Showing results for "Mohammed Hanif" in All Categories

There is a saying that when lovers fall out, a plane goes down. A Case of Exploding Mangoes is the story of one such plane. Why did a Hercules C130, the world's sturdiest aircraft, carrying Pakistan's military dictator General Zia ul Haq, go down on 17 August, 1988?

Was it because of: mechanical failure; human error; the CIA's impatience; a blind woman's curse; generals not happy with their pension plans; the mango season? Or could it be your narrator, Ali Shigri?

The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital need a miracle. Alice Bhatti may be just what they're looking for. She's just been released from the Borstal Jail. She's the daughter of a part-time healer, and it seems she has inherited his gift. With a bit of begrudging but inspired improvisation, Alice begins to bring succor to the patients. But all is not miraculous. Alice is a Christian in an Islamic world, ensnared in the red tape of hospital bureaucracy, torn between her duty to her patients, her father, and her husband.

An American pilot crash-lands in the desert and finds himself on the outskirts of the very camp he was supposed to bomb. After days spent wandering and hallucinating from dehydration, Major Ellie is rescued by one of the camp's residents, a teenager named Momo, whose entrepreneurial money-making schemes are failing as his family is falling apart: his older brother, Ali, left for his first day of work at an American base and never returned; his parents are at each other’s throats; his dog, Mutt, is having a very bad day; and an earthy-crunchy aid worker has shown up....

Only weeks since her release from Borstal, Alice is a candidate for the position of junior nurse at Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments. With guidance from the working nurse's manual, and some tricks she picked up in prison, Alice brings support to the thousands of patients littering the hospital’s corridors and concrete courtyard. In the process, she attracts the attention of a lovesick patient, Teddy Bunt, apprentice to the nefarious ‘Gentleman Squad’ of the Karachi police.

This book is a distillation of the wisdom gained after years of study of sacred texts from the Islamic tradition. The author, Muwaffaq ad-Din al-Maqdisi, is one of the foremost scholars in the Hanbali school, and this concise and inspiring work sums up the realities of this world and the next, gathered in kernels of advice to his fellow believers.