When divorce is best
OVER the ages the Pakistani drama heroine has been the bearer of many a societal message. Actresses from Roohi Bano, Shehnaz Sheikh, Marina Khan to Mahira Khan have borne this burden with aplomb — ploughing the depths of emotion and tragedy required to portray the life of a Pakistani woman. Television drama serials as a genre have survived social change and transformation and, in so doing, continue to be an instrument capable of provoking introspection in a society suspended between traditional mores and modern urban life.
The latest serial to attempt this is Kafeel — meaning guardian or provider. Written by Umera Ahmed, a well-respected author with many esteemed works, Kafeel centres on the dilemma of whether a woman in a bad marriage should leave and get a divorce or endure her fate and suffer in silence. The central character is Zeba — gracefully portrayed by Sanam Saeed — a woman married off by her parents because her mother suspects she may have flirted with a boy, a fact that would bring dishonour to the “khandan”. In the sort of tragic coincidences common to television dramas (the events are set in the late 80s or early 90s), Zeba agrees to the marriage because the boy she locks eyes with at a friend’s wedding has the same name as the first proposal. The two never see each other properly until their wedding day — when the striking Emmad Irfani, nicknamed “Jami”, is nevertheless a tremendous disappointment to Zeba.
Many more disappointments follow. Within the first several episodes it becomes clear that many lies were told about the financial position and character of the man to whom Zeba has been hurriedly wed. Jami is in love with another woman and has no job — a profligate character living off handouts from his better-off and gainfully employed siblings abroad. The family wealth touted by Zeba’s mother’s friend (whose brother Jami is) does not exist and Jami, Zeba’s parents belatedly discover, has a reputation for borrowing money and failing to repay his debts. His in-laws are no exception.
Very early on, the drama presents the choice that must be made. Zeba’s father, who feels terrible at having sentenced his daughter to life with a man of low morals and non-existent ability to earn, regrets his decision and asks her to take a divorce. Her grandmother — deployed by the author to represent “old” thinking, concerned with honour and the tradition of silently suffering women — steers Zeba in the opposite direction. Just as the choice hangs in the balance, Zeba discovers she is pregnant. An already difficult decision becomes more complicated. Should she save herself and abandon a marriage that promises lifelong pain, only to face the jibes and exclusions Pakistani society heaps on divorced women?
Suffering in many cases is only cowardice.
Zeba makes the wrong choice. She decides to stay. In a sharp narrative leap, the story jumps forward 20 years and we find Zeba — now a schoolteacher and mother of four — still suffering at Jami’s hands. The family live in an apartment purchased from Jami’s inheritance and life is still tough. Jami, still profligate, still idle, even steals money from his children and continues to see women on the side with the proceeds.
Kafeel’s portrayal of Zeba’s continued suffering and the trauma endured by her children, who have known only an abusive and toxic marriage as their one reality, sends a clear message. Staying in a toxic relationship is not absolution from suffering but its multiplication. Even the honour argument is dismantled. If Zeba believed she was “saving” her children from stigma by staying, she finds the opposite to be the case. A boy interested in marrying her daughter Javeria cannot persuade his parents because her father is a wayward man without job or reputation.
Millions of women in Pakistan confront such choices. The inevitable consequence of clinging to arranged marriages at a time when urbanisation and demographic change have weakened the family ties that once stabilised them is precisely such post-wedding revelations. It is increasingly difficult for families to truly know what the boy is like — complicated further in middle- and upper-middle-class families where many young people live abroad. In some cases the situation becomes untenable, and the question of divorce is real and pressing.
In innumerable television serials divorce has been portrayed as the ultimate evil; Kafeel is commendable for doing the opposite. Life as a divorced woman in Pakistan — particularly one with children — is not easy, but as Kafeel shows, staying in a toxic marriage with an abusive man is more dismal still. Women who remain in such relationships do not protect their children; they traumatise them, ensuring their lives are shaped by the nightmares of childhood. Suffering is not noble nor kind — in many cases it is only cowardice.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2026
