The Bargain from the Bazaar: A Family's Day of Reckoning in Lahore
Ullah spent more than eight years researching this true story of a Pakistani family, the Rezas (whose names are changed to protect their identities). The highly readable narrative, moving from 2008 through 2012, illustrates how the Reza family members adapted and endured in a culture that had been ripped from them by British rule and then returned under the interfering thumbs of the U.S., Russia, and others, with a political structure cobbled together from a host of competing traditions, including feudalism, Islamism, and Western-style representational government. Reza family patriarch Awais, a shopkeeper in Lahore’s Anarkali Bazaar, fought in the Bangladesh War. His three sons chose distinct paths—shopkeeper, like his father; law student; and suicide bomber (one of the ultraholy men hell-bent on pleasing God in heaven). Their mother, Shez, never lost her faith in her family, herself (she became a nurse), or her religion. Ullah’s straightforward depiction of bravery, love, and hard and illuminating truths about contemporary Pakistan—a shaky nation that might just hold the key to victory over the superpowers of terror—makes this an excellent book-club choice. --Eloise Kinney