MIshal Hussain’s Torn Threads begins with the actual frayed threads of a saree from her grandparents’ wedding. The cousin uses the brocade border on the shawl and gives it to Hussain as a wedding gift. Other than that, however, the book contains surprisingly few stories of objects for family memories in the age of nostalgia seen on Instagram. It quickly becomes clear that Hussain, a well-known BBC journalist, was not just looking for a place to record her memoirs. She had access to her grandparents’ memories: “I had books written by one grandparent (Shahid), unpublished memoirs left by another (Mumtaz), several audio recordings of my grandmother Tahira and my 97-year-old brother Mary. to talk,” Hussain says in an email interview. The structure of the book follows from this: Chapters 1-4 focus sequentially on her grandparents Mary, Mumtaz, Shahid and Tahir.
