Monday 14th September, 2020

Bhaji,

I’m still waging against the insanity that your life changed permanently last week.

In this culture she can be branded a whore for not bringing his cup of tea on time. Leered at for wanting financial independence – or just independence. Control. Abuse. Dismissed. The Pakistani female experience requires desensitised hearts to exist and obedient minds to survive. 

 As I read about your ordeal, my thoughts turned to those I know, suffering with the same torment. See, despite what regressive elements of society will try to convince you of, despite the system bearing down on you to hide in your misery and shame as though diagnosed with an unrecognisable contagion; women have this forced upon them every day, in every country in the world.

I want to tell you about my Jordanian friend, who, after confessing her conversion from Islam to Christianity to her father; was gang-raped in the back of his van while he, sat in the front of the same van, listening indifferently to her screams. Similarly, Hannah Shah details in The Imam’s Daughter, that she was held in the basement of her family home in northwest England, and repeatedly raped by her father for most of her childhood. 

The system is broken. There is a defect in the cultural mentality that disillusions many men to think they’re entitled to everything where women are concerned. Only then can they approach a broken-down car along the Lahore motorway, forcibly drag a woman and her children at gunpoint to a nearby field and gang-rape her. To add insult to injury, the lead police officer placed more of an emphasis of the risks unaccompanied women pose rather than point out the lack of humanity. 

But many are. These protests throughout Pakistan are for you and every survivor. Hundreds of women – and men – are challenging the government, police forces and society as a whole to rethink how they approach sexual violations, particularly toward women, and how rapists should be punished. For every rejection and abandonment there is also acceptance and adoption. Millions of people both in Pakistan and around the world see no shame in you. 

My friend has a joy and strength that is remarkable, in spite of and because of her anguish. She knows what it takes to survive and would tell you that one day you will overcome this. Hannah Shah had the courage to usurp the honour-shame complexities of our Pakistani conditioning to publish a book about her resilience. Both women have rebuilt themselves in spite of the worlds they live in.

And you, in spite of this insanity, still have it in you to dance.