My Feudal Lord

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Ms Durrani in this book is less upset of how Khar fooled the people he claimed to represent, she is more upset how he abused her individually, while abusing a woman is in itself inexcusable, what is notable is that she did enjoy the priveleges associated with the life of a powerful man's wife gets you.

And no reader of history, especially in the form of a biography, should be naïve enough to assume that what they are reading is, in fact, what actually happened. Examples like these abound, and though there are moments you want to feel sympathy for her, since she does seem to have faced many psychological traumas, her increasing self-righteousness towards the end of the book confirms that she is nothing greater than a hypocritical self-promoter, like many of her class. There is politics involved, whch shouldn't come as a surprise because she married a politician, afterall. In private, however, the story-book romance of the most talked-about couple in Pakistan rapidly turned sour.I think she was too wrapped in that idea of being a powerful mans wife, which got her in to trouble in the first place. I think we need to have a very honest conversation about why we assume patriarchal notions won’t exist where they do, and how stereotypes can plague even those who mean well. But that's not a result of any intention by the author, which makes the book itself a terrible read. The act of writing this book by stripping bare all the embarrassing details and facing the severe possibilities of negative criticism, she made a stand in my list of influential women. According to my friend’s paper, the enduring legacy and bestselling status of books such as this one are dangerous indicators because they ‘feed shallow generalizations about Muslim societies instead of informing the reader of the ‘radical specificity’ of each case’.

Durrani said that the story is factual, with some names and events altered to protect the identity of the women who are at the center of the story. Mind you, this is Pakistan right after the Zia years and the book detailed a sexual affair that leads to marriage, and sexual humiliation at the hands of the feudal husband. Despite the fact that our mother had divorced her first husband, we were taught that marriage was a sacred and irrevocable institution. And what’s fascinating about this marriage is that our protagonist had five other examples – all of Khar’s ex-wives – to show her what kind of husband he was, except they were clearly not on her mind, proven by the bare minimum attention paid to them in this telling. And without fail each criticism, contentious and strongly worded, is tinged with hints of ingrained misogyny.

When the first stage of beatings passes, he apologizes, promises spuriously to never assail her again, shows regret, croons and pamper her all the while whispering future betterment. One of the most intense conversations I had during the reading of this novel was in questioning the veracity of the claims put forward by Durrani. Most men of our society have a superiority complex and violence is used as a tool to keep weaker gender in line.

While they were both married when they met, Mustafa Khar manipulated the situation enough to ensure Tehmina's divorce.Miss Durrani narrates about her life and that of her husband Mr Mustafa Khar's in Pakistan(who is uncle of Hina Rabbani Khar). She clothes herself in the socialist political ideals of her husband but her written word stinks of the classism and entitlement that she could never willingly surrender. She complains about corruption but is perfectly content to receive extralegal VIP treatment to forego laws upheld by immigration, visas, or courts.

This sort of intertwining of the personal with the political is a thread that runs throughout the book, primarily because Mustafa Khar was a politician.Its subject is Ghulam Mustafa Khar,a well known Pakistani politician,former Governor of Punjab,and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's right hand man. And this question, about why she stayed with him, is one of the most commonly asked ones about abusive marriages: why does the woman (or, in some cases, the man) stay with their abuser? What also pushed me to get a copy of this book was because of William Hoffer, who co-authored my absolute favourite book 'Not Without My Daughter'. Tehmina suffers rejection from her mother during childhood, marries her first `love', has a daughter, then has an affair with Mustafa Khar.