It must be her fault!
Its hours past midnight, I can’t sleep, my mind refuses to quieten- I have tried meditation and present moment exercises, all failed. Noor Mukhadam is revolving in my thoughts, she was found brutally murdered at a residence in Islamabad by the suspect Zahir Jaffer.
I desperately want to put
the onus of this crime on Noor so that I could be over and done with it. I want to justify the trauma and the fear of her death by saying that it must have been her fault, she must have said or
done something to infuriate Jafer. It is always the woman who say or do something
that hurts or irritates a man to such an extent that he would just behead her.
Is it really the truth, I wonder? More than
half of Pakistan’s population is based on women and every time she says or does
not say something; does or does not do something which makes a man so angry
that he hits her, or molest her or burns her, or kill her. And it all seems justified,
of course it is her fault.
If she is molested at a bus stop, in rickshaw,
at university, at home or at work than it must be her clothes or her abaya or her
gestures which appealed to the instincts of a poor uncontrollable man’s desires.
So what if she has to climb a 4 ft. high bus or is compelled to drive a motorbike, because there is absolutely no other way for a middle-class woman to either commute or travel economically, but she must be fully covered. She must be so covered that a man should not see the
tangible outline / shape of her body or her face or her fingers because that
would attract him to her and when she will refuse him or will try to get away
from the poor uncontrollable man, he will ruin her.
Sonya Syed.
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