A Woman Like Her

by Sanam Maher

  Wow, Mufti sahib knows how to romance, she thinks.

  Qandeel puts the videos and photographs on her social media pages. The videos are played over and over on the news. The photographs go viral. The story about the sexy young model meeting the Muslim cleric is a hit. “Qandeel Baloch claims Mufti Qavi hopelessly in love with her!” declares the headline in one newspaper. “When Qandeel Baloch met Mufti Qavi: a guideline on how NOT to learn Islam,” says another.

  A very public row takes place between Qandeel and Mufti Qavi. Who is telling the truth about the meeting? Mufti Qavi tells everyone that Qandeel called him first—she insisted on meeting and coming to his hotel room. She wanted to be alone with him, he said.

  She says he is lying. “I thought there would be some betterment in [meeting him] for me,” she tells reporters. “I party a lot, I thought it would be beneficial to me if I spent some time around someone who is religious. He called me.” A few weeks later, she remarks to an interviewer off the record that Mufti Qavi was actually interested in setting her up with a friend of his.

  Amber’s BBC editors in London sit up and take note. They want to run Qandeel’s BBC Urdu interview again, close to a month after it first aired, but this time the editors do not need to be convinced that she is worth the airtime. The interview is given a spot on the network’s main platform, accessible to millions around the world, not just on the BBC’s Urdu site. The editors go back and forth once more—not to discuss whether the story deserves to be told, but to ask themselves if it is still safe to air the interview because Qandeel is now pleading with the government to provide her with protection against the threats she is receiving from Mufti Qavi’s supporters.

  Later, Qandeel’s parents will tell the media about the day their daughter called them and said she had been terrified alone in that hotel room with Mufti Qavi. She told them she had slapped him and tried to get away. And then when he looked at her, his eyes turned dark with rage. He looked like a ghoul and she was scared he would grab her. She couldn’t even imagine what he wanted from her. What he wanted to do to her.

  THE MUFTI

  “I know it’s not right to have your palm read…” Hina says. But there is something about her brother that’s important to know in order to understand him—in order to understand all that had happened between her brother and Qandeel Baloch—better. When he was younger, Hina’s elder brother Abdul Qavi was taken to a skin doctor for some ailment. The doctor also dabbled in palmistry and liked to look at his patients’ hands and tell them whatever he could see. He uncurled Abdul’s fist and ran his fingers over the faint spidery lines on the boy’s palm. He is unusual, the doctor told Abdul’s parents. He might have even said extraordinary. Abdul is intelligent. But there will be many who are jealous of this. There will be many who are against him, who will not like how intelligent and extraordinary he is. Just as the sun rises to its peak, so too will Abdul. And just as the sun reaches in its flaming ascent the point known as zawal—a time when some Muslims believe it is forbidden to pray and others say it is the moment when the everlasting fire in hell is kindled afresh—so too will Abdul’s life have a moment of zawal. A time of misfortune.

  Abdul’s sisters saw that he was careless with his tongue, that he was too trusting, too naive. “My father would tell us, ‘Explain this to your brother. He says things in jest and he does not realise that every person is not his friend,’ ” Hina says. She teaches women how to read and understand the Quran, and in Multan she is known as Apa (elder sister) among those who flock to her classes. “This is one of the first things the Quran teaches us: how to hold your tongue. But my brother lacks this ability. When people know that about you, they will try to exploit this weakness. Even now, even after everything that has happened, he will not change. Whatever happened to him was a trial from Allah.”

  But Allah looks out for His beloved ones, she says. “It is Allah’s grace that has saved my brother.” After all, it is at times such as a trial, when your heart is hurting and you feel forsaken, that you are drawn closer to Allah. That is what happened to her brother after he decided to meet Qandeel, Hina believes. That woman was a test of Abdul’s faith. She ushered in a time of great uncertainty and bad luck for Abdul—the zawal the doctor had foreseen all those years ago.

  * * *

  —

  Abdul Qavi and his three sisters were born and raised in Multan, as was his father and his father before him, and so on for decades. His family can trace its lineage in the city back 300 years, he says. The fifty-nine-year-old cleric still lives there with his wife, his three daughters and their children, in a small house located at the back of the Darul Uloom Ubaidia, the madrassa that he runs in Multan’s Qadirabad neighbourhood. “Look for the street that is crowded with the halva and milk sellers,” he said when giving me directions to his home. “You’ll know you’re near me when you smell sweet wafts of halva. Let that be your guide.” And if you get lost, he instructed, just ask any man on the street where you can find Mufti Abdul Qavi. Everyone here knows him.

  I do get lost. I cannot find the halva sellers. And no one—not shopkeepers, guards, traffic policemen, rickshaw drivers, men idling on the side of the road, men squatting on donkey carts—knows Mufti Abdul Qavi’s name or where his madrassa is. When I finally find it, the place smells of nothing. The madrassa is located in a lane off a small square. A man leans against a cart laden with fish. They have been gutted and laid open to the sun as the blood congeals on their gleaming scales. A milk seller places a plastic dummy milk bottle as tall as a man outside his shop and paints its creamy white surface with a menu—cardamom milk, milk with crushed almonds, cold milk soda. A billboard for “Gorgeous Beauty Saloon & Institute,” sun-bleached black and white with tinges of green, has been fixed above the milk shop.

  The swinging glass doors to a shop selling “Multan’s famous sohan halva here since 1970” are closed. There is no one inside and a barber has set up shop on the kerb. An old man sits on a high chair before a table with a mirror propped against an electricity pole. He stares at his reflection as the barber tilts his head, clutches his tufts of greying hair to hold him steady and strokes a razor down the side of his jaw.

  The madrassa, flanked by a shop where a boy is slapping pats of dough inside a hot tandoor, has a faded date painted at the entrance: 1862. Inside, visitors are welcomed with a sign that reads, “This is a school for those who seek knowledge; the streams of knowledge that flow from here shall never run dry.”

  “All of this,” Mufti Qavi says, drawing an arc with his arm from the milk seller to the boy with the naan to the madrassa established 155 years ago and the two mosques—one set up by his uncle—further down the lane, “this whole street is ours.” When Qandeel was murdered, there was talk about Mufti Qavi’s connections with the village where her family still lives. There was speculation that his photographs with Qandeel had tarnished his reputation in Shah Sadar Din and that he was furious about that. But Mufti Qavi rubbishes these claims. “I have nothing to do with that place,” he wants people to know. “But my great-grandfather was married to a girl whose family was from there.” The girl’s father had been the prayer leader at the village mosque. That connection meant that people from the village had gone to Mufti Qavi’s ancestors to study the Quran and receive religious guidance. “Everyone who is running a madrassa or mosque there, or anyone who prays there, has likely been taught to do so by my family,” he says. He only returns to the village now on “happy or sad occasions.”

  Mufti Qavi spends his days in the offices abutting the madrassa. The two-storey building is centred around a courtyard used as a parking space. The first floor has rooms to accommodate any guests of the madrassa. Mufti Qavi’s office itself is small and carpeted, with a few dark green shelves stacked with books. The walls have been painted a sickly pale green with a glittery sheen as if glass has been crushed into the paint. The colour is streaked in some places and chipped in others, revealin
g slate-grey concrete beneath. The room doesn’t get any sun, and the bright white phosphorescent lights stay on until Mufti Qavi leaves for the day. There is no privacy. The windows do not have curtains, and the door stays open all day. He points out that there is no guard at the gate or the entrance to the office. Mufti Qavi wants his visitors to know that he has nothing to hide. Anyone can look into his office. Anyone can walk in to give Mufti Qavi a box of mithai as thanks for solving a particular issue or to fold a wad of notes—rent for the properties he owns in Multan, he explains—into his hand, and he will pause briefly in the middle of whatever he is doing to say “salaam” before continuing a conversation or helping someone who has come to him for advice.

  When he speaks, his visitors know not to interrupt. He sways gently back and forth and projects his voice as though addressing a gathering or standing at a lectern rather than sitting in a room that can accommodate six or seven people at best. When he becomes impassioned, his voice rises like he is trying to drown out someone else’s words. If his phone rings while he is speaking, he will answer the call but keep the caller on hold until his sentence is complete. Only then will he turn his attention to the call. Once he has had his say, he will hang up with a quick “Peace be with you.” Callers rarely get to question or argue with anything he has said.

  Most of the space in the office is taken up by a low, hefty slab of wood topped with a sheet of glass. Mufti Qavi sits at this “desk” cross-legged on a small raised wooden platform with a bolster at his back. When meeting journalists, attending an event or taking part in a television show, Mufti Qavi likes to wear a waistcoat and his karakul cap. Today he wears a grey waistcoat and a cap threaded with embroidery. His beard is clipped to a precise point under his chin, and when he smiles his cheeks lift in two cheery, plump points, and his small eyes, often difficult to see behind the light that glints off the glasses he always wears, narrow into slits. His hair and his beard are an even black. There is no grey, no salt and pepper. His nails are neatly trimmed and his hands smooth and pale. There are no creases in his cream-coloured shalwar kameez. But when he sits at his desk on that wooden platform you see his feet. The soles are ash-grey, the skin is calloused around the toes and his nails broken and jagged.

  He is particular about the placement of books, stationery and papers on the desk, sliding them across the glass until the corners of all the books are aligned with the edge of the table and the papers lined up next to the books before he speaks or acknowledges visitors. And they in turn must be seated in a particular way in this room. Visitors accompanying someone, or those who want to sit in on a particular meeting to glean some religious knowledge, must sit on the floor directly opposite Mufti Qavi. Men who come to Mufti Qavi for guidance or religious instruction must sit to his left, while women go to the right.

  “Come closer.” He beckons to me, pointing to the carpeted floor on his right side.

  He clicks his tongue. “Closer.”

  He pats a spot that is within arm’s reach of him. “Come on,” he cajoles. “More closer.”

  There’s a reason for this seating arrangement, he explains, and the story tumbles out. Akbar, the Mughal king who was married four times, had yet to have a son. Two of Akbar’s wives were Hindu and two were Muslim. Now, to cut a long story short, one of the Hindu wives gave birth to a son. Of course, many Muslim clerics today—not Mufti Qavi but many others—say that Hindus and Muslims cannot get married, and so you can just imagine what they would call a baby born from a union between a Muslim and a Hindu, a word that Mufti Qavi would not like to say in front of me, a woman whom he has just met but whom he looks upon as his daughter, but of course we all know what that word is, but anyway back to the story. Whenever Akbar’s Hindu or Muslim subjects came to visit him, Akbar would have the Hindus sit to his left, and the Muslims to the right. When one Hindu objected that the king was treating the two groups differently, a wise vizier helped Akbar out of a potentially sticky argument by explaining, “The king has seated his Hindu subjects to his left, so that his heart faces you.”

  Mufti Qavi loves this story. When women visit him with their fathers, brothers or husbands and appeal to him for help with domestic issues—and he is often on their side, you see, and scolds the husband who beats his wife or the father who wishes to forcibly marry off his daughter the moment she hits puberty—no one can claim that Mufti Qavi is biased towards them. For his heart, he says, quoting the vizier, looks upon the men.

  “Now, come closer,” he says. “You see, I don’t like to speak loudly. Everyone in my home knows this—from the children to the wife. If I must call someone, I just—” he claps his hands together like a magician “—do this. I don’t like loud voices at all. Now, say in the name of Allah, and…” He folds his hands and rests them on his stomach. He bows his head and closes his eyes. It’s hard to tell if he is praying or if he would like you to know that you have his utmost attention. “Ask me anything,” he encourages, his eyes shut.

  Mufti Qavi is clearly used to having an audience. His appearance on Raja Matloob’s show with Qandeel was not his first or last on national television. In January 2011 he had been on TV with Pakistani actress Veena Malik, who had been voted off the Indian reality TV show Bigg Boss.

  Malik had spent eighty-four days in the Bigg Boss house before she was evicted. As an article in the English daily the News noted, “When the show started off, hardly anybody in India knew of [Veena Malik]. But by the end of the first week, she had the audience agog.”1 Malik struck up a friendship with an actor named Ashmit Patel, and was not afraid to be seen “openly fondling him on screen and sitting in secluded corners…having long, intimate discussions,” the article stated. They kissed and hugged often and there were rumours that they had had sex while in the house together. Malik dressed in skirts, shorts and high heels on the show, and in one episode wore a bathing suit as she joined the other residents of the house in the pool. This did not go do down well with the audience in Pakistan.

  In January 2011, fresh from her sojourn in India, Malik was invited on to a talk show on Express News to defend her actions in the Bigg Boss house to Pakistani viewers. “There is an allegation against you, made by a segment of Pakistani society, that you brought dishonour upon Pakistani culture in India,” the host Kamran Shahid said to Malik. “Your dresses and your actions, as well as your interactions with people there, did not represent the ideological foundations of Pakistan, its culture or its people. As a cultural ambassador of Pakistan, do you regret your actions—if these allegations are true—or do you think the allegations are baseless?”

  Malik said she did not set out to represent Pakistan, nor could she have acted as a cultural ambassador on the show. “I was there to represent the Veena Malik of Pakistan’s entertainment industry,” she argued.

  “So what you’re saying is that the entertainment industry is vulgar and encourages nudity?” Shahid countered.

  Before Malik could explain herself further, Shahid cut to the night’s second guest, Mufti Qavi. “Mufti sahib, I’m going to stay neutral,” Shahid said, “but you on the other hand have an opinion about all this.” Mufti Qavi told Malik that her actions had saddened his heart and the hearts of millions in the country who liked and respected her. Allah had blessed her with beauty and grace, he said, and showing off that beauty and grace was permissible, but within certain parameters. “After all, Allah loves beautiful things,” he lectured. “But if [Veena Malik’s] conscience is alive, she needs to look at her pictures and ask herself if what she has done is right or wrong.” He would give remarkably similar advice to Qandeel five years later during their interview on Ajeeb Sa.

  Malik said her conscience told her she had done nothing wrong. The argument swiftly escalated. Mufti Qavi told Malik he was hurt by what she had just said. “No Pakistani can sit with his daughter and look at those images of you,” he said, his voice rising. The host tried to get Mufti Qavi to be quiet, so that Malik could respo
nd, but the cleric shouted over him, “Whenever she has a son, he will not be able to look at these images of her. Her father and her brother could never look at them.”

  “If you want to come and talk to me about Islam, then you should know that you are not permitted to even look at me right now,” Malik responded. She ran her fingers through her wavy chestnut-brown hair. She was wearing a low-cut sleeveless black top and she leaned forward as she addressed Mufti Qavi. She wanted to know how he could praise her beauty and grace when, according to Islam, he could not gaze at a woman who was not related to him. “You should be punished for that,” she said. Instead of lecturing her on Islam, Mufti Qavi should turn his attention to other problems in the country, she suggested. “Go and look at what the politicians are doing. What about bribes and robbery? What about murders in the name of Islam? Why are you picking on Veena Malik? Because I’m a woman? Why me? Because I’m a soft target.”

  Mufti Qavi tried to reply, but Malik would not let him. She told him to “focus on the clerics who rape the children who come to study in their madrassas.” Mufti Qavi asked her to refrain from attacking him, but Malik would not be stopped. “If you follow the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), then you would know that he was a man who stood up in respect for women,” she scolded him. “He would not call them dishonourable…Just because you’re a mufti, you think that you can accuse a woman of anything and pass a fatwa on her whenever you feel like it?”

  Shahid did not intervene as his guests continued to shout at each other for nearly twenty minutes.

  “I speak on behalf of all those who say that your behaviour was so horrifying that to call you a Pakistani or to call you a Muslim would be an insult to Pakistan and an insult to Islam,” Qavi told Malik. However, a few minutes later, when she asked him which actions in particular had angered him, Qavi admitted that he had never watched Bigg Boss. “I did not watch your programme, but millions of Pakistanis who did say that your behaviour was an insult to Pakistan and Islam,” he hastily added.