Fortunately, Khan appreciates that a well-crafted short story can carry at least as much of an emotional impact for the reader as a novel, sometimes more. While the short story genre has not been neglected in Pakistani English writing per se, it is often forced to play second fiddle to novel writing in spite of praiseworthy short story collections by Rukhsana Ahmad, Aamer Hussein and Khaled Saeed among others. Though Khan takes global Islamic extremism seriously - one of the later stories dwells on a Canadian girl’s unhealthy obsession with the self-styled Islamic State or IS - she never allows it to overwhelm the primary concern of her writing: a faithful depiction of the psyches and predicaments of all her major characters. The first two tales focus on the lives of individuals from vastly different social strata who just happen to be worshipping at a Shia mosque in Pakistan when it becomes a horrific scene of terrorist violence. Though each story can stand on its own, a couple of them are connected by incidents or figures. Perusing Khan’s collection is an especially refreshing endeavour, largely because of the fact that she not only possesses a perfect command over English, but appears to be so attuned to the rhythms of the language that she goes beyond simple near-native competence and writes with genuine grace and sophistication. Tehmina Khan’s brief but entertaining collection of a dozen heartfelt short stories, Things She Could Never Have, will prove to be a welcome read for those who enjoy relaxing with a book, but are too busy for heftier tomes or simply disinclined to engage in heavy-duty reading.
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