Darul Aman: last resort for victims of violence
DARUL AMAN, shelter homes for the battered and the abused is the last resort for women, because of the social prejudices and traditional biases.
A woman, who is a victim of violence is stigmatized forever for taking refuge in a Darul Aman and the society shuns her for trying to assimilate into the society.
Violence is the most powerful weapon used by the family and society against women to subjugate them and because of low status the society refuses to accept her within its folds.
According to the Punjab Government report in Pakistan 80 per cent women are subjected to violence. About 42.4 per cent accept it as their fate, 33.6 per cent are unable to take any action, a small number of them react, 19.2 per cent protest against it and 4.8 per cent retaliate. Of these women only seven per cent opt to leave their homes and still a very few of them come to this institution.
Unfortunately, Darul Aman provides little emotional and physical sustenance to these tortured women. They are maltreated, malnourished and often exploited by the people at the helm of affairs.
A visit to Rawalpindi’s Darul Aman would testify all this. The centre houses 23 inmates all yearning for respect they deserve and a chance to be allowed to lead a normal life.
Established in 1961, the centre has a maximum capacity of 50 women. It has so far given shelter to 5,744 women. The centre’s annual budget is Rs971,000, most of which is spent on utility bills and repair and maintenance of the building.
The double-storied building is not exactly the most comfortable place to live in. Each room has three beds with modest facilities but the inmates are even happy with these meagre services.
Miss Lilly Khan, the centre’s in charge, said majority of the women were run-away cases, who disagree with the parents in matters relating to marriage and other affairs of importance for them.
The second category is of those affected by family disputes.
There are also a few cases of Hadood, Wata Satta (exchange marriages), cases with significant age difference between husbands and wives, those involved in crime and women sold by their husbands.
Darul Aman lacks proper psychological treatment facility and the only counselling available is by the centre staff.
Ms Khan said her experience showed that in 70 per cent cases parents were reluctant to compromise with their daughters who opted to live in shelter homes.
The centre also arranges marriage of girls, who wish to remarry and start a new life. Such marriages are seldom successful because only poor or very old men marry such girls.
One of the inmates, a graduate has been at the centre for the past 2-1/2 years after being thrown out by her brothers and sisters over property matters. She says she has tried to reconcile with them, but they are not interested.
Another girl, a victim of her husband’s violence took refuge here because her parents refused to accept her back in their fold.
A girl from Swat landed at the centre some three years back, when the person she had eloped with deceived her.
An illiterate woman, who claims to have been falsely implicated in narcotics case has completed her four-year sentence, but is still awaiting release orders. After conviction she had been lodged in Darul Aman on special instructions of the court. She said her release orders were being delayed.
The inmates appealed to the President Musharraf to make it obligatory for the court through a law to decide divorce cases within few months instead of letting them linger on for years.—Zahra Syed
About the kahani and the afsana
WHEN I saw the programme sent by the Lahore Arts Forum, I found that the month would be starting with a talk on the Urdu short story. Rather quizzical, I entered the auditorium of the Model Town Library to have a look at the person who was going to tell me all about story writing.
Thinking that the speaker would be a venerable old man, I was not a little surprised to find a young man barely out of his teens (at least this was how he looked) and clad in an open shirt and trousers. But then Muzaffar Ghaffar, who conducts the proceedings started to introduce, Muhammad Jawad. He taught philosophy at the Punjab university, he said, and was also an accomplished singer. In addition, he kept an intimate relationship with books and was accepted as a literary critic as well. It was a flattering introduction, no doubt.
The young man started off on a negative note. What is not a short story, he asked, and answered the question himself by saying that there was no fixed definition of it. Then he started to differentiate between kahani (story) and afsana. He was of the view that a kahani or story was a narrative of events while the afsana had some imagination and observation.
If we trace the history of the Urdu short story, we find that the oral tradition was in vogue much before stories came to be written. According to Saleha Abid Husain, the geet and story were born at the same time. A lori or lullaby was the first form of geet and a story was narrated to lull a child to sleep. However, short story as we know it today is not something which is narrated but is primarily meant for reading.
Coming to the origin of the short story in Urdu, Muhammad Jawad said it had found its way into out literature through Western writings. He sounded quite knowledgeable but somehow could not put forward thoughts coherently. Most of his sentences were like stray reflections. He said that Ghulam Abbas drew inspiration from Chekov and left it at that.
He also cursorily went over the different phases of symbolism, abstractionism, impressionism and realism through which the Urdu afsana has passed. But all said and done, a story remains an essential element of an afsana.
The talk went well with the listeners and the number of questions asked in the end showed that he had been heard with attention.
IT was after a long time that I saw contributions not only from Taj Saeed but also from his wife, Zaitoon Bano, in the April issue of Takhleeq. That took me back to 1958 when both Muzaffar Ali Syed and I were in Risalpur and Taj Saeed used to come down from Mardan to visit us. In those days, he was producing the Urdu magazine, Qand, an issue of which devoted to drama helped me select some delightful one-act plays for staging at the PAF College (now Academy). I also enjoyed hearing from him the geets that had written.
Taj Saeed remained in contact with me until recently. Whenever he came down to Lahore with Zaitoon Bano, the couple made sure to call on me. I was, therefore, shocked to hear the other day that he was no more in this world.
The monthly Takhleeq deserves special attention this time for a unique article by Zafar Azeem. It is almost a researched piece on Bhagat Kabir. Born in the 15th century in a Muslim household of Benaraes, Kabir was equally revered by the Hindus for his beliefs. A virtual Sufi, he appreciated all that was good in other religions and spread the message of universal brotherhood.
Another article of interest in the issue is by Mahmood Hashmi. It is about the Urdu poets living in Birmingham. Although there is no dearth of Urdu poets spread all over the British Isles, these seem to be concentrated in Birmingham. When I last went to England, I even found Zia Mohyuddin living there. Some years ago, Ata Jullundri who had been living there for years came to Lahore on a visit and was invited to dinner by Siddiqa Begum. He recited his poems in the occasion. He had his daughter with him who also wrote poetry, but in English. By the way, Shahnaz Muzammil has just returned from Birmingham after participating in some mushairas in that city.
Returning to Mahmood Hashmi’s article, I find something in it I have not heard before. He mentions Inayat Shadan, a senior poet who lived in Birmingham, but originally hailed from Ludhiana. He is reported to have said that when Sahir Ludhianvi recited his poem about the Taj before a group of friends, everyone appreciated it but he expressed his reservations. He felt that there was nothing new about it as Kaifi Aazmi had written a full poem on the topic much earlier. It was titled, Dost mein deikh chuka Taj Mahal wapas chal.
Further up in the issue, there appears a review of the articles on literature published by the monthly Takhleeq last year. It would, however, be impossible to give the salient features of this article within the limited space at my disposal.—Ashfaque Naqvi
Absurd finger-pointing
THE night after the bomb blast in Karachi that killed 16 people, including 11 defence technicians from France, PTV’s News Night programme had a live discussion on the probable causes of the tragedy. The PML-QA’s Gohar Ayub Khan, also a former foreign minister, and a retired commodore of the Pakistan Navy were invited to speak on the subject.
Mr Khan was, for much of the show, quite balanced and said that investigators should keep all options open. Like any sane and rational person, he said the attack was carried out by those who meant to cause great harm to Pakistan’s image, its government and possibly to its defence production and procurement programme.
These were sensible remarks and one would agree with their tone. However, what the other so-called ‘expert’ said was, to say the least, absurd and shocking. As a senior colleague also pointed out, the thrust of what the former navy official (and from his theories he definitely seemed as if he must have served with naval intelligence) was that India was to blame for the attack. Unfortunately, this theory — which makes no sense when you look at the content of Sept 11 and Pakistan’s support for America and the allied forces, and the modus operandi of the attack — has been doing the rounds in some of the country’s more educated and, should I say, liberal circles.
The way some people rule out the possibility that elements hit by the president’s Jan 12 speech or by the defeat of the Taliban could be behind this attack is that they assume it would be impossible for a Muslim or Muslims to do this to a Muslim country. They then go on to assume that since a Muslim or Muslims would never do this to Pakistan, it is only logical that India should be behind this. These people also hide behind the excuse that since India assumes Pakistan and the ISI for literally everything bad that happens in that country, it is only fair that we do the same. The ‘expert’ on the show then went on to drop other pearls of wisdom. One was that the only way to counter this threat from our eastern borders, was to make our educational curriculum such that children from an early age were taught to become patriotic. Well, the reason that we have become an intolerant society — and perhaps why the BJP has so many adherents in India — is precisely this misplaced emphasis on patriotism, which is really nothing more than extreme nationalism leading to jingoism. What the retired naval officer said — on national television, and at a time when many people across the country would have been watching and perhaps hoping to get some better informed opinion — sound even more absurd when you consider what President Musharraf himself said at the beginning of that evening’s Khabarnama, since most of his remarks to allude not to India but to Al Qaeda or related elements.
It’s tragic but understandable if educated people automatically begin to blame India for this but it’s downright criminal if ‘experts’ called in by the state network parrot this kind of conspiracy theory. The tragic aspect does not necessarily come out of any particular love for India, but out of the need to find the real causes of this attack, to find those who sent the suicide bomber on his mission, and to prevent further attacks from taking place.
The other dangerous fallout of such kind of remarks on national television is that the international community, and its representatives, are quite aware that PTV’s discussions on national security and related issues to a great extent reflect state policy, particularly these views of the establishment. So what sort of message was being given by calling someone — on the evening of the attack — who was constantly blaming India. No wonder, we have seen foreign newspapers print stories that have openly questioned whether some elements within the state security apparatus are out to deliberately sabotage the president’s intentions as outlined in his speech of Jan 12. —Omar R Quraishi