The First Woman
In one of the poor districts of Karachi, between the Lyari river and the fields of dirt where stray dogs roam aimlessly until they fall to a silent death from starvation or disease or both, is a police station - the only one designated for the area. Unlike most police stations in the city, this one stands lonely, undisturbed. Except for it’s daily visitors: prostitutes, junkies, pickpocketers, and pimps, most of the public will take their troubles to any one of the number of mosques in the neighborhood, permitting a Mullah to preside over their matters.
Hence, the officers were left with little work to do and they accepted it because they understood that here things are done because they have always been done that way.
Days at the station were reduced into a pattern: arrest the repeaters, hold them in jail for a night or two, release them with a fine (which is hardly ever paid) and then the cycle is repeated. The night shifts are tranquil and unfrequented, expect for this particular night, when the woman walked into the police station.
She walked toward the front desk as she adjusted her head covering. Her clothes and demeanor indicated a woman from a proper background and her face, although flushed, was absent of any bruises and scars. Rarely do woman ever walk the streets of Pakistan alone without facing disrepute from the neighborhood and here the woman stood alone, in the middle of the night, in a police station, with the lowlifes of society so it was but natural for everyone in the police station to be struck with curiosity.
The officer behind the desk straightened his posture and closed the buttons of his khaki uniform. With his fingers, he brushed down his mustache and prepared himself for the disruption. Still in his seat, he gestured to woman sit in the chair across from him.
She sat down and took a moment to gather herself. The officer waited patiently, with his pen in his hand, ready to jot down notes. In the distance a dog howled.
“My husband brought home a second wife. He did not have my permission.” Said the woman. It was the first time she said it out loud, and hearing it out loud for the first time brought to her the gravity of the situation.
The officer put the pen down and eased back into his chair with a satisfaction that resembled that of someone who had just figured out the solution to a brainteaser. Men are permitted to have four wives and in the patriarchy society they both inhabited, there is no legal barrier to stop the woman’s husband from fulfilling his desires. They both understood this well and the woman knew the officer’s response before he said it.
“The police do not handle these personal kind of matters. I am sorry, madam.”
The woman slammed her fists against the table and then, she fell back into her seat and crossed her arms, surrendered.
“Did you know that a long time ago, when Pakistan and India were one, Lyari river had clean water and fish and its beauty was protected and looked after by the farmers,” the officer said, “then after Partition, the people who took care of it left and the river became vulnerable and naked to the thousands who came here, who only took and took and never gave. And now, it has become a shitting ground for the public. Madam, listen to me, you do not want to be a shitting ground.”
As days passed, men with tools and large planks of wood walked in and out the house she spent the last decade of her life in. Noise from the construction in the upstairs floor filled the house all day long only to remind the woman of her new permanent guest. “She will live upstairs with own kitchen, bathroom, even with her own entrance. You will never see her,” the husband told her, believing himself to be doing her a kindness.
The woman found herself spending her days and nights alone in the shadows of her own home like a lingering ghost. There was no family to go to for support and she had no children of her own to get a sort of purpose from. She would still cook and clean and do all the duties that she been doing in her eleven years marriage more out of habit than anything. Some in the neighborhood pitied her like a patient with a terminal disease while many praised the husband -even her mother in law frolicked through the neighborhood, “Look at how generous my son is. He has taken in a helpless woman as his own!” she chanted.
Weeks turn to months and the woman never laid her eyes on the new upstairs resident nor did she have the desire to. Bit and pieces came her way about the origins of the replacement but it can all be broken down into two basic truths: that she had nobody and that she was younger than her.
The husband’s visitations became less frequent. When he would come, she would not let him touch her and he consented. The constant confliction between not allowing herself to be touch and the craving for companionship would keep her up at nights and she hated herself for even desiring it.
One winter night, the husband walked in with a gold box of sweets. It had been weeks since she had seen him. He stood in the doorway and her soul unfolded and she felt eager, not to see him but to be seen.
“All day I have been distributing these out to the whole neighborhoods but I saved one for you. I am to be a father. God has been kind to me,” he said, in a soft voice and his eyes shining like a child’s. He paused for the moment to let her speak but it soon occurred to him that his belief; that a new life into this world was a universally shared joy went beyond any held grudges, was not reciprocated causing him to change his tone. “I hope you do not give us the evil eye,” he said, before placing the box of sweets in her hands and leaving. Even after the husband was gone and his footsteps could be heard from above her, the woman did not take her eyes off the box of sweets in her hand. The next morning, the woman began to pack her things.
***
If one were to ask anyone in the neighborhood about the whereabouts of the woman, some would respond that she found an old apartment where she brought men over for money. Others will say that they last heard she moved to Karachi to live with a distant aunt who made her work like a slave around the house. Very few actually knew the woman had taken in residence with a sick elderly woman near the end of her life and in return she would cook for her and take care of all her bathroom needs. For money, she found a job in a garment factory, sewing clothes that get sent off to international lands.
The days ran long with a constant impending sense of doom around the corner. The elderly woman could die any moment and she would have no place to live anymore. Her job at the garment factory could easily replace her if couldn’t keep up with their unrealistic quotas. The woman was exhausted. He feet were marked with blisters from her daily walk to the garment factory. Bags under her eyes from the nights when she was awoken countless time to help the elderly lady with her needs. At her age, she wondered how long she could continue living like this. She wondered if it was better to have never left.
One afternoon, the secretary ushered the woman to the office of one of the low level managers. The woman gazed around, as vulnerable creature would do when entering new territory, taking in the many framed certificates and awards on the wall. Her attention was drawn to a large portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan hanging in the center of it all.
The door opened, and the manager walked in, a smile on his loose face. He was an old man, heavier than most. Based on the large gap in rank between them, she stood up even as the man motioned her not to.
He offered the woman chai and even though she declined he asked his secretary to bring them two cups. The old man spoke in a casual manner, so much so, that the woman forgot to whom she was talking to in the first place
The old man talked about the pressures of his job and recounted a story about how his five years old son begging him for a dog so he brought home a stray dog from the Lyari river grounds after getting him cleaned and examine by a specialist. “My son got his fun. It cost me nothing and even thought that dog died a few months later, that fucker had the best life he had in those months than he did his whole life at Lyari” said the old man, pleased with himself.
These informal meetings continued on regularly. It had been ages since such attention was directed towards the woman so it was only normal for her to take delight in it and it seemed harmless enough to not ask any questions that may risk putting an end to their daily chats.
The old man sipped down the last bit left in his cup. “It is horrible the situation you are in. Let me help you” the old man said, the clunking sound of the sewing machines in the factory floor kept an invisible envelope of privacy around them. The old man placed his hand over the woman’s hand. “Allah has blessed me with so much, money, status, a wife, children and I want to share His generosity. I am able love more than one person.”
There was a long line of buildings some small distance away from the Lyari River. These were built during the British rule and hastily abandoned during the painful birth of the country. The first arrival of Muslim refugees, fleeing their homes amid violence, settled into the vacant rooms and it became home for a succession of generations to come, paying little attention to the historical structures. Now, nearly fifty years after it’s construction, it stood weathered and run downed, scars from a colonial past.
It was in one of these rooms that the woman was provided by the old man. She had the walls repainted and had some of the old furniture thrown out. The old man’s family lived in one of the bigger rooms at the end of the hall. Fearing an uncomfortable encounter with them, she hardly stirred outside her one small apartment.
The woman couldn’t help but enjoy the comforts of her living situation. After passing through a hurricane, a storm becomes favorable. Everything was more or less to the woman’s liking except for the view. Peering from her window, she could see the Lyari, silent and still, and this stillness did not bring her any peace -it was a stillness of a merciless God that knew of no justice, no restraint, and no shame and on days with a strong breeze, the stench of the river would gently wander past rooftops and electrical wires and softly graze the inner walls of the woman’s nose, sending a shiver down her spine.
Hence, the officers were left with little work to do and they accepted it because they understood that here things are done because they have always been done that way.
Days at the station were reduced into a pattern: arrest the repeaters, hold them in jail for a night or two, release them with a fine (which is hardly ever paid) and then the cycle is repeated. The night shifts are tranquil and unfrequented, expect for this particular night, when the woman walked into the police station.
She walked toward the front desk as she adjusted her head covering. Her clothes and demeanor indicated a woman from a proper background and her face, although flushed, was absent of any bruises and scars. Rarely do woman ever walk the streets of Pakistan alone without facing disrepute from the neighborhood and here the woman stood alone, in the middle of the night, in a police station, with the lowlifes of society so it was but natural for everyone in the police station to be struck with curiosity.
The officer behind the desk straightened his posture and closed the buttons of his khaki uniform. With his fingers, he brushed down his mustache and prepared himself for the disruption. Still in his seat, he gestured to woman sit in the chair across from him.
She sat down and took a moment to gather herself. The officer waited patiently, with his pen in his hand, ready to jot down notes. In the distance a dog howled.
“My husband brought home a second wife. He did not have my permission.” Said the woman. It was the first time she said it out loud, and hearing it out loud for the first time brought to her the gravity of the situation.
The officer put the pen down and eased back into his chair with a satisfaction that resembled that of someone who had just figured out the solution to a brainteaser. Men are permitted to have four wives and in the patriarchy society they both inhabited, there is no legal barrier to stop the woman’s husband from fulfilling his desires. They both understood this well and the woman knew the officer’s response before he said it.
“The police do not handle these personal kind of matters. I am sorry, madam.”
The woman slammed her fists against the table and then, she fell back into her seat and crossed her arms, surrendered.
“Did you know that a long time ago, when Pakistan and India were one, Lyari river had clean water and fish and its beauty was protected and looked after by the farmers,” the officer said, “then after Partition, the people who took care of it left and the river became vulnerable and naked to the thousands who came here, who only took and took and never gave. And now, it has become a shitting ground for the public. Madam, listen to me, you do not want to be a shitting ground.”
As days passed, men with tools and large planks of wood walked in and out the house she spent the last decade of her life in. Noise from the construction in the upstairs floor filled the house all day long only to remind the woman of her new permanent guest. “She will live upstairs with own kitchen, bathroom, even with her own entrance. You will never see her,” the husband told her, believing himself to be doing her a kindness.
The woman found herself spending her days and nights alone in the shadows of her own home like a lingering ghost. There was no family to go to for support and she had no children of her own to get a sort of purpose from. She would still cook and clean and do all the duties that she been doing in her eleven years marriage more out of habit than anything. Some in the neighborhood pitied her like a patient with a terminal disease while many praised the husband -even her mother in law frolicked through the neighborhood, “Look at how generous my son is. He has taken in a helpless woman as his own!” she chanted.
Weeks turn to months and the woman never laid her eyes on the new upstairs resident nor did she have the desire to. Bit and pieces came her way about the origins of the replacement but it can all be broken down into two basic truths: that she had nobody and that she was younger than her.
The husband’s visitations became less frequent. When he would come, she would not let him touch her and he consented. The constant confliction between not allowing herself to be touch and the craving for companionship would keep her up at nights and she hated herself for even desiring it.
One winter night, the husband walked in with a gold box of sweets. It had been weeks since she had seen him. He stood in the doorway and her soul unfolded and she felt eager, not to see him but to be seen.
“All day I have been distributing these out to the whole neighborhoods but I saved one for you. I am to be a father. God has been kind to me,” he said, in a soft voice and his eyes shining like a child’s. He paused for the moment to let her speak but it soon occurred to him that his belief; that a new life into this world was a universally shared joy went beyond any held grudges, was not reciprocated causing him to change his tone. “I hope you do not give us the evil eye,” he said, before placing the box of sweets in her hands and leaving. Even after the husband was gone and his footsteps could be heard from above her, the woman did not take her eyes off the box of sweets in her hand. The next morning, the woman began to pack her things.
***
If one were to ask anyone in the neighborhood about the whereabouts of the woman, some would respond that she found an old apartment where she brought men over for money. Others will say that they last heard she moved to Karachi to live with a distant aunt who made her work like a slave around the house. Very few actually knew the woman had taken in residence with a sick elderly woman near the end of her life and in return she would cook for her and take care of all her bathroom needs. For money, she found a job in a garment factory, sewing clothes that get sent off to international lands.
The days ran long with a constant impending sense of doom around the corner. The elderly woman could die any moment and she would have no place to live anymore. Her job at the garment factory could easily replace her if couldn’t keep up with their unrealistic quotas. The woman was exhausted. He feet were marked with blisters from her daily walk to the garment factory. Bags under her eyes from the nights when she was awoken countless time to help the elderly lady with her needs. At her age, she wondered how long she could continue living like this. She wondered if it was better to have never left.
One afternoon, the secretary ushered the woman to the office of one of the low level managers. The woman gazed around, as vulnerable creature would do when entering new territory, taking in the many framed certificates and awards on the wall. Her attention was drawn to a large portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan hanging in the center of it all.
The door opened, and the manager walked in, a smile on his loose face. He was an old man, heavier than most. Based on the large gap in rank between them, she stood up even as the man motioned her not to.
He offered the woman chai and even though she declined he asked his secretary to bring them two cups. The old man spoke in a casual manner, so much so, that the woman forgot to whom she was talking to in the first place
The old man talked about the pressures of his job and recounted a story about how his five years old son begging him for a dog so he brought home a stray dog from the Lyari river grounds after getting him cleaned and examine by a specialist. “My son got his fun. It cost me nothing and even thought that dog died a few months later, that fucker had the best life he had in those months than he did his whole life at Lyari” said the old man, pleased with himself.
These informal meetings continued on regularly. It had been ages since such attention was directed towards the woman so it was only normal for her to take delight in it and it seemed harmless enough to not ask any questions that may risk putting an end to their daily chats.
The old man sipped down the last bit left in his cup. “It is horrible the situation you are in. Let me help you” the old man said, the clunking sound of the sewing machines in the factory floor kept an invisible envelope of privacy around them. The old man placed his hand over the woman’s hand. “Allah has blessed me with so much, money, status, a wife, children and I want to share His generosity. I am able love more than one person.”
There was a long line of buildings some small distance away from the Lyari River. These were built during the British rule and hastily abandoned during the painful birth of the country. The first arrival of Muslim refugees, fleeing their homes amid violence, settled into the vacant rooms and it became home for a succession of generations to come, paying little attention to the historical structures. Now, nearly fifty years after it’s construction, it stood weathered and run downed, scars from a colonial past.
It was in one of these rooms that the woman was provided by the old man. She had the walls repainted and had some of the old furniture thrown out. The old man’s family lived in one of the bigger rooms at the end of the hall. Fearing an uncomfortable encounter with them, she hardly stirred outside her one small apartment.
The woman couldn’t help but enjoy the comforts of her living situation. After passing through a hurricane, a storm becomes favorable. Everything was more or less to the woman’s liking except for the view. Peering from her window, she could see the Lyari, silent and still, and this stillness did not bring her any peace -it was a stillness of a merciless God that knew of no justice, no restraint, and no shame and on days with a strong breeze, the stench of the river would gently wander past rooftops and electrical wires and softly graze the inner walls of the woman’s nose, sending a shiver down her spine.