Prisoner no. 650

We are the generation of Muslims that grew up fearing our own kind. We pigeonholed all the practicing ones as extremists. We dreamed of fleeing abroad and making our future in the center of learning and knowledge. However, we soon realized our flawed construction of reality. The promising slogans of Peace and Democracy proved to be hollow. Shard by shard, our emotions were hurt by those claiming to be humanists; from Abu Ghuraib prison, Iraq WMDs farce to this never ending phony war of terrorism. Now, the case of Dr. Afiya Siddiqui has once again set us ablaze.

Dr. Afia Siddiqui, a Pakistani citizen, went to Manchester to graduate in neurobiology. She had been an accomplished student since her early years and got into MIT and Brandeis University through scholarships. Later, she got married with Amjad Khan but the marriage came to a breaking point in 2002, the year she got divorced. In December 2002, she made another trip to US to find a job for her. The US suspects the real purpose was to open a PO Box Office for an alleged al Qaeda operative. In 2003, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, a chief al Qaeda person was arrested by FBI from Rawalpindi. Around the same time, Afia Siddiqui was catching a flight for Islamabad from Karachi airport from where she was hustled off by the ISI agents along with her three children. Her family was threatened to remain hushed about the matter. However, later ISI denied all the reports about a woman being handed over to FBI by Pakistan.Moazzam Beyg,an ex detainee of Bagram Air Base, wrote a book Enemy Combatant and mentioned the horrifying screams he heard of a lady. This was corroborated by other detainees and Lord Nazeer. The book was read by Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist who travelled to Bagram and confirmed about an imprisoned woman known as The Ghost of Bagram jail and Prisoner no. 650. After the hue and cry, she was removed to Guantanamo Bay where she was repeatedly raped and brutally tortured. She was kept in a male facility and there was no privacy for her shower and bathroom. She had lost her sanity. She was charged with the crime of being a courier of diamonds and for shooting an FBI officer in Ghazni.

Throughout this time, her family was kept in dark about her whereabouts. Her mother cried vehemently waiting for the shreds of news about her extraordinary bright daughter. It was Yvonne Ridley who broke the ice and presented the case to the public. Her case was reopened in Feb 2010 and the court passed the verdict against Dr. Afia and gave her life imprisonment.

Rehashing the facts is not my purpose, neither am I trying to plead her innocent. I simply want to share with you what bewilders me. The question arises in me is that even if she is guilty of aiding al Qaeda, should she be yanked away from airport to the gloomy dungeons of Bagram, without any news to her parents? Why should her children be detained and made to suffer? Why aren’t the courts issuing verdict against those officers who subjected her to sexual harassment and physical assaults?

The role of agencies in this quagmire is equally dirty. Pervez Mushurraf, in his book mentioned about earning million dollar bounties for capturing and handing over suspected al-Qaeda persons to the US. I feel indignant at us first. Islam considers women sacred, yet she was treated so atrociously and shamelessly by the Muslims. There had been news about her manhandling and gruesome torture, but nobody flinched.

I see this as blatantly against fundamental human rights. The law says that everyone is Innocent until proven guilty. She might be more heinous than Osama bin Laden in the eyes of US, but does that give them the right and authority to molest her, to abduct her along with her children and torture her? I demand that we should put our foot down and force the government to pass a verdict against this injustice and extremism.

If the case is scanned chronologically then one finds sheer inconsistencies. First, the ISI had been telling the family that she is wanted for mere interrogation, and later she is called as one of the dangerous al Qaeda operatives. Secondly, the FBI report contradicted the blame on her since the finger prints on the bullet does not match her DNA. Moreover, the site where she allegedly shot the police shows no signs of bullets. Amjad Khan, who had been in the forerun in alleging Afia of being an aide of al Qaeda, said all the news reports about her are false. He says her son had been killed and her lawyer says that Afia’s identity had been stolen.

I am not taking any side, but a comparison needs to be drawn. Ridley, a UK journalist was held by Taliban for ten days but she wasn’t hurt a tad. So much so, that after her release she embraced Islam. What about the civilized and humanitarian claims of the US? Is Mukhtara Mai the only Pakistani woman worthy of their humanly consideration? I don’t know what torture is like, but we can see a glimpse of it in the picture of Dr. Afia from Guantanamo Bay. Her face has withered. Her radiant smile of her graduation day seems of a totally different person. It shows not only the physical pain, but also the mental scars.

I am not here trying to awaken anyone because all of this should have scrambled us to action a lot before. It’s too big a loss for us to just sit and whine about it. Allah SWT says in Surah Nisa “And what is wrong with you that you do not fight in the Way of Allah and for those ill-treated and oppressed among men, women and children?”We are a nation which boasted about woman’s honor. We are a nation of Muhammad bin Qasim, who flocked to Sindh on the plea of a woman and liberated her.

The Holy Woman

How many of us have heard of Holy Woman? It evokes an image of a nun, clad in black robe and scarf. Well, it’s not that! Holy woman or Shahzadi Ibadat, as in Urdu, is a woman created by the feudal lord who is married off to Quran or more exactly to the land in case there is no male heir, or if the men of the family do not want to marry off their daughters. I can sense surging anger already!

In her extremely stirring and exquisitely written book, Qaisra Shiraz weaves a plot where a drop dead dame is forcefully turned into a Shazadi Ibadat. The story starts with Sikander, a business tycoon from Karachi falling in love at the first sight with Zarri Bano, who has been rejecting many suitors in search of Mr. Right. However, Sikander is a guy who finally sweeps her off the feet. Soon, she gets engaged experiencing a new kind of love spell cast by Sikander. Period.

The tragedy starts when Jafar, Zarri Bano’s brother dies, and her father finds alleged reason to not let Zarri, a feminist, modern and well educated damsel from marrying. Crying bitter tears and not believing she was being brought in the lap of a tyrant, she was forced into doing something she had fought against all her life. She had pitied and crusaded for those oppressed girls but little did she know that once she herself will have to surrender under the pressure of her father, his izzat and Siraj Din’s love for the mere acres of land.

Shahzadi Ibadat is devoted to a life of worship and religious preaching. As the whole concept of Shazadi Ibadat unfolded, it seemed brutal, inhuman and downright ironic. Though outwardly, one gains respect, but the inner remains shattered, desiring human love. It shows man’s absurd sense of proprietary. He cannot allow another man’s gaze to set upon his daughter. It shows that though our society has outwardly made progress, women are still mere puppets, their strings in the hands of man who can pull and drop it on their whims. Their happiness and sadness are manipulated by their ideas. Qaisra showed how male can twist the logic by connecting the most natural and noble of things and feelings with innuendos and degraded remarks to blackmail and stop woman from going against their way.

One also questions the logic behind making her a Shazadi Ibadat, in which case she is forbidden to marry thus cannot bequeath the property to a legal heir. Her father said that the next heir, according to the tradition will be her sister’s child, then one questions why not allow Zarri to marry who might as well have passed down the property to her own son? Qaisra showed in the end that pulped down by whatever circumstances, human nature is indomitable. It retains its essence, as in the end Habib realizes the havoc he has played with his daughter’s life. Zarri Bano, though alienated from human feelings in the end assents to marry Sikander.

Another story that goes parallel with Zarri Bano’s is Chaudhrani Kaniz who plays the role of a tyrant mother. It is a typical plot where the Chaudhrani is against her son’s wish of marrying washer woman’s daughter, Firdaus. In a typical hyper theatrical style, he flits away from his house and Kaniz has no other picking but to yield to her son’s desire. It gets very humorous too, when both, soaked in their pride, spewed abuses at each other. In the end, she admits defeat and makes Firdaus her daughter in law.

At one point, it seemed the book has been unrealistically weaved into tragedy and melodrama. One almost starts crying at the heartlessness of parents when Ruby marries Sikander. At that point, the reader is teeming with hopelessness and disappointment. I would have loved the read more if Qaisra had not martyred Ruby and Habib, and instead showed that Zarri or her mother stood up against the injustice and gave the ‘happy’ ending to their lives. This way the story would have been a powerful lesson and an example for the entire women who have surrendered to their kismet, carved by their male bigots and their nonsensical traditions.

The language and flow of Qaisra is flowery as well as captivating. She has an intellectual conversational style. The dialogues are passionate, which makes the book an easy read and a page turner. It seems Qaisra deliberately and very astutely crafted a story intermingled with a fine humor and intense tragedy that makes reader cruise swiftly through the chapters.