Minnesota writer's 'Under the Tamarind Tree' transports readers to another time/place

You know the pleasure you experience as you binge a TV series that transports you far from your own time and place, one that immerses you in the details of its world and the complicated lives of its characters?

That's how I felt reading Minnesota author Nigar Alam's absorbing debut, "Under the Tamarind Tree." The novel is set in the coastal city of Karachi, Pakistan, in the 1960s and in 2019. It's about the friendship of Rozeena, Aalya, Zohair and Haaris, who are bound together by the legacies of the Partition — which dissolved British rule of India and Pakistan — and the events of a "single night that ended everything."

On Aug. 14, 1947, Pakistan celebrated its independence from British colonial rule. The next day, India celebrated theirs. Two days after that, the British government imposed an arbitrary border, the Radcliffe Line, creating a partition separating Pakistan and India. The region exploded in sectarian violence. Hindus and Sikhs fled to India; Muslims fled to Pakistan. Millions were displaced; thousands were massacred. The British went home.

The Partition is the historical landscape on which Alam's novel is drawn. It's a backdrop I found fascinating and one I didn't know much about. Alam deftly layers the legacies of the Partition across the novel as context for many of the choices her characters make and the constraints they face.

The story's main character is a retired pediatrician named Rozeena, living uneasily with her past. Rozeena has created her own partition, a high wall separating her from Haaris, the love of her life. At 80, Rozeena "can't shed the feeling of outlived utility, and lately her empty life is driving her mind to the past." But her past may jeopardize her present because Rozeena's been telling lies all her life, lies tangled up in the loss of her brother during the Partition and that dreadful night that changed everything. Rozeena's lies unravel during the summer of 2019 when she agrees to let Haaris' granddaughter, Zara, help tend her garden.

The character of Rozeena and her relationship with Zara are the true joys of the novel. Zara is a 20-something artist, struggling to find her place in her family and the world. Like Rozeena, she's burdened with the unfulfilled expectations of a brother who died young. Both women live according to the strict expectations of others and bristle against "the constant worry about other people's perceptions."

Under the shade of tamarind trees, with the scent of jasmine in the air, Alam's novel explores the responsibilities of friendship, the weight of atonement when forgiveness is fleeting, and a theme that resonated most with me: that no matter the time, the place or the adversity of the circumstances, there are always women who cultivate meaningful lives for themselves and their children.

Under the Tamarind Tree

By: Nigar Alam.

Publisher: Putnam, 320 pages, $28.

Event: Alam in conversation with Kathleen West. 7 p.m. Mon., Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls. Free; registration required at magersandquinn.com.