Book Review: Mirza Waheed's new novel tests the limits of a mother's love and faith

Mirza Waheed’s new novel, Maryam & Son, tells the story of Maryam Ali, a 46-year-old school chef of British Indian origin living in East London, and her search for her son, Dilawar. The story opens with her discovery of her 20-year-old boy missing from home. Since his father Ashfaq, or Ash, died suddenly when Dilawar was a teenager, Dil (or Dilly), as he is called by his family, has grown up under the attentive care of his mother. A quiet and introverted boy, he is good with computers and has made a career out of this talent, making a living through remote work. When he doesn’t return home for three days, his mother thinks of the worst—a possible racist attack—and goes to the police, sick with worry. Only for the case to take an unexpected turn.

On this scaffolding of a domestic tragedy, Waheed hangs a tale of grief and loss, intersected by questions of identity and belonging. As it turns out, Dilawar is suspected to have defected to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), where he is allegedly helping terrorists carry out their violent missions with his acumen for information technology. Days after his disappearance, a grainy video appears on the internet showing a young man, his face partially covered, holding a sword, standing among a group of terrorists. As per AI imaging analysis, it bears a 72% resemblance to Dilawar, though his mother refuses to corroborate it. But, for the powers that be, “the Swordsman” is all the evidence they need to frame the Ali family into a web of intrigue and intimidation.

An ISIS novel, circa 2026, may feel a bit dated. Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire and Tabish Khair’s Jihadi Jane, both of which were published in 2017, were some of the notable forerunners of this subgenre. But Waheed’s book is more than a political set piece. Like his previous novel, Tell Her Everything (2019), it is a story about families, especially about the relationship between parents and children—the spoken and unspoken truths that lie between them.

Maryam & Son gets its urgency and humanity through Waheed’s close observation of life as it unfolds in the suburbs of London, on the seamier streets of Walthamstow, where class, race and ethnicity clash to create the dark underbelly of multicultural Britain. For the most part, the author’s focus remains on everyday domestic and sociological dramas. Maryam’s younger sisters, Saffina and Zarrine, play key roles in holding their elder sibling through the crisis, acting as foils to her mounting pain. The British authorities, including the local police and intelligence officers, descend on her home, unceremoniously delivering bad news and asking her questions to which she has no answers. The exception among this lot is Julian Chapman, a family liaison officer, young and sensitive to a mother’s helplessness and vulnerability, with whom Maryam forges a bond of trust and affection. The author builds up their complicated “friendship” patiently, teasing it out incrementally rather than opting for sensational leaps and sweeps.

Apart from the complex characterisation, Waheed’s biggest achievement in Maryam & Son is his ability to sustain the reader’s interest in a plot that isn’t driven by a rapid turn of events. If you’re expecting the high energy of a thriller from this novel, you will get only a mild taste of it towards the denouement, where the action quickens as American troops launch attacks on ISIS and prevail over them.

For the most part, Waheed’s story unfolds as a slow burn, exploring strands of inner trauma as it is experienced and processed by a mother, who, ever since she became a widow, has devoted herself to her son at the expense of her personal happiness. This is a novel is about the loop of thoughts that spool and unspool within Maryam’s mind, pushing her two steps forward on her journey to acceptance on some days, then letting her regress into a spiral of self-blame and recriminations against the world on others. It isn’t easy to write an engaging story that rehearses and repeats a narrative of mourning cyclically. But Waheed pulls off this feat without letting the pace flag or taking a toll on the reader’s attention.

For a novel with the names of its two key protagonists inscribed into the title, Maryam & Son gives the reader a deep insight into the life of one character over the other. Dilawar, the biggest absence at the heart of the story, is also its biggest driving force. Waheed gives the reader an intimation of him through a series of glimpses and flashbacks. Like a pixellated photo on a screen, his image comes into focus and recedes as the eye of the narrator zooms in and out. It makes sense that a part of his identity should be left deliberately obscure—like the authorities, the reader too is on a mission to piece together who he is. Even his mother, who had always believed him to be a “good boy”, isn’t quite sure about his proclivities.

There are, however, a few loose ends in Dilawar’s story, such as a cursory mention of a girlfriend, who the reader isn’t told much else about later on. Presumably, like the rest of his family, she too would be upset and affected by his abrupt disappearance.

In a novel with an overt political subtext, there is usually a temptation to take sides, to identify and pit the forces of good and evil against each other. While Maryam condemns Islamist violence unequivocally, she remains steadfast in her faith in Islam till the bitter end. It would have been the easier option for her to throw her beliefs to the winds and become a heretic in her grief. Instead she embraces her faith tighter and saves herself at a pivotal moment, when the balance of powers would have shifted irrevocably had she acted out of her desire.

Instead of the politicised rhetoric of good versus bad Muslims, the reader is compelled to reckon with fragile human beings—be it a parent shattered by the loss of their child or a disillusioned youth, hiding the scars and scabs of years, finally taking a leap into the unknown.

In the epigraph, Waheed quotes from Stevie Smith’s poem, The Reason, framing the bigger questions that underwrite the novel. What is it, the poet asks, that stops us from ending it all, especially since our lives are so “vile”? It is because “Hope springs alive/ Good may befall/ I may yet thrive.” Because none of us can fathom the games that the gods play on us. “It is because I can’t make up my mind,” as Smith puts it, “If God is good, impotent or unkind.”