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Educating the powerless
A largely female audience recently witnessed the performance of Hajira ki betian in Karachi, a play which was preceded by a panel discussion on ‘Facilitating women’s empowerment in Pakistan.’ With the discussion stretching far longer than intended, the performance began half-an-hour late, but none of the women seemed to mind the delay too much, even though it meant being glued to their seats for almost three hours.
Organized by the Karachi Women’s Peace Committee and revolving, naturally, around women’s issues, the hour-and-a-half long performance focused on the lives of three families. The set was impressive, depicting three households from varied social strata. The centre of the stage was occupied by a drawing room of a well-to-do family – with a sofa set placed before props of white marble pillars – while the right side of the stage depicted a shanty home with a backdrop of brick walls, a tin folding bed and a tin bucket lying in front of it. The left of the stage served as a middle-class home, embodied by a blue wall contrasting effectively with the white background of centre stage, and wicker furniture.
Directed by Nargis Rahman and Makhdoom Riaz, the play brought to the fore the various problems women face by concentrating on developments in the three households almost simultaneously. Beginning with centre stage, the play opens with Ashfaq (Abu Mehroz) sitting in his drawing room, where he receives his secretary, Mahvish (Mahvish) who has been called to the house on the pretext of an important meeting. Just as he begins to force his advances on her, his wife Shahla (Samira Hasan) and daughter Hira (Zeba Bakhtiar) arrive unexpectedly.
The play tried to educate the audience by touching on issues of divorce, polygamy and women’s rights from an Islamic viewpoint, while also dwelling on how the Hudood Ordinance is being misused. However, one feels that much of the impact of these lessons was lost because of poor execution
As a furious Mahvish resigns from her job and storms out, the audience learns from a telephone conversation Shahla has with her mother that her husband is prone to having affairs and spending large sums of money on other women. She also admits to her mother for the first time that Ashfaq has been using her throughout her marriage to further his business deals. Eventually, when Ashfaq tries to marry off his daughter to promote his business interests, Shahla puts her foot down and the two walk out on him.
The focus of the play then shifts to the shanty home, where Sughra (Parvin Naz) and Maula Dad (Darain Siddiqi) live. Sughra earns her living working in Shahla’s house while her no-good husband spends his day beating her, complaining, and spending her hard-earned salary. As the play zooms in and out of their lives, one sees the wretched woman ultimately being murderer by Maula Dad, who discovers his friend Karimo (Sardar Hassan) harassing her and suspects her of having illicit relations with him.
The third story is about Mahvish’s household, although one only sees her briefly, when she comes home to inform her brother Saleem (Shahid Hameed) and sister-in-law, Saima (Nayyar Sultana) that she has quit her job. Although the brother is happily married, during the course of conversations with different visitors to their home, one gleans an insight into this male chauvinistic society that allows males to have more than one wife, even though they may not be able to provide for them, and to look for young, beautiful wives even when they themselves are old and twice widowed.
The play in fact tried to educate the audience by touching on issues of divorce, polygamy and women’s rights from an Islamic viewpoint, while also dwelling on how the Hudood Ordinance is being misused. However, one feels that much of the impact of these lessons was lost because of poor execution. The acting was by and large mediocre and detracted heavily from the play. The notable exceptions who performed well were Parvin Naz and Darain Siddiqi, who were brilliant in their roles, not to mention Sardar Hassan, Shahid Hameed and Zeba Bakhtiar. The performance of the rest was not only below par, they kept forgetting their lines and missing their cues as well.
The problem didn’t just seem to be insufficient rehearsals, but miscasting. Samira Hasan was totally out of place as the socialite Shahla and it was obvious she was painfully uncomfortable in delivering her lines in English. In fact, each time she had to say something in the alien language, she laboured over the words, at times trailing off sentences, which instead of arousing sympathy, made her appear ridiculous. Similarly, Abu Mehroz’s acting was so pathetic that he actually apologized in the end for his performance.
One hopes that if the play is to be repeated in the future, the organizers devote a lot more time to rehearsals and cast selection, for in the final analysis, it is the actors that either make or break a play.
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