Feminism in Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

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"These Muslas," says Joseph Bhatti, father of Alice, "will make you clean their shit and then complain that you stink." This is pretty close to the mark. Pakistan won't forget the low-caste origins of most of its Christians, or "Choohras" – the derogatory term refers to their status as an "untouchable" sweeper and maid class. In recent decades, with the rise of increasingly intolerant forms of Islam, the Choohra plight has worsened. Christians are victims of obscene blasphemy laws and frequent sectarian violence. How refreshing, therefore, that Mohammed Hanif, Booker-longlisted author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes and perhaps Pakistan's brightest English-language voice, has chosen to view his country through the eyes of a (lapsed) Christian – the eponymous Alice Bhatti, a hard-nosed, warm-hearted nurse, too beautiful for her own good, also nifty with a razor blade. Her lover and foil is the "Musla" Teddy Butt, a thigh-waxing, body-building, Mauser-packing lowlife. Teddy works unofficially for the Gentlemen's Squad, a police unit somewhat darker than the Keystone Cops staffed by partially reformed rapists, torturers and sharpshooters. A need for protection propels Alice into Teddy's arms, and his courtship afterwards has a certain flair. They are married, improbably, on a nuclear submarine. Their love story ends badly, though Hanif's narration concludes with absurd religious optimism, a parody of beatification that includes a couple of delicious swipes at Mother Teresa. The lovers' lives are framed by institutions, from borstal to hospital via police station and nursing school. The Sacred, where Alice works and the characters meet, is a rat-infested place "where half a pint of O-positive costs 200 rupees". In the compound outside, beggars, miracle-seekers and aspiring patients sleep among the roots of the Old Doctor, "a 200-year-old peepal tree that was believed

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