“Tragedy is not only what happens to women, but also the emotional death of the men who feel compelled to inflict it.”
When she was a young girl, Fathi Salim, who was born in Sharjah, moved to Mahé, a district of the Union Territory of Puducherry, bordered on all sides by Kerala. Her mother’s side of the family had roots there, explains Fathi, whose debut novel Dechoma and the Women of Mahé, originally published by Malayalam publisher Mathrubhumi Books in 2022, is largely set in this picturesque coastal town.
While she couldn’t help but notice how the women of this matrilineal Muslim community of Mahé are often pitted against patriarchal systems and face more than their fair share of restrictions, what really struck her about them was this: the camaraderie between them and the intensity of their relationships with each other, says the Kozhikode-based author and founder of an NGO dedicated to educating street children. “They had their own world inside and were happy in it. If they encountered problems, they shared them with each other and found solutions together,” he says.
Her observations and memories of her time spent with these women in her formative years were translated into her novel, recently translated into English by J Devik. “Dechoma and the Women of Mahé was not only a literary project for me, it was also a reflective journey that took me through some childhood memories that made me smile a little from time to time,” says Fathi, who believes the mutual trust and intimacy shared by Mahé women was very different from those elsewhere.
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Focusing primarily on the friendship between a young girl, Umaiba, and Dechoma, who works at her home, the book unfolds in a fragmented, choppy fashion, delving into the lives of the various women Umaiba meets. This structure, says Fathi, was a deliberate choice, not an attempted experiment. “Women’s stories are not lived in straight lines. They are interrupted, shared, passed on,” she says, emphasizing that each chapter of the novel is seen through the lens of a different woman. “We don’t inherit one continuous epic. We inherit whispers, warnings, recipes, secrets—chapter by chapter, woman by woman. I believe that fragmentation was the only honest structure here.”
By Fathi Salim | Photo credit: Special arrangement
That the main protagonist of the novel was Umaiba, an underage girl, was also “not accidental,” says Fathi. “When you write through the eyes of a child, you’re gifted with a narrator who hasn’t yet learned what to see. Adults see the world through layers of conditioning, trauma, and societal expectations; but a child is just watching.” Umaiba maintains a clear and literal view of the absurdity of gender roles and cultural constraints without the heavy-handed cynicism of an adult. “She doesn’t see ‘patriarchy’ as an abstract, looming monster, she’s just trying to understand why wearing glass bangles and kajal isn’t good just because it attracts men,” she explains, adding that the naive, matter-of-fact honesty with which Umaiba reports things allows nuance to emerge naturally. “The reader has to sit with the discomfort of these observations, so the critique is much stronger than a lecture would be.”
For her, the true heart of the novel lies in navigating identity and finding one’s own voice in a world where the lines between love, culture and oppression are beautifully, devastatingly blurred. Consider, for example, the men in this novel who are not inherently evil but rather products of their environment, caught in the same cultural machinery as Fathi puts it. Using Umaiba’s unfiltered perspective as a framework allows the reader to see the men in her life in their entirety—as loving fathers, weary uncles, or protective brothers who also happen to support or benefit from a dysfunctional system.
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“When violence or oppression occurs, the novel explores it not as an isolated act of a ‘bad man’ but as a systemic symptom. The tragedy is not just what happens to women, it is also the emotional death of men who feel compelled to inflict it to maintain their status or honor,” says Fathi, who previously published short stories in leading Malayalam newspapers.
Dechoma and the Women of Mahé was not only a literary project, but also a reflection, says Fathi | Photo credit: Special arrangement
The transition from writing short stories to a full-fledged novel was not without problems, he admits. “Writing a short story requires intense concentration and offers faster gratification. You can have the entire architecture of the story in your head at once,” he says. On the other hand, the novel is an exercise in endurance and emotional discipline, he feels. “You’ll be living with the same characters and issues for months, if not years. There’s a big burden of checking continuity and enforcing the inevitable ‘mid-book blues’ when the initial spark of inspiration dies.”
It’s not the length of the story that causes concern, but rather the honesty that the form demands makes it clear. “I prioritized perfecting each chapter while ensuring that Umaiba’s journey was uninterrupted and vibrant with daily interactions with the unpredictable and vibrant women around her.”
While the Malayalam version of Dechomayum Mahile Pennungalum became a commercial and critical success, selling over 10,000 copies and winning the KP Kesava Menon Award in 2024, Fathi did not think it would be of interest to anyone outside the state. But her friend, academician and translator Devika, insisted on translating the book, she says. “She told me it was something that should be done because the story had the potential to travel,” recalls Fathi, who is deeply grateful to her translator for capturing the canvas and cadence of the story so well. “The process begins not with a glossary, but with the alignment of the voice. The translator must live inside the text until he understands not only what is being said, but also the emotional logic behind why it is said that way.”
Not only was Devika able to preserve hyperlocal expressions, but sometimes she chose not to translate, leaving some untranslatable words such as terms of endearment, specific culinary items, local flora or exclamations completely intact | Photo credit: Special arrangement
Devika, says Fathi, not only managed to preserve hyperlocal expressions, but sometimes chose not to translate at all, leaving certain untranslatable words such as terms of endearment, specific culinary items, local flora or exclamations completely untouched. “It forces the reader to step into the character’s world instead of pulling them into theirs. The reader may not immediately know the exact dictionary definition of a local phrase, but the rhythm of the scene makes them feel it,” he believes.
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While Fathi is still basking in the limelight of the recently released translation of her first book, her second novel Bosthi Jeevan is already out. He describes it as a book “where I tried to look into the sometimes harrowing experiences from the shadowy margins of Bengali people on the fringes of society”. And yes, she’s already thinking about another story centered on the women of Mahé, a place that clearly still fascinates her, “following the intimate, harrowing journey of a woman going through the currents of failure in her marriage,” she says.