Date of Award
Fall 12-2013
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.F.A.
Degree Program
Creative Writing
Department
English
Major Professor
Barb Ann Johnson
Second Advisor
Amanda Boyden
Third Advisor
Earle Bryant
Abstract
Mina is a young girl in a rural village called Tobay in Pakistan when her only friend Dhaaga, a family servant around her age, suddenly leaves. After a betrayal by her father’s second, much younger wife, Mina starts her long journey. She becomes a prostitute in Heera Mandi, the famed red light district of Lahore, and unexpectedly finds friends in a nearby transvestite brothel. Mina suddenly ends up with her life in danger when she tries to take revenge on the man who ruined Dhaaga’s life. She gets help from a human rights lawyer and escapes to safety in America with a New Orleans cabbie, who she met during her Heera Mandi days. She is eventually forced to come back to Pakistan and finally returns to her home in Tobay, where she finds that everything has changed as much as she has. The novel is set in 1980s Pakistan, when the country faced increasing religious pressure from its military government, and girls like Mina got caught up in stricter standards of honor. It is a coming-of-age novel that takes the protagonist around the world before she is able to finally face her djinns and demons.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Shuja, Aneela, "Under the Pomegranate Tree" (2013). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1784.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1784
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.