I met Mukhtaran Mai on March 8, 2007 at the Karachi Press Club. The event was the celebration of International Woman’s Day. These are the feelings I penned down on my flight back.“It was a weird feeling, sitting there today and looking at the likeness drawn by an artist. It was disturbing. I had seen the person before many times on the television but the image drawn and displayed in front of me was unsettling. It was her eyes….. those big sad eyes.
The artist had captured a unique expression in those eyes, which made me at once restless and connected. I sat there trying to decipher that piercing yet humbling look. A look of deep pain, a look of sorrow and compassion. But their captivity lay not in these emotions, it lay in another feeling that the eyes conveyed; that of defiance.
They say your eyes are the mirror to your soul. It would be a rare occurrence to be able to capture something as lucid as the soul. A photographer had once captured something similar in a young afghan girls eyes years ago, immortalizing those hazel green eyes forever. However, there was no similarity between the young child’s woebegone look and the piercing gaze that looked down at me today. These eyes represented a next phase in the cycle of pain. The phase where the green eyes would find the answers to the baffling riddle called life. The woman with the defiant eyes was Mukhtaran Mai.
Having read her story a many times and having seen her on the tele, I didn’t expect much when I was invited to celebrate International Women’s Day with Mukhtaran at the Karachi Press Club. To me yes she was a woman who was centre to a lot of news and controversy. Honestly, I think I have become desensitized and numb. With the news of rape, murder, killings (honour and otherwise) splashed all across our nation everyday, one hardly even turns the head to see another victim. Unfortunately I, like most people have started taking the most heinous crimes in the same stride as I discuss the weather, an acceptable part of everyday life.
When I met her, I realized how small and frail this woman was in real life. Yet nothing weak was visible in her person, she was graceful and polite, instead of looking for sympathy she looked like the pillar of strength. Destiny holds for us unique paths to discover our true self. In case of Mukhtaran, the journey began the day she was subjected to tribal injustice and unthinkable human cruelty, that journey has taken her to the cover of a book dedicated to her life and her struggle. It is not the fall but how one recovers from it that determines the course of our life and Mukhtaran has emerged from this battle, scarred but not broken”
This meeting took place four years ago, I had thought then that this woman may very well have overcome the worst and will find justice. But The saga of Mukhtaran continues, her journey taking yet another fateful turn, this time acquitting her 13 tormentors of cruelty against her under the pretext of “lack of evidence”. How many Mukhtaran does it take to convince the jury and the judiciary of the crimes committed against her, for her to convince the law abiding in this world “beyond reasonable doubt” that the people who commit crimes against humanity are indeed the biggest criminals of all.
May you become stronger and more defiant every day Mukhtaran, with that prayer, I rest my case.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/154026/mukhtaran-mai-verdict-citizens-enraged-by-supreme-court-let-down/
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