Suturing The Memories Of The Liberation War Of 1971: The Narrative Poetics Of Sorayya Khan’s Noor

Abstract

This essay will engage in the dialectics of memory and (dis/re)membering through its questioning of the basic assumption that memory helps one to understand an event holistically. Memory plays a pivotal role in Sorayya Khan’s debut novel, Noor (2003; revised ed. 2006), shaping the identities of the main characters, both victims and perpetrators. Through a close reading of the novel in relation to the Liberation War of 1971 and the recent emphasis on the ‘memory boom’, the author will examine the theoretical and textual nexus between history and memory, tracing the shift in analytical focus from the historical to the psychological and how personal memory of public events is transcribed into the larger collective memory of the nation-state. The analysis of the novel will demonstrate how the trauma of 1971 resides both within and outside the individual.

Keywords:

• remembering
• forgetting
• memory boom
• historiography
• trauma
• narrative poetics
• 1971 War of Liberation