Lyari Girls prepare for speech contest ‘What If There Wasn’t A Woman’ in memory of life lost in the name of honor
Zaratoon Faqir Mohammed Durra Khan was killed by her brother Ghaffar after she eloped with her lover. The couple was hurtled down to their death from a mountain top and have no grave.
Preparations are in full swing at a girls school in Lyari in old town Karachi, commercial capital of Pakistan, on the topic “What If There Wasn’t A Woman.”
The contest is being organized by the Bazm-i-Adab of the school in the memory of a Baloch woman who was killed in the name of honor more than eight decades back.
The school with more than 1,300 girl students is named Government Girls Secondary School and is headed by Nafeesa Noor. It is located at Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai Road, Shah Baig Lane.
According to human rights groups as many as 1,000 women are killed in Pakistan every year but most cases go unreported.
Zaratoon Faqir Muhammad Durra Khan and the man she chose to love had escaped from Karachi but were tracked down by her brother Ghaffar Faqir Muhammad Durra Khan in the interior of Sindh province.
The two lovers were taken atop a hill and hurtled down to their deaths. The fluent in English brother, who used to wear Savile Row suits like Pakistan founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, lost his mental balance after the killings.
The victim was grand daughter of Waja Durra Khan, one of the richest British railway contractors of India, who built the Khojak tunnel in Balochistan. Her father was appointed as judge in Karachi by the British; very few locals got such positions under the white rulers.
The school where the debate is being held also produced Pakistan boxing champion. Unlike the rest of Pakistan, where people are crazed by cricket, the two favorite sports in Lyari and most Balochi-speaking areas of Pakistan are football and boxing.
In 2021, the school’s 10th class student Maria Rind won the gold medal in the National Women Boxing Championship and also won the best female Boxer of the Pakistan at Lahore.
Cute little girls of the school participate in running competition barefooted.
The school is located in an economically disadvantaged area just like black neighborhoods in the U.S.A. It only has 34 teachers for more than 1,300 students.
Lyari is still the stronghold of Pakistan People’s Party though the Deep State did manipulate the elections and former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari lost there—it was first time in half a century that the P.P.P. lost an election in the last general elections.
However, though his grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had promised to turn Lyari beautiful like Paris, not much development work has been undertaken there under successive P.P.P. governments.
The victim Zaratoon Faqir Mohammed Durra Khan was this writer’s late mom’s first cousin.