Full Description
Fairoz is a book-length poetry sequence in which Moniza Alvi explores an imagined teenage girl's susceptibility to extremism. The book's fragmented, collaging narrative draws together fairytale elements, glimpses of Fairoz's thoughts, and pieces of dialogue. A folkloric representation of God and the devil acts as a wry counterpoint, touching on questions of morality. Fairoz is a powerful portrayal of human vulnerability.
Contents
11 Driving the devil away
12 In the present tense
14 Indoors
16 Hair
17 What do you do with a heap of stones?
18 'It was a house of female habitation'
20 Questions in the wood
21 The Devil and the gleams
22 The Devil's soup
23 The white cat
24 Not enchantment
25 In the morning
26 Home
27 Fairoz and Annat
29 As summer
30 School lunchtimes
31 Listening to Fairoz and Tahir
33 Pilgrims
35 Does the Devil know what he is?
36 The notice
37 When they meet
39 A story of God and the Devil
40 Ripe
41 Wolves-of-the-woods
42 What runs under her skin
43 She pictures Jannah
44 Absent and present
47 Her absences
49 'where the swarm is thickest'
51 The dark patch
52 The plants
53 It was long ago
54 A conversation
56 A punch
58 Ice age
59 He's 'v v sorry'
60 The short long story
61 The loping wolf
62 A tale reduced to a sliver
64 God's eyelids
65 This woman will speak to you, he says
67 The bride
68 Gone
69 A task
71 The viewing
71 He was
72 The contest
73 A change
75 Classroom scorpions
77 Cherry stones
78 Who's there?
79 DANGER
81 The eye
82 She's heard nothing from Tahir
83 Call him three times
84 What's real?
85 The Devil's news
87 Witnesses
89 In the snow
90 Her whole life
91 Urgent question
92 Like a mark on her kameez
93 What she'd like to say
94 The room in her mind's eye
95 The woods
96 Cold song
97 Her future
98 'Over every soul there is a watcher'
99 My imagined Fairoz
102 Notes and acknowledgements
