A Woman Like Her

by Sanam Maher

  “Does that thing really deserve to come on mainstream media so bluntly?”

  “Cheapsters like Qandeel Baloch must be brought into the open and insulted and, yes, molested.”

  “Women like these should be hanged if this country was made and separated on the basis of Islam and the word Baloch should be removed from the name of this slut.”

  Many viewers are unhappy with Lucman: “You will be just a pimp at least from my point of view,” says one man. “Being such a respectable citizen of Pakistan, you should not invite such people and insult yourself and us Pakistanis,” one woman writes. “Sick cunts both of you,” says another.

  A film director turned investigative journalist, Lucman likes to boast that his programme is the most banned show in Pakistan, frequently sanctioned by the government’s media regulatory authority. In 2014 he was given a lifetime ban for remarks against the judiciary, but returned to television after apologizing in court. That same year he featured as a guest on his own show and threatened to quit television and leave Pakistan in protest over the government’s failing leadership. His enemies, he says, want to silence him, and his show is a mixed bag of leaked videos, exposés of alleged government corruption and the odd interview with the disgruntled former spouse of some politician or celebrity.

  Lucman opens his show that night with a few words about why Qandeel has been invited on to Khara Such. He says that he has overruled many members of his team who did not want to run this interview. They feel Qandeel should not be given the publicity that she seems to crave. But, “Social media is a reality that cannot be ignored,” he says. “We can object to it, we can criticize it, but we cannot deny it. Because even we—the anchors, the columnists—look at the trends to see what the hot story is and what people are discussing the most.”10 For him, the reason for having Qandeel on the show is simple: “When something is being discussed so much, and when people have taken reactive measures to something, we need to ask her what she planned. Did she want this? What was her purpose?” If there is anyone in Pakistan who has not heard of Qandeel yet, they will know her name after her debut on this show.

  On the show he asks her, “Qandeel, first of all, tell me how I should address you: as an actress, a singer, a model or a social media activist? What would you want?”

  “I’m a singer and actress,” she replies. She usually appears on these shows with a smile, often flirting with the host. But she is upset tonight. “People end up saying whatever they like, so…” she trails off.

  She is hurt that she has been labelled vulgar. She has gone against her family to do what she is doing. Her family is not, as some of the commenters have said, a dishonourable family.

  My family refuses to acknowledge me. It’s because of all these things that are going on. They say you are dead to us.

  Those who say she is dishonouring Pakistan are hypocrites, she says disgustedly. “When politicians go to mujras [dance parties] and watch girls dance for them, don’t they realise then that this is a Pakistani girl? Where does their honour go then?” Isn’t that more vulgar than anything she has done? “I am just very spoiled and stubborn,” she explains. She says she is inspired by Indian women like Poonam Pandey, Sunny Leone and Rakhi Sawant. If they can make videos and upload pictures of themselves, why can’t she?

  There are those who claim she is not a Baloch girl. After all, what Baloch girl would promise to dance naked for the whole world to see? But she does not want to argue with these people. If they have made up their minds about her, there is nothing she can do. She doesn’t care what they think about her. Everyone is just upset because Pakistan lost the match and she did not strip. They are furious about the trailer because it only gave them a peek of what they really wanted to see.

  But on this show and the ones that will follow, she knows what the hosts want to hear. She can vent her anger for only so long. She must be contrite, and she must ask for forgiveness.

  I only feel sad from the bottom of my heart that I put out a trailer for such a loser team. That’s all I feel sorry for.

  “I’m appealing to all of Pakistan,” she tells Lucman. “Please forgive me. I made a mistake.” She says it over and over again. She swears she will not put up any more videos.

  There is no vulgarity in that video. I think it’s hot. Watch it carefully.

  I’ll never accept that I was being vulgar. I think it’s hot and very sexy.

  When Lucman suggests that she stick to singing so she can become respectable, she says quietly, “I have no respect as it is. What respect will I get? You lose people’s respect once and never get it back. It’s gone.”

  On another show, a few days later, she is one of three guests alongside an actress and a religious scholar who is the head of a well-known madrassa in Karachi.11 The host asks the scholar if in his opinion it is permissible for Qandeel to push the limits of freedom of expression in the way that she does. Should she really be allowed to make the kinds of videos that she does? Should she have offered to strip for the Pakistani cricket team? “So many evils are being born on social media,” he replies. “She shouldn’t have done this. It’s obvious.”

  The actress chimes in saying that Qandeel is giving show business a bad name. It is because of people like her that girls from good homes think twice before wanting to become an actress or singer.

  “If they are from good homes, then they should sit at home,” Qandeel retorts. “Why do they want to come on TV?”

  “I believe these kind of people are just bubbles,” the actress continues. “When did they come? When did they burst and disappear? Nobody will know. They just vanish.”

  These female monkeys who curse me—do I go to their homes and force them to watch my videos? And then when their husbands complain and curse them, then they cry about “women empowerment.”

  Qandeel does not expect such women, these actresses, to stand by her. She learned this when she starred in a reality TV show the year before. She was sent to some village in Punjab with a crew of other aspiring actresses, models and singers to compete to be the ultimate “desi girl”—a modern city girl who can survive in a village and carry out tasks such as drawing water from a well or carrying bales of hay.

  Did the other contestants know when they saw Qandeel pick turnips in a field and crack a whip over a donkey that she had grown up in a village not very different from this one? That she was playing at being a girl from the big city, and not a girl who had to learn to live in a village? She played the part well. In the very first episode she turned up in the village in her skinny jeans and stiletto booties—she could never go to Shah Sadar Din dressed like that—and tripped and twisted her ankle in the mud of an unmade road. Whatever they knew, those women called her “proudy” and voted her out. They did not want her there, Qandeel knows, because they realised she could win. Women rarely stand by her.

  “A woman gives a man permission to misbehave with her,” the actress on the talk show tells Qandeel. “And you are one of those women who do, from what I have seen of you and heard of you and heard you say.” A woman like Qandeel can only be the bright light of some man’s night, not the pride and joy of a home, she says.

  Shut the fuck up.

  The religious scholar tells her she has gone against Islamic law, the law of the country and Pakistani culture and manners. People like her want to see Western culture in Pakistan. “Our young men and women are being destroyed,” he says. “We cannot allow it.”

  When the host asks the scholar if he would issue a fatwa against Qandeel’s behaviour, she interrupts, “It’s my conscience and I have to go to my grave and give Allah an answer for what I have done. So no one here can try to pass any fatwas on me. There’s no need for that.”

  “I’m very happy her Facebook page was removed,” the actress says at the end of the show. “In the future, if anyone tries to do something like that, they will think about the reaction first. The
public, the people, will not be silent. They will say what is right and what is wrong. I don’t think she should behave this way ever again. No one should follow her. People like her should just be made to disappear.”

  You’re going to miss me when I’m gone. Kitnay gunday hain aap log waisay [You’re so terrible], double standard log. You like to watch me, and then you like to say, “Why don’t you just die?”

  Will you be happy when I die?

  When I die, yahaan pe koi aur Qandeel Baloch nahin aani [There will never be another Qandeel Baloch].

  Aik sau saal tak Qandeel Baloch paida nahin honi [For a hundred years, another Qandeel Baloch will not be born]. You’re going to miss me.

  Qandeel wears a black tank top and a fitted black blazer on the show. When the programme airs, the channel has placed a blurred square where her cleavage would be had she been wearing something more revealing.

  * * *

  —

  Jalal, her former tae kwon do teacher, watches these interviews and thinks about how much she has changed since he first met her. She has become so confident. The shows’ anchors seem to be baffled by her. Sometimes he chuckles while watching her because she seems to be interrogating the interviewer, and not the other way around.

  You think I’ll go quiet if you close down my Facebook page?

  Having observed her in his classes in Islamabad, he knows that she is quick to fight, easy to upset and sometimes shy. But now she also seems glamorous and self-assured.

  They got my page banned. They are happy that I can’t be bad any more.

  During his classes she was happy while she was throwing punches, but would complain bitterly the minute she was hit. When he paired her up with a female student, she would argue. “I don’t want to fight girls,” she would say. “I want to fight the boys.” But if she ever lost a point in these bouts, she didn’t care whether her opponent was a boy or a girl—she would try to hurt them.

  But I’m not done being bad. I’m just starting.

  Jalal learned quickly that she was very sensitive. Sometimes she would break down and cry. She took defeat to heart.

  Wait and see what I do.

  But despite all that, Jalal admired her: she was a good fighter, and strongest when attacking her opponent. A blow might stun her, but she’d make sure the last punch was hers.

  Now it’s a fight between me and the public. Let’s see who wins. I don’t do these things happily. You could say that this is my revenge from this country.

  THE HELPLINE

  Nighat Dad is not an easy woman to find. The Digital Rights Foundation (DRF), an advocacy organization she founded in 2012, has just launched Pakistan’s first cyber harassment helpline, and I’m in Lahore to see how it works. But the DRF office is located in a residential area of the city, and I quickly get lost within its winding, narrow lanes. I try to find my way by using the map application on my phone. Nothing shows up.

  I think I have found the office at the end of a lane that curves away from a small patch of green where children in this neighbourhood come to play in the evenings. As I am about to ring the bell, a woman taking out the garbage opens the gate. I ask her if she works at the DRF office. She gives me a blank look and shakes her head. “There’s no office in this lane,” she says.

  The gate next door opens, and a guard steps out. The house looks like any other on the street until you notice the thicket of barbed wire along the top of its boundary walls. The guard won’t confirm or deny if this is the office for the Digital Rights Foundation or if Nighat is inside. He rests his hand on the gun holstered at his hip while I call her. She sends someone outside to fetch me.

  This is my first time meeting Nighat. She travels frequently and we have only ever been able to speak on Skype. The first thing I notice is her easy smile. Her mouth is painted a bright crimson, and metallic-red hair sweeps across her forehead. A few forest-green locks peek out from under the shawl she has wound around her neck. She apologizes for how difficult it is to find the office. It is not locatable with any map app, and the people at the office do not chat with the neighbours. There are people who do not like Nighat and the work she is doing, and she does not want to make it easy for them to find her.

  This morning Nighat is tired and only has a little time to spare before she has to leave for a presentation about the helpline at a local college. She thinks it’s for two or three dozen people, but then receives a call from the woman organizing the event: the college has received a flood of requests once word got out that Nighat would be there. There are now close to a hundred attendees.

  Since 2010 Nighat has been travelling across the country to conduct training sessions for Internet users—many of them women—who want to learn how to protect themselves and their identities online. At one such session one of the participants was a young girl from Swat, at the time under the control of the Taliban, who would go on to capture the world’s attention when her then-anonymous blogs and her call for education for girls earned her a bullet in the head: Malala Yousafzai.

  Nighat soon started to receive messages in her Facebook inbox from women who had attended her workshops. They were being harassed, blackmailed, or threatened online, and they were hesitant to approach a government agency, or their friends or family members for help. They were scared of being dismissed, judged or punished. In many cases they were unable to talk to a family member because they were forbidden to be on sites like Facebook in the first place. Many of those being blackmailed by current or former partners could not admit to their families that they were in a relationship—in one 2014 case a fourteen-year-old girl was blackmailed into repeated gang rapes when her boyfriend threatened to release a video he had secretly shot of them.1 Word of mouth was slowly spreading that Nighat was the woman to approach if you were having problems with your online presence, or if your email had been hacked or your online security breached.

  In 2015 Nighat was named one of Time magazine’s “next generation leaders” for her work. She was suddenly one of the best-known digital rights activists in the region. The attention was a blessing for DRF, but it soon took a toll on Nighat. Her inbox was flooded with pleas for help from women across the country, and she felt increasingly helpless and exhausted, terrified of missing even a single message from a distraught stranger. When she mentioned this to a friend, her friend had an idea: why not share the load? Why didn’t she start Pakistan’s first cyber-harassment helpline?

  By July 2016 Nighat had started to reach out to people who could help her set up the helpline and was mulling over how best to do it. Then news broke of Qandeel’s murder. On 15 July, the day before her body was discovered in her home in Multan, Qandeel had posted a message on her social media platforms: “I believe I am a modern day feminist…I am just a women with free thoughts, free mindset and I LOVE THE WAY I AM…” In the days after her murder many reports in the international media would echo this description of Qandeel, praising her as a feminist icon. She had become a role model, “a one-woman revolution against religiously and culturally justified misogyny” (Daily Beast). In the Pakistani media some obituaries followed the same vein. She was no longer ridiculed or criticized, but embraced by the very people who had once scorned or ignored her. “Qandeel Baloch is dead because we hate women who don’t conform,” explained the cultural editor of Pakistan’s leading English-language newspaper, Dawn. “Qandeel Baloch was an unapologetic rebel,” lamented another journalist. There were slideshows of her photographs and listicles of “10 powerful quotes by Qandeel Baloch.”

  However, the online conversation was very different. In the week that followed Qandeel’s murder, Nighat found herself targeted online for condemning the killing. Today she sits at her laptop, its cover scattered with stickers—Challenge Power!, Back Up Your Data!, and Queen in bright pink letters—and reads out some of the messages she received.

  “You seem to be following her pathetic footsteps.”


  “Show your boldness and put off your clothes as Qandeel used to do.”

  “Do you want to spread pornography in whole country?”

  “Kill yourself.”

  “After QB it will be ND.”

  These are some of the milder posts. Some of the activists Nighat knows were being trolled, receiving rape and death threats, and being slut-shamed online after they spoke out against Qandeel’s murder by her brother. Many of Nighat’s friends deactivated their social media accounts because they were intimidated by the messages they received after they expressed grief or anger over Qandeel’s killing or shared any news stories that were favourable towards her. Three days after the murder, a story on the BBC detailed the kinds of threats that some female journalists were facing when they spoke about Qandeel Baloch. “I’ve been recently trolled on Facebook for posting a status update on how we, as a society, failed Qandeel Baloch,” said Iram Abbasi, a reporter. “One user said I didn’t have a ‘good family background.’ Another asked how I could come from a reputable family if I wore sleeveless shirts. For the same reason, another user said I was wearing ‘dirty’ and ‘un-Islamic’ clothing.”2

  On Twitter and Facebook newsfeeds were flooded with messages from Pakistanis who believed the murder, an “honour killing,” had been just.

  “Finally #QandeelBaloch murdered,” tweeted one woman. “Someone had to do it. She was disgrace for the country…”

  “Good news,” wrote another. “She was just indecent and a dishonourable woman.”

  “She was going out of hand.”

  “She’s certainly gonna suffer in hell. Her brother did well.”

  “Where there is no honor in killing, there are hoes like #QandeelBaloch. Honor killing is a good thing sometimes.”

  “Finally a good news after long time :p.”