!.. she wasn’t half as fair-skinned as Wahida… Rabia

would measure Wahida’s long hair with small hands and then check her own,

despairingly. ‘Che why can’t I be pretty as you, Akka! Look how big my nose

is…And even Ahmad teases me sometimes for being so dark!’ (ibid 52)

Even Rabia’s mother is worried about her dark complexion and she often instructs her

powder her face and dress properly. Salma has scornfully attacked many myths

prevailing in her society and also the rigidity with which people follow these myths. The

young girls of the community are married off at a very young age to a man to elderly

men. They are not even asked for their consent and the male members of the family take

the decisions of their lives. It is considered beneficial if a girl gets married within the

family without breaking the kinship knots so that the property of the family remains

within. Girls and women of the community are not allowed to appear in front of men and

while going out without purdah or covering their body is considered as a dishonorable.

When Wahida menstruates for the first time, Zohra threatens her and say:

‘Never ever come before men who are other than our family. If you see their faces,

or they see yours, your face will lose its light and go that.’ Because of that…When

visitors came to the house… she would take to her heels and hide inside her room.

It was not on this house alone that this happened. In every house in the village,

girls who had come of age ran and hid exactly the same way. (ibid 112)

Married women are also not allowed to appear in front of men at home and outside also.

Outside they observe purdah and at home they stand behind the wall or pillar while
conversing with the male members. There are some rigid notions for the married women

to follow up strictly. Their body is considered to be something impure after marriage. It is

obligatory for them to have a bath before the dawn, immediately after having sex with

their husband in order to purify their body. When Wahida gets married:

… she began to pour the water over her head and bathe; to wash away the

pollution from her body… she remembered very well what Zohra told her: that

immediately after sex she must have a bath and wash her sheets and pillow

case…(ibid 316)

This rule of sustaining purity of body is just for women and men are free from such

conservations. Women are not even allowed to have a sip of water until they don’t take a

bath:

‘After you have been with your husband, you must not drink even a mouthful of

water without having had a bath. It’s a sin’… She knew she had to clean all the

places in her room where she had walked around, and was worried about that as

well. (ibid 402)

Young girls grow up with a fear in their minds for not bypassing any social norm even by

mistake. They are always realized of their secondary status by the female members of

their own family and community. Rabia at a funeral asks her aunt, “Yemma, don’t men

cry, ever?... Amma said, ‘Idiot! Men mustn’t cry. They never cry. They are not like

women.’” (ibid 7) Apart from this, there are several incidents in the novel highlighting

this concept:
 It is the responsibility of men to keep their women well under control. Do not

allow your women folk to go about alone either in our streets or to other towns

elsewhere. Not during the day, not at night. Tell the women they must never go to

the cinema. Make this an absolute rule (ibid 256).

It is considered immoral for the girls to express their sexual desires and even to look at

their own body parts:

Rabia ran to her room, removed her clothes.. Suddenly she wanted to bend down

and look at her own breasts. She wanted to know whether they had grown big

enough.. She felt shy… there was some kind of shame and repulsion which

stopped her… Her mother had told her that she would surely go to hell if she

bathed without any clothes…if she gazed at her own genitals, or at anyone else’s,

her face would darken. So how could she ever gaze at her own body? (ibid 154)

Such a restrictive environment does not let girls to open up and sex remains as an

ambiguous subject to them. These circumstances provoke them to explore the ambiguity

of sexuality through porn literature, experiment and immature discussions with each

other. Rabia shares a very intimate bond with her friend Madina and her cousin Wahida.

Both Rabia and Madina wonder how babies are born and they feel the urgency to know

about the truth behind staying of Madina’s brother Suleiman (who works abroad) for a

year this time. Together they try to explore and explain the mystery what her brother and

sister-in-law do “behind the locked doors” (ibid 328).

 It seems he’ll go away only after Anni has had a baby… But Rabia, don’t you get

a baby anyway, once you are married? So why does he have to stay here? Do you

understand it? (ibid 213)

When they both read the pornographic material while sitting on the terrace secretively,

Rabia feels guilty for she thinks it is a sin according to the religious commands:

She was beset by the fear that instead of reading Koran.. She was committing a

grave sin.. According to it, it was the Devil who always tempted us; if we manage

to escape him, we can be assured of a place in heaven where milk and honey will

flow like rivers… make them happy.. (ibid 360)

This is the reason why for girls like Wahida, nurtured with such a mind-set, sex comes as

an utter shock after marriage. Her immature psyche creates a kind of revulsion towards

sex in her mind and makes her sexually frigid:

Full of irritation, she used all her strength to push him away… she had never

expected he would behave to her in such a casually violent way.. All the dreams

and hopes… had shattered in an instant.. He had treated her as is she were an

object. (ibid 314)

Salma through such incidents wants to convey that such a mind-set leads to psychological

complications and girls discover the mystery of sexual intercourse as dreadful rather than

pleasurable. This reclusive outlook of Wahida makes her feels so horrified that she gets

severely ill. She does not even share her feelings with her mother. She has developed a
feeling of hatred for her mother thinking why she had married her off to such a brutal

man. Wahida’s father-in-law (Sayed) is a lecherous man who always looks at her with his

lustful eyes and seeks an opportunity to exploit or tease her with his immodest comments

and actions. Wahida lacks courage to confront him or disclose his cheap behaviour to

anyone, she becomes a silent bearer of all his cheap advances and that makes her

condition worse.

Women characters of Salma’s The Hour Past Midnight consider their life after marriage

as their ultimate destiny and they do not even know about the delight of freedom. For

them, their husbands are their gods and they are on the earth to serve them only. They are

completely oblivious of their own identity which has been cremated under layers of

sacrifices and prescribed traditional roles. On the death of Zuneida, Zohra tries to

console her daughter saying: “Your mother has died well, as a vaavarasi, while her

husband is till alive. Who can be so fortunate, tell me?”. (ibid 7) For them dying before

husband is the ill-fate of a woman and then again in a wailing sound Zohra says:

‘Allah grant a good fate to all women, and call us away before our husbands.

Grant us a good death like this one.’ Several voices, full of sadness, joined in,

with a heartfelt ‘Ameen’. (ibid 9)

Salma also puts forth the issue of different sexual norms for men and women belonging

to the same community. Men roam like free huntsmen and their lust and lewd behaviour

is acceptable while women have no right to even acknowledge their female sexuality and
desires. When Zohra tries to protest her husband for choosing Sikander (Who has affairs

with many women) for Wahida, he just snubs her justifying him:

‘So what? He said. ‘How long can we be bothering with all that? Men will be

Men. It’s wrong only when women behave like that?... how can he control

himself for so long. Nobody worried about such things as far as men were

concerned. (ibid 158)

At the very onset of the novel, Salma has written one of her poems which talks about

women’s evolution from womanhood to motherhood and the psychological changes and

the bodily changes after giving birth:

These nights

Following the children’s birth

You seek, dissatisfied,

within the nakedness you know so well,

My once unblemished beauty.

You are much repelled,

You say,

By a thickened body

And a belly criss-crossed with birthmarks;

My body, though, is unchanging ….

Then in the later part of the poem, she compares a man’s body with a female’s body:

True indeed

Your body is not like mine:

It proclaims itself,

It stands manifest…

Nature has been

More perfidious to me

Than even you…

The biased attitude towards women projected in the poem is what Salma had seen in her

surroundings. In the novel, Fatima who sneaks off with a Hindu man (Murugan) whom

she loves and this news creates an outrage among the male members of the village as they

think that it is wrong according to the religious norms and also it would affect the

reputation of their village:

Had they been able to get hold of Fatima or Murugan… they would have ton

them apart, limb from limb… How are we going to suffer from the humiliation

we have suffered today? Because of this wicked whore none of us can walk with

our heads held high anymore! (ibid 252)

What Fatima has done is considered sinful and disgraceful. For committing this act, a

few male members of the village and the religious mongers of the mosque collectively

decide to banish her mother (Nuramma) and her family from the society:
 We are all agreed that a forbidden thing has happened… She has run off with a

Kafir boy. Hereafter she will not be allowed to enter this town… At the same

time, the Jamaat considers it necessary to ban Nuramma from the community..

We will not accept ay contribution to the mosque from her.. No Hazrat must go to

her house on any occasion. (ibid 252)

When the news of Fatima’s death comes, it is justified as a penalty for her sins demanded

by God. Her elopement with a Hindu man is seen as transgression of the boundaries

drawn to cage women and their existence in the name of religion:

Suleiman: Do you see how Allah has punished her?... Would He let her get away

with it? …. See what came to her, and how quickly, the whore… He would give

her what she deserved so soon. The Lord is great, isn’t He? (ibid 432)

In the novel, Salma talk about the sexual politics prevailing in her community

highlighting the issue of plogamy. Men are free to express their sexual urges and

women’s expression is considered anti-social and destructive. This is why Fatima’s act

makes her a shameless woman and nobody questions men like Karim (Zohra’s husband)

who is involved with Mariyayi (a Dalit woman, who works for her), Sayed, Sikander and

Abdullah (an old man who is going to marry a young girl for the fourth time) who have

relationship with several women in abroad. What Salma brings out in light is that the

women are not ignorant of their husband’s illicit affairs, instead they accept it willingly

because according to the Shariat, men have the liberty of indulging in polygamy:
 What did you ask me? About men marrying again and again? According to the

Shariat, men can marry four wives, it isn’t wrong. Women do it, it is wrong.

Zohra knows about her husband’s affair with Mariyayi but she never dares to question

her husband regarding it. Instead of questioning, she calls Mariyayi for some help in

Wahida’s wedding preparations and also chooses a sari for her for the wedding day. This

evidently shows how women put blinders of patriarchy and think that what their

husbands do is always right.

Salma’s bold writing in a way can be seen as a challenge to the orthodox supporters and

creators of the patriarchal values who suppress women’s sexuality and its free expression.

She has also touched upon the bold of issue using female body and indulgence of women

like Nuramma, Nurnissha and Karirunissa in prostitution for meeting their daily needs:

“…. The lack of any other income was the reason for Kairunissa’s choice of life.

Once Nuramma came of age, Kairunissa herself began to arrange and invite

clients for her daughter. Soon, Nuramma becomes used to her means of

livelihood. She even liked it, and welcomed her clients warmly… Not only had

she entered into prostitution without being compelled into it; she also invited her

younger sister to join her.. (ibid 329-330)

Nurnissha after her husband’s death, is left with no option as she has three children

whom she has to bring up. Her circumstances drives her to choose prostitution to survive

and feed her three children when her own brother turns his back and refuses to help her in
any way. Salma through the situation of these women has tried to illustrate one more dark

side of the lives of women of her community.

The incidents of the novel reveal some grave issues which show Salma’s keen sense of

understanding the deep psyche of women whose bodies are just machines for childbirth

and countless pregnancies. With this issue, Salma highlights the control of masculine and

religious norms on the body of women which do not allow them to use contraception or

choose sterilization to eschew unwanted pregnancies.

What did you ask me? Why do I get pregnant? Well, what do you suggest I do?

He says I shouldn’t use any kind of contraception. He says it would bring Allah’s

anger upon us. … As for him, he quotes the Shariat and the Hadiths that children

are our wealth and that it is a sin to prevent them. But who is it that bears the

brunt of it all? Is it the man? Not at all; it’s the woman, of course.

Women like Saitthoon and Raihaina face perilous health issues by giving birth to babies

one after another. Sherifa’s notices the effect of incessant childbirths on her sister’s

Raihaina’s body:

Her arms were like sticks; the skin hung loose on them. Her body was worn down;

only her stomach stuck out, round as a pot… Her sunken eyes and nose and mouth

looked like tiny versions of themselves.. Sherifa felt pained to see that anaemic

body and strange features… (ibid 140)

Mariyayi is exploited by Karim as he impels her to go for sterilization so that his repute

remains virtuous and upright in everyone’s eyes.

She considered her relationship with Karim a special privilege to the extent that

she even accepted his arrangement to have herself sterilized… (ibid 66)

She gets swayed by her emotional attachment with him and to save the relation she

sacrifices her internal urge to be a mother. For him, she is the one who is always there to

satiate his sexual desires. Mumtaz is happily married, but she lives in a constant fear of

losing her husband. She has not been able to get pregnant after a year of her marriage and

if it does not happen soon then her husband will marry another woman:

If she failed to produce a child quickly, it would not surprise her too much if he

did, indeed, marry again. The thought terrified her. Even the previous night he

had said .. ‘Nowadays, I only sleep with you because I want a child…’ The words

had bitten into her… it was now that she felt such a desperate need to conceive a

child… She knew that it would not be a big deal for him to find another woman..

(ibid 350)

And there are women like Maimoon, Sherifa (both are widows) and Firdaus (a divorcee)

who convey the excruciating condition of women without a man in their lives. They are

forced to live a life which harsh, stark and grim and they are not even allowed to dress up

nicely. They are treated indecorously as their existence is considered inauspicious in any

celebration or festivity. They are ostracized because of the stigma of widowhood and are

thus cramped inside their own houses. It is problematic to find a match for these women
as their body is not given much importance in comparison to an unmarried girl. Sherifa is

always imparted instructions to not to get enticed by the worldly pleasures and not even

dress properly:

People will talk badly about her… were she to dress herself in silk saris, or put on

makeup. Could she not, just once, put on a good sari, fill her hair with

flowers…jewellery and admire herself in the mirror?.. (ibid 317)

Women in the community are terrified by the ill-fate that widowhood brings and this is

why Sainu is thankful to god that her daughter did not marry her sister-in-law’s son who

dies after few days of his marriage with Sherifa. She consoles herself and says:

The only consolation was that had Farida actually married him, she would have

been left a widow by now… a new vessel would have become an old one. When

there was no way to find a new lid for the new pot, how could she think of the old

one? Was it possible to cover the old one now? But poor Sherifa, what use was

her beauty and youth?.. (ibid 134)

Salma’s presents the dark reality of the Muslim community where female body is

objectified and their make them feel mentally tormented and at some point the

trepidations surrounding their lives make them realize the futility of their existence.

Women are expected to have ideal feminine behavior and follow the rigid norms of

womanhood upheld by the society and those who fail to follow are austerely punished

(sometimes to death even). Maimoon (a divorcee), conceives out of her disastrous

marriage and to avoid humiliation and social castigation, she has to go through a painful

abortion which leads her to death:

The agonizing pain that Maimoon suffered after the ointment was applied

continued on and on, into the early hours, until dawn broke; the four women

holding her down to stop her from screaming… Maimoon’s life ended that day,

along with the baby that dropped from her body as fragments and shreds and clots

of blood… (ibid 45)

Another women in the novel, Firdaus, a divorcee, dares to love another man (Siva) and

for this her mother gives her poison as a punishment for her deed. She is an exuberant

woman who loves life and never wishes to die in her youth but her act of violating the

social decorum of the community brings her ill-fate which leads her to an unfortunate

death:

Her throat and stomach were burning, as if on fire. She swallowed back the pain,

determined to die without making noise… she could not believe she was actually

dying, nor understand why she had been driven to this pass. She asked herself

again whether it was a huge sin to be with someone she loved… she wanted to

hold on to life… Quietly she died.. (ibid 389)

Salma has discussed about many restrictions imposed on girls and women in the form of

traditions, customs and religious beliefs. When Madina reaches puberty, after that she is

not allowed to go the school and is confined to the four walls of her own house. She is

not even to allowed to play with her friends outside. With her friend’s confinement,
Rabia feels completely lost and traumatized. When Zohra comes to know about

Madina’s coming of her age, she then forbids Rabia to go to school.

It was week since school reopened. Zohra had declared that Rabia need not study

anymore. Rabia pleaded and begged as much as she dared. But Zohra had made

her decision the day after Madina menstruated. She said, ‘It’s enough for you to

stay at home, and be well-behaved-girl. Madina is not going to school anymore; I

don’t want you to go alone.’ (ibid 439)

Both of the girls are not able to understand the norms of the society which do not allow a

girl to move out freely, to study and achieve her dreams. There are numerous instances in

the novel presenting the picture of a society where the fabricated notions are imposed on

a girl or women just to chain her existence. Rabia is even prohibited to sleep with her

father in the absence of her mother.

It was her mother’s warning… ‘Don’t go if your father invites you to sleep in his

room. You won’t know if your skirt or davani slip off when you are asleep; you

don’t want that to happen in front of your father.’ (ibid 411)

In an interview, Salma explains how difficult it is for women to break the patriarchal

shackles as they are taught to be this way by their own mothers, grandmothers and sisters

and this goes on and on from one generation to another. She said:

It is difficult for a woman to break free from this male-driven thinking and

develop a unique awareness… she does hope to emphasize how “women

 discriminate against women” in this culture. .. many of the older generation are

caught up in the patriarchal model in which thinking furthers gender inequality.

http://www.maduraimessenger.org/printed-version/2013/april/in-conversation-02/

Salma has exposed even the minute details of the customs and the beliefs of the

community where she grew up. In the days of Ramzan or fasting, it’s considered a sin to

go to cinema or sing songs. Girls and women are not allowed to go the mosque for

prayers; they stay at home while men go to the mosque:

The girls would show off their clothes and ornaments to each other while the men

and boys went into the mosque for the night-long vigil and prayers. Ahmad would

often challenge Rabia and Madina, ‘Come on, let’s see whether you are not

allowed to come in and pray like us.’ (ibid 146)

It can be noticed that women are expected to be more religious than men; religious norms

are imposed on them and demand a complete renunciation of their desires and strictly

follow the norms. It is indispensable for the girls and women to learn Koran by heart and

recite the prayers regularly. but Salma has also explored the joys of female friendship

through the loving relation between children Rabia and Madina, the intimate bond

between Zohra and her sister in law Rahima, the attachment among all the female

members of the community. Salma’s vivid portrayal of the emotions of these women

brings them to life and the way with which she digs into the minds of the characters to

present the true picture of the circumstances which force them to accept their fate as it is.

Often the women of the community get involved in chattering and babbling whenever
they get together during some celebrations or preparations of the festivals. These women

leave no chance to target each other, crack jokes and tease each other. They are shown to

be very open in discussing and teasing each other on their sexual relationships and private

lives. Mumtaz and Nafiza are often seen involved in such gossips. When they come to

Wahida during the preparations of Wahida’s marriage, they both tease Wahida with their

mocking comments:

Just because she is young, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how to lie down…

‘Listen, Wahida, if you have doubts… don’t hesitate to ask us… Mumtaz even

has a cassette… she’ll show you… The Bridegroom will see to what’s left .. (ibid

87)

These women don’t miss any chance to make fun, peep inside and discuss somebody’s

life in their gossiping sessions. Even at the mourning ceremony of Zuneida, Mumtaz and

Nafiza started entertaining everyone with their bantering talks. Salma’s description of the

moments when all the women are together, sharing their personal lives with each other

(marriage and sex), gossiping, giggling and teasing each other, cooking and eating

together give a peep deep inside their repressed psyche, their mind-sets and their

schizoid self. Their friendship for them acts like a panacea to them and sharing their day

to day life make them feel bonded together and the detailed description of these incidents

make the reader feel the woes and twinges of women’s lives.

The Hour Past Midnight is a novel which encompasses psychological, social and familial

issues and the major part of the novel is agonizing and sad. The autobiographical touch
and the powerful description of the incidents clearly reflect how Salma has challenged

the layers of patriarchal ideologies by highlighting the reasons and issues of women’s

weak position. Her bold writing is her way to create awareness among women to know

the cause of their marginalization and to persuade them to fight for their rights.