UNMOORED HOMES AND CONTESTED BELONGING: ORIENTATION AND HOMING DESIRE IN TALKING WITH BOYS AND WHAT REMAINS AFTER A FIRE

Abstract

This article offers a comparative reading of Tayyba Kanwal’s Talking with Boys (2026) and Kanza Javed’s What Remains After a Fire (2025) through Sara Ahmed’s concept of orientation and Avtar Brah’s concept of homing desire. It argues that in both collections, home is not a secure destination or a stable site of comfort. Instead, home emerges as a fragile and contested mode of belonging shaped by patriarchy, migration, race, class, religion, grief, and everyday survival. The article focuses on selected stories from both books, especially “The Girl Who Ran,” “A Legal Alien,” and “Huma and the Birds” from Kanwal and “Rani,” “My Bones Hold a Stillness,” “Worry Doll,” “Ruby,” and “The Last Days of Bilquees Begum” from Javed. Ahmed’s framework clarifies how bodies seek direction, familiarity, and livable space, while Brah’s formulation of homing desire explains why home in these texts cannot be reduced to homeland, return, or origin. Read together, the two collections show that Pakistani women and Pakistani diasporic subjects do not simply lose home or recover it. Rather, they are forced to negotiate partial, provisional, and often painful forms of belonging across Pakistan, the United States, and the Gulf. By bringing these collections into one comparative frame, the article identifies a clear research gap in the study of contemporary Pakistani Anglophone short fiction and shows that these stories transform home from a sentimental ideal into a difficult social relation.