Saima Mir on marriage, dreams and late flourishing
The Wintering Sessions with Katherine May:
Saima Mir on marriage, dreams and late flourishing
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This week, Katherine talks to Saima Mir about marriage, dreams and late flourishing
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Listen to the Episode
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Katherine May:
Hi. I'm Katherine May. Welcome to The Wintering Sessions. It is quarter to 9:00 on a beautiful blue sky June morning. My son has just headed off to school. The birds are singing, and I'm walking down to the beach for a swim. I love mornings like this. I love it when the tide's up, just after school drop-off. Morning swims, I want was about to say are my favorite, but actually evening swims are my favorite, particularly sunset swims, but anyway, I like this.
Katherine May:
I'm walking down in my towel poncho, something you can do when you live in a seaside town, without raising too many eyebrows, I think; I hope. I'm going to go for a lovely, early morning swim. The weather hasn't been so good yet this year. It's coming up to the solstice, the longest day, and normally by now, I'll have had a few nights on the beach, having some food, maybe a little glass of wine, and just generally hanging out as the sun goes down, coming home in the dark, such a lovely thing to do with kids, because eventually the stars come out, if they stay up long enough.
Katherine May:
It just hasn't been warm enough for one of those yet. The weather seems to be so disrupted everywhere. I just came back from a little holiday in the Azores, and there it was unseasonably cold; whereas, my mum, who lives in Spain, says it's been ridiculously hot. Everything's changing.
Katherine May:
I've just realized, of course, that not only am I walking through the streets in a towel poncho, I'm also talking into a big furry microphone. I'm getting a few askance looks. I just can't think why.
Katherine May:
Anyway, I've got yearnings for nights on the beach, but these beautiful summer mornings that make it so easy to swim without having to worry about taking loads of kit, or necessarily getting out of your swimming costume as soon as you've swum, are just such a gift. I love winter swimming, as you know, but there's something about the ease and luxury of those summer swims that reinvigorates your passion all over again.
Katherine May:
I've made it onto the beach now, as you can probably hear. The tide is high, and it's a lovely greeny-blue today, not quite the full high summer blue. We're still a little bit choppy. There's a breeze. I can't wait to get in. I'm really here to introduce you to this week's guest, Saima Mir, who, after a long career as a journalist has turned her hand to novel writing, and what a novel, and what an impact. She's going to talk about The Khan, which I think I probably mispronounce, but I do my best, you know. I'm willing. It has just swept the boards everywhere, and really reinvented the crime syndicate novel. I just really couldn't wait to get the chance to interview her on The Wintering Sessions, because I know she's someone who has lived about a dozen lives, really, who's endlessly had to steel herself to reinvent and to dig her fingernails into her palms and find the confidence to carry on.
Katherine May:
You know, when you watch people like that living their life, it's so wonderful when they start to truly, truly flourish. Anyway, you're going to love her. She's brilliant. She's funny, and she's smart, and she's hard as nails. I'm going to get in the water. I'll see you a little later.
Katherine May:
Saima, welcome to The Wintering Sessions. It's amazing to have you here. I don't know. Is it bad to say I feel so proud of you for how your novel has been doing? I don't think I've got the right to feel proud, but I'm right behind you. It's amazing.
Saima Mir:
I think you do, because we've known each other for a while, haven't we? When we wrote Maternal Rage, when I wrote the Maternal Rage essay, so I feel like we sort of know each other, but don't, because we've not met physically.
Katherine May:
No, no. It's one of those funny online relationships. Yeah, because you wrote the amazing essay that everybody always talks to me about when they've read The Best Most Awful Job, about what it's like, that kind of rage where you're pushing your fingernails into your palms when you've got small children. I think it just struck a note for all of us. I think that tells us something very early on about you, which is that you're willing to say stuff that other people would shy away from saying, but which is completely true and recognizable when you say it.
Saima Mir:
Yes, yeah. I always joke that it's like I flashed the world.
Katherine May:
Okay.
Saima Mir:
For me, I don't want to write about anything if it doesn't connect with somebody. For me, the process of writing is to make other people feel seen and heard in all sorts of like, I'm going through this. Are you going through it, too? Then, so people read it, and they're like, oh God, yeah, I'm not weird. I'm not strange. I'm normal. This is perfectly normal, even though everybody else has been telling me it's not.
Katherine May:
Oh, it matters so much, yeah.
Saima Mir:
That's why I write, and that's the joy of it, because I felt alone for such a long time, and I've been in situations where I've been like, I'm completely nuts. Am I going nuts with this? Am I the only one who feels like this? Yeah, that's what I wrote, and my essay did seem to strike a chord, didn't it, with so many people?
Katherine May:
Yeah, because I do, I think those times in parenthood, when you are feeling like that fury that drops into you, that isn't aimed at your kids, like I... We were only able to talk about the idea that that might be a terrible, dangerous thing, but actually most of us our busy suppressing that all of the time, and I think that's why we need to talk about it to each other, because that's the only way it gets released, really.
Saima Mir:
I agree. I absolutely agree. It's not my children who are the source of it, but they're the ones-
Katherine May:
Or the object of it, or the subject of it, or whatever.
Saima Mir:
Or the object of it, sorry. Yeah, it's sort of... It's everything else around motherhood and parenthood that I feel like I didn't know, and I don't know if I was complicit in it, by not knowing it before I had children. I'm not sure about that. I've not figured out whether it was, but it's just the disrespect that's heaped upon women, all the stuff around maternity pay and childcare costs.
Saima Mir:
I've also been thinking about this a lot. I'm afraid I'm going off on a tangent, but how, as women, we were told we could have everything, and then I realized actually even men didn't do everything and have everything. They had an army of women doing all the stuff in the background. As women, why did I think I could do it all, when men weren't doing it?
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, but we were always told that they were doing everything. Now I look at... I don't know. I look at the traditional successful man, and I think how indulged he was, like how looked after and catered for.
Saima Mir:
Totally.
Katherine May:
When we're going out doing the whole damn lot. It's really no wonder we're tired.
Saima Mir:
Absolutely, and I feel as if we did a disservice to ourselves where, instead of raising the importance of what was traditionally women's work, all the work that women did, we sort of go, "Oh, we're going to aspire to the work that men do." I'm not saying we should not do that, because I think we should. We should have access to it, but I think it was the raising of the status of the work that those women were doing that hasn't been done until now, and I think we've only just started talking about it. I think it's when we do that, and our own men are taught the importance of the work that those women are doing at home, that things will change.
Katherine May:
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like you know that from both sides more than most people, because when I was prepping for this interview, I was going back to old articles that I've read before, but I was reading back about your first marriage, and indeed your second marriage, but it's quite traditional marriages in lots of ways. I was just thinking about how far you've traveled and how different your life must be, but maybe we can go back and tell the story of that a little, because you were married when you were 19.
Saima Mir:
I met my first husband when I was 19. I was married when I was 21, and there's not much in it. There's not much in what you get when you're 19. It feels like it, but yeah, I was 21. I come from a British Pakistani family. About 90% of the women in my family are graduates, so I come from an educated family. I had a really nice childhood. My parents had an arranged marriage. They were cousins, which happened culturally quite a lot, and they loved each other.
Saima Mir:
I never questioned this idea of marriage, like having an arranged marriage, and so I was just sort of oblivious. I feel like I want to go back and shake myself, like what were you doing? You were just in this bubble of niceness. I was reading Anne of Green Gables, and I was reading Shalace, all these books, and Little Women, and then I was thinking, "I'm going to have this..."
Saima Mir:
I got married to this guy who was a doctor. I'd met him literally once before I married him. That was a norm in my culture. It didn't work, and three months later, I... I moved to Mississippi, I should say, finished university, graduated, didn't really bother much with my degree, because I thought I was going to get married and be this doctor's wife. I don't know what I was thinking.
Saima Mir:
Then I moved to Mississippi, and three months later I came back, because it was really strange. I was miserable. I don't think I knew quite what had happened, but I knew it was awful, and it was wrong, and I shouldn't be there. My parents seemed to know, so they sort of said... My grandmother, I remember, said to my mom, "Make sure she brings back all her wedding jewelry." Wedding jewelry was a big thing in my culture.
Katherine May:
Ooh, wow.
Saima Mir:
She knew. I think my grandmother was wise enough and had seen enough in life to know that this is wrong.
Katherine May:
You were in this really weird situation where his mother was, well, a bigger part of the marriage than you were, I think.
Saima Mir:
Yes, yes, absolutely. I don't really talk about it much, because I can't remember it. I'm now 47, and...
Katherine May:
Grand old lady that you are.
Saima Mir:
But the fact that it was such a long time ago now that I think, and I don't want to do a disservice to the situation and say things that I can't really clearly remember, but I remember the feeling of it being awful. His mother lived with us, and I never got to go anywhere. I was just basically in this house all day, cooking and cleaning, and just sitting on the sofa waiting for him to come home from the hospital where he worked. His mum would be with me, and we would all sit on the sofa together, the three of us next to each other, him in the middle, watching television, and then it would be bedtime.
Saima Mir:
It was like, you know, it was really weird. He did things like he measured the distance between the speakers and the TV. That's one thing I really remember. It had to be optimal.
Katherine May:
Well, I don't know. I've got a very audiophile husband who, he would not even raise an eyebrow. He'd be like, "Yes, of course you'd do that."
Saima Mir:
Yeah, and generally speaking, there's things like that, that I don't really know enough about to say...
Katherine May:
But it just struck you as off, yeah.
Saima Mir:
It was odd, and I wasn't happy, and I think I was getting quite depressed, because I sort of... I came back, and when I told him, and my parents spoke to him, he said, "My mum's not happy. My mum's got enmity towards her." I think she was some woman in her 70s or whatever, 60s-70s, and I was a 21-year-old, so it was weird.
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah.
Saima Mir:
So I got divorced. At that time, women from my background didn't get divorced. If you were a nice girl from a nice, educated, Pakistani household, you didn't do that. You just didn't. I was there, and I'd sort of done this thing, and so I was a bit of a... I mean, I was a pariah. I didn't know what to do, and it felt like the world was ending.
Katherine May:
What stuff made you feel like a pariah? Did people make comments, or was it more diffuse than that?
Saima Mir:
Yes, so things like people would ask me things, because obviously I'd been married for three months, which meant I'd had a sexual relationship, and so people couldn't accept that. There was a thing where I was suddenly tainted because I've had sex. I'd got married. I mean, I don't know what they thought I was going to be doing.
Saima Mir:
They would ask me things. I'd have people come and they'd say things like, "Where did he kiss you?" And, "I can't accept that this has happened," because it was such a big deal to have had this thing happen to this young woman who... It was sort of a this doesn't happen to us kind of thing.
Katherine May:
Gosh.
Saima Mir:
I felt tainted, and I felt sullied, and I remember standing in the shower and scrubbing myself clean. I had shame, great shame, associated with it, because I'd had this [inaudible 00:14:35].
Katherine May:
It's so weird, isn't it?
Saima Mir:
It's very weird.
Katherine May:
All the stuff that, I don't know, that downloads with marriage. I mean, I got married quite young, and for me, that was the transgressive thing, like different cultural norms. I think people saw me as having thrown myself away too early, whereas I was more expected to go and play the field through my 20s and maybe settle down later, so it's kind of the opposite expectations, but what really shocked me was how people treated me differently after that marriage ceremony. I mean, nothing had changed, you know? But everything changed. It was shocking.
Saima Mir:
That's how I feel. I feel like nothing, and now I look back on it, and I think, that was three months of my life. It was, in the grand scheme of how my life, how long it might end up, three months is nothing.
Katherine May:
Tiny, yeah.
Saima Mir:
But it completely changed the way people looked at me and talked to me. My family, they were... I mean, my mum and dad were young, and they were naïve, and they'd never been through anything like that. They wanted the best for me, but I don't think they knew what to do, when you're suddenly the talk of the town, and your child is the talk of the town, and so they... Somebody else kind of proposed, and they were like, "Yeah, this is the way to do it. This is the... Just marry her off, and it'll be all right."
Katherine May:
Here's the solution.
Saima Mir:
Yeah, the solution. It will be as if that thing never happened. She'll be over it, because nobody... Even, therapy wasn't a thing that people talked about, even in kind of western circles, it wasn't... It was sort of something that Woody Allen did on a [inaudible 00:16:07] movie.
Katherine May:
Oh my God, therapy is so recent in the UK. I don't think Americans listening will understand just how recent therapy has come to the UK on any level, and the idea that you might do it as somebody who wasn't in complete crisis, it's just... It's very alien to us, still, culturally.
Saima Mir:
Yeah, I'm laughing at that, and I feel like I'm in this bit of a black comedy. Sometimes [inaudible 00:16:33] measure time by my first wedding, second wedding, and third wedding. It's like, "Yeah, do you remember that from..."
Saima Mir:
So I got married to a guy who was only a couple of years older than me, and the opposite of my first, because my first husband was very calm and controlled and very proper, and he was about 10-11 years older than me. My second husband was about a year and a half, two years, older. He was just full of life, the zest of life, and he just thought everything was funny and a joke, and he was just living and sucking the juice out of life and having this time.
Saima Mir:
I just thought, okay, I'll try this. I know that sounds terrible. I feel like I was just throwing my life away, but he said to me, because I was reluctant, and he said, "What's stopping you?" He said to me that I will, "If anything like what happened to you before happened, I'll stand by you. I'll take a stand for you." I was blown away by the fact, and this is how low my standards were, that he was willing to accept me, knowing that I'd been married to somebody else before, just for three months.
Katherine May:
Right.
Saima Mir:
I thought, this guy must be great, and his family must be great. They presented as a nice family. Mum was a teacher. His dad had been a banker. He was a banker. They were all sort of... They all lived, this was in the UK. I said to my parents, "I don't want to live with his mum and dad." His parents said, "It's only going to be a year, and then they can move out and get their own place." I was 23 at the time, and he was 24 or 25, so we were young. We were in London.
Katherine May:
Yes, still so young, really.
Saima Mir:
So young. If you think that the human brain, apparently, doesn't fully form until you're 25, at 24 you're still making rash decisions, so we got married.
Katherine May:
I don't think youth... I mean, people say youth is lost on the young, but I don't think it's even that. I think it's that when you are young, you don't have any context to how young you are, and you feel really grown up.
Saima Mir:
Yes, yes.
Katherine May:
Then you look back on your 20s now, and you just think, my God, I knew nothing about anything.
Saima Mir:
Yes, yes.
Katherine May:
It's shocking, like how was I allowed to make financial decisions?
Saima Mir:
I think it's because nothing's bookended. You're not bookended. I feel as if now my life, I can see in the future, at some point, there's going to be an end to it, and I feel that, but it wasn't like that in my 20s. I was just there doing whatever. It was going to go on forever. Time was infinite.
Katherine May:
Absolutely. I'm sure there are 70-year-olds listening to this, going, "God, they sound naïve. Listen to how young they are."
Saima Mir:
Yes, totally. I'm well aware of that now.
Katherine May:
Rolling their eyes at us right now.
Saima Mir:
I'm so... But the difference, I think, is now that I'm aware that those 70-year-olds are quite rightly rolling their eyes at me.
Katherine May:
Yes.
Saima Mir:
Whereas, in my 20s, I would be like, "No, I know everything there is to know, and I'm going to do it so much better than those people in their 40s, or whatever." They're ancient. Look at those women in their 40s. They're just going to drop off the edge, yeah.
Katherine May:
Yeah, I know, and actually, I mean, it's interesting that we started off talking about how motherhood is compared to how we thought it would be. Actually, I remember at that age looking up the ranks towards women who were my age, and who were parents, and thinking how compromised they were and how boring, and how convinced I was that I wouldn't do it the same, so there we have it.
Saima Mir:
Yes, absolutely. I can agree. I just didn't understand. I didn't understand how hard and draining and exhausting motherhood is, and how it's increment... I think the thing I didn't understand was the incremental nature of the exhaustion that happened.
Katherine May:
It chips away at you.
Saima Mir:
Yes, yes.
Katherine May:
Anyway, sorry. I'm digressing, because you were in the middle of telling us about your second marriage, and I've shifted you away from it. Sorry, that's my fault.
Saima Mir:
No, it's fine. I got married, and we lived with his parents. We lived in Essex, and it just was wrong from the get-go. His parents were very controlling, and it was things like from what I was wearing to who I was seeing to, slowly, I ended up being a complete maidservant in the house. I did all the cooking. I did all the cleaning. I ended up doing all the ironing for everybody. I don't even do that in my own house now. I mean, I-
Katherine May:
Shake it out and put it on the hanger, honestly.
Saima Mir:
Yes, yes. I mean, who does that, everybody's clothes? I remember things like, if I went to my parents' for the weekend, I remember coming back, and his dad taking me aside and saying, "When you leave, you need to make sure there's enough food cooked for the weekend for us."
Katherine May:
My goodness, wow.
Saima Mir:
Yeah, how odd, taking me to the fridge and showing me some cheese that had gone moldy and saying, "You should've thrown that cheese away." Why, oh why, didn't I say to that man, "Well, why didn't you throw that cheese away? Why is that cheese my responsibility"?
Katherine May:
Yeah, throw your own cheese away.
Saima Mir:
Yeah, "Handle your own cheese. Some of us have got our own stuff to handle."
Katherine May:
That is interesting to me, because I can't... Knowing you now as you are, I can't imagine you not saying, "Throw away your own cheese, Mate." It's such a huge change in you.
Saima Mir:
Because my current husband, as I refer to him, says the same thing as just as you said. He said, "I don't know that woman you described. I only know you the way you are, who would not take..." I don't know if I can swear on this program.
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah, no. Swear away. It's fine, no worries.
Saima Mir:
"You just wouldn't take shit from anyone. You'd just be like..." Ah, yeah, actually when I think back to that time, I don't know why I was so scared, but I was scared. I was physically afraid of those people. I mean, no one hit me. There was no physical violence.
Katherine May:
No, no.
Saima Mir:
There wasn't anything like that, but the coercive control and the emotional abuse of a situation that's strict, strict, and also because I was raised with this disease to please, I was just supposed to be nice. I thought that if I was nice to everybody, and if I just could do the absolute right thing, it would be okay.
Katherine May:
Yeah, to make everybody happy with you.
Saima Mir:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
Of course, it had all gone wrong before, as well, and I guess, I imagine you just felt like you couldn't afford for a second thing to go wrong, second marriage, I should say, not a thing.
Saima Mir:
Yes, and I... Yeah, it's the whispers of society. There are little whispers that come, which is, "You need to deal with this, because you've got sisters, and if you don't show yourself to be a good daughter-in-law and a good wife, then who's going to marry your sisters."
Katherine May:
Right.
Saima Mir:
This is how it is, and I was told things like I wasn't raised properly. I didn't know how to be, and I believed it, because it was so incremental, and my self-esteem was chipped away and destroyed. By the end of the two and a half years that I was there, I just thought I was worthless.
Katherine May:
It's actually, so much of what you write is about gossip and the effect of gossip.
Saima Mir:
Yeah, yeah.
Katherine May:
And the way that your reputation can be manipulated by others, and the whispers of, often, older women, who judge younger women really harshly.
Saima Mir:
Yes. I think it's soul destroying, and also one of the things, for me, coming from this culture, was that when you're the child in an immigrant community, from an immigrant community, the pool is small that you belong to.
Katherine May:
Yeah, you're very visible.
Saima Mir:
You're very visible. After I left that second marriage, I was literally shunned. I mean, I would go to events where people wouldn't speak to me.
Katherine May:
That's horrifying.
Saima Mir:
Friends of mine, who I'd grown up with, I feel... Because they thought I'd left two perfectly good men, one was a doctor and one was a banker. If you think in the pool of marriage, marital pool, arranged marriage kind of thing, these were two good guys. I'd literally taken out two good guys by the time I was 25, and [inaudible 00:24:32], you know? People said things to me like, "Well, we put up with it. Why couldn't you?" Superficially, I was given the trappings of life, so a car. He bought me a car, or took me on these holidays, or bought me a diamond, diamond rings. It was things like that those things come at a cost, and the cost is my soul and my self-confidence and my mental well-being, and they're his way of making himself feel better about having shouted at me.
Katherine May:
They're almost the instruments of control, aren't they?
Saima Mir:
Yes.
Katherine May:
They're the ways that, not only you're controlled by it, but also it's like an external demonstration to the people who are not party to the dark bits of the marriage, that everything's perfect, actually. It's always against the truth that you can tell.
Saima Mir:
Yes, they are absolutely the instruments of control. That's exactly the phrase. It's almost like they're sort of stuffing those things in your mouth, so you can't speak, used as the silencing of you. My ex-husband was very big on public displays of affection, so when we were at events, he would be mouthing the words, "I love you," across the room, and people genuinely thought-
Katherine May:
I'm sorry. It's hard not to laugh at that. I mean, like wow.
Saima Mir:
People genuinely thought he adored me. One of the things I don't see people talking about is the addiction of that kind of abuse, that the receiver of it, I don't know, victim... I don't know if victim is a very good word, but the receiver of it becomes, and I think I was addicted to that high and low of that marriage, because when I met my husband, my now husband, who's a lovely, normal person, where everything's on an even keel, I almost sabotaged that marriage and that relationship by thinking, why is this so normal? This is boring. It was boring to me, when I met him.
Saima Mir:
The only reason I think I managed to get past my own self is because I'd seen my parents in a loving relationship, and I knew, that's what I want, and I have to get out of my own way to get there. It's almost like I had to detox, because my husband doesn't... We don't have raging rows. He can be a bit passive-aggressive, and I'm like, "What did you say?" He's like, "All right, we'll talk about it now."
Katherine May:
We've all been there. Don't worry.
Saima Mir:
But people that, but there was no in your face, rah-rah-rah, and that had become my norm.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I'm just interrupting you for a moment to ask if you'd consider subscribing to my Patreon. Friends of The Wintering Sessions get an extended edition of the podcast a day early, the chance to put questions to my guests, a monthly bonus episode, and exclusive discounts on my courses and events. Most of all, you help to keep the podcast running. To find out more, go to patreon.com/katherinemay. Do take a look. Now, back to the show.
Katherine May:
I'm guessing you've been following the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial very closely in that case, because it seems to me that those conversations have been really ignited again, and it's fascinating to see lots of commenters say, "She can't possibly have been abused, because..." There's a whole list of things that seem to be coming out, like why did nobody ever see any bruises? Why did she keep going back for more? Why was she contributing to the anger? It's like, wow, we still really don't have a popular understanding of how abusive relationships work at all.
Saima Mir:
No, I don't think... I think, one of the things with these abusive relationships is the thing that we consider love is so far removed from what actually healthy, normal, positive love is that, if you've been in that toxic situation, you really have to go through a process of detoxing and learning that actually this is what I want.
Saima Mir:
I was lucky, because I had seen that in my own lifetime with my own parents. I knew, okay, that's what I want, but I think if I hadn't, and if I'd seen... If my parents had been in this similar relationship, I would've just stayed, because that would be marriage to me.
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah, and that's true for so many people, isn't it? That they go and replicate the same patterns over and over again, because they have no way of knowing any better.
Saima Mir:
Yes, and I think a lot of the judgment, now, when I look back at the judgment that came from other people, it was from people who had never seen healthy relationships, and the culture I came from... My husband has also come from a healthy... his parents, similar to mine. We have a very similar background, which is purely coincidental.
Katherine May:
Or maybe not. Maybe that's why you were attracted to each other.
Saima Mir:
I think and maybe that's why he put up with my madness for a while, but I think... He talks about this, as well, about how rare it was for us to see couples who loved each other and were kind to each other and respectful in the backgrounds that we came from, because we came from this culture of arranged marriage, where people just stayed together. It was survival, I guess, and they were immigrant families, and it was a different time. It was completely different, but that's why they perpetuated and talked about and gossiped about it really.
Katherine May:
Yeah, but I don't think just Pakistani marriages should carry the can there, because I think when I grew up, white western marriages that I saw were often incredibly unequal. The men were, I don't know, just often served and were allowed to make really unreasonable demands, and women did a lot of biting their tongue and keeping quiet, because you kept the peace, and that was not seen as a rare or a difficult marriage. That was just what marriage was.
Saima Mir:
It was what you were supposed to do, wasn't it?
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Saima Mir:
Because we were just... They were bringing in the money in those kind of generations.
Katherine May:
Yes, that's right.
Saima Mir:
We had no... Women had no financial power, and that work that the men were doing was considered so much more valuable, because it was financial remunerated, you know?
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, it was, and I think we are so close to those times, and we're still... I'm still surprised how many people's relationships I see that in, the idea that you don't say no to your husband. You don't challenge or disrupt him. You just go off with your girlfriends and talk about it between you and complain about it.
Saima Mir:
Yes, yeah, totally. How dare we try to get them to talk about it? My husband and I often joke, because he avoids... He's a conflict avoider, and I'm someone who's like, as I said, flashing the world. Look at this! What's going on? Oh my God! Look at me! Look what I did! What's wrong with me?
Saima Mir:
He says that he's got this carpet that he used to... emotional carpet that he'd hide things under, and he said, "You're always making me lift that rug up and have a look underneath it. That's not what I want to do."
Katherine May:
Yeah, "Leave my rug alone."
Saima Mir:
Yeah, "Leave my rug alone. Why do you always make me face things?"
Katherine May:
That's so funny. We have a very similar dynamic, very, very similar. Just leave things alone, and I'm like, no. Every stone must be turned over. We must analyze this.
Saima Mir:
Yeah. I'm really lucky because he understands the value of it. I think my husband is that generation that was on the cusp of... He was raised with this idea of equality and feminism for women, but he was raised in a family where it was still... His dad was a traditional breadwinner, and his mum did the house stuff, and so when he went to university, and he's very... He wouldn't even use the word feminism, because he said, "Well, that's just good sense isn't it. This should just be how it is," but I think, no, he wasn't really taught how to be an ally, so his emotional needs were, "I am an ally, and I'll be there," and he's massively supportive, but I feel like I had to teach him.
Saima Mir:
You actually have to do laundry in order to be my ally, and you have to... You've got just enough that you're okay with everything else, and you know you're my biggest champion, but these are the practical aspects of allyship that you need to do, and he was never taught that.
Katherine May:
Yes. We are in this process of change, and I think it's invisible to us, the work of change that we're all doing in personal relationships, but when I look back over my 45 years of life, I can't fathom the level of change in our expectations, the genuine change.
Katherine May:
I remember the point when I was reading about the possibility of women living the lives that we're living, and the possibility that we could rebalance things, but it seemed very distant, and people weren't sure if it was possible. Even the people that wanted it weren't sure if it was possible. Now I think, God, we've changed. We've changed so much and so fast.
Saima Mir:
I said something to him the other day. I said, "I am my childhood's wildest dream," and I think that sums it up. I have come so far from the kind of child that I was, who was afraid of everything, who didn't want to upset the status quo, but was reading all these fascinating things about strong women, and about the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. and somehow those foundations were being laid, and then life happened to now, where I am in this situation where I've been on a book tour with The Khan, and my husband has had the boys for five days alone.
Saima Mir:
I have never had the boys alone for five days. I've got three boys, and it's not even a question. It's not even a... I didn't ask. It's like, he's like, "Well, of course you're going to do this. Of course, I'm going to do this. I'm going to make it work."
Katherine May:
Yeah, that's amazing.
Saima Mir:
There's no discussion of, well, whose going to leave me... There's no put the moldy cheese in the bin. It's like, "Don't worry about the moldy cheese. I'll find more cheese. You go on your book tour. Don't worry about the boys. They'll be fine."
Katherine May:
The cheese is under control.
Saima Mir:
The cheese is, there is no importance to this cheese. It's about you. I am my own wildest dream, and I think I'm still processing it. It's been an interesting week. I was The Times bestseller on Saturday.
Katherine May:
I know! Congratulations. It's extraordinary.
Saima Mir:
Thank you.
Katherine May:
I mean, it's such a great book. I mean, it's an obviously great book, so it should be, but it hasn't always happened to, I know as you used to say, brown writers.
Saima Mir:
I know. It hasn't.
Katherine May:
You've been told in the past that they don't sell, and it's not true.
Saima Mir:
They don't sell. Who's going to read this book? And so, the fact that my life is so vastly different. If you think that, when I was 27... I was 25. I was twice divorced, and I was 27, and I started working at my local paper. The reason I did the things I did is because I thought my life was over. I thought, that's it. I'm never going to get my read. I'm never going to have children. I've screwed this up, and so now I'm just going to live on my own terms. It's not that I did anything particularly radical in the grand scheme of things.
Katherine May:
No.
Saima Mir:
But from the background that I came from, just saying that, I'm just saying no, as a people pleaser, who was just saying yes to everybody, just to drawing boundaries and saying actually no.
Katherine May:
I mean, I know you don't think it's anything exceptional you did, but I think loads of people would not have felt permission to go and start a career as a journalist, even at that stage, you know? They'd have waited for someone to make it okay for them, or they would've waited forever, but you approached it very differently. You obviously still believed enough that you were worth it, despite all that had happened by then.
Saima Mir:
Yes, I think I must've done. I just know that I realized, and I still believe this, and I still say this to anybody who asks me. No one is going to give us permission, as women of color, as mothers, or any of those things, and even men... If you're doing something that's slightly different, no one is going to give us permission to do something that's new and that's radical, and we just have to go and do it, and let the world catch up, which is what I've seen.
Saima Mir:
Even as a journalist, I left the BBC 12 years ago. I was thinking about this the other day. I was trying to send out my show reel, which I look at now, and I think, it was a great show reel. I was young. I was attractive. I was slim, and I was in the wilderness. There was just nothing. Nobody was interested in my work, and I couldn't sell my book. I'd been this social pariah, culturally, and now I was this... sort of felt like I was out in the cold as a journalist, and I had lost a little bit of faith in myself and self-belief, but I knew that nobody was going to give me permission, and I just was going to take what I needed just to get there.
Saima Mir:
My agent said this to me yesterday. She said, "You've always said, 'I'm buckled in for the ride. I'm going to do the work.'" Do the work.
Katherine May:
Yeah, that's it. That's what I kind of think over and over again. I honestly spent years with a very, very unpromising writing career, but I kept going back to it, just because putting my head down and working is what I know how to do, and also because I wanted it. It seemed to me that I was allowed that simple leaning towards something. That's all it was. It wasn't anything more than that. I mean, when I used to talk to people about it, I used to get weird reactions like, "Well, who made you believe that you were allowed that, almost," like, "Who..."
Saima Mir:
Who do you think you are?
Katherine May:
Yeah, it is. It comes down to, "Who do you think you are, to want that in the first place?" I used to think, well, it's nothing to want it. It's not... It doesn't mean anything. It just means that I want it. That's the most basic building block of this. It's no more than that. It's quite humble, in a way. I want to make work.
Saima Mir:
I want to make work. I also have discovered through achieving various strange things in life that the joy really is in the work. It sounds like I'm saying my diamond shoes are too tight, but I don't mean that in a [inaudible 00:38:56]. It's great having The Times say, "Oh, you're a Times bestseller." It's wonderful, but that moment lasts... It literally lasts a moment, but the work, when you're sitting there, and it's coming together, and it's happening, and you're lost in it, that's actual joy. That's the joy of it.
Katherine May:
Such a luxury, isn't it? It's so...
Saima Mir:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Saima Mir:
And I know that, so this... The rest of it is sort of like, it's on the side. Yes, it's wonderful, and it means that I get paid to do that work, and I have the privilege of saying I'm a writer, because publishing houses now continually say, "Will you write for us?" But...
Katherine May:
Which is quite nice.
Saima Mir:
Which is lovely, yeah, because now when people say, "Well, who do you think you are?" I can say, "Well, I'm Saima Mir, and this is what I've done." I think that, "Who do you think you are?" is really fascinating, because I think it's just by being asked and committing to a dream, we shake the structures of those other people, because they're not committing to it. They're not brave enough, and it's almost like we're a mirror, and they're looking at us and thinking... They see themselves as not being strong enough to do what they really wanted. That's what upsets them.
Katherine May:
The people who only ever talk to you about themselves, honestly, I think you learn this over and over again. All the things that have stung me most, when I look back on them, were all about other people's lack of confidence and self-belief and sense of permission to do the thing that they wanted to do. I forgive them for that. I take it... It's got nothing to do with me. It's not about me at all.
Saima Mir:
That's it. People-
Katherine May:
I've just sat down and written stuff. That's all I've done.
Saima Mir:
Yes. People see the world as they are, not as it is. That's what they say. I find Twitter fascinating for that. If you ever write a message on Twitter and just say, "Can anybody help me with X, Y, and Zed?" And the plethora of responses that come back sometimes, and I think, you've not read that message. You've just seen something in it about you, or you felt attacked. I've not attacked you, but you've felt attacked because something within you is making you feel that way.
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah.
Saima Mir:
That's such a... Yeah, that's the lesson I've, one of the great lessons of life I've learned is that. I always used to think it was about me. What's wrong with me? Why are they attacking me? Why are they being like... Now, it's got nothing to do with me. It's to do with them.
Katherine May:
No. It's what's wrong with the world, and how do we change it, and how do we create a new one that makes this stuff easy for the people who want it? That's the big question I think.
Saima Mir:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
You created this character, in Jia, who is, I think, is so much of you, but is also, I mean, obviously very different, has a very different family background, and makes a different set of decisions, and in many ways is actually, weirdly, more compromised than you ended up being, I guess. Let's talk about her a little bit. Tell, for those who haven't read your book yet, which I think is a dwindling number of people, frankly, but tell us about her.
Saima Mir:
I love Jia Khan. Jia Khan is a barrister in London, so she's living this very luxury lifestyle. She grew up in the north of England, in this fictional town. She's from a British Pakistani background. She's [inaudible 00:42:16], and her father is a criminal kingpin.
Saima Mir:
When her father is killed and her brother kidnapped, she gets drawn back into this underworld. She's estranged. She's got a husband who she's not seen in 16 years and a son, and she's just been living this kind of life away from everything she grew up with. Yeah, I just think she was fascinating to write, and I absolutely love her.
Katherine May:
Yeah, because she's so... I mean, she's competent in a way that I could never aspire to be.
Saima Mir:
I was saying... I was on a panel the other day, and I said, "She's basically... You know when something happens to you, and you don't know what to say? Maybe you're in the shower the next morning, and then you think, 'That's what I should've said,'" She is competent in that way that we are in the shower,-
Katherine May:
Should've said it in the first place.
Saima Mir:
But in that moment.
Katherine May:
She... What you unpack through-
Saima Mir:
She's controlled.
Katherine May:
Yeah, self-control and self-poise, I think is the word I'm looking for, which I think loads of us dream of having, and struggle to attain. But what you use her to unpack is a Muslim community that I don't think white British people understand, necessarily, that is complex and interconnected and has shades of moral black and white rather than a kind of flat belief system, and which is kind of in profound flux, I think.
Saima Mir:
Yes, I think absolutely that's exactly how it is. It's this idea that we are somehow homogenous, and we're all the same, is something that I've never seen growing up, and I've never seen it. I've never seen the nuance of being from these backgrounds in books before now, because we all like to read different things.
Katherine May:
Yeah, no, me neither, yeah.
Saima Mir:
Yeah. I mean, there's always this thing about which cricket team do you support, and it's like, well, I don't like cricket, so I don't [inaudible 00:44:13] British, English cricket team. There's lots of us who don't.
Katherine May:
And certainly not Indian.
Saima Mir:
Yeah. There's lots of us who don't, and because actually we are something in the middle. We are completely different.
Saima Mir:
Culturally, one of the things that I have come to be okay with and accept and like about myself is that I am something in the middle. I am a bit of a mutation, and there's lots of us. As mutations go, we all have different bits of the cultures that we come from and the culture we were raised in that make us, us. Actually, it's wonderful. We don't have to be one or the other. That's the beauty of living in the now.
Katherine May:
That's how evolution happens.
Saima Mir:
Yes, yeah, absolutely, and I wanted to talk about that and how Jia Khan isn't a Pakistani woman, and she's not purely... She doesn't have the same life as a white English woman, but she has some of the sensibilities of it and the trappings of it. She still has some of the code of the [inaudible 00:45:12] and Pakistani heritage that she was raised in. She's forged this new thing, and because she's a bit of a disrupter, she's having to take the rest of, some of the rest of her people with her, and why that's okay.
Katherine May:
I'm guessing she's going to be part of a long series of books now, right?
Saima Mir:
Yeah, so there's a sequel. I've signed a deal for a sequel, so I'm working on that. I don't know if there's going to be a long series of books, maybe three. Literally, this is like discussions that are ongoing, because it's so exciting that it's being well received. It's Waterstones' Thriller of the Month, and it was a Times paperback.
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Saima Mir:
For a book that publishers didn't know what to do with, it's something you're just not sure your readers like it, and they want more, so we'll see.
Katherine May:
I think it's amazing, and I think it's just you doing what you've always done, which is forging a completely different way through, that no one's dared to trek before.
Saima Mir:
Yes. Yeah, flashing the world, as I said.
Katherine May:
That's so funny. Saima, thank you. That was just such a joy to talk to you, and I think people will find you so inspirational, honestly. I think people will be listening and cheering you on.
Saima Mir:
Thank you so much for having me. It's been such a pleasure.
Katherine May:
Ah, thank you. Hello, post-swim glow here. I've got a falling tide. It's just beginning to retreat from the beach. I'm drying off a bit in the sun. That's another thing you can't do in the winter.
Katherine May:
It is so often the case that my friends and I, who swim together, really have to drag ourselves down here. I mean, I don't mean like it's a chore, but we so often think that we haven't got the time, and we get onto WhatsApp and say, "Do you fancy a swim?" And everyone will go, "Oh, no. I've got such a busy day."
Katherine May:
Then, every now and us, one of us will say, "Yeah, but we won't regret it, and we'll all get in together." It's so, so hard to make time for the stuff that's good for you, like good for your soul, good in any kind of a practical, measurable sense, but good in that it leaves you with a sense of calm and of having done something wonderful that will fire you through the rest of your day.
Katherine May:
I know that my relaxation turns up a notch after I've been in the sea. There's a dropping of the shoulders. There's a big exhale of breath. I don't know why it's sometimes so hard to persuade myself to get down here. Here I am. I'm glad I did it.
Katherine May:
Ah. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Thank you to Saima, who is just a superstar, obviously. Thank you to Meghan and Buddy, who make this podcast possible. Thank you to the amazing listeners and Patreons. We have had fun this month with the Patreons doing a live chat, which I now get online and do once a month. I really enjoy... It's so nice to be in a room of funny, wonderful, clever people who are chatting together. It's really nice. Do join us if you can. It helps to make this podcast possible and sustainable and accessible, because one of the things Patreons pay for is for the podcast to be transcribed, every single episode. If you didn't know that, you can always find a transcription on my website, katherinemay.co.uk/winteringsessions, where you can read the podcast with all the ums and uhs instead of listening. If you love it, please do give it some stars in whatever app you listen to. I know everyone begs for this, but it really helps, or leave a review or share it.
Katherine May:
These things are so hard to get out there. There's no, I don't know, fixed route where you can tell everyone about your podcast, and it is a medium that is, I don't know, dominated by people who are famous, and I'm not famous. My son thinks I am but, you know, what 10-year-olds know is limited.
Katherine May:
Anyway, I'll stop begging. Thank you for listening. We're going to take a break over the summer, not yet, just to recharge our batteries a little, and we'll be asking you to vote for your favorite episode from season one, which we will then remaster and put out again over the summer, because I think loads of you, who are listening now, didn't hear that first series, and there are some of my favorite interviews in there, so look out for that. Let us know, or let us know in the comments which ones you'd like to hear again with maybe a bit more of a sparkly treatment from Buddy, rather than my own homemade approach, endearing as it was. All right, I'm going to walk home now. See you all soon. Bye.
Show Notes
This week, Katherine talks to Saima Mir about marriage, dreams and late flourishing.
‘I am my childhood’s wildest dream,’ says Saima Mir. This episode is about the process of getting there, not just the determination and hard work, but also the intangibles: the beliefs, ambitions and understandings that you don’t even know how to articulate, but which hold you up on a decades-long journey to becoming.
In this conversation, the journalist and bestselling novelist talks about shame, failure, the experience of being gossiped about - but also the inner strength and family support that allowed her to reinvent herself after leaving her first two husbands. Saima came late to journalism, but forged a successful career on TV and in print before writing her genre-changing (or will it be genre-defining?) novel, The Khan. Here, she surveys that pathway to this place, and how it built her iconic character, Jia Khan.
We talked about:
Shame, failure, the experience of being gossiped about
Inner strength and family support that allowed her to reinvent herself
Her best-selling novel, The Khan
References from this episode:
Other episodes you might enjoy:
Season 2: Zeba Talkhani on surviving online abuse
Season 2: Jackee Holder on the good things in life
Please consider supporting the podcast by subscribing to my Patreon where you’ll get episodes a day early (and always ad free) along with bonus episodes and more!
To keep up to date with The Wintering Sessions, follow Katherine on Twitter, Instagram and Substack
For information on Katherine’s online writing courses, including her programme Wintering for Writers, visit True Stories Writing School
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Wintering is out now in the UK, and the US.
