‘Welcome to hell,’ one woman hissed at me.
Another jumped in front of me on all fours like a baboon. She giggled, but it was an unnerving sound. One young woman even had a little child with her. The mother didn’t look much older than me. There were two bunk beds woven with plastic cord – our charpais at home were woven with hemp rope – and thin cane mats piled up against one wall. One of the bunk beds had three layers.
I was hungry but no one gave me food. It was afternoon by then and I’d missed both breakfast and lunch. A bucket of water and a container to drink with stood in a corner near the door but I didn’t want to annoy the women, who were probably all Muslim. I must have been staring at the bucket, for the girl with the child brought me a tin mug of water. I thanked her and she sat cross-legged in front of me with the toddler.
‘Isn’t that a school uniform?’
The little girl crawled across her mother’s legs to sit in my lap. If she had always lived in this cell, she probably thought she had five mothers. What was one more?
I tipped my head at the young mother, aware of the women nearby, listening.
‘What’s your name? Mine’s Kamilah Muhammad.’
‘My name is Jani,’ the child said. She was very solemn but she dragged my plait to the front of her and inspected the ribbon at the end of it. ‘Neela, blue,’ she said.
Her mother was staring at me, chewing something in her mouth. It looked like a piece of gum. Where would she get that in here?
I was wary. If I gave my full name, they’d all know my religion. And what if they thought the same as the mob outside the school? Some of the women shuffled closer, sitting in a semicircle behind Kamilah.
‘Aster,’ I said quickly.
‘That’s a different name,’ Kamilah said. ‘What are you doing here if you’re a schoolgirl? You must be the youngest prisoner in the prison.’
I shifted under her direct gaze, smarting from the label ‘prisoner’. Surely I’d be let out as soon as they discovered this was a mistake?
Jani was undoing the ribbon. In normal circumstances I’d give it to her; I had plenty more at home. But I might need it here. She murmured my name over and over – Aster, Aster, Aster until it became Asti. She smiled at me but I couldn’t return it. The nickname made me think of my little cousins.
An older woman with a voice like stones rolling together called out. ‘Answer the question! Why are you here? Zina, adultery?’
I shook my head in horror. It must have showed, for Kamilah’s face changed; her eyes narrowed. ‘It’s too easy to get accused of zina.’
A woman with an acid scar on her cheek spoke, ‘Kamilah was accused of zina but she was forced, of course. When the baby began to show she was reported to the police.’
‘Guess who reported her?’ said the woman with the voice of stones.
I shook my head. How could I know?
‘Her own father.’
I stared at Kamilah in shock and she looked appeased.
‘Ji, this is the life we have. Do you think I could find four male witnesses to testify I was forced?’
I could never imagine my father doing that to me.
‘The last woman who birthed a baby in here had a boy – the family took him away.’ The older woman spat on the floor. ‘The honour of the family! But what use is honour when innocent girls go to jail?’
She pointed to the woman who crouched on all fours. ‘Narjis was married to a cruel warlord to pay off a debt and she ran away.’
She swept her arm in a circle to encompass the cell. ‘All of us here are innocent.’
‘Except me, Gazaalah.’ The young woman with the scar stared the older woman down.
‘Ji, except you, Durrah,’ Gazaalah mumbled.
The older woman was nothing like a gazelle, no deer-like qualities in her voice or form at all. People’s names could be surprising.
‘And I’d do it again.’ Durrah’s stare was piercing. ‘The way he used me, and his mother was no better – they were going to kill me, but no one believed me.’ Her voice ended in a shout and I moved further against the wall, my arms around the child, Jani, who wasn’t perturbed at all.
‘So what do they think you did?’ Kamilah persisted with me.
They were all watching me, even Narjis. ‘I made a mistake in an exam.’ I would not say that word, ‘blasphemy’. The woman with the scar would beat me for sure.
Kamilah frowned. ‘That’s no reason to go to jail.’
‘That’s what I did.’
Durrah shouted at me. ‘What did you do? Tell the truth!’
I stared at her, wondering how to say it. Truth? In our country if you tell the truth, you die.
Just then the genie slowed as she passed the cell. She said two words, ‘Masihi blasphemer.’
She sounded as smug as if she’d found me out herself. I held my breath. Would the women turn into monsters like the mob of men outside?
Gazaalah shifted closer, frowning at me.
‘What subject was it?’ She was getting closer to the truth of it. ‘Tell us.’
‘Islamiyat.’
‘Ahh,’ she said as if I had explained everything, ‘and you insulted the Prophet.’
Instantly all the women stilled, and I felt as if I had to save myself. ‘The teacher says I did, but I must have spelt a word wrong.’
The silence continued and a few women glanced at a woman who hung her head in the cell next to ours.
‘Too bad. Hafsah there,’ Gazaalah pointed to the woman, ‘she’s in prison for blasphemy too.’
I felt a lurch in my stomach. Maybe I wouldn’t be the only Christian. I turned towards Hafsah and said quietly, ‘Are you Masihi?’
But all the women heard me.
‘Of course she’s not!’ Gazaalah said. ‘Do you think people have to be Hindu, Masihi or Ahmadi to get accused of blasphemy? There are more Muslims accused than anyone else.’
I stared at her, astounded.
‘Hafsah is Muslim.’ She shouted at the woman called Hafsah. ‘Tell her, tell this Masihi Aster how you got accused.’ Hafsah was young, maybe only twenty. But she seemed tired. She spoke, but I imagined it was only the force of Gazaalah’s personality that made her open her mouth.
‘I was bringing in quilts after airing,’ she said, as if she’d related this a hundred times. ‘I had to lift them higher to not knock glasses from a table. But the top one caught the Holy Qur’an on its high shelf. It fell and landed so close to the fire that a corner was burned.’
‘But that’s just an accident! How—’
Hafsah didn’t answer. Just then the food came on a tray. The genie shoved it into the cell, and the women quickly crowded around it. There were seven chapattis and a bowl of curry in the middle to share. I was shoved backwards. I wasn’t sure if it was on purpose or accidental so I gingerly edged closer. One woman who hadn’t spoken yet saw me and threw down her chapatti.
‘I’ll not eat out of the same dish as a kafir. She’ll defile it and how can we wash ourselves properly in here?’
‘Chup, Muneerah!’ Gazaalah said. ‘Keep eating, she can have hers last.’
I sighed. Would they leave me any? I felt my eyes prickling. If only my parents knew, but what could they do?
When Muneerah finished she walked over and slapped me on the side of my face. The force of it threw me backwards and my head hit the bars behind me; my glasses landed on the floor.
‘I don’t care what the others say about sisterhood and innocence, I don’t want a blasphemer here.’
Surprisingly I found the courage to answer, ‘I’m not one.’
‘Tell me you believe Muhammad, Peace be Upon Him, is the last Prophet.’
I kept my mouth shut. Whatever I said, she would take it the wrong way. How could a non-Muslim answer that question without offense?
‘See?’ She turned to the others. ‘They all say they’re innocent but where there’s mud there’s been rain.’
She turned back to me. ‘A teacher
wouldn’t accuse you unless you were guilty.’
She gave me another slap, as hard as the genie’s. The pain seared through my head and I cowered, tensed for the next one.
‘Muneerah, leave her alone!’
Muneerah faced Gazaalah. ‘Who’s going to tell?’ She looked around the cell. ‘She deserves to die. That’s the law. I’d be rewarded, maybe I’ll be freed. I could even earn a place in heaven. There’ll be a price on her head soon by some mullah, if there isn’t already. Imagine what the Taliban would do to her – stone her, probably.’
At that Gazaalah reached up and pulled me away from Muneerah. She lifted her chin at the tray. ‘Eat what’s left.’
The other women watched me. There was one chapatti and about two mouthfuls of vegetable curry. Did they forget to leave me enough or, like Muneerah, did they think I didn’t deserve it?
It was difficult eating under their watchful gaze, wondering if someone else would hit me. I scooped up the curry in pieces of chapatti but it stuck in my throat. I felt it would surge up and I’d vomit. I tried calming myself, thinking of the village, the platefuls of sweet rice we had at Hadassah’s wedding, and crawled to find a space as far away from Muneerah as I could to finish the rest of the chapatti in peace.
I found myself close to Kamilah, who handed me my glasses but didn’t speak to me. Maybe if Muneerah heard her, she’d beat her too. She sang in a low voice to Jani and cuddled her. It suddenly struck me: she could have been Hadassah. If anyone in town had known Hadassah’s secret and told the police, she would have been arrested and sent to jail too. We had no male witness, let alone four. Only I saw what happened and considering I was a girl and too naïve at the time to understand, my testimony was worth nothing.
It was hot in the cell with no fan. There was also no toilet, just a hole in the cement floor. Our village courtyard was like this but I expected more from an institution like a jail. Again I wished I had a shawl, not only to keep myself warm when the nights would get cooler but to shield myself when using the hole, but it had to be done.
No one remarked, though I caught Durrah and Muneerah watching me. Were they checking I cleaned myself properly?
At least there was a cane mat for me, but hardly any floor space to put it, and no spare blanket.
The corridor fell quiet as the evening wore on, and I lay on the mat, as close as possible to Kamilah’s bunk bed, my glasses by me on the floor. What if it got cooler in the early morning? I could imagine the slap the genie would give me if I asked for a blanket. I tried to keep my weeping quiet.
This was a nightmare. The mobs of men, the riot police. Would it have been on the news? What must Ammi and Abba be thinking? Were they safe? The whole village would weep and pray, but were my parents still in the village or had they fled? I tried to pray, but my mind kept jumping like young goats. How annoying I had thought them when I had to round them up for the night. My heart beat too loudly when I lay on my left side so I rolled to the other.
Then I remembered the story of Yusef and his multicoloured coat. He was betrayed by his brothers, just as Kamilah was by her family. And me: it was Mrs Abdul who put me here. I didn’t want to think about her – those thoughts would turn into demons and gnaw at me from the inside.
Yusef, think about Yusef instead – he ended up in jail. He did his best to honour Khuda even under the threat of death and became respected by the prison guards. For years he waited for someone to remember he was imprisoned.
How long will I be here? Yusef had a special talent for interpreting dreams. That was how he was released and became Governor of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. But I had no special talent, nothing with which to save myself.
MESSAGES
Sammy Ibrahim, + 3 Salaam, cousins. Perhaps you know already our tragic news. Aster has been accused of blasphemy. Something to do with her exams. There was a riot outside the Government Girls High School yesterday. The army had to disperse the crowd. Her parents, Uncle Suleiman and Aunty Marya, are so shocked but they can’t do anything to help. Even Colonel Rafique couldn’t get bail for her. Please pray for us.
Hadassah Bashir I am so sorry for this. Please tell Aunty and Uncle we are thinking of them.
Sammy Ibrahim It gets worse. There have been death threats, not only against Aster but also her family, which is actually the whole village. We are packing in case the village is torched. Aster has been moved to a district jail for her own safety. So far we don’t know where she is.
Hadassah Bashir Tell Aunty and Uncle they can stay with my new family.
Afia Yunis Hie, this is awful news. People can stay in our village too.
Maryam Yusef I wish I could say you could come to Australia and stay with us but no such luck with our strict refugee policy, I’m afraid. I will write on my blog. Will you all visit and sign a petition to free Aster?
Afia Yunis Will that work, Maryam?
Maryam Yusef We have to do something to let the government there understand that people around the world know about it. We all love Pakistan, but do we want injustice like this happening? Where is the freedom for minorities that’s promised in the constitution?
Sammy Ibrahim This doesn’t just happen to minorities either.
Maryam Yusef Something needs to be changed. How can I contact Aster? Do they have internet in Pakistani prisons?
Hadassah Bashir My husband Danyal says no internet is allowed. No phones either. You could write a letter, but be careful. It will be censored.
Sammy Ibrahim I’ll let you know when we know which jail. It’s probably in the Punjab.
Maryam Yusef I’ll write on Aster’s wall so her friends know.
Peacock Blue I’ve heard Peacock Blue has been arrested for blasphemy. I am her cousin, Maryam from Australia, and I think it’s unbelievable that this can be true – that an innocent minor can be accused of such a thing. If you would like to help her please click on the link to see my blog and to sign a petition.
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To see a world where freedom,
peace and justice reign
Free Peacock Blue
A fourteen-year-old village schoolgirl does an Islamic exam and her teacher accuses her of blasphemy. A riot ensues and she is jailed. Is this the land of the pure we love and honour? How threatened the minority communities must feel? How much pressure laid on the police and legal system by religious extremists? How is the girl treated? Think of the terror she must feel, an innocent victim. We’ll call her Peacock Blue for her safety.
Last year another girl was accused of blasphemy for burning pages of the Qur’an while she collected rubbish. She was given bail when it was discovered that a mullah had planted the pages in her path. The girl couldn’t read and would not have distinguished a Qur’anic page from any other. The bail was excessive, yet the money came from overseas organisations horrified by the girl’s plight. It was the first time bail was given for blasphemy in Pakistan. I have read that bail will not be given in Peacock Blue’s case as the evidence against her is apparently ‘strong’. I hope this petition will help her. Join with me in signing this petition to the governor of Punjab to please free my cousin, Peacock Blue. Sign here
COMMENTS
Ahmed Assalamu Alaikum, sister ji. This never used to happen before ex-President Zia changed the law to include the death sentence. This law needs to be reformed to exclude the death sentence.
Fatima Anyone who has tried to reform that law has been killed by extremists. No one wants to touch it.
Shafique This is sad news, but it is happening more and more. It won’t stop until they start prosecuting the people who wrongfully accuse others. God bless you, sister, for doing this for your cousin.
Abdulla This girl deserves the punishment she will surely receive. Islam must be respected and Sharia law upheld. I hope she gets the death penalty.
Affat Shame on you, Abdulla. Where is your love? And is our God so small we have to protect him from a child? I am Muslim too b
ut comments like yours do damage to Islam and give our faith a bad name. All thoughtful Muslims will abhor this treatment of a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl.
Abdulla There are already demonstrations calling for this evil girl’s death.
Fozia Religion always causes problems. I’m an atheist and I live in a progressive country where no one cares about religion. Nothing like this can happen.
Tamsin I agree religions cause trouble, especially ones built on inflexible rituals and rules which open the way to prejudice. I believe God prefers a relationship with us; he’s about mercy not religion, grace not rules.
Habib That’s crap – the priests wouldn’t be able to control what everyone thought if you had a religion like that. People might get it wrong.
Tamsin I rest my case.
Affat Fozia, if you lived in a country like mine that has a state religion, you’d be put in jail for not believing. That also can be called blasphemy. We need to stand together for freedom to believe what we want, or not to believe, without threat of violence.
CHAPTER
15
I’m in prison in a solitary cell. No toilet, no water, the floor stinks of goat manure and the food smells like fish that’s been on the Karachi train in summer. I can see through the bars and I see Yusef riding past in his chariot – he does this every day, watching the wheat crops, giving orders for harvesting and where to keep the grain to feed Egypt through the seven-year drought. I bang on the bars. ‘Lord Yusef, save me. You were innocent like I am. Tell the king to free me.’ But he never hears me. Now when I call, the bars move closer together. When I lie on my mat the ceiling descends a few inches. Then a few more. I will be squashed.
I sprang awake but it was too early. The cell was dark and I could hear one of the women snoring; I imagined it was Gazaalah. The aftermath of the dream brought shadows that flickered at the edges of my mind and I wondered how my parents were. How shocked they must be. How wonderful it would be to see them, to know they were safe.
The Truth About Peacock Blue Page 8