She has yet to reach the age of 25. Slim, fair and good looking, she laughs heartily, and does so frequently. However, her laughs, cannot hide the scars inflicted on her soul by circumstances and people. Now she sits, half-divorced from a man who has another wife and six children, some of them grownups.
Naz was born into a lower middle-class family. However, she has never been able to cast off the phantom of bad luck that has followed her since her childhood.
She lives in miserable circumstances. Just two rooms for a family of nine, headed by her stepfather, who is a car driver. This house, too, is not the one she could call her home.
Her latest round of misfortunes began about a year ago. Working in a school office, she was lured into marrying an old man who frequented the office ostensibly to pay his children’s fees or to discuss other such matters.
Circumstances had driven her to this pass. She was desperate to find a shelter. Her stepfather is poor. Her own father, living with her stepmother, is better off, but is unable to own this daughter in the presence of five children from his second wife.
When her mother and father had parted ways, she was just five years old. The woman worked in a factory. Its owner began to make amorous advances towards her and she began to drift along her unrealistic fantasies. This finally culminated into the breakup of her marriage. Naz’s father was rather pleased with the arrangement. The mother also landed into a second marriage, but not with the factory owner, but the driver, who was a TB patient and many years her senior.
Naz’s father worked as a car mechanic in Dubai. Whenever he visited his family back in New Karachi, he would also visit Naz in her stepfather’s house in a Korangi locality, bringing small gifts for her. This gesture would revive her hopes and make her ambitions soar. It would also momentarily secure a tolerable place for her in the family she lived in, with her mother nagging all the time. But this link snapped soon after the man returned to the city permanently and set up a workshop here.
Years passed by. She managed to pass her matriculation examination. She also got a job in the private school, though drawing a meagre salary. Youngsters among her own paternal family and a few others demonstrated their liking for her. She was ecstatic. But a genuine proposal came from an electrician and she was formally betrothed to him.
The relationship did not last long. The man’s family, convinced that they would not get in dower as much as they had, however, expected, looked for excuses to break the engagement. Finding a flimsy pretext, they succeeded in their designs and shattered the girl’s dreams. The breakup also opened the door for relatives and others to taunt her whenever they got an opportunity. It was too much for her sensitive self.
When the old man offered to take her as a second wife, she was too eager to accept it, and plunged headlong into the unforeseen circumstances. The two went to the court and legalized their matrimony. Her sympathizers were appalled. The man’s wife and children and relatives were furious. She was forbidden from having children. But she hanged on to it.
All hell broke loose when her mother took her to attend the engagement ceremony of Naz’s younger sister in the absence of her husband. The man, hearing of her audacity, lost all sense of reason. He sent her a letter, also signed by two witnesses, informing her that she had been given a pehli tallaq, or a first of the three counts of divorce. It’s almost six months now. The man has never personally asked her to return home, where she had laboured for a whole year merely for two square meals.
Naz, not her real name, is held aloft on the horns of a dilemma. “I can’t decide whether to stay with my mother or return to my husband,” says Naz helplessly. She is not free to look for a way out. And not geared to fight a legal battle, which could be long drawn and hard to win.
The NGOs pretending to serve such causes have disappointed her on her first contacts. “Please give me Rs2,000,” demanded a woman assistant of a legal firm when she visited there with her mother, who stands by her side as long she is willing to pursue a divorce.
“But we had heard that you serve people...,” said the distressed girl.
“That’s true,” snapped the woman, and forcing a mocking smile added: “This nominal amount is just for documentation, photocopying, etc, you know!’’
She has yet to reach the age of 25. Slim, fair and good looking, she laughs heartily, and does so frequently. However, her laughs, cannot hide the scars inflicted on her soul by circumstances and people. Now she sits, half-divorced from a man who has another wife and six children, some of them grownups.
