Des Pardes

About This Drama

Des Pardes (1988) was Haseena Moin's attempt to grapple seriously with the experience of Pakistanis living abroad — the emotional dislocation, the renegotiated identities, and the complicated pull between the country left behind and the life being built in its absence. The drama followed characters whose lives straddled Pakistan and the diaspora with a thoughtfulness and specificity that reflected genuine research and imaginative engagement with experiences that were, by the late 1980s, becoming central to Pakistani social life. It reunited Haseena Moin with the actors — including Shehnaz Sheikh and Javed Sheikh — whose work had made her previous dramas defining events, and the result was a production of considerable emotional intelligence and cultural significance.