No country for a woman alone

“It was in the early 2000s that my daughter decided to move to the US where her father lived, to finish her high school,” recounts Fareeha Mirza*, a teacher in her 50s, her temples graying, her eyes soft brown.

'Life in Karachi was getting stifling for her as a 15-year-old being pestered by her mother to dress according to what area you are in Karachi — cover up and drape appropriately in varying shades of cultural acceptance and norms that we have created for ourselves in our metropolis.'

“When she left, I was left alone in our apartment. My parents lived separately in their apartment not far from our rented 2-bed in an upper middle-class residential building in Clifton. One thing was to miss her, with the depression and loneliness that followed. However, the more difficult part was to create the impression of not living completely alone. A single woman in our society is treated differently from a single woman with a daughter or a single woman with a son, as well as a single woman with a son and daughters. Let’s be honest, us Pakistanis are way too judgmental for our own good. We instantly form opinions about others, and mostly they are negative, as we live in our own holier-than-thou bubbles.

“Also, let’s not pretend that it doesn’t matter to those being judged, it certainly does — the heads being turned around, the nudges, smirks, and stares by women. The lingering looks by single and married men in the neighbourhood, in which case their mothers and sisters want to keep you at a distance, while their wives become insecure and sometimes even look a bit hostile.

I decided to keep a low-profile. The first thing I did was to dress down a bit. Try and deliberately look a little dowdy. Second, I made sure to step out and return home at decent hours. I stopped going to weddings which begin and end late and from where I would have to return home looking like a Christmas tree at late hours. I didn’t want to give the wrong impression, everything should be and look kosher.

“I used to read the news in those days as a part-time stint and sometimes return home with make up and a jacket on, but stopped doing that also when one neighbourhood gentleman, let’s call him Mr Bored-With-His-Marriage, who after politely greeting me when I returned home once, suggested that instead of news reading, I should model! I started to clean my face before I left the studios. Also, I put the jacket in the car on a hanger and draped a dupatta around my collared shirt. Now this to me is the worst form of encroachment on one’s personal space. But the average Pakistani doesn’t know about its existence.

“An electrician who came to the house a few times taught me another lesson. Seeing me alone in the house when he fixed a bulb or board, he actually had the audacity to suggest that some ‘madam’ whose house he worked in shared her problems with him. So he had become close to her, and I should feel free to do so, if I needed a friend.