However, the narrative structure breaks this pattern. Muskan employs a dual narrative technique: external third-person observation and first-person internal monologues. As critic Fatima Rizvi notes, “In Hoshruba , the male gaze is the prologue; the female voice is the novel” (2021, p. 45). By granting Hoshruba an internal language, Muskan transforms her from a passive symbol of beauty into an active agent. The magical elements—Hoshruba’s ability to make men forget themselves—are reframed not as supernatural curses but as metaphors for the reclamation of attention. When a male character falls into hoshrubi (enchantment), it is not magic but the disruptive force of a woman refusing to perform subservience.