February Issue 2007

There is something dramatic about personal tragedies that are brought under the glaring limelight of publicity. First, their details enthrall the audience, but then the force of imagination takes over, conjuring up pictures far more graphic than the actual event. But the gang rape of Mukhtar Mai, a 33-year-old divorcee from Meerwala, Multan, is riveting for a totally different reason: rather than wait for minds working overtime to build a picture of her ordeal, she herself brought the frightening facts of the tragedy before everyone, leaving nothing to the imagination. Thanks to her exceptional guts, she has now become a symbol of courage and resistance against an unjust, male-dominated system stoked by wretched social customs and poverty.

Her book, In the Name of Honour, is a continuation of the same spirit that made her tell the story to a shocked audience four years ago. In the book, she does not balk at repeating the trauma of being raped by the members of a powerful local clan, the Mastois, who accused her 12-year-old brother of having an affair with a much older female of their clan.

“That is where they rape me, on the beaten earth of an empty stable. Four men: Abdul Khaliq, Ghulam Farid, Allah Ditta and Muhammad Faiz… then they shove me outside, half-naked, where I stumble and fall. They throw my shalwar at me.”

And all this was happening as her wailing father, detained by the perpetrators’ accomplices, and nearly the whole village stood witness to the crime.

There is one difference though: while her terrible suffering is her very own, the book is not. The writer, Marine-Therese Cuny, used two-way translators to pen down the gist of her conversations with the Mai. The task of another translation in English has been handled by Linda Coverdale. When an emotional narrative hops through so many layers of translations, it would pose textual and contextual problems. And the publisher of Oh! Editions does talk of the “…hurdle posed by the great disparity of language.” Yet a western perspective of the sordid episode — oppression of women in conservative societies — pervades the whole narrative, whose declared intent is to highlight the might of Mai’s courage and not her misery.

A certain hype also precedes a stylistically tame recollection of the situation of Mai, her rape, its publicity and the trial that ensued.

Nicholas D. Kristof, the New York Times writer, who made a crusade out of Mai’s case, and introduced it to the rest of the world by consistently hammering it through his columns, quotes a Wisconsin-based human rights activist, Amna Buttar, levelling a rather serious allegation at Brigadier Ijaz Shah, who is described as “one of President General Pervez Musharraf’s closest friends.”

“The brigadier warned Amna that she and Mukhtar should be careful and not stir up trouble and he added that Pakistani intelligence knows about everything they do. Alluding to a planned visit by Mukhtar and Amna to New York he added: ‘We can do anything. We can just pay a little money to some black guys in New York and get people killed there.’”

Kristof shoots off the next paragraph convinced that the damning threat was indeed delivered. “That sounded not only racist but also like a blunt threat to kill Amna and Mukhtar on American soil.”

Whatever the truth of the matter, snippets like these form the bricks of the pedestal on which Mai’s story is eventually placed as being unique and outstanding.

In the book, Mai speaks as a woman of exceptional wisdom and insight, someone who understands her situation in all its complexities.

“How many will be supported by their families as I was supported by mine? How many will be lucky enough to have a journalist report the facts, to have human rights organisations take up their causes so strongly that the government itself must intervene?”

Mai’s hard logic is rivalled only by her grasp of her surroundings: she seems to know a bit of everything — from the global female lib movement to the good work done by human rights activists in Pakistan, some of whom she quotes verbatim on the status of women in the country.

But the Mai from Meerwala saves her best surprise for the reader when, towards the end of the book, she takes leave of her traditional humility and somewhat pompously wallows in her new role: “I have become a survivor and an activist. An icon. The symbol of the struggle waged by the women of my country.”

This fits well into the theme of the book: transformation of a week-kneed helpless woman into a shining tower of hope; but at the same time, such self-praise unfortunately paints Mai in colours that are neither true nor do any service to her image.

A personal interaction with her on the contents of the book would reveal the rather disheartening fact that she is oblivious to nearly half the things that have been attributed to her.

She has not even read the book. And that is because she cannot. Not even in Urdu, should a translation be provided to her. By her own admission Mai is illiterate, except for her ability to recite the Holy Quran, which to her was a tremendous source of strength when she was running around the country in a vain search for justice. Mai is not initiated into the world of books and information. True, tragedies are natural teachers and heartfelt emotions pour out untutored. But the kind of knowledge base and scholarly wisdom Mai exhibits in the book are clearly not her own. These probably come from the writers’, or translators’, generous account of her story.

In fact, on some significant personal issues, the real Mai contradicts the Mai of the book. For instance, in the book she is visibly relieved and pleased for extricating herself from an arranged and “strange marriage.” Her husband also comes across as the villain of the piece, an exploitative, uncaring chauvinist.

But the real Mai believes that the biggest mistake of her life was to “get divorced” and attributes much of her trouble, even partly the tragedy of the gang-rape, to her single status. She has no harsh words to say about her ex-husband whom she remembers wistfully and says that the cause of the break-up was bad blood among him and her father.

To the feminists’ ears, this would not be music because this is another way of endorsing and reinforcing male domination. Yet that is what the real Mai, who is truthful, honest, shy and silently courageous, believes in.

She is not the firebrand feminist enthused with a messianic zeal to uproot the evil of discrimination against women across the globe — even though this is exactly the role that the book casts her in. Left to her own devices, she wants nothing from life: no money, no glory, no certificates, no name in history — only justice. Ironically, so far she has got everything else except that. Her tormentors are in jail, but the trial is lingering on. And that is the real story.