Waiting In The Wings Vol 1: A Memoir

March 1947. A four-year-old Salima Hashmi is witness to the Sikh leader Master Tara Singh and his many followers denouncing the demand for Pakistan. Soon the sub-continent is partitioned and Salima her sister Moneeza her English mother Alys and her father the renowned Urdu poet and leftist intellectual Faiz Ahmed Faiz are citizens of the nascent Pakistan. Life in the newly formed nation is full of ups and downs the lowest points being Faizs imprisonment in 1951 on charges of sedition and his subsequent self-exile from Pakistan in 1960. Even as the family struggles to cope life is not without its highpoints. There are picnics and outings with her cousins Salma Mariam and Billoo. The family home is frequented by writers artistes and political figures and Salima is privy to their conversations and arguments. And through it all Salima finds her footing in art which becomes her lifes calling. Waiting in the Wings the first part of her two-volume memoir is the account of the first two-and-a-half decades of Salimas life. It is as much a portrait of a young nation as it is the account of the authors own life.