CHAPTER 2.
PART : 3/3
Being the popular girl in school helped; there were many who would happily collect my order for me. No one in my core circle could get away with only buying food for themselves anyway; they would bring me my share or I would (very adorably) take my share. Nadia had a way of getting around it. She would take her retainer out of her mouth and slip it into her pocket the minute she saw me approaching. After touching the damp mouth-mould in her pocket a couple of times while looking for sweets or cash, I learned not to check her pockets again.
I was very busy with my socialising during break. There were several groups I hung out with. With my new-found recognition on television, and oodles of confidence, I was very much in demand. Everyone wanted to be my friend, but I don’t think I ever really thought of anyone as a friend. By Year 8, Nadia and I were labelled ‘best friends’ as we spent so much time together after school. But during break, she was always indifferent towards me. She was a friend when it suited her. I had come to accept her need to be around the ultra-rich kids of politicians and industrialists.
I never confided in anyone, and certainly never broke down in front of anyone. That one incident with Nadia and the ‘object’ in Year 5 had shown me that people preferred a cheerful girl over a teary one. Never again did I cry in front of a stranger, except when my mother was pronounced dead. I would always deeply regret shedding tears in intimate relationships. It was perceived as a weakness that they could exploit. The world is a stage and we must wear makeup. Very few will value the real you, and those are the ones who will never give you a reason to cry.
Although I was popular, I can think of a few things that perhaps made me a little less lovable: I would never put on weight or get any acne, no matter how much I ate. Back then, I was blissfully unaware of any jealousy. Some girls would openly curse me to my face for having spotless skin, while others tried to put me down for my skinny physique. It all bounced off me. I never cared for anyone’s opinion. As a pre-adolescent, I had actually prayed to not become curvy like some of my older family members. The sight of heaving, freckled bosoms was repulsive. God listened, and I remained flat chested for much of my life. It wasn’t until year 10 that I forced my mother to get me a bra. Meanwhile at school, my practical jokes continued.
I would embarrass fellow classmates by pulling their elastic brastraps at strategic times in a lesson. The noise was like a slingshot. Needless to say, though the class would giggle like mad, it was not appreciated by the victim. Nadia enjoyed no immunity as my friend. We had desks in school which could be padlocked. I sat behind Nadia. One day, I slipped a padlock through the end of her long, thick, plaited hair, and shackled her to my desk, just behind her. When our rather adorable and much-tortured Home Economics teacher asked her to stand up to answer a question, poor Nadia couldn’t get up because she was literally chained to my desk.
Our Home Economics teacher would suffer at the hands of most of our gang. She was rather voluptuous and would wear see-through outfits. Her choice of lacy underwear under diaphanous outfits would result in fits of giggles from us. She was a sweet soul and ignored it all. We never really appreciated her at the time since we were all besotted by our class teacher. Ms Nighat Afshan was an ordinary looking but exceptionally good-natured woman. She had won our loyalty not only because of her knowledge of science, but because she was totally involved in all aspects of our personality. She was invested in us. She cared. Sadly, she was diagnosed with cancer just before her marriage, which had already been long overdue. We weren’t told about this, and reacted extremely badly to the unavoidable substitutes. No one measured up, but then again, we never gave anyone a chance. The Year 8s of 1986 managed to make eight teachers run for the hills in just a week.
No one explained to us why our favorite teacher had disappeared or if she would ever come back. We survived on unreliable rumors. The H.E. teacher happened to be around while we were so disturbed. We took great pleasure in arguing with her, and she patiently tried to help us. My fierce, blind loyalty to those who were insincere to me was spotted by her early on. After I stood up in class to defend Nadia one day, the teacher took me out and gently explained why I needed to not take risks for other people. She tried to warn me that not all people were worthy of my earnest support, but I did not listen. The friend in question would later abandon me on all key junctures of my life. My H.E teacher had perhaps been through it herself, and could recognize the vulnerability behind my tough, practicaljoker
exterior. But it would be thirty years before I learned to put myself first. We listen to people, but do we hear what they are saying?
By 1990, I had reluctantly joined Jinnah College for Women in Peshawar University. It was considered the best in the city, but I’d had set my heart on Kinnaird College in Lahore. However, my mother was terrified of sending me to the big city. She had heard stories that painted a rather liberal and bold image of Kinnaird girls. The former expat parent had not moved to Pakistan to take risks like that with her daughters, so she subtly manoeuvred me out of a move to a college in Lahore or Islamabad. Rather upset by this, I refused to apply to any college in Peshawar. My mother had to literally drag me to the principal’s office at Jinnah College. The principal had the reputation of a dragon lady. She was an incredibly harsh woman, and widely hated for her abusive language. We were late for the application process, but my mother had an excellent reputation. She was immediately recognised by the Vice Principal from her own college days as the brainy, high-achieving daughter of Dr Sher Bahadur Khan. I cringed with embarrassment as I overheard my mother tell them how I would one day be an asset to their college.
On the first day of college, I was surprised to be welcomed as a bit of a celeb. I escaped without any bullying, which was normally the fate of freshers on their first day. And as time progressed, my fan following grew. However, this was predominately in the student core, especially the juniors, rather than the teaching faculty. The college was to quickly discover that I was hardly the nerdy, proper lady my dear mother had been in her time. For me, life was always about fun and laughter. Instead of toiling in the scorching sun of the compulsory NCC (National Cadet Corps training), something we were all supposed to endure, I would be found in the cool shade of the cafeteria, perfecting my skills with
playing cards. There were more than enough adoring fans willing to sit in and complete my shifts for me. I enjoyed the training with guns, but sweating it out in the sun was not my style back then. Juniors were in awe of me and my group. We were the best at everything, from academics to sports and dancing. Cooler still, we would routinely get into trouble with the college administration, although, on reflection, they do all seem like such petty issues. We would be fined for interrupting ongoing dance performances on the school stage with the intent of improvising over them. Juniors would draw images of me in chalk on my route to class. Poetry dedicated to me was chalked out in the school bathrooms. It
all seems a bit excessive in retrospect.
The strictest teacher, Miss Chand Rehman, tried hard to restrain her smile at my free-spiritedness. Although she was a much-feared teacher to our seniors, she had a soft spot for me. In return, I was never late for her early class. Ms Rukhsana Iqbal, our English Literature teacher, had a phrase for me: “Reham is wanton like a stream. She cannot be contained”. Although I didn’t want to be a good student (and really tried hard not to be), it was teachers like these who made me so interested in studies that no one else in my core group of six girls would bother at all. Cheating was far from uncommon, and people like me didn’t help the situation. The general understanding was “Reham will have read everything, let’s leave it to her”. There was no need for anyone to study.
By the end of Year 10, my friends were slowly being married off, one by one, every six months or so. As they returned to study after their weddings and in their pregnancies, cheating became a necessity for some. In one exam, for Faculty of Arts - Intermediate Level, I was moved to the far end of the hall by the invigilator so I would be left alone to complete my paper in peace. She could clearly see me being disturbed by constant kicks to my chair from the girl sitting behind me. After a welcome fifteen-minute period of peace, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw the same girl literally standing above me, asking me to explain what the word ‘Thesmothete’ meant in Thomas Hardy’s novel Far from the
Madding Crowd. The invigilator had to physically drag the girl away amid peals of laughter in the exam hall.
On one occasion, the principal sent me a message that a British girl would be sitting behind me, and that I should be helpful to her during the exam. Ironically, that girl had been sent back to Peshawar by expat parents for an arranged marriage. She was finding it hard to adjust to the conservative environment of Peshawar. The man she ended up marrying had put in a proposal to my family for me a year earlier. I had thought this man from Charsadda would not let me continue my education or have a career. Seeing him as a backward Pashtun, I had refused. A few years later, I bumped into the same girl.
She had become a judge, and was madly in love with her rather progressive Pashtun husband, while I had found myself under lock-and-key in good old England. In the 80s and 90s, Peshawar appeared to be quite conservative. However, we did have a very active underground fashion scene. Ladies-only fashion and variety shows were frequently arranged. There were several ladies clubs for the posh-toffs. I had been walking the catwalk since I was 13 in ladies-only fashion shows, like all the girls in our social circle. This was similar to the debutante balls in the West. It was very much a small elite class. Those who’d had exposure to the West lived in a world of their own. There was an overlap of the diplomatic circle into this class. There were also Christmas parties (all of us grew up being familiar with Christmas carols and traditions). A college friend of mine would recall fondly how I suggested strapless bras long before she even knew such things existed. Although I was brought up to be aware of what was happening in other countries and cultures, I was very conscious of my own traditions and culture.
I was nicknamed ‘the hooded monster’ in college. Scores of boys would line the road outside the college to eye the girls. Family and friends remember me wrapping the chadar methodically around myself, so no one could catch even the slightest glimpse of me. I believed all men were horrible perverts. My friends may have had no such qualms, but I had other priorities. Marriage was not on the cards for me, or so I thought.
As a 16-year-old, I was in a rush to start earning money and getting a career sorted. I reminded my mother of her own mother-in-law, and whenever annoyed by my restlessness and impatience she would address me as Zohra Jaan, her mother-in-law’s name. Of course, I reveled in the labeling because my grandmother was my ideal woman. My grandmother was full of life and bounding with energy. Even later in life, when she wasn’t very mobile, she had to know what everyone was up to, and controlled the household from her bed. By contrast, my mother was the kind of woman who spoke so slowly that it was pointless to make long distance phone calls to her as it would cost as much as an air ticket. My mother was very much the wise turtle of the household, who found all the rushing around to be dizzying.
I, on the other hand, was buzzing with enthusiasm and ideas, ready to set up a business empire rather than take it slow. I came up with a new idea every day, from setting up a female-only gym, to a home-delivery health food business. I wanted to make films too, and wrote an entire script one summer, based on The summer of Katya, much to my mother’s horror. Boys and marriage were nowhere on the agenda.
But attitudes were changing rather rapidly under Zia, as were the laws. The elections he had promised to hold within 90 days never happened. He stayed put for ten years until his plane blew up in 1988. We also grew up during the time of the Afghan war, when the Mujahideen, Saddam Hussein, and Bin Laden were heroes. Jihad was honorable, and Islamic Hudood Ordinance was imposed. The effects of the Islamisation introduced during the Zia years were to persist beyond his mysterious death. The fabric of society had changed, perhaps irreversibly.
My mother recalled how as teenagers in Peshawar it was possible for them to walk on Saddar Road without a chadar. But post-Zia, everything was different. My nephews from Islamabad would ask if there were any women in Peshawar, as they never saw any. The change had also permeated among our rather Americanized circle. My older sister got married at the age of 26, like most of her peer group, whereas I and nearly all my friends got married younger. Indeed, all my friends were married before they’d even left their teenage years. No one would bat an eyelid at a 15-year-old being married. And these were girls from educated privileged family backgrounds. It just seemed like the right thing to do at
the time. My view on this could not be more different now. If I see any girl being married before she completes her education, the only reaction to expect from me is one of shock and protest.