Daily Times

They say that you have been killed in the name of honour, my dear. Your slayers had formulated a long list of accusations for which they convicted and punished you in the most appropriate manner deemed by them. You were charged with the crime of winning the bread for your family where your male relatives had tragically departed soon enough to make earning incumbent on you. You were arraigned for working at a non-governmental organisation, something eyed as highly indecorous by our society. You were punished for receiving education not at home or in a madrassa but in registered schools, colleges and universities where you did not put a stop to your didactics without reportedly bagging the certificate of chartered accountancy.

You were chastised for how ‘unchaste’ you had become; rejecting the proposal of your ‘honourable’ cousin — the very cousin whose honour did not scar when he asked you to come with him alone to the basement of your house; the very cousin who wanted you to quit your job and sit at home; the very cousin who considered his state of being unemployed honourable enough to impose his decision on a 30-year-old self-sufficient jobholder; the very cousin who had been impressing on you through his father his whim to marry you. Mehboob Alam, your cousin, was apparently smitten with your love to the extent that he preferred killing you rather than watching you trotting to work every morning. This endearment was, perhaps, the mere lust for your property of which you were the heiress without your will. After all, the estate cannot replace the physical presence of a benevolent father and a supportive brother. However, I can now smell the smoke from embers burning somewhere near. It is all evident; we just need to clear the concealing cover we have labelledas “honour killing”.

Before reaching any conclusion, I have a few questions to ask in order to secure their respective vindications in both pans of the balance. These reservations must have captivated your mind several times in your life, but these dubious objections must be presented before the society because it is high time that the word “honour” is redefined.

Where were your glorious uncle and his son when your only brother was killed by ‘unidentified’ men, who are probably still wandering the streets of Astarzai Payan area of Kohat?

Where was your estimable family when your father was being swallowed by cancer and nothing else worried him more than the thought of leaving his family without any wage earner?

How could your honourable cousin gain enough courage to foist his unreasonable injunction of restraining you in the house? Would he have earned at your place and fed your widowed mother, sister-in-law and sister along with their children? But how was this possible given that he was uneducated and jobless?

Furthermore, how could work in a non-governmental organisation be considered disreputable? There might remain some concerns regarding the repute of NGOs and their use of white lies for their vested interests, but this certainly does not seem to be the case here. More importantly, the NGOs you were working at aimed to help elderly in getting their right to social services and healthcare. It apparently seems to be a harmless, noble mission.

Above all, does there not exist even a little possibility that this murder was not actually perpetrated in the name of honour but to fulfil the covetousness for the property that you had owned and, which, as per your uncle’s intimidating claims, would have eventually fallen into their hands by hook (in case you had not spurned Mehboob’s proposal) or by crook (after your death, let it be natural or planned)?

Is there not even a slight chance that Mehboob gunned you down because of your dishonouring his proposal with contempt, which had, definitely, hurt his ego, kindling the misogynistic element in him?

Between 150 and 400 cases of acid attacks and at least 5,000 cases of rape being reported in Pakistan every year, how many of these can possibly be enacted to protect “honour”? There indubitably exists a large fraction of those incidents, which are executed only in the wake of a man’s egocentricity, self-conceit, faux pride, selfishness and arrogance, targeted whenever a woman disdainfully or politely refuses to his marriage proposal. Instead of taking rejection as will and choice of the lady, it is reckoned as an opportunity to take revenge and that, too, in dreadfully malefic or ghastly manner. Your brutal murder might also be your cousin’s vengeance.

None of the possibilities can be ruled out till Alam is found, taken into custody and exhaustively interrogated. Whatever the cause is found to be, if your murder was yet another incident of honour killing then nothing would be apter than quoting Saadat Hasan Manto:

“Our society can allow a woman to run a brothel but cannot allow her to ride a horse-cart.” However, if you have been killed out of revenge then Mehmood himself needs to remember one fact:

“Revenge is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.”

The writer is a student of Biotechnology with an interest in current affairs, politics and journalism