Is marital bliss ever blissful?

The Smile of Despair is a three-hander which examines attitudes toward disability from within the British Muslim community by emerging Bury based hard of hearing writer Shahid Iqbal Khan.

Naqid and Mubina Khan face the everyday challenges of work and endless family gatherings with smiles on their faces and a takeaway in their bellies. Their cheery marital banter is interrupted when Mubina’s younger sister Aida moves into their cramped home. Profoundly deaf and with a new lease on life, Aida disturbs the settled routine of the household with an awakened desire for the life her sister has.

Maybe three is a crowd, even when you’re related.

It achieves this by showing the interloping of a disabled sister between her able bodied sister and new husband when she moves in with them and the secret of a Muslim woman aborting a child because she discovered it would be born disabled.