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I find strength and empowerment in the UAE: Pakistan writer Amna Mufti

The acclaimed Pakistani writer talks about how the UAE became her new literary haven and what she hopes to achieve here as a writer

Amna Mufti couldn’t be happier to be in the UAE. When we sat down at a local cafe for a simple but delectable daal roti lunch in Dubai, the critically acclaimed Pakistani author was all praise for the UAE.

Winner of Lux Style Award for Best TV Writer in 2014, Amna Mufti, who is also a professor in Lahore, recently received the UAE golden visa. She has written many cult TV shows such as Dil Na Umeed Toh Nahi (starring the hit television pair Yumna Zaidi and Wahaj Ali) and the dark yet stunning show Ullu Baraye Farokht Nahi (also starring Yumna Zaidi along with Saba Qamar and Sohail Ahmed).

So, what made Amna Mufti come to the UAE?

“There are things in life about which you say, ‘I didn’t choose them, they chose me’,” Amna responds. “You can say that UAE chose me. Whenever I came to the UAE, I noticed how multiculturalism is a large part of the country. People come here for work, for businesses etc. For a writer, this amalgamation of culture, ethnicities and dialects presents a beautiful palette of colours for their stories. This is what compelled me to consider UAE as a home. Many times, I had thought of coming and moving here but now when I saw the opportunity of the golden visa, I realized this is the right time to come to the UAE and start writing here. A female writer is often like a spider, always weaving webs of stories and the cultural diversity provides food for thought and subject matter for stories.”

UAE is also one of the safest countries in the world for women. Was this a huge pull for Amna as a female writer? “If you want a woman to write, she should have a room of her own,” Amna says, quoting Virginia Woolf. “That’s strength for a woman,” she continues. “In UAE, I feel that strength, I felt the same feeling of having my own room, that strength and empowerment. Here you can have your own place, a room of your own. You can go out and shop at any time of the day, which is often not possible in many other metropolises in the world.”

“How has life in the UAE been beneficial to your process as a writer?” we ask Amna, to which she responds, “The history of this area is very close to Indian and Pakistani writers. We share a common colonial past and we have had a close relationship as independent nations. When the UAE grew in the 70s and 80s, it also became very close to me because we are the generation that saw all this development happen in real time. This is a very interesting subject to me, and I wanted to see it even more closely as a resident of the UAE. Post-war economies are very interesting topics for some writers. For me, seeing how UAE grew to be the country that it is now, seeing how UAE doesn’t really have those shadows of post-colonialism as Pakistan does, is fascinating. All of it will help me write the novel that is on my mind; the novel which I plan to write when I’m settled here.”

Amna has a vibrant community of writers back in Pakistan. Does she plan to start a writing community here? “The Arab World has always had a very strong tradition of storytelling. The Arabian Nights, Dastaans and all the stories were a part of a period when Dastaan-Sarai was common. In Lahore, I have a book club and I plan to revive it here. I’ll build a community of book-loving folks, like a Halqa-e-Arbaab-e-Zauq (a circle of friends of the arts) where we will have story and critique sessions. I’m accustomed to that life in Lahore and when I’m here, I’ll continue it here too.”