Thinner than Skin by Uzma Aslam Khan: book review

The novel, Thinner than Skin (2012), is set in the mountains of Pakistan in the North-West Frontier. It begins with local resident Maryam , her family, and her daughter Kiran. The the reader meets the Pakistani narrator, Nadir Sheikh, on a mission to photograph glaciers. He is in the Kaghan Valley, in the easternmost corner of the North-West Frontier, on the edge of Kashmir. He is there with his lifelong friend Irfan, his German-Pakistani girlfriend Farhana, and Farhana’s American friend Wes.

Nadir had met Farhana in San Francisco and fallen in love. He tells how they met, that he didn’t really want her to accompany him on his working journey to the glaciers, and of her insistence to take her “back to Pakistan” although she had never been there. “She was at a time when other women longed for a child. Farhana longed for a country.” She announced that she was bringing Wes and their relationship concerned Nadir. “I feared her love for me was like a Pakistani glacier. It was difficult to say if it were growing or retreating.” And although Nadir loved Farhana, photography was his passion.  “While photographing the owl, I hadn’t thought of Farhana even once.”

But they are not meant to be in Kaghan Valley. They had planned to go straight to the Northern Areas of Gilgit. “Irfan was the reason our route had changed” causing an argument between Nadir and Farhana. The news of a hotel bomb explosion in Peshawar, killing one foreigner and seven Pakistanis resulted in Irfan changing their journey to Naran in the Kaghan Valley. It was where he had worked for many years, and it was where he was located when his wife was shot during a car hijacking in Karachi. Although it was the narrator’s journey, Irfan seemed to be the one making the decisions “where to stop and for how long.”

It is in the Karghan Valley, staying in a cabin, where they meet the villagers, and the family of Maryam. At Lake Saiful Maluk, Farhana wanted to take a boat onto the lake, with Kiran, Maryam’s young daughter. The family did not want Kiran to go with strangers, but they did not want to refuse a guest either. Kiran did not like water. Nadir rowed out with Farhana and Kiran. It was cold, and the lake was freezing. Farhana asked Nadir to turn back. Nadir spun the boat around – too quickly.

After the accident, the group continue to the glaciers, specifically along Babasur Pass to Ultar Sar. It was the same path that Nadir and Irfan had taken seven years earlier, so they knew it well. Yet they were also accompanied by Maryam’s relative, the merchant Askarov, who had the role of armed escort. They were not the only outsiders on the mountain. The suspect in the Peshawar hotel bombing was believed to be in the area, and hunted by police. And Ghafoor was there too. Ghafoor, a trader, was on a quest to present a boxed gift to a woman in the Kaghan Valley; one that he had met in his youth - the woman whom he had loved for a very long time. The box fitted exactly in his hand. He was not the only one with a boxed gift. Maryam had one too. And it was suspected that the bomber had hidden the detonator in a small box.

The title, thinner than skin, refers to goat skin. Kiran’s mother Maryam tells her that a child’s skin is thinner, but that there is a second skin beneath the frail one. And it is tougher, for it is designed to protect the outer layer.

Wes suggests to Nadir that he propose to Farhana. Nadir is relieved that Wes is not a competitor for Farhana’s attention. Nadir had courted her in America with flowers, specifically calla lilies; now he will court her on the ice. And so they continue … Wes and Farhana together, Irfan and Nadir together, and behind them is Askarov, the armed escort. At a rest stop, Nadir notices a gift box, wrapped in red cloth, symbolic of a long journey, in his back pack. He didn’t put it there.

Although not always linear, due to a series of flashbacks, it follows the nomadic life of a corner of the world where people of many backgrounds continue to trade – Pakistanis, Afghans, Chinese, Uzbecks, and Russians, as well as the narrator’s quest for the glacial photographs that he hopes will cement his career. It is moreover about love and separation. Throughout the well-written novel are wonderful descriptions of the Himalayas, the mountains, snow, ice, and glaciers. But it is also an enthralling adventure with mystery and intrigue.