Interview: Dr Saba Mahmood Bashir, Translator of "Darkness and Other Stories ”

Dr Saba on translating Razia Sajjad Zaheer preserving silences, fear, and female interiority while bringing forgotten Urdu stories to contemporary English readers.

on Mar 03, 2026

Interview: Dr Saba Mahmood Bashir, Translator of "Darkness and Other Stories ”

Frontlist: As the translator of Darkness and Other Stories, what drew you to this particular collection and its focus on the everyday lives of women?

Dr Saba: Darkness and Other Stories is a collection of stories written by Razia Sajjad Zaheer. However, they were not published together in a single book in Urdu, but in different magazines and have been collected here, thematically, for this English collection. All the stories chosen for this collection seem to be about the women of today, even though they were written five to six decades back. The everyday lives of common women, the challenges faced by them, the issues they came across and dealt with…all seems to be contemporary ones.

Frontlist: The women in the stories come from varied social locations a homemaker, a teacher, a writer, a sex worker yet their inner conflicts feel universally resonant. How did you work to preserve this shared emotional core in translation?

Dr Saba: Many stories in this collection would fall under the category of sketches rather than short stories. They are sketches of people that Razia Sajjad Zaheer knew in her personal life, people who were around her, yet on the margins of the society, and she chose to write about them. The character of Shamli in ‘Low Caste’ (‘Neech’ in Urdu) makes the narrator question her own thoughts. Of course, the challenge to retain the nuances in translation from the source language (SL) to the target language (TL) is nearly apt when the translated text can create the same visual imagery that one gets in reading the text in the SL. Having said that, a translator needs to adopt the role of a reader, then a writer and finally an editor to be able to justice to a translation. The challenge is not really about finding an equivalent word but be able to recreate the emotions in another language, in another culture.

Frontlist: ‘Fear’, especially female fear in public and private spaces, is portrayed with restraint rather than drama. As a translator, how did you ensure this understated tone remained intact?

Dr Saba: Emotions are the most difficult thing to translate, from any SL to any TL, be it wit and humour, sarcasm, irony, anger, or fear. The story under consideration can also be put under the bracket of a Partition story, and unlike most Partition stories that one has read, it is not violent and the seething and pulsating fear reverberates through. If an English reader managed to find the tone retrained rather than drama, I am sure I am successful in doing the needful. Jokes apart, translation is all about language, about vocabulary. The translator has to understand the tone of the text in the SL and recreate the same in TL.

Frontlist: Many moments in the book rely on implication rather than explicit explanation. How do you approach translating silences, pauses, and what is left unsaid?

Dr Saba: This is actually in connection with the earlier question – translation of silences, of the fears, of pauses and of sighs is the challenge. The task of the translator is to be very true to the author, to the text in the SL. If that intention is maintained while translating, I feel, the translator can be successful in achieving what the author intended to communicate.

Frontlist: As a poet and a long-time translator of writers like Gulzar and Manto, how has your engagement with their work shaped your sensitivity to voice and rhythm in this collection?

Dr Saba: All three of these authors – Gulzar, Manto and Razia Sajjad Zaheer – are extremely sensitive authors who have written about social issues, with writing about the Partition being a common theme with all of them. If Gulzar has Partition poems (‘Dastak’, ‘Bhameeree’ etc), stories (‘Raavi Paar’ being most popular) and the novel Do, which he himself translated as Two, Manto is known for his heart-wrenching stories and sketches (‘Khol Do’, ‘Toba Tek Singh’, etc). If Gulzar questions the existence of God in poems like ‘Khuda’ and the politics of the nation, Manto describes everything in the most explicit manner. Having been so closely involved with the works of these two writers, understanding the nuances of Razia Sajjad Zaheer, seemed fairly comfortable.

However, the challenges with all the writers are different from one another. If it was the translation of unusual imagery for Gulzar, it was idiomatic references for Manto. And, for Razia Sajjad Zaheer, it was her use of homonyms!

Frontlist: This translation brings attention to stories that have received limited visibility so far. What does it mean to you to help introduce this work to a contemporary English-language readership?

Dr Saba: Razia Sajjad Zaheer has a huge body of work in Urdu and this is the first anthology of her stories in English. A Progressive writer, and a translator too, she has been neglected for long. Darkness and Other Stories is a part of the project Women translating Women of the Ashoka Centre for Translation. When Prof Rita Kothari, who has spearheaded this project, had approached me to translate an Urdu woman writer, my instant reaction was Razia Sajjad Zaheer, simple because she hasn’t received her share of recognition. I sincerely hope that this anthology is successful in doing what it had intended to – to bring Razia Sajjad Zaheer to contemporary English-language readers.