The First Jasmines

by Saima Begum

East Pakistan, 1971. On their way to visit their mother, two sisters, Lucky and Jamila, are captured by Pakistani soldiers and thrown into a world of horror.

Locked in a room in an unknown village-turned-camp by the river, the women look through a lone barred window onto white jasmines blooming day and night. Meanwhile, around the camp, deadly guerrilla fighters from the Bengali Mukti Bahini gather to take back territory from the Pakistan Army.

As Bangladesh crowns painfully into the world, Lucky and Jamila must choose between heartbreak and secrecy to return from an unspoken violence.

Genres: Fiction, Bangladesh

245 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 2025

About the author

Saima is a British-Bangladeshi writer based in North London. She won the MFest Short Story Competition in 2021.

Reviews

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the 2026 Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize

Ammu said jasmines were heavenly flowers, placed on earth by God's most favoured angels, to remind them of him during the most precious moments of a woman's life. Lucky remembered filling her hands with them as a girl, how those first jasmines rolled around each other to fit into the curves of her palms like flowing water. She remembered how the same smell had enveloped her as Waleed placed a garland around her head in front of their families. How his nose had twitched at the flowers tied on her wrists when they hovered around his neck, and how the flowers shrivelled and closed their petals at night so as not to see or hear them.

In the camp, the jasmines slumped from loneliness, having realised long ago that no one would pluck them. Though they blinked open and spread their scent far, the soldiers' hearts were too hard to notice their beauty, and the women's too hollow to cherish it.

The First Jasmines is the debut novel of Saima Begum.

It is published by Hajar Press and is their entry into the 2026 Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize.

The novel centres on the experience of the 'Birangona' - women who were raped by the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. It began as a potential PhD thesis, but turned into a beautifully crafted work of literaturem inspired in particular by a famous photo by Naib Uddin Ahmed.

The novel focuses on two women in particular, Lucky and Jamila, adoptive sisters, captured and held captive with other women by the Pakistan Army, in a camp where they are repeatedly raped, while they wait for the Bengali Mukti Bahini guerrila fighters to liberate them. The story describes both their experience and their memories of life before the war.

This is a highly lyrical novel, the beauty of the text contrasting, almost uncomfortably, with the horror of the events described, although their ability to remember and appreciate beauty is itself an act of defiance and survival:

When the lotus flower opens its eyes in the day and joins us in sleep at night, or like me the night jasmine does the opposite, man tells me I’m better off lost and buried somewhere if I don’t live for his pleasure, and through it all the beauty of my resilient heart still beats louder over the darkness of his.

But liberation, when it comes after the Indian army intervene, does not provide for a happy ending. Despite the goverment denoting them as war heroines, society prefers to forget their existence:

‘They’re afraid of us’, Mohini said, shaking her head. ‘No matter what we do, we’ll always remind the nation of what our enemies did to us.’

And their mother counsels them to hide what happened from Lucky's husband and Jamila's fiancé:

‘Man is fragile, Lucky. He cannot even bear to hear what a woman can endure. And when he does hear it, his sadness, his fears, it all turns to anger, because he can’t put his feelings into words like you can. He takes his anger out on you, because you remind him of his powerlessness.’

Interview with the author at The Skinny

Hajar Press - an independent political publishing house run by and for people of colour.

Hajar publishes books by writers of colour with original and transformative ways of seeing, imagining and remaking the world.

We don’t believe in an either/or distinction between beautiful and revolutionary. Why not both?

Our publications aim to challenge, connect and inspire readers to see and think differently.

Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize judges' citiations:

Our prize judge Marina Benjamin writes:

This novel explodes with energy, urgency and acute observational insight. Saima Begum’s portrayal of women prisoners seized during Bangladesh’s war of independence, confined to a cramped cell, and serially abused by their captors, is unsparing in its horrors and yet so tender in the telling of how these women endure and survive. Begum’s is an entirely fresh literary voice. The First Jasmines is a luminous example of Hajar Press’s political remit to publish radical work by people of colour.

Judge Susanna Crossman writes:

An extraordinary debut novel, The First Jasmines by Saima Begum is a fiercely lyrical work, recounting the devastating untold story of ‘Birangona’ - women kidnapped and raped by the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. Begum shows great prowess in dealing with the horrors of sexual violence and imprisonment in a poetic, deeply human voice. Vividly written, with unforgettable characters, spirit burns bright through these pages. Founded in 2020 by Brekhna Aftab and Farhaana Arefin Hajar Press produces books written by people of colour; The First Jasmines echoes Hajar Press’s politically engaged statement about their publishing vision, that books can be both ‘beautiful and revolutionary.’

And judge Stu Hennigan writes:

The First Jasmines by Saima Begum, from Hajar Press is a coruscating novel with a savagely visual voice that uses the medium of fiction to bring the darkest of hidden real-life stories to a wider audience than a work of historical non-fiction on the same subject might expect to reach. Blisteringly told, utterly real, and laudably unflinching in its willingness to lay bare the moral complexities and contradictions of how these women were treated in the aftermath of their terrible ordeal, this is a bold and important publication.

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prose is so beautiful I’ve never read anything like it. The storyline and characters will stay with me for a long time

Rabia is a real one 🥲🩷 all the characters had such colour and intricate descriptions that you felt connected to them all in different ways. Wonderful read 🙏🏻

[Marije de Wit · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The whites of their eyes shone darker than their pupils and Amma knew they had come back dead, the kind of dead only a living woman could be.'

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ammu said jasmines were heavenly flowers, placed on earth by God's most favoured angels, to remind them of him during the most precious moments of a woman's life. Lucky remembered filling her hands with them as a girl, how those first jasmines rolled around each other to fit into the curves of her palms like flowing water. She remembered how the same smell had enveloped her as Waleed placed a garland around her head in front of their families. How his nose had twitched at the flowers tied on her wrists when they hovered around his neck, and how the flowers shrivelled and closed their petals at night so as not to see or hear them.
In the camp, the jasmines slumped from loneliness, having realised long ago that no one would pluck them. Though they blinked open and spread their scent far, the soldiers' hearts were too hard to notice their beauty, and the women's too hollow to cherish it. For Lucky, the small stars stretched and squeezed her faded memories and shrouded her eyes with a watery warmth until sleep overcame her.
 

Shortlisted for the 2026 Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize (the first year of the rebranded Republic of Consciousness Prize).
 
Published by the London based Hajar Press “an independent and proudly political publishing house run by and for people of colour. We publish creatively ambitious and politically engaged literature by writers of colour, from novels and short stories to poetry and essays, with a particular focus on experimental work that blends forms and bends genres. We are interested in writing that reflects how politics are lived and felt, whether conveying histories of resistance passed down generations, or embodying how the future is prefigured and enacted today. In short, we publish beautiful, revolutionary books that move us to think, feel, dream and imagine anew”.  This is their first longlisting.
 
It is the British-Bangladeshi author’s debut novel and grew out of her frustrating research for what was intended to be an undergraduate English Literature dissertation on the birangona woman – women raped by the (Western) Pakistan Army in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 – frustrating as she felt the story had not really been told, and eventually realised that she needed to tell it herself but in the more powerful than academia medium of fiction.
 
At the novel’s heart are Lucky – her husband abroad in London, living with her son – and Jamila (a street girl adopted by Lucky’s parents at her request – the two bought up as sisters); they are captured by the (West) Pakistan (often referred to as Punjabi) army while going to visit their ailing widowed mother/adopted mother/Ammu and taken to a camp where they are subject to repeated rapes by the Urdu-speaking soldiers (known to them only by physical descriptions – Fat Man, Major Moustache – camp leader, Slightly Cross Eyed Soldier – their guard, Slowly Smiling Soldier and so on – both reflecting back how the soldiers see the women – as nothing other than physical bodies – and reflecting how the women experience the men).
 
There are a range of other women in the camps and over time some of them share their back stories of how they were captured – while Lucky and Jamila also look back across their lives (Jamila finally sharing with Lucky how she came to be a beggar/street girl).
 
And while the women ostensibly hope for rescue from the Bengali (East Pakistan) guerilla fighters – the Mukti Bahini, some of them dread rescue both thinking of how they can continue with normal life after their terrible experiences and believing they will be seen as soiled or even disgraced by their families and villages.
 
In practice when they are finally liberated - with the rapid mass surrender of the Pakistan forces after the Indian army intervention – the newly installed President confers the title on them of Birangona – meaning war-heroines and asks the nation to honour them – but in practice people are wary (as one of their fellow victims says “They’re afraid of us …. We’ll always remind the nation of what our enemies did to us” and their mother urges them not to share what happened to them with Lucky’s husband and Jamila’s fiancé (eventual husband) when both return (‘Man is fragile, Lucky. He cannot even bear to hear what a woman can endure. And when he does hear it, his sadness, his fears, it all turns to anger, because he can’t put his feelings into words like you can. He takes his anger out on you, because you remind him of his powerlessness.’).
 
And eventually the terrible burden of memory proves too much for Jamila, although for Lucky the novel ends on a more hopefully not with the line “The Shackles of a Darker Time cut loose by the white thread of dawn” (the first line of the novel that came to the author – and inspired by the famously devestating photo of a birangona taken by Naibuddin Ahmed and published by the Washington post -https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/...)
 
What is most striking about the novel is the writing – densely lyrical and meditative despite (perhaps also due to) the terrible events it is describing.
 
For example early on we have
 

When Jamila had been gone, her image had remained just behind Lucky's eyes even in wakefulness. It leapt in front of her thoughts and rattled her chest so hard she forgot the stench of the soldiers' sweat and the waste bucket in the corner of the room.  As night terrors began to consume her, instead of sleeping, Lucky opened her chest to look inside and found her heart lay where two oceans met, between salt and freshwater. She was always there, in the middle. Never brave, never cowardly. Never angry, never at peace. But in a much worse place altogether, in wait. Spirit apart from body. A breathing inhabitant of the barzakh.

 
Often such imagery associated with flowers like the titular ones – so for example
 

Beyond the windows, white jasmines sat on royal green leaves like soft reminders of a distant love that ran through her life. Like the laughter of women with baskets made of wood and bamboo leaves, who plucked jasmine buds from their roots and eagerly traced their fingers over budding petals, giddy to garnish life's beautiful moments with garlands. Now, her heart burned with a heat she wished she did not feel. A yearning, hellish heat to see those same white jasmines lining the barred windows, stained red with the repentance of men who had sold their hearts in exchange for hers.

 
And I would say that this makes the novel a slow read – the prose not flowing very naturally, at least for this reader, although perhaps that reflects too the interminable ordeal of the women.
 
Overall, perhaps a novel I admired more than enjoyed – and one I found easier to review than read; but definitely very worthy of its longlisting.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I set out to read the shortlists for the Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize and its over-the-pond sister prize, the Republic of Consciousness Small Press Prize. I have to say the excitement level for prize reading definitely dips once prize winners have been announced (which was a couple months ago for both prizes).

But the prizes are fulfilling their wonderful missions by introducing readers (including me) to authors and publishers they might not know who are taking risks and publishing works the bigger houses likely wouldn't touch. Begum's debut novel was Hajar Press's prize submission. I feared this might be a rather graphic and extremely brutal read given that it bears witness to the Pakistan army's raping of women during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. And it is indeed brutal, but the lyricism of Begum's writing helps to soften things, and while there are some rather graphic violence scenes, many a sexual atrocity is alluded to or seen in the aftermath (as opposed to detailed in what might have been stomach-wrenching, play-by-play description). With such an atrocity as the topic, Begum makes things approachable by centering the narrative on two sisters, Lucky and Jamila.

"It was an ancient story that could be traced all the way back to Habil and Qabil, thousands of years before the British came, conquered and cut them into pieces. It was a tale of two brothers and their nation of two tribes: West Pakistan, East Pakistan.

Greed was first to grip the western brother. He pledged allegiance to family while holding the hand of his eastern brother with miserly fingers. Accounts were kept secret and trade routed one way until the people of the East, who outnumbered the people of the West, became thin and gaunt.

Pride came second. Urdu, lingua franca of the West, would be the only national language (and English, someone whispered from the back). The western brother mocked the tongue of the eastern Bengalis, took their script off their notes and stamps, taunted their culture, customs, dress and palate."

In addition to humanizing the experience and capturing a long-overlooked historical blight, Begum reveals the wider societal dynamics in which women had to struggle. It was almost harder to stomach how they were treated by society after they were freed than it was during their tortured enslavement. Other than some pacing issues I had with the book, I thought it a rather impressive debut novel (all the more so as the book's impetus was the author's PhD dissertation research; she thought the story would be better served in fiction and decided to go for it despite no fiction writing in her past).

"Every child must one day set fire to the belief that every aged face is a friend, and that is the day their childhood ends."

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My ranking of the nominees I read for the 2026 Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize:
1) Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group by Rebecca Gransden, from Tangerine Press
2) Ghost Driver by Nell Osborne, from Moist Books
3) The First Jasmines by Saima Begum, from Hajar Press
4) Darryl by Jackie Ess, from Divided Publishing (note: I read the American edition by Clash Books, which I believe is slightly different from the edited version submitted to the prize)
5) SPIT by David Brennan, from époque press

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tough read, in all the ways that it should be

[Avery Marley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The First Jasmines is a haunting and intimate portrayal of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Through the eyes of sisters Lucky and Jamila, Saima Begum explores the human cost of conflict, captivity, and survival, contrasting the beauty of blooming jasmines with the horrors of violence and displacement. With precise, empathetic prose, Begum captures the tension between secrecy, heartbreak, and resilience, creating a deeply affecting narrative that illuminates a painful historical moment while giving voice to those who endured it.