Aboard the Democracy Train (19 page)

While the Zardari government has increased women’s quota seats in parliament to 21 per cent – up from 17 per cent under
Musharraf – and appointed a woman, Dr Fehmida Mirza, as speaker of the National Assembly, change is slow to follow. Pakistan’s women parliamentarians are the wives, sisters, daughters and nieces of feudal and tribal politicians whose traditions often keep them from speaking up on issues of national importance.

Even the constitutional reforms package passed by the Zardari government has avoided repealing the discriminatory laws passed by Gen. Zia ul Haq. Gen. Zia had initially passed the laws as ordinances before they were indemnified to the constitution. That has left the discriminatory laws against women, Laws of Evidence and
Qisas
and
Diyat
intact.

On the other hand, decades of hue and cry from Pakistani women have transformed the Zina Ordinances. While the Musharraf government converted it into the Women’s Protection Act, the Zardari government took it a step further and brought rape within the ambit of the secular Pakistan Penal Code.

As anywhere in the Muslim world, the veil has come back to Pakistan in almost a knee jerk response to US presence in the region. In a male-dominated set up, the different forms of the veil in Pakistan not only defy Western influence but are the preferred traditional form of escape from sexual harassment. Still, women are free to wear Western dress without any fear of retribution.

Indeed, the relatively liberal personal life styles of President Musharraf and President Zardari and inevitable globalization have left Pakistan with a dusting of modernity. Nightclubs have gradually opened while private parties serve alcohol more openly. Most of the superficial changes contribute to a liberal atmosphere in cities like Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad but don’t necessarily empower its women.

Today, in a fragile democracy, the PPP’s government has abdicated its writ over large parts of the country. There, women suffer from galloping population, domestic violence, rapes, honor killings and “marriage to the Quran.” In this backdrop, the civilian government teeters forth – unable to take bold steps that could unlock women’s potential and draw Pakistan out of centuries of backwardness.

When people ask me how I met my husband, I sometimes say “Through the newspaper.” That could give the impression that we met through matrimonial ads in Pakistan’s newspapers with the kind of captions that read, “Young bride wanted from good Sunni Muslim family, devoted to the home and children.”

The truth is, I found my husband while hunting for his sister’s killer.

In January 1990, I was the health beat reporter for
Dawn
and, as such, covered the public hospitals. Three government hospitals in Karachi cater to the poor and needy and it was well known that their corrupt administrations siphoned off even the meager funds they were allocated.

My sources were doctors who contacted me confidentially with grievances that they wanted me to bring to light. Through my write-ups, they hoped to force the hospital administrations to take action.

By that time, I had gained a reputation as a sympathetic reporter. Women, religious minorities, doctors, consumer interest groups, politicians and trade union leaders who felt discriminated against came to me hoping to find recourse through the newspaper.

My senior journalist colleagues watched through the corners of their eyes. At times, I saw their curiosity and touch of envy as clusters of people congregated around my wobbly wooden desk. The room I worked in had no ventilation and no air-conditioning and we sweated in the hot stale air circulated by ceiling fans. However, in the heat of conversations, no one seemed to mind.

Among my sources, one doctor frequently contacted me with bits of information about the malfeasance in hospitals. I had grown to trust him over the years, because his complaints weren’t personal and his tips often proved fruitful.

He was a short, earnest looking young man with glasses. Normally, he spoke so fast in Urdu that he would stumble over his words. Apparently, that stemmed from his desire to communicate “inside information” on sensitive stories that other reporters wouldn’t want to touch. Over time, he had developed a trust in me that allowed him to confide the most troubling problems he witnessed first hand in the system.

Late one evening in January 1990, while I worked at the city desk at
Dawn
, the earnest young doctor came to visit me. This time, he was whispering.

“She’s disappeared,” he said.

“Who has disappeared?” I said a bit exasperated since I was immersed in juggling other news stories.

“Fauzia, remember the woman doctor I was telling you about?”

I remembered he had telephoned me weeks ago to tell me about a fellow woman doctor who felt she was being discriminated against after she was abruptly ejected from her government housing. The government provided housing for medical interns near the hospitals where they worked. However, there were few rooms to go around and these had to be obtained at a premium.

Shortly thereafter, the earnest doctor’s colleague had called me, fuming. I guessed that he had got her to telephone me as
well. Her indignation startled me. She was talking so fast that I heard myself saying, “Wait, wait and slow down.” But her words spilled out fast and furious: “I came back to my room one day to find my furniture and possessions strewn all over the hallway,” she was saying.

Her fury had been directed at Fauzia, who was now missing. Apparently, Fauzia had acted like an upstart and thrown belongings out of the room originally allotted to this woman doctor.

For a few seconds I wondered what the issue – which was prima facie so personal – had to do with a forum as public as my staid newspaper. But there was more to the story. Apparently the woman, Fauzia Bhutto – who had displaced my contact’s colleague – was rumored to be having an affair with a senior member of parliament. Indeed, many had seen the newly-elected member of the Sindh assembly come frequently to pick up the young woman from her room near the hospital.

For me, the fact that a government official had found housing for a young woman was enough to raise a red flag. I knew full well that in a sex-segregated society like Pakistan, men don’t do favors for women without expecting something in return.

Moreover, the incident reeked of existing ethnic tensions. The official in question, Rahim Baksh Jamali was a Sindhi-speaking Member of the Provincial Assembly (MPA) from Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party. The woman – Fauzia, now missing, too – was a Sindhi speaker from Shikarpur in interior Sindh. As Benazir mania swept the rural areas, Fauzia had campaigned to get Jamali elected on the PPP ticket allotted to him from his hometown of Nawabshah.

It was a time when the Sindhi majority, who lived in the underprivileged rural areas, looked toward Benazir’s rule as an opportunity to lift themselves out of centuries of deprivation. On the other hand the Mohajirs (Muslim migrants from India), who were the majority population in Karachi, looked at the Sindhi-supported PPP rule with suspicion.

Both of the doctors who approached me were Mohajirs and felt the particular sting of being displaced by a Sindhi parliamentarian and the woman he had brought from interior Sindh.

At that time, Karachi had fallen into its worst bout of ethnic violence between the ruling PPP and the MQM. Benazir’s government had been in power for only a year but already the initial and fragile peace accord between the two political parties had given way to kidnappings, torture and murders of rival party members. The city burned when it was not under curfew.

As urban Mohajirs, my sources resented that incumbent PPP officials had brought their own people – Sindhis – into coveted jobs and positions in Karachi.

Twenty six year old Fauzia Bhutto, a former student of Nawabshah Medical College, was part of the Bhutto tribe – one of several prominent tribes among the larger ethnic group of Sindhis. Like most Sindhis she supported Benazir’s leadership of the country.

Tall and lean with shoulder-length hair, the high-spirited extroverted Fauzia was an active social worker. And yet like many young idealistic students in the small town of Nawabshah, Fauzia never had much exposure to men. She quickly became enamored of the well-connected landowner from Nawabshah, Rahim Baksh Jamali, for whom she campaigned in the 1988 election.

A year later as the older balding Jamali was elected MPA in Benazir’s cabinet, he lobbied to bring the pretty young woman to Karachi. Here, he found her a job as a medical intern and got her government housing.

Fauzia became known for her generosity among colleagues, nurses and patients, with her warm, sociable nature quickly winning her close friends. But in a traditional Muslim society like Pakistan, where unrelated men and women do not meet openly, she hid her relationship with Jamali. Only a few select friends knew about it.

Jamali had been known to visit her frequently. Now, her sudden disappearance – without any efforts on his part to find her – had my earnest doctor contact deeply concerned.

Barely whispering, with his body language saying more than his actual words, my contact told me that he suspected foul play. Indeed, by the time he had finished whispering his story,
I grew just as concerned that a young professional woman had disappeared and her patron had made no effort to find her.

My source wanted me to mention Fauzia’s disappearance in my newspaper reports – hoping that by publicizing her case, we would succeed in finding her.

I waited for the right time to show a connection between the missing Fauzia and the man I knew to be visiting her. On January 12, 1990, I inserted an innocuous paragraph in a larger news report I was doing on a nurse’s strike in the hospital where she worked. I wrote that a PPP member of parliament elected from Nawabshah, Rahim Baksh Jamali had placed his “girl friend” in Room 104 of JPMC doctor’s hostel. This was the room that Jamali had obtained for Fauzia from the hospital administration.

While on the surface this seemed harmless, I had publicly linked Jamali to Fauzia. Unbeknownst to me, Jamali already had a wife and children in his hometown in Nawabshah. By using the term “girl friend,” I had inadvertently stepped on the toes of a man from a tribal background – where extramarital relationships are punishable by “honor killings.”

The next day my report was out in
Dawn
and I saw its impact. My editor, who oversaw the city desk – Akhtar Payami – signaled to me to come quickly to his adjoining chamber. Glimpsing the urgent expression on his face in the conjoint room with sliding glass windows, I practically skipped inside.

A quiet, unassuming man who looked like he harbored many secrets, Payami told me in hushed tones that Jamali had just telephoned him. Apparently, the MPA had protested at the “objectionable” language used in a reputable newspaper like
Dawn
. He had been offended, not just by being associated with the missing Fauzia, but by my choice of the term “girl friend.”

“She is not my ‘girl friend’, she’s my wife,” he told my editor belligerently.

I was thrilled. It was the first public admission that Jamali had made about his alleged connection to the missing girl. His surprising claim that Fauzia was his wife, while hardly believable, had become necessary. While a Muslim man could
have four wives, having extramarital relations is punishable by death. He couldn’t refute the relationship since he had got Fauzia a job and room near the hospital.

Still, when Jamali called, he did not mention that his “wife” was missing or whether he had filed a missing report with police. Despite his influential position, he had made no move to find her. Instead, the man, driven by tribal instincts – as I later found him to be – had only expressed pompous annoyance that I had “soiled” his reputation by my choice of words. The timing of his phone call would be his first mistake.

On the morning of January 9, 1990, shepherds tending their flocks in the dusty wastelands along Karachi’s Super Highway stumbled upon the body of a young woman. They turned around the body, wrapped in an
ajrak
(a multi-purpose red Sindhi cloth), and saw that her eyes were shut. Her long tresses covered part of a bloodstained tunic, which she wore over a
shalwar kameez
and
dupatta
(baggy trousers and a scarf ).

The shepherds informed police, who in turn contacted Pakistan’s veteran social worker, Abdus Sattar Edhi. Edhi picked up the unclaimed body as a routine service to the city and buried her as an “unidentified girl.” The police lodged a routine First Information Report (FIR) of the murder against “unknown persons.” As was standard practice among local tabloids, a little-read Urdu newspaper then published a photograph of a dead girl with the caption, “unidentified young woman.”

None of us knew about the body that was found, nor had we seen the photograph in the newspaper. The photograph documented what we knew later – that Fauzia had been murdered between the nights of January 8 and 9. It definitively established that Fauzia was already dead when my paragraph connecting Jamali with the missing girl appeared in
Dawn
four days later.

Throughout January, Fauzia’s family had kept up hopes of finding the missing girl alive. Although her immediate family lived in Shikarpur – a good eight hours by road from Karachi – they became increasingly worried when a week went by and she failed to contact them. Fauzia’s father had passed away four years before, so the eldest son, Javed Bhutto came to Karachi to look for his sister.

Javed, who was eight years older than Fauzia, had recently returned to Pakistan with a master’s degree in philosophy from Sophia, Bulgaria. A slender, reflective man with a thick crop of hair, he was possessed with finding her. He searched for her at familiar haunts in Karachi, Hyderabad and Nawabshah, where she had worked or studied and asked friends and acquaintances where and with whom they had last seen her.