A moving memoir by a survivor of anti-Muslim violence in contemporary India that delicately weaves political and family histories in a tribute to India''s vibrant multiethnic society and the resilience of its women and minorities, especially in the face of growing religious extremism “A warning, thrown to the world, and a stunning debut–Chowdhary is a much-needed new voice."–Alexander Chee In 2002, Zara Chowdhary was sixteen years old and living with her family in Ahmedabad, one of India''s fastest-growing metropolises, when a gruesome anti-Muslim pogrom upended her world. Instead of taking her school exams, she is put under a three-month lockdown with thousands of others, fearing for their community and their lives. The chief minister in the state at the time Narendra Modi, accused of fomenting anti-Muslim violence, would become prime minister of India and lead a government committed to eroding the rights of India’s 220 million Muslims. In With lyrical clarity and intimacy, <The Lucky Ones< is a poetic remembrance of how a country’s promise of a multi-ethnic secular democracy can so easily dissolve and descend into extremism. Chowdhary’s story is a protest against the erasure of India''s Muslims, a testimony of a lost girlhood, and a testament to her family and country''s entwined lives.

Autorentext
Zara Chowdhary is a writer and creative writing professor in the U.S. who has worked in cinema, advertising and television for studios like Eros Entertainment, Red Chillies, Turner Classic Movies and National Geographic. The Lucky Ones, her debut memoir, is a PEN America 2025 finalist, was #4 in the Time Magazine’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024, and featured in lists and starred reviews by NPR, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, Esquire, People, Electric Lit, Literary Hub, The Caravan, Outlook India, and Kirkus Reviews, amongst others.

Leseprobe
On February 27, 2002

At 7:00 P.M., Amma has been missing for two hours. Papa paces the living room. He stops short of the dining table, turns around, and involuntarily ducks under Dadi’s precious crystal chandelier, missing its sharp spikes.

He walks out through the French windows onto the balcony and peers over the parapet, down eight floors. The street is lined with cars and scooters, and Papa’s eyes search for the slightest movement between them, a bird scouring for a worm. She isn’t there.

He bites out the words “Careless. Lying. Always lying,” and back he marches into the living room, ignoring my younger sister, Misba, and me. We sit, hands folded in our laps, by the telephone waiting for it to ring. It peals soon enough, echoes burning through our apartment. Papa swoops on the receiver.

“Walekum-as-salam! Kya? Haan curfew toh hoga. Allah sabka bhalaa kare.” And peace unto you. What? Oh no. Yes, a curfew is likely, then. Allah be kind.

If Papa is invoking Allah, it is safe to assume he is talking to Shah Sahab, our family priest, or pir.

Where is Amma?

The doorbell rings. Gulshan, our maid, rushes to open it; our eyes meet briefly. We share the same dread for Amma. We know what awaits inside. The bell isn’t Amma. Hussain Bhai, Jasmine Apartments’ liftman, stands in the doorway telling Papa that the neighbors are all moving their cars off-street. The Holiday Inn across from Jasmine is offering to let us move vehicles inside its gates. Hussain Bhai asks if Papa wants to move his new Hyundai Santro. Everyone in a one-mile radius around Jasmine has heard Papa boast about how it is the first car he’s bought in twenty years with his hard-earned savings, his khoon paise ki kamaai, a result of his blood, sweat, and tears. Everyone in a one-mile radius also laughs at how six months later he still hasn’t taken off the plastic covering from the seats. Hussain Bhai says someone might set fire to it if rioting starts.

Riot? What is going on? Where is Amma?

Papa and Dadi whisper to each other, which in and of itself is unusual. Something about a train on fire.

Where is Amma?

Papa grabs the car keys and leaves with Hussain Bhai. Dadi finally notices us sitting by the phone and turns to us. “Kahaan gayi hai tumhari Ma?” Where is your mother?

How would I know? I want to snap back, but that will only fuel her.

“Kuch bolti bhi nahin hai. Anney do. Aaj padegi usko Zaheer se.” She never informs us. Let her come back tonight. She’s going to get it from Zaheer. Or more like she will make sure Amma gets it. Dadi walks away muttering.

I leave Misba sitting there and walk to the majoos—this ornately carved antique chest filled with more of Dadi’s precious crystal ware and neatly arranged china. I hate her bloody majoos almost as much as I hate her when she speaks of Amma like that. Like vermin to be crushed under her chappals just because she’s bored.

Past the majoos, between its sharp edges and the wall, is a tiny corner where Amma stacks all our namaz items: soft cotton dupattas, velvety jaanemaaz mats. That corner has a worn, comforting scent I’ve otherwise smelled only in old hole-in-the-wall libraries where Amma takes me some evenings, where I spend hours scavenging for Famous Fives and she for tattered Danielle Steel romances. This corner smells of Amma. I pick up a jaanemaaz and go into Dadi’s room, where I’ve been sleeping with her on her large, low bed for the past two years, since her husband, our grandfather Dada, died. She hates the loneliness more than she hates me, I guess.

I wash my arms, my feet, rub water into my face and scalp. I lay down the jaanemaaz and step onto it, wrap the dupatta around my head, careful to cover every inch of my skin except my palms and fingers. Allah doesn’t mind seeing my fingers, I’m told. But can They see and hear my heart under all this cloth?

Where is my mother, Allah?

I stand, head bowed, hands folded across my chest, and start to pray. I can feel Dadi stop by the room, make a face, and walk away.

The muezzin cries out from the mosque behind our building as if sensing my urgency to start namaz today.

“Allah hu-akbar Allah . . . hu-akbar . . .”

When I was younger, and Indians had only the state-run Doordarshan channel, which syndicated a handful of foreign shows, I used to watch Hindi-dubbed Aladdin with almost religious zeal. When Amma first taught me how to read namaz, I couldn’t focus on the ritual, so while she chanted aloud in Arabic, a language I couldn’t understand, I would distract myself pretending the jaanemaaz was a flying carpet. I’d sway back and forth on my heels, mimicking Amma’s trance, but really in my head, I was steering, racing through the clouds, higher, lower, faster, away from any shadow that could catch me. Every time I passed by that musty corner near the majoos, I’d look at the jaanemaaz stack and smile to myself thinking here they were, these magical things, hiding in a dark corner of this darkness-filled apartment, my secret spaces of silence in a house full of noise and people always in each other’s business. Amma also unwittingly fueled this fantasy.

“Allah listens to the voices of innocent children before He listens to anyone else.” What other incentive does a child full of things to pray and plead for need, right?

Wave after wave of azaans blare from loudspeakers in all four directions; muezzins from six mosques chase one another. Papa jokes that five times a day the maulanas are participating in a talent competition, crying louder, hoarser, outshouting each other vying for our attention. Our neighborhood, Khanpur, doesn’t have fancy malls or restaurants, but we have something few others do: the bu…