PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
The Return
CHAPTER 2
Birth of a Nation
CHAPTER 3
The Scent of Other Cities
CHAPTER 4
A Suburban Wedding
CHAPTER 5
Half a Wife
CHAPTER 6
The Woman in Charge
CHAPTER 7
The Graveyards of Karachi
CHAPTER 8
Loving and Leaving
CHAPTER 9
A Return to the Original
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Rafia Zakaria is an author, attorney, and human rights activist who has worked on behalf of victims of domestic violence around the world. She is a columnist for Al Jazeera America, Ms., Dissent, and DAWN, Pakistan's largest English-language newspaper. Zakaria was born and raised in Karachi and now lives in Pakistan and the United States, where she serves on the board of directors of Amnesty International USA.
"The Upstairs Wife” does manage to cover so much ground so
skillfully, casting a sharp eye on complicated personal politics
and affairs of state alike."
—New York Times
"The Upstairs Wife weaves emotion, historical fact, and a young
person’s wonder at her world into an exquisite tale of patriarchy,
conflict, love, hope and hate… The story that unfolds is both
memorable and magnificent.”
—CounterPunch
“A dense, carefully rendered work of minute, memorable detail.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“In this emotionally generous, beautifully written memoir, Rafia
Zakaria tells two stories that are really the same story. One is
the descent of Pakistan into violence, poverty, corruption, and
extremist Islam; the other is the smoldering misery of family life
in which women have little power, except, sometimes, over each
other. The Upstairs Wife is a revelation.”
—Katha Pollitt, poet, essayist, and columnist for The Nation
“Rafia Zakaria’s gorgeous prose and brave storytelling transported
me into the center of a region I’ve struggled to understand in a
way no newspaper article or history book ever could. Better yet,
she made me love the women there—their woundedness, their
resilience, their uncertain future. The personal and the political
collide in this beautiful memoir of Pakistan.”
—Courtney E. Martin, author of Do It Anyway
“From a window in the upstairs of her family’s house, Rafia Zakaria
parts the curtain, looks down on Pakistan, and writes its history.
The Upstairs Wife roams between the lives of a family and the life
of a nation—and finds itself in the heart of a society that is much
maligned and little understood.”
—Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations
“What a tour de force! Rafia Zakaria’s The Upstairs Wife is a
masterful tapestry. Through the eyes of Karachi’s women, the beauty
and horrors and mysteries of Pakistan are laid bare. Zakaria
elegantly weaves personal memoir with historical treatise,
showcasing a breathtaking literary talent.”
—Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Code Pink and author of Drone
Warfare
“Zakaria captures polygamy’s emotional toll on wives: the
depression, self-doubt, and jealous calculations that poison the
politics of intimacy.”
—Ms. magazine
“If it weren’t for the personal bravery of women like…Rafia
Zakaria, and the countless other Muslim women fighting hard to
reclaim their rightful space in public and private, as well as
—personal and political arenas, the no-go zones for Muslim women
would continue to expand.”
—Sampsonia Way
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