TOBA TEK SINGH: Some eight months ago, happily married Nagina Akram had not even imagined one day she would be running a tyre shop at a bus stand as a young man, Usman Akram.

Usman was born as a girl to a family living in Ghaziabad. His father Haji Akram was a trader. As Nagina, (s)he was married to an expatriate Khalid who worked in Spain in 2011.

Khalid and Nagina spent two years as a happily married couple. Khalid would visit Pakistan after about every six moths to see his wife.

When the couple had no ‘good news’ even after two years of their marriage, Khalid asked his wife to consult a doctor.

That casual visit to a local gynecologist Dr Tahira Khalid changed every thing for the couple, especially the wife.

The gynecologist, after observing some changes occurring in Nagina’s body advised her to have some necessary tests at Karachi's Agha Khan Hospital.

The tests confirmed that Nagina was undergoing sex change and needed surgery that was conducted at a local private hospital, turning her into a young man who was named Usman Akram.

At that time Khalid was in Spain, busy pursuing the legal procedures necessary to bring his ‘wife’ to the European country.

Usman told Dawn that initially he felt very shy about the change he had gone through. “For at least eight months I shaved my face to grow facial hair so that I looked like a man,” he said, adding that finally he succeeded in his effort.

He said that soon after his medical tests confirmed signs of sex change he had informed his husband about this telephonically and since then they had not contacted each other. Khalid’s family had amicably returned the dowry, he added.

He said that since he needed some means to earn his livelihood as a man, he started running a tyre shop on the bus stand.

Usman, who has been issued his new CNIC with male status, is looking for a suitable girl so that he could start his new marital life, now as husband.