by Sanam Maher
I ask Fahim if he feels the novelty of the Chaiwala is wearing thin. After dozens of interviews and appearances on almost all the popular talk shows and morning shows in the country, Arshad’s rags-to-riches story has been told so many times over the last four months that it has lost one crucial element in a viral star’s ability to draw a crowd: it is no longer surprising or unique. If Arshad wishes to forge a career on the strength of one viral photograph—if he wants the modelling contracts, advertisement offers and invitations to appear on talk shows—he has to continue to give Pakistanis something they have never seen before.
The average Pakistani social media user may scroll past dozens of viral videos, memes and photographs a day. Viral stars like Qandeel knew how to make those viewers hit pause. Qandeel’s videos may have been scorned or dismissed as “attention-seeking,” but she knew how to create content that sparked conversation. “Qandeel Baloch gave the selfie generation a catchphrase when she uttered those three words,” declared an article naming the “How I’m looking?” video as one of the “10 notable quotes that defined Pakistan’s entertainment scene in 2015.” “The innocuous phrase was also quite revealing. [It] encapsulates our generation’s need for validation online.”12
Qandeel was aware that in order to sustain her audience’s interest, she had to continue to give it something worth watching—people could laugh at her, be shocked by her, send her hateful messages or make fun of her, but that meant they were paying attention to her. “For popularity, you have to show yourself, you have to take your clothes off, you have to do nude photo shoots,” she explained in an interview in 2014, well before “How I’m looking?” became her calling card. “To remain popular and ‘in,’ you have to upload strange photos of yourself on social media.”13
But Fahim insists that Arshad isn’t being talked about as much because he has become “exclusive.” “Actually, we have decreased his appearances ourselves,” he argues. He says that he has recently got enquiries about the Chaiwala from China, Malaysia, Greece and Dubai. “We want him to rest and relax. People think his fame has decreased, but we are making him exclusive. We don’t just give interviews to everyone any more.”
After the Muskan Jay video, Arshad’s team has become cautious about the offers that it accepts. There are no more music videos for now. Fahim refuses invitations for appearances at parties. “Girls, parties—we keep him away from all that,” he says. “I am scared that he’ll get ruined.” Arshad doesn’t have a Facebook account, and he is allowed to have a mobile phone but can only play games on it. He doesn’t take any pictures of himself or make videos or interact with fans on social media. His managers receive messages, calls and Facebook requests from women who want to propose to him or offer their daughters in marriage. Then there are the other, less tame requests and video messages. “I never show him those ones,” Fahim says. “I don’t want him to have those things on his mind. Whatever I think is good for a younger brother is what is good for Arshad.”
Arshad still doesn’t quite comprehend why his photograph went viral. How did one moment, one glance, change his life? “I still don’t understand what it is in that photo,” he admits. “People tell me that it’s my face. Others say I have good-coloured eyes. But this is my kismet from Allah. This is Allah’s doing.”
Some days he still cannot believe he is the Chaiwala. “Sometimes I think this is all a dream and it can go away any minute,” he says. “Just as Allah has ordained that the night takes away the day, He can take anything away from you in a minute. Things can come into your life suddenly, can also leave just as suddenly.” He says he cannot imagine going back to the life he used to have before he became the Chaiwala.
Fahim and Rizwan urge me to stay for dinner. They plan to have a big, traditional meal of grilled lamb. But it’s late and I refuse. As Arshad sees me out, he grins. “Forget this grilled stuff,” he says. “The next time you meet me, I’ll be a star. I’ll bring you a live lamb.”
Six months pass before Arshad is in the news once more. In July 2017 the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) states that Arshad and his family are from neighbouring Afghanistan and living in Pakistan illegally. A photograph has been shared on Arshad’s social media pages featuring the Chaiwala, his hair curling past his ears as it had outgrown the cut he was given by stylists in Karachi, receiving his brand new identity card as a Pakistani citizen. But NADRA officials claim Arshad obtained the card using forged documents. The media contact Arshad’s team for a comment. “Arshad Khan’s manager Malik Fahim…found the NADRA claim shocking,” an investigative story notes. “[Fahim] made it clear that he did not know Arshad prior to the Chaiwala becoming a celebrity.”14
The photograph of Arshad smiling with his identity card is deleted from his social media accounts. Nearly two years would pass before Arshad appeared on television once more. In April 2019, he is interviewed on a morning talk show and the hosts prompt him to make tea and ask him to say a few sentences in other languages he might speak. He confesses that he can speak Punjabi, but not very well. “Can you say, ‘This tea does not have enough sugar?’ ” the host asks him. Arshad repeats the sentence. The hosts are delighted. “This is the kind of stuff that will go viral!” they say. “No one has ever heard him speak Punjabi before.” The interview fails to generate any buzz.
“GUYS, WHO WANT TO WATCH MY NEXT NASTY CLIP?”
The video from Murree has been viewed thousands of times. By the end of the year, Qandeel would be called an “insta-celeb.” People are turning to Facebook and Twitter to find the “How I’m looking?” girl and they want more videos. They like to laugh at her.
Qandeel and Mec disagree over what she should do next. He takes her to every single event, books her for any show he can and introduces her to everyone they meet. Sometimes she complains that it is all a waste of time. People take photos with her at these events, but she isn’t getting paid for them. She doesn’t just want to make friends—she is looking for connections.
She stumbles across the Facebook profile of a man in Karachi, Mansoor, who was a model when she was just a girl in Shah Sadar Din. His Facebook feed is full of photographs taken at dinners and parties with girls Qandeel has seen on TV. She recognizes some of the names from his friends’ list. He seems to have the connections she needs. She sends him a friend request. He is used to these requests from strangers, usually women, who hope that he knows all the right people and will be able to help them break into the fashion industry. In fact, it happens so often that he now has a policy of asking any girl who sends him a friend request on Facebook for her phone number to confirm whether she is indeed an aspiring model or actress and not some man trying to fool him. The ones who willingly give their phone numbers are legitimate. Qandeel sends him her phone number.
“Hi must talk to you,” he texts Qandeel. “Call now.”
She is travelling and is unable to speak with him just then. “Let me come too then I talk.”
They continue to exchange messages and soon she is calling him “baby” and “jaan” (sweetie). When she tells him she is back in Karachi and feeling lonely, they meet for the first time and he takes her to a friend’s house for some company. She messages him on WhatsApp late at night and asks, “What are you doing?” He is usually fast asleep. She likes Dubsmash, an app that lets users lip-sync phrases or songs, and sees that the video from Murree has also become popular there. She sees actresses and singers mimic her words in videos that they post to their social media feeds.
She uses Dubsmash to make a few videos of herself singing songs she loves. Mansoor’s phone glows in the darkness of his room as she sends him each clip. “Put it on your Facebook timeline,” she encourages him. She makes kissing sounds and calls him “jaanu” and “my darling” in the clips and pouts, “I can’t sleep.”
These are not like the clips that she now puts up on her Facebook page.
Guys, who want to watch my next nasty clip?
There, she is often mute and plays a variety of roles: sexy girl lying on her stomach, grinding against her bed while her fingers clutch a red teddy bear; ordinary girl drying her wet hair after a shower, her lips painted a glossy baby pink; sad girl stroking her cheek against the soft head of a white teddy bear and holding it close as she sighs and looks beseechingly at the camera to let you know “I mishhhh you;” angry girl bowing her head, furrowing her brow and blinking rapidly as though feeling the hot tingle of tears because “I’m angry with someone.”
In other videos she coos, “Good morning,” rubs her eyes and yawns. She makes a video in which the lace curtains billow at the windows in her room as she lays her head on a white furry pillow and whispers, “This is how I like to sleep.” She likes to line her eyes with a thick stroke of kohl, winged at the corner like the tail of a tick mark. “Goodnight,” she whispers, looking into the camera on her phone, much of her face covered with the fall of her thick hair. “Sweet dream. Bye.” She puts up a video in which she nestles against the curve of a man’s body and hugs his arm between her breasts. She crops him out of the frame. “Did you guys know that today I don’t have a teddy bear?” she says with a grin. She kisses the man’s hand. “Instead of a teddy bear, there’s someone else here today. Today I’m so much happy. You know why? Should I tell you?”
The commenters don’t care.
“She was rejected in Pakistan Idol since than loose [sic] her mind.”
“This guy is your pimp.”
“You’re a slut and I know it.”
If people say something bad about you, judge you as if they know you, don’t feel bad, just remember, “Dogs bark if they don’t know the person.”
“Horny bitch.”
“You’re happy he’s fucked you without a condom.”
“I love you.”
“After fucking all girls feel v v v much happy.”
“Finding a gun send me her address LOL.”
I used to make funny videos just to make people laugh. People would abuse me so much I would wonder, What have I even done? When they say you are so bad, then you might as well become bad.
She is being noticed. Now, when she is invited on to the morning shows, she is singing less and talking more about the videos she puts up. “I saw your videos because one of my dear friends is a very big fan of yours,” explains a host on one show.1 “She used to post so many of your videos [on Facebook], so I thought I really needed to check out what was going on.” She asks Qandeel about a video that has been shared more than 500 times on Facebook alone. In it Qandeel lies back on her bed, hot with a fever. “My head hurts.” She sniffs. “My eyes are smarting.”
“Perhaps it’s because you were wearing so much eyeliner?” the host suggests.
“I love lining my eyes,” Qandeel explains, “and I only use imported things. That was a Chanel eyeliner. Not local.”
The woman hoots with laughter and begs her to show the audience how she complained.
“But my head really was hurting in that video,” Qandeel insists. They don’t care. She droops her head in her hands and sighs. “Ufffff, I’m running such a high fever. My eyes are burning.”
“Marvellous!” the host cries. “Marvellous!”
The host shares a clip of Qandeel playing with a goat she has supposedly adopted as a pet. A little boy scampers past in the video.
“Who is that boy?” the host demands. Qandeel explains that he is her nephew.
The host laughs and says, “Oh, I was wondering if this would be something exclusive we could reveal—that you have a son.”
Qandeel giggles.
It isn’t just the morning-show hosts—the English-language newspapers have also taken note. “Who is Qandeel Baloch and what is she doing on my timeline?” asks an article published online by Dawn. “Facebook has a new bug and its name is Qandeel Baloch.” There is curiosity. Who is this girl? Is she really this cartoonish in real life?
People think that I have become famous overnight. That I have won the lottery overnight. What I did on social media just clicked. They think I didn’t have to work for this. I didn’t have to struggle.
“I am the daughter of a huge landlord,” she says in interviews. “I have property worth millions. I’m not desperate for money.”
She makes the videos late at night, when she is sure that her whole family is fast asleep. They are just for fun. “I like to bother people, to point out things to them. I like to comment on some people or to give reviews on things. I do it from the heart. Not to be famous.” Some people believe her. “This is exactly what happens when you’re the brat of some rich man,” one of the comments on her videos read. “These rich brats do stuff like this and bring shame to their parents and their country. She’s just another spoiled rich girl.”
Sometimes she calls Mansoor and whines, “I’m hungry.” When he is free, he picks her up and takes her out for a burger or chips or chai, and they eat sitting in his car so that people do not bother her for selfies while she is eating. One time he is on his way to a dinner when she calls and says she is hungry, and he stops at a fast-food joint, buys her a pizza and pays to have it delivered to her apartment.
Mansoor knows that men are harassing her and want to sleep with her. She doesn’t tell him about the kinds of messages they send her on Facebook, but remarks, “Every horny guy out there has some line for me. And none of them are worthy of me. They’re all liars.” Some of them start by complimenting her and telling her they are her biggest fans. Then they ask, “How much for a night?” She wants someone who will help her, who will take her out when she feels alone. Mansoor has grown to like her. He calls her “selfie queen.” Qandeel isn’t like the other models Mansoor knows. They are all sluts. She is not a slut, he says. She just wants to be in the limelight.
She is struggling to find work despite Mansoor’s connections, and there aren’t many offers for the notorious selfie queen to be the face of a brand or the star of a television show. Some people promise work in exchange for what Mansoor calls the “cast couch.” But that is a trick; there is never any work. Mansoor feels Qandeel is fighting to survive. She is making some money from morning-show appearances, and for a few days she visits Dubai to do a photo shoot, but it isn’t enough. She calls Mansoor one day and says that her brother is visiting and she needs some money. Can she borrow some from him? While he is trying to arrange that, he receives a message from her. Don’t worry, she says. I’ve got it from someone else.
He knows money changes hands easily among the people he parties with. If Qandeel needs money, it isn’t hard to get. Just the other night some girls came over to Mansoor’s friend’s house with a boy who “looked like a fag” and they danced for everyone and then people gave them a hundred dollars each. He likes that Qandeel never begs. When he eventually learned of her impoverished background, he would marvel. You really had to give her credit, he would say. Look where she came from and where she ended up.
* * *
—
Ahmed meets Qandeel on 14 August 2015, Independence Day, at a park in Islamabad. He is a reporter and is there to file a story on the day’s celebrations for the TV channel he works for. There is going to be a musical performance in the park and Qandeel is one of the singers. Ahmed’s cameraman points to her and suggests they interview her. Qandeel is tall in her shiny black heels, and wears a pair of tight moss-green jeans and a fitted white shirt. She has had her hair and make-up done specially that morning and looks beautiful in the colours of the Pakistani flag. Ahmed figures that a short clip of her performing is exactly the kind of colourful footage his producers want for an otherwise standard Independence Day package.
When the event ends, Ahmed is getting ready to leave when he sees that her manager’s car has broken down. He offers to give her a ride back to the guesthouse she is staying at, and when they reach the guesthouse, she tells him that she is m
odelling in a show the next day. Does he want to come? And perhaps cover the show for the television channel he works at?
The following evening he goes to the show and stays until the end so he can drop Qandeel home once more. They are the same age—twenty-five—and they enjoy talking to each other and agree to stay in touch.
They have been chatting almost every day for more than a month or two when Ahmed calls Qandeel one evening and tells her he has just arrived in Karachi for work. She is at an event but gives him directions to meet her. For the next four or five days they meet frequently. Sometimes Ahmed comes to her apartment for a cup of tea. One day they meet after she gets her passport back, freshly stamped with a visa for Dubai. She is happy she will be travelling there again and shows him the visa. He spots the name on it and sees that it is not Qandeel. She tells him her real name. That name has shown up in her tweets (“Fouzia Azeem invites you to join their network!” “Fouzia Azeem would like to share a post with you.”) but no one has asked who Fouzia is and she doesn’t think she needs to remove the tweets. Ahmed doesn’t give it much thought. After all, don’t most women in show business change their names?
She mentions a brother who is in the army and stationed in Karachi, her sisters and their children, whom she adores, and her parents, who live in Multan. She meets them every Eid and takes gifts for the whole family. She lives near the seaside in Karachi, and she and Ahmed go for walks along the promenade and talk or ride the dune buggies that are rented out by the hour. One evening, as they walk back to her apartment from the beach, she suggests they check out a new shisha café that has opened up near her apartment building. Inside, a man spots her and says in surprise, “Are you Qandeel?” She seems nervous. She does not answer and instead shuffles behind Ahmed so the man cannot see her. Ahmed does not ask her why.
A month ago she was invited as a celebrity guest to judge a talent show at a university in Islamabad. “Cover yourself up properly,” Mec instructed. “There will be boys there. You need to be careful.” She stayed on the phone with him, and as the car got close to the university, she was excited to see a crowd of male students waiting. She turned her phone camera on and showed Mec. Some of the students took pictures of her. Others cupped their hands around their eyes and pressed up against the car windows. “Look at how they are welcoming me,” she said with delight to Mec. He felt a jolt of fear. The boys had crowded so tightly around the car it could not move. “You fool, don’t get out,” he snapped. “Someone might hurt you.” Some of the boys turned their backs to her and took selfies while she stayed inside the car with the doors locked. They refused to move. The university management told her she couldn’t get out of the car and begged her to leave.