In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Immediately acclaimed, journalist and lawyer Daniyal Mueenuddin’s collection of short stories, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (2009), went on to win many awards, most notably becoming a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Consisting of eight lightly interlinked stories that take place in the Pakistan district of Punjab from the 1970s through the 1990s, Mueenuddin’s work draws from his own background to explore Pakistani society in terms of limited access to social mobility, the inflexibility of gender roles, and the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.

Although each of the stories typically features a different set of characters, they all orbit K.K. Harouni, the reigning patriarch of a wealthy family in a slow decline but still in possession of a farm in Dunya­pur and a mansion in Lahore. We see everyone in this hierarchical ecosystem: the rich and power­ful Harouni family, as well as their farm man­agers, electricians, drivers, gardeners, cooks, and servants.

The first story, “Nawabdin Electrician,” introduces the manager of the wells on K. K. Harouni’s Dunyapur farm. Though Nawabdin works tirelessly for his thirteen children, he isn’t above cheating the electric company by sabotaging its meters. When the story opens, Harouni has just rewarded Nawabdin with a motorbike – a high-status object in the village. One evening, Nawabdin picks up a desperate-seeming hitchhiker, but the man pulls out a gun and tries to steal the motorbike. When Nawabdin fights back, the man shoots him in the groin – but the gunshot also brings help, and nearby villagers rescue Nawabdin by shooting the robber. As the robber dies, he begs Nawabdin’s forgiveness. However, the farm manager, realizing that the robber would have left him to die in the road if their fates had been reversed, refuses forgiveness. Instead, he is happy that he stood up for his rightful property.



In “Saleema,” a fourteen-year-old girl escapes her miserable village existence by marrying and moving to Lahore. Ten years later, her husband has become a drug addict, and she gets a job as a maid in the Harouni household. Saleema falls in love with the much older Rafik, the family’s trusted and respected driver. They stay together for two years; Rafik seems to really love both her and Allah Baksh, the baby they have together. However, one day, Rafik receives a letter from his estranged wife asking to try to repair the relationship, and he decides to leave Saleema to go back to his first family. Saleema is forced to return to her drug addict husband. After K.K. Harouni dies, only the senior servants are offered jobs with other family members. When Saleema pleads with Rafik to take care of her and their son, he refuses. She ends up dying, and her son is left to become a homeless street kid.

“Provide, Provide” features Harouni’s land manager Chaudrey Jaglani, who is tasked with overseeing the sale of the Dunyapur farmland to raise money for Harouni’s debts. Unbeknownst to Harouni, Jaglani, who has been embezzling from his rich master, parlays these ill-gotten gains into political office. Jaglani hires Zainab as a cook. He slowly begins to develop feelings for this servant girl, eventually forcing her to divorce her husband despite the fact that she doesn’t return his feelings. Jaglani marries Zainab, and when she turns out to be infertile, he gives her his son Shabir’s youngest daughter to raise as her own. Eventually, Jaglani dies of cancer, cursing Zainab for never having loved him. He refuses to provide for her after his death, caring only that his son Shabir takes over his political position, but others in the government quickly oust Shabir.

“About a Burning Girl” is narrated by an unnamed sessions court judge in the Lahore High Court. The judge takes pride in being a corrupt cog in an unfair judicial system run on kickbacks, favors, and clout. When his servant Khadim goes to visit his sick mother, he is arrested for the murder of his sister-in-law. The judge decides to get involved, not so much to get the truth, but because Khadim’s absence makes home life annoying. To get the judge to retry the case on the evidence and to thus free the wrongfully accused Khadim, Khadim’s brother explains that the dead woman actually killed herself after being discovered stealing money from a neighbor. However, the judge only understands his system of immorality and demands a bribe in order to do the right thing.



The collection’s title piece, “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” focuses on K.K. Harouni at the end of his life. Estranged from his wife, with his farm having been taken over by Chaudrey Jaglani, Harouni suffers the indignities of falling status. He hires as a servant Husna, a distant family member, who soon becomes his lover. He finds her unrefined speech and manners charming and freeing – around her, he doesn’t have to act with the courtly manners demanded by his social position. She, meanwhile, tries her best to parlay sex with Harouni into the glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle she envies. While Harouni is alive, the gambit works and he plies her with gifts. However, when he dies, the family steps in and quickly disposes of the ambitious young woman.

“Our Lady of Paris” moves to the family of K.K. Harouni’s cousin, also named Mr. Harouni. Mr. Harouni idolizes America, calling it the place where he would most like to have been born. Although he has lived a blessed life in Pakistan, Mr. Harouni images that in America, “You aren’t weighted down by your families, and you aren’t weighted down by your history.” His son Sohail, internalizing his father’s longings, falls in love with an American woman he meets while attending college in the U.S. However, his mother doesn’t share his father’s enthusiasm and puts the kibosh on their relationship, assuming that Sohail will return to Pakistan. Nevertheless, the deeply disappointed Sohail stays in the U.S., marries a different American woman, and completely assimilates into American culture.

“Lily” describes a party girl who has grown up in a respectable Punjabi family privileged to spend most of her time going to trendy parties, shopping, and having casual sex. She decides to improve her selfish and spoiled ways by marrying a kind, hard-working man of her own class with the hope that by settling down, she will get over the lifestyle of her youth. Although her intentions are true, her nature can’t be changed by marriage. Slowly, realizing she can never live up to the culture’s ideals of what a wife should be, Lily slowly reverts to her old ways.



In the final story, “A Spoiled Man,” a poor working man manages his hardscrabble existence until he meets and marries a lovely young woman from a similar working-class family. They are happy for a while, but then his wife mysteriously disappears. The situation creates a series of calamities in the man’s life, eventually leading to his early death.