I am usually not one to ink reams of paper in the first person and that too while sharing an anecdote. But this is another story.
I was first, personally introduced to Saba Karim Khan (SKK for interview purposes) through a mutual friend of ours. This was back in 2021 when I had begun toying with the idea of launching a Women in Literature Festival focusing the Global South. I spoke to Saba on the phone. Not only was she one of the very few people I had related this grand… lofty idea…, it never really felt it was the first time we were speaking to one another. We hit off… spoke of literature… language… the need for such festivals that not only celebrate diversity when it comes to the written word but also highlight areas not spoken of. That was our first conversation.
Never thinking twice… Saba was on board!
From there, this intellectually stimulating relationship grew with amazing collaborative initiatives that can be found on her platform Chaap Tilak as well as Ananke’s YouTube page.
But the story doesn’t end there. Little did I know and this was early on… that there was another… Beautiful thing… a link that connected us. In one of our conversations, I found out that one of my favorite university professors… admired and beloved – Professor Rafat Karim – was her father. What joy!!
Adding to the list of wonderful accomplishments is her latest project W.R.A.P – a journey authe dience will embark on and follow the lives of three underground hip-hop artists from the neighbourhood of Gizri in Karachi.
Saba… there are so many interesting things that you’ve been doing… I would like you to tell us about yourself…. Your journey … how it all began?
SKK: Simply put, I am a storyteller. I grew up in a home surrounded by books, ghazals, hand-written letters, all that sort of stuff. But I think there was one luminous moment that sparked the realisation with me, that storytelling is the label I identify with the most. I was sitting in a class at NYU, listening to a guest speaker talking to our students about mindfulness, about being immersed in the moment and he shared a quote (the original is by Sir Henry David Thoreau) which went something like: “most men and women, lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them”. He then asked everyone: “What’s your song. Take five minutes and scribble your song on a piece of paper and share it with the person sitting next to you.” In that moment something shifted within me, making me realise that storytelling is my song—I think that was the day the seeds of my debut novel, Skyfall, were sown.
Do you consider yourself a filmmaker first and then all other roles of a creative… including being an author and so forth? Or is it just a process of fluid transformation… from one form of creativity to another?
SKK: I think the various roles and projects get subsumed under the umbrella of storytelling rather than taking on any order of priority. I love writing, of course but filmmaking, being on a set or location, has its own magical quality. Whilst with the former you get to build and imagine different worlds, with the latter, it opens up a window into real people and spaces that sometimes lie at such a departure from our own. What greater form of enrichment could there be, to immerse yourself and capture stories of different people as a participant observer.
What areas of filmmaking attract you the most?
SKK: I love being on a set or location, that’s a real high. All your senses are evoked and sometimes, just listening to someone’s story as you film it, can forge a profound and poetic connection with strangers. There’s this beautiful, unpredictable quality about it, because you never know where the conversation could ultimately lead to … those moments of revelation and shared intimacy, where someone unexpectedly pulls you backstage, are pure magic.
What is your process as a filmmaker?
SKK: Co-creation from start to finish. It’s taught me so much about trusting and delegating.
I prefer for the story to emerge from the material that gets filmed, rather than scripting the documentary beforehand. It’s much more grounded and organic that way and helps to preserve the voice of the person at the centre of the story, exploring how they make sense of their world, rather than how I see it from behind a camera or from the “outside”.
Can you tell us about your latest project?
SKK: W.R.A.P. which stands for We Really Are Pakistan is my upcoming documentary film that follows the lives of three underground hip-hop artists from the neighbourhood of Gizri in Karachi. The question that piqued my curiosity was that despite being surrounded by so much strife—violence and crime, death, drugs and alcohol, poverty—in a place like Gizri, what makes these boys gravitate towards rap music, towards creating art? I couldn’t wrap my head around that apparent paradox. Ultimately, does it offer some sort of hope and resistance? Is it registering some politics of protest? I found those questions fascinating.
Why did you pick this theme and what was the journey like not only as a filmmaker but also as an ally of the documentary’s protagonists?
SKK: I think I’ve answered the first part of this question in the previous one but I should add that I also chose this theme because we tend to understand success and heroism in very limiting ways. We want to make a splash with stories that have obvious larger-than-life elements; but most people’s lives are far more ordinary than that, yet they are no less worthy of being told. These three boys and their attempt to rise above the mundaneness, to say I’ve been taught to downsize my dreams so that they fit my reality, but I’m actually going to outstrip my reality to make it fit my dreams, is nothing short of heroic to me.
The journey is difficult to put into words, just how enlightening and rewarding it has been. Despite growing up in Karachi, filming this documentary in Gizri and other locations has reminded me of how removed we are from the reality of most people in Pakistan. The colours and contours, sights and sounds, the darkness of it all, gosh … but most importantly, the skill to survive, I mean these boys are warriors, their story is jaw-dropping. It revealed to me how much of a bubble we actually inhabit, we think we’re aware of it, but I certainly wasn’t.
I have this distinct memory from our first day of shoot in Gizri, where there was a tiny baby, maybe just a few months old, their legs hanging from the railings of a window, and all they could see outside was the wall of the adjacent tall building. It was as if the two buildings were literally an inch apart, rising high, and it felt so suffocating to watch, to think of how constricted that baby’s view was. It says so much about the state of things, a metaphor for differences in privilege perhaps.
I hope many of us can be allies with people whose lives might be markedly different from our own, isn’t that so much more empowering than attemping to “save” them. My endeavour with W.R.A.P. is to start telling some of these stories in their original voices, to offer these boys a seat at the table and to show that hope can seep through from the darkest spaces.
What was your vision about W.R.A.P and how much of that vision is on screen – as movie/documentary making also has a collaborative element to it… with other stakeholders being part of the process?
SKK: Like I said, my vision was to preserve the voice of the people to whom this story belongs, rather than tell it through my own tone or someone else’s voice. That’s what my ethnographic training in anthropology has taught me. My vision was also to open a window into Pakistan that goes beyond the breaking news tickers and international headlines—we rarely hear about stories from Pakistan that show the glass half-full. This film doesn’t undermine the struggle and despair that is so very real, but the whole celebration is about how these boys are trying to overcome the darkness that their world is plunged in. Their lives are work-in-progress but that is the whole point—the messiness, the ambiguities, the trying, taking one step forward, two back and one sideways. It’s complicated and I didn’t want to try and sanitize that.
Everyone on the team shared the vision and urgency of telling this story; from filming and editing, to lighting, sound and music, the trailer, poster, subtitles, everyone is a stakeholder and collaborated to get this film out in the world.
Any plans, future projects… or is that too early to ask? J
SKK: I’ve got an anthology on Pakistan that is slated for publication early next year – it explores people’s complicated relationship with home. And then there’s another experimental short film that has now been completed. Hopefully more on those works closer to the time!
Any last words
SKK: Thank you for this wonderful interview. After Skyfall, I’ve realised that writing a book, making a film, any such thing is just half the battle. Getting it out into the world is equally essential. I am grateful to Ananke for spreading the word!
Saba Karim Khan is an author, award-winning documentary filmmaker and educator, who read Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and works at NYU Abu Dhabi. Khan’s debut novel, Skyfall, was published by Bloomsbury and she is a contributor to the recently launched anthology, Ways of Being: Creative Non-fiction by Pakistani Women. She is a columnist for Khaleej Times and her writing, interviews and talks have appeared in The Guardian, BBC, The Independent, the Emirates Literature Festival, Lahore Literary Festival, NYUAD Institute, Gulf News, The National, Wasafiri, Huff Post, Verso, LUMS, Think Progress, DAWN, The Friday Times and Express Tribune. Khan’s doc-film, Concrete Dreams: Some Roads Lead Home, produced by the Doha Film Institute (DFI), secured official selections and won awards at film festivals in NYC, Paris, Berlin, Toronto, USA, Sweden and India. Before joining the Academy, Saba worked as Country Marketing and Public Affairs Head at Citigroup. Born in Karachi, she now lives in Abu Dhabi with her husband and two daughters. Saba Karim Khan can be contacted at https://sabakarimkhan.com/.
