Reversing the usual refugee story clichés, Homing Birds shares the hopes, fears and aspirations of a young man searching for a place in which he feels he truly belongs. Young Afghan refugee Saeed desperately wants to reconnect with his roots and find his long-lost sister. So he leaves his adoptive family in London and returns home to Kabul to work as a doctor, eager to contribute to rebuilding a new Afghanistan. But as past and present collide, Saeed must face up to the reality of his changed world. This captivating and evocative play asks if a place can ever be home without a connection to family and roots? RUKHSANA AHMAD Award-winning writer Rukhsana Ahmad has written and adapted many plays for stage and BBC Radio. River on Fire was a finalist in the Susan Smith Blackburn Awards, Wide Sargasso Sea was a finalist for the Writers’ Guild Award for Best Radio Adaptation and Song for a Sanctuary was a finalist for the CRE award for best original radio drama. Other plays include Mistaken: Annie Besant in India and Letting Go. She has also written fiction: The Hope Chest and The Gatekeeper’s Wife and other stories. She has also translated We Sinful Women, a collection of contemporary Urdu feminist poetry and The One Who Did Not Ask by Altaf Fatima. REVIEWS OF PREVIOUS WORK “... the debates about belief and faith are clear and compelling and the play also bravely grapples with big spiritual ideas...” – Aleks Sierz, theatre critic “... sensitive approach gives painful credibility to the dilemmas facing women with nowhere else to go.” – The Independent
Explores the incredible story of Annie Besant’s relationship with India and the boy who went on to become one of India’s greatest teachers and thinkers – Krishnamurti. 1916: India is simmering with discontent against the Raj. Enter English proto-feminist Annie Besant, notorious at home for the match-girls’ strike, political, charismatic. In India she finds a new family and a new cause. Gandhi hails her as the leader of the Congress Party after she courts imprisonment for promoting Indian Home Rule. She admires him – but can rulers ever befriend the ruled? Can Annie’s great love affair with India last? ... or is she mistaken in her beliefs, politics and adoptions? ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rukhsana Ahmad‘s stage plays include: Song For Sanctuary, The Gate-Keeper’s Wife, Black Shalwar, River On Fire (shortlist Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2002), The Man Who Refused to be God, Last Chance and Partners in Crime. Radio plays and adaptations include: Song for a Sanctuary (CRE award, runner-up), An Urnful of Ashes, The Errant Gene, Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman At Point Zero, Jean Rhy’s Wide Sargasso Sea (shortlist CRE and Writers’ Guild Award for best adaptation), R.K Narayan’s The Guide and Nadeem Aslam’s Maps For Lost Lovers. She also wrote for Westway and helped to create Pyaar Ka Passort for BBC World Service Trust. Her fiction includes a novel; The Hope Chest (Virago) and several short stories have been published internationally. Her translations from Urdu include We Sinful Women, and Altaf Fatima’s novel, The One Who Did Not Ask. Currently she is working on Letting Go, a new play for Pursued by a Bear, and an adaptation for the BBC of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.
In this novel, three women's lives touch, sometimes directly, sometimes tangentially. Ruth is unable to distinguish between her elaborate dreams and reality; Rani is caught up in her own fantasy; and Reshma only dares to hope that her reality has some profound meaning.
Zainab is a thirteen year old facing a LOT of problems that threaten to overwhelm her: manipulation, bullying, the sexual exploitation of a friend and eventually an attempted suicide. But when a teacher offers her the opportunity to direct a school house league play, Zainab thinks it might be the chance she's looking for. If she can bring the most popular bully in school, in line, maybe she can prove she fits in. Maybe... Winner of the 2001 Manitoba Young Reader's Choice Honor Award Nominated for the 2000 Ruth Schwartz Award Nominated for the 2000 Red Maple Award
Explores the incredible story of Annie Besant’s relationship with India and the boy who went on to become one of India’s greatest teachers and thinkers – Krishnamurti. 1916: India is simmering with discontent against the Raj. Enter English proto-feminist Annie Besant, notorious at home for the match-girls’ strike, political, charismatic. In India she finds a new family and a new cause. Gandhi hails her as the leader of the Congress Party after she courts imprisonment for promoting Indian Home Rule. She admires him – but can rulers ever befriend the ruled? Can Annie’s great love affair with India last? ... or is she mistaken in her beliefs, politics and adoptions? ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rukhsana Ahmad‘s stage plays include: Song For Sanctuary, The Gate-Keeper’s Wife, Black Shalwar, River On Fire (shortlist Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2002), The Man Who Refused to be God, Last Chance and Partners in Crime. Radio plays and adaptations include: Song for a Sanctuary (CRE award, runner-up), An Urnful of Ashes, The Errant Gene, Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman At Point Zero, Jean Rhy’s Wide Sargasso Sea (shortlist CRE and Writers’ Guild Award for best adaptation), R.K Narayan’s The Guide and Nadeem Aslam’s Maps For Lost Lovers. She also wrote for Westway and helped to create Pyaar Ka Passort for BBC World Service Trust. Her fiction includes a novel; The Hope Chest (Virago) and several short stories have been published internationally. Her translations from Urdu include We Sinful Women, and Altaf Fatima’s novel, The One Who Did Not Ask. Currently she is working on Letting Go, a new play for Pursued by a Bear, and an adaptation for the BBC of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.
Reversing the usual refugee story clichés, Homing Birds shares the hopes, fears and aspirations of a young man searching for a place in which he feels he truly belongs. Young Afghan refugee Saeed desperately wants to reconnect with his roots and find his long-lost sister. So he leaves his adoptive family in London and returns home to Kabul to work as a doctor, eager to contribute to rebuilding a new Afghanistan. But as past and present collide, Saeed must face up to the reality of his changed world. This captivating and evocative play asks if a place can ever be home without a connection to family and roots? RUKHSANA AHMAD Award-winning writer Rukhsana Ahmad has written and adapted many plays for stage and BBC Radio. River on Fire was a finalist in the Susan Smith Blackburn Awards, Wide Sargasso Sea was a finalist for the Writers’ Guild Award for Best Radio Adaptation and Song for a Sanctuary was a finalist for the CRE award for best original radio drama. Other plays include Mistaken: Annie Besant in India and Letting Go. She has also written fiction: The Hope Chest and The Gatekeeper’s Wife and other stories. She has also translated We Sinful Women, a collection of contemporary Urdu feminist poetry and The One Who Did Not Ask by Altaf Fatima. REVIEWS OF PREVIOUS WORK “... the debates about belief and faith are clear and compelling and the play also bravely grapples with big spiritual ideas...” – Aleks Sierz, theatre critic “... sensitive approach gives painful credibility to the dilemmas facing women with nowhere else to go.” – The Independent
Muslim Child is a collection of short stories, poems and prose that examines the world through the eyes of Muslim children. Each story represents a tenet of Islam in a way which is both entertaining and enlightening.
This book deals with miseries and problems of Indian women with respect to their social class structure. India is known for its caste system and its economic and political history is based upon these classes. Feminist history is also interwoven with the social classes. Women were treated as private property in medieval India. In this book, women of elite classes in the middle ages such as Razyia and Noor Jahan are discussed. Razyia was scandalized with Yaqut solely due to her gender. Noor Jahan belonged to the vast harem of Emperor Jahangir. She had to survive in a harem, as well as strengthen her political position in the court of the great Mughals. The issues of the spinster princess like Jahanara and Zeb-un-nisa are also highlighted. The purdah had also set a standard for social morals for women in the middle ages. The political and cultural activities of Mughal women were the channels of their catharsis. They were able to accomplish things because they had money and the resources. The women of the middle and lower classes bore the burden of the class, family and society. This book also describes other aspects of that age such as clothing and jewelry.
Exploring how and why communication breakdowns occur during pandemics and world disasters, this book offers solutions for improving communication and managing future public health crises. A compilation of evidence-based lessons learned, this book shows how to effectively convey critical lifesaving information during a pandemic. It assesses how trust in leaders and governments during a public health crisis is formed and the impact this has on how information is perceived by the public. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, the book demonstrates how informative policy decisions and health risk messages can be better communicated for the handling of future pandemics. At a macro-level, the book looks at issues concerning situational awareness, how different countries managed or mismanaged the pandemic, and the lessons readers can learn from those occurrences. At a micro-level, it examines individual differences in public health message perceptions and corresponding actions taken or not taken. An interdisciplinary critique of the delivery and reception of messages during global disasters, this text is suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses in Communication Studies, Health Communication, Risk Communication and Public Health, Psychology, Sociology, and Disaster Management.
Mahvish Khan is an American lawyer, born to immigrant Afghan parents in Michigan. Outraged that her country was illegally imprisoning people at Guantanamo, she volunteered to translate for the prisoners. She spoke their language, understood their customs, and brought them Starbucks chai, the closest available drink to the kind of tea they would drink at home. And they quickly befriended her, offering fatherly advice as well as a uniquely personal insight into their plight, and that of their families thousands of miles away. For Mahvish Khan the experience was a validation of her Afghan heritage - as well as her American freedoms, which allowed her to intervene at Guantanamo purely out of her sense that it was the right thing to do. Mahvish Khan's story is a challenging, brave, and essential test of who she is - and who we are.
Zainab is a thirteen year old facing a LOT of problems that threaten to overwhelm her: manipulation, bullying, the sexual exploitation of a friend and eventually an attempted suicide. But when a teacher offers her the opportunity to direct a school house league play, Zainab thinks it might be the chance she's looking for. If she can bring the most popular bully in school, in line, maybe she can prove she fits in. Maybe... Winner of the 2001 Manitoba Young Reader's Choice Honor Award Nominated for the 2000 Ruth Schwartz Award Nominated for the 2000 Red Maple Award
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