Short Story Month: Outside People and Other Stories by Mariam Pirbhai

Every Thursday in May we interview a short story writer and share an excerpt from their latest work.

Interview with Mariam

All Lit Up: If you had to describe your collection in 12-15 nouns only, what would they be?Mariam Pirbhai: ALU: Who are your favourite short story writers and why?MP: Ismat Chughtai – one of the best renowned and influential Urdu short story writers (and women writers) of the early 20th century whose works challenged social and literary conventions. (For example, Deepa Mehta’s ground-breaking film Fire was loosely based on Chughtai’s controversial story “Lihaaf” or “The Quilt,” which explores lesbian desire in the context of the South Asian Muslim bourgeoisie. Chughtai was writing about these themes from the perspective of a Muslim woman in the 1930s and 40s – well ahead of her time by any standard. Also, my mother tongue is Urdu. Even though I have to read Chughtai’s work in translation, the richness of the language endures. Ernest Hemingway – Because his stories epitomize the economy of language in storytelling. The story becomes the “clean, well-lighted place” through Hemingway’s minimalism. This might be a stylistic cliché, but that doesn’t make it any easier to master. I can’t say he’s always a favourite in subject matter, and I can’t say my work emulates this style, but any time I find myself veering toward verbosity and overkill, I think of Hemingway’s stylistic “iceberg effect” and get a writerly wake-up call!Thomas King – “Coyote’s tales are bent,” as Thomas King might say. How can anyone not be captivated by that? Indigenous storytelling is so much more than fiction. It is truth-telling, history-telling, myth-making, myth-breaking, anti-imperialist, iconoclastic. It is laughter. It is cosmology. It is a worldview. It is a wonder of craft and craftiness at its finest and most inspirational.   Rohinton Mistry – though Mistry wrote more novels than he did short stories, his debut collection Tales from Firozsha Baag is a gem. It is a masterful contemporary example of the frame tale, one of the classic short story narrative devices hailing from the The 1001 Arabian Nights, reminding us that everything old is new again, and that innovation is non-linear, and influence is always cross-cultural. As storytellers, we are imbricated in and indebted to the ancient as much as the modern.ALU: What do you like most about the short story as a form?MP: There is a certain democracy in the short story. Because every person, everything, in fact, is a living, breathing, story. The story democratizes narrative space and always makes room for the underdog, for the little guy, for me or for you. The subjects of epics — those larger than life characters — are brought down to size, while those among us whose points of view are rarely foregrounded are given full reign.In my debut collection, Outside People and Other Stories, those “outsiders” — those held in some way as outside the purview of our social or cultural radar, or even those who might be seen to fall outside the purview of a country’s protection, as precarious citizens—take centre stage, if only for one hour or one day in the life of such a character.ALU: Have you ever abandoned a short story you were writing? Why? What was it about?MP: Not that I can recall. I tend to write stories in concentrated doses. My stories gush out of me like a waterfall rather than a steady stream, so I rarely have the chance to second-guess myself in some way and abandon the writing process. I write, revise; write, revise; write, revise—in equal measure. But this doesn’t mean that there won’t be stories worth abandoning in the near or distant future. I’ll be sure to keep you posted!

Excerpt from “Air Raids” from Outside People and Other Stories

Her parents used to describe this sublime part of the country as the “Switzerland of the East,” a far cry from the images of U.S. drone attacks, terrorist cells, and cross-border warfare that now dominated the news. And the Little Pakistan that was changing the face of Montreal’s western half was only matched by the ever-burgeoning Petit Maghreb in the city’s eastern half. Soon enough, the two would meet in the centre, their shared symbols of Arabic calligraphy adorning mosques and community centres, colourful boutiques, specialty grocers, and family-friendly restaurants, fusing together a place so long divided by language and history.Before she entered the Complexe Desjardins, which apart from a mall, restaurants, and office towers housed the five-star hotel accommodating his airline crew, she deliberated whether she had time enough to smoke a cigarette, a habit she had officially broken, more or less. The rumblings of the gathering crowd drowned out the battle of mind-over-matter raging within her and she threw another glance across the street. This time she could make out some of the wording on the placards. MULTI-FAITH GATHERING FOR PEACE.VIVE LE QUÉBEC LIBRE POUR TOUS.QUÉBEC IS NOT FRANCE. And the largest one: “I AM NOT A SYMBOL. I AM A PERSON.” The placards were clearly directed at the government’s recently proposed legislation to ban religious symbols in the public sector. The controversial bill dubbed the “Charter of Values” had made headlines for weeks, with groups of all religious backgrounds calling it a violation of religious freedoms or an attack on multiculturalism, itself the haloed credo of the nation. Satisfied with her discovery and the momentary diversion it offered, she suppressed any further cravings and pushed open a heavy-set glass door. With her back to the morning light, the reflection of another placard caught her eye, the words CHARTER OF SHAME obliquely burned into her retina like a sunspot.–From Outside People & Other Stories by Mariam Pirbhai (Inanna Publications, 2017)* * *

Mariam Pirbhai was born in Pakistan, and lived in England and the Philippines before emigrating to Canada. She lives in Waterloo, Ontario, where she is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies, at Wilfrid Laurier University. Pirbhai has published several academic books in the field of postcolonial and diaspora studies. Her short stories have also appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals. Outside People and Other Stories, recent winner of the IPPY Gold Medal for Multicultural Fiction, is her debut collection of short fiction. * * *Thanks so much to Mariam for being our final interviewee for this year’s Short Story Month, and to Renee at Inanna Publications for connecting us. To catch up on the series, click here.