This season, hope has taken the form of Barzakh, an India-Pakistan venture produced by Waqas Hassan and Shailja Kejriwal, helmed by Pakistani-British director Asim Abbasi. Barzakh stars Pakistani actors Sanam Saeed and Fawad Khan who have been heartthrobs in India since they became known here through Pakistani serials in the 2010s.
Barzakh is on Zee5 in India, but was taken down from YouTube Pakistan last month – ‘voluntarily withdrawn’, said a statement by Zee’s Zindagi channel, due to ‘current public sentiment in Pakistan’. The reported reason: opposition to Barzakh’s LGBT-plus content. In an India routinely subjecting art and artists to fundamentalists’ diktats, this feels like a familiar story.
Barzakh is set in the Land of Nowhere where the wealthy Jafar Khanzada (Salman Shahid) has invited his estranged sons from earlier marriages to attend what he insists is his final marriage. This time the bride will be the ghost of his long-dead lover, Mahtab. Jafar has an acrimonious relationship with his boys, Shehryar played by Fawad Khan and Saifullah by M Fawad Khan. (Sigh, two Fawads!)
Jafar’s caregiver, who also manages his resort, Mahtab Mahal, is a daughter-like figure of mysterious origins, Scheherezade (Sanam Saeed). Jafar is at loggerheads with the poor locals, ever since he constructed Mahtab Mahal on the graves of their ancestors. He isn’t an alien though. He was once one of them. At the forefront of the campaign to reclaim their land is Jafar’s brother, Jabbar.
In terms of genre and treatment, Barzakh is far removed from Abbasi’s 2020 series Churails, a fast-paced thriller about a group of women vigilantes exposing unfaithful husbands in contemporary Pakistan. Barzakh is deliberately slow, steeped in magical realism, set in an unspecified time and a mythical realm where fantastical elements allude to present-day realities. While I have still not bought into some of its more abstract imagery, I found myself being gradually seduced by Barzakh’s soothing tone, exquisite visuals, a burst of unexpected song in the final episode, the charismatic cast, excellent acting and, above all, the multi-layered commentary. Jafar condemns Jabbar and the community for Mahtab’s murder, without introspecting about his role in it. Her end came because he set out to make his fortune and left her behind, no different from millennia of men before him leaving wives behind – literally or figuratively – in their quest for glory, fulfillment, riches or spiritual enlightenment. What her dreams and goals were, he did not ask.
‘Barzakh’ is Urdu for interval, connecting link or barrier. In Islam it denotes a space between death and resurrection, akin to purgatory in Christianity. When this concept is juxtaposed against the metaphor of a mythical snake eating its own tail that gets repeat play in Barzakh, Jafar and Jabbar are India and Pakistan – siblings stuck on a plateau of all-consuming turmoil as we fight over a piece of land and past grievances. Is self-destruction the inevitable end? Will it lead to regeneration and rebirth?
Even bolder than this allegory is the constant reference to The Book in the narrative. ‘It was written, therefore it must be,’ is the mindset of pivotal characters in this saga. Yet, as the show reminds us, The Book has blank pages too. Ultimately then, what Barzakh bats for is interpretation, independent thinking and evolution, all of which are anathema to the religious Right everywhere.
Ironically, it’s not this but Saifullah’s reluctant surrender to his sexual orientation, a beautifully written and acted relationship between two men, that has angered conservatives. If this were a social media post and not a column, this is the precise spot at which I would place an eye-roll emoji.