Three Begums: The Women Who Shaped My Life By Ziauddin Sardar C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd ISBN: 978-1805263333 276pp.

Ziauddin Sardar is arguably the UK’s leading Muslim public intellectual. He is an exceptionally versatile and engaging scholar, with a prolific and wide-ranging output. Over the course of his career, he has written and edited more than 50 books, spanning the fields of contemporary Islamic studies, British Muslim history, cultural theory and criticism, science and society, and futures studies.

Sardar is also a journalist and broadcaster and has worked extensively with The Guardian, BBC and Channel Four. He has written four major autobiographical works: Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim (2005), Balti Britain: A Provocative Journey Through Asian Britain (2009), A Person of Pakistani Origin (2018) and, most recently, Three Begums: The Women Who Shaped My Life (2025).

Sardar’s latest memoir, Three Begums, is an attempt to make sense of what life has done to him after the deaths of three influential women in his life, one after the other. Their loss broke his heart, not only emotionally but also physically, and he had to undergo cardiac surgery.

Three Begums revolves around a central question that Sardar poses at the end of Chapter Two: “Why should a mere thing like death separate us?”. In reliving the memories of his begums, writing about them and sharing the book in various circles and literary festivals, he finds his answer: death cannot sever the bonds of love — it only imposes a spatial distance.

In his latest memoir, British author Ziauddin Sardar reflects on love, loss and language as he remembers three women who shaped his life

In his latest memoir, British author Ziauddin Sardar reflects on love, loss and language as he remembers three women who shaped his life

Love and memory, however, are resilient, as they bridge that distance and return to visit the living when grief becomes unbearable. During his grieving process, Urdu poetry and Munni Begum’s ghazals were his companions.

Three Begums is divided into three chapters, each dedicated to one begum. The first chapter focuses on Sardar’s mother, Hameeda, who comes across as a matriarch, a larger-than-life figure: a fighter and a devoted lover of Urdu literature. The chapter opens with an Urdu sentence written in Roman English, “Baitay kya baat hai?” [What is the matter, son?] which, the author notes, reflects how his mother addressed not only her own children but even a stranger’s child.

She is presented as a mother who believes in interdependence, who is traditional yet firmly believes that men and women are equal. This childhood, embedded in love, Urdu literature, and regular mushairas, left a lasting imprint on Sardar. Later in life, these memories became a source of reference and solace amid political and personal turmoil.

Hameeda possessed diwans [poetry collections] of Mirza Ghalib, Mir Taqi Mir and Bahadur Shah Zafar, as well as several volumes of Allama Iqbal’s poetry, including Bang-i-Dara [The Call of the Marching Bell]. Her personal library also included numerous Urdu novels, among them works by Zubaida Khatoon and Deputy Nazeer Ahmad, Sadiq Siddiqui’s Andulus Ke Do Chaand [Two Moons of Andalucia] and Nasim Hijazi’s Aakhri Chataan [The Last Rock].

In reliving the memories of his begums, writing about them and sharing the book in various circles and literary festivals, he finds his answer: death cannot sever the bonds of love — it only imposes a spatial distance. Love and memory, however, are resilient, as they bridge that distance and return to visit the living when grief becomes unbearable. During his grieving process, Urdu poetry and Munni Begum’s ghazals were his companions.

In reliving the memories of his begums, writing about them and sharing the book in various circles and literary festivals, he finds his answer: death cannot sever the bonds of love — it only imposes a spatial distance. Love and memory, however, are resilient, as they bridge that distance and return to visit the living when grief becomes unbearable. During his grieving process, Urdu poetry and Munni Begum’s ghazals were his companions.

Hameeda is portrayed as a hopeless romantic and, therefore, financial constraints and the hardships of immigrant life in London did not break her spirit. She was a mother not only to Sardar and his siblings but to many others as well.

The second part of the book is dedicated to Sardar’s friend Merryl, who emerges as another strong presence in his life. She was his intellectual partner, co-writer and co-editor on many projects. The chapter discusses how both Sardar and Merryl were deeply committed to social justice around the world, particularly in Malaysia. It also details Sardar and Merryl’s camaraderie with the Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and his wife, showing how they supported one another during both personal and political challenges.

Merryl, a Muslim convert, was also interested in debates around Islam and the politicisation of the religion. She and the author “spent some time discussing issues of tradition and modernity, the problems of Islamic movements, the lack of critical thought in Muslim circles, and the then hot topic ‘Islamisation [sic] of knowledge.’”

The chapter further highlights how global political patterns give Sardar a “sinking sensation that the world is terminally insane” while Merryl urges people to learn to ask new questions. The friendship between Merryl and Sardar thus became another anchor during his difficult times, as well as a source of robust political and religious debates that helped shape both his politics and his writing journey.

The book’s final chapter is dedicated to Sardar’s wife, Saliha. It opens with the Urdu words “Meri jaan” [my life] and describes in detail how a marriage that began as an arranged one gradually developed into an “unconditional love emanating from both of [them].”

Sardar built a life with Saliha and their three children, Ziad, Zain and Maha. The reader can sense the depth of love that Sardar had, and continues to have, for his wife, whom he describes as his “invisible but ever-present co-author” in all his work. He also describes how the ghazals of Munni Begum became an important part of their love story and how her music pops up “at fateful junctures of [their] lives.”

Saliha’s love sustained Sardar’s heart and mind and, therefore, when she died, his grief was not silent but vociferous, so overwhelming that he felt as though he “was disintegrating into so many atoms and molecules. The glue that held me together had dissolved; half of me had gone, and the remaining half was falling apart.”

Three Begums places emotion at the centre of the narrative, allowing it to shape the text’s movement. Sardar’s memoir suggests that, in the grieving process, it is not sympathy from others that offers the greatest solace, but rather the reassurance that one is still needed, an affirmation that enables a person to grieve as fully and humanly as possible.

He further reflects that recognising the depth of one’s relationship with the deceased makes it possible to approach life with less severity, to move forward while carrying the presence of those who are absent. This insight is powerfully expressed at the end of the chapter about Saliha when, after returning from Malaysia, he senses her presence all around him.

He “walked down to the living room, and then all over the house, with Saliha wrapped around me, as though she was a life-enhancing blanket… She turned my grief into grace,” and, for the first time, he feels “free living with my grief.”

This journey through grief is further articulated through Sardar’s use of Urdu, which conveys how the unpredictability of loss cannot be contained within a single language. He has remarked that he ‘feels’ in Urdu but writes in English, and the memoir vividly demonstrates his ease and intimacy with both.

The gentle interlacing of Urdu words into English, especially “meri khwaahish” [my desire], “meri hasrat” [my unfulfilled wish] and “meri tamanna” [my longing], placed at both the beginning and the end, evokes the full spectrum of human desire and longing, all of which ultimately converge on the inevitability of death.

The lyricism of Urdu, combined with the discipline of English, lends the narrative a profound lucidity, sustaining the intensity of heartbreak alongside the recognition that loss is a fundamental human condition, one most of us encounter, often more than once.

For those navigating the mazes and confusions of grief, the book offers a tender guide, suggesting how love, memory and language together can illuminate a path through both loss and life.

The reviewer is Assistant Professor of English and African literature at LUMS, Lahore. She can be reached at sadia.zulfiqar@lums.edu.pk

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 12th, 2026

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