In the tribal regions of Pakistan, girls usually don't go to school. They are often forced into marriage and if they bring any shame to the family, they are punished with death in honour killings.
Khalida Brohi Photo: https://about.me/khalidabrohi
A marriage was arranged for Khalida Brohi before she was even born and her own cousin was the victim of an honour killing, But Brohi's father wanted her to be the first girl in her village to go to school.
She's now an advocate for women's rights, and is the founder and executive director of non-profit organisation the Sughar Foundation.
Brohi describes her experiences of tribal life in Pakistan and her fight for women killed by their own family members in her new book, I Should Have Honour: A Memoir of Hope and Pride in Pakistan.
She tells Afternoons' Wallace Chapman her story starts with a choice her father made when he was 14, and her mother just nine years old.
She explains her parents' marriage was an "exchange marriage", a common practice in Pakistan's tribal regions.
Exchange marriage is when families intermarry, especially families that don’t know one another’s tribes, a daughter from each tribe is be exchanged as a kind of security.
"In a way this is kind of a security for the bride that is going to the other tribe, because if they beat this bride this tribe would actually beat their daughter in exchange.
"What ends up happening is that even though, yes there is security in that ... a lot of times if one family is not happy with the daughter the other one has to face consequences."
As an example, she speaks of a friend who despite being in an exchange marriage fell in love with her husband.
"One day suddenly they are happily sitting there having breakfast and her husband gets a call that the bride that was exchanged in this same marriage was being divorced from the other family.
"Just like that their happy marriage of many years ended because the other family had decided to get rid of the bride.”
Brohi herself was chosen by her father's family as an exchange bride before she was born - but her father, having been through this process himself, rebelled.
She says he was the first man in the tribe to stand up to their father.
"He spoke up to his father, he tells me still that there are times when he remembers that moment when he made his own father cry."
Education and freedoms
The family left the village and moved to a slum community in Hyderabad and her father insisted Brohi go to school.
"He told me I would dishonour him if I don’t study hard in the school.”
That was his way of relieving Brohi from the fear she was enjoying freedoms her cousins back in the village wouldn’t have.
She says her father did end up taking the family back to his village, so that they wouldn’t forget where they came from.
"The tribal leaders, and everyone, started thinking perhaps we could always go back to the family, perhaps we could marry our cousins just the way everyone does, but thankfully my father kept protecting us until we were able to do that for ourselves.
"So he kept us attached to that family, but told us that we have to rise above all those restrictions, and that’s what we did."
Honour killing: Her cousin's murder
She says she realised how privileged she was when she found out her cousin had been murdered in an honour killing.
"We went back to the village and she was not in the village, and somehow slowly I found out that she was taken by my older uncle and killed in the name of honour because she had fallen in love.”
Photo: AFP
Her cousin was kept in a house for days until a decision was made, then was walked for hours and taken to a place where her grave had already been dug.
"It was done in such a secretive way that nobody knew and no authorities were told. It wasn’t reported and right after they murdered her - according to the so-called tradition she was also taken away from the family.
"Her name was taken away, her stuff was buried and a lot of her stuff was thrown away and everybody was told that she never existed."
She felt great anger towards her uncle, she says.
"He [her uncle] had had a heart attack in the middle of the night and that showed how much grief he had kept in himself ... he had become a completely different person after her murder, but in those times even when he passed away I am sad to say that I still hated him.
"I later forgave them but I knew that he could have stopped it, he really could have but God knows he didn’t."
She also felt guilty.
"When I first discovered about the murder of my cousin I did stop going to school because I did realise how unjust I was being by being the one girl who’s expected to be a doctor, who’s given all the freedom and everything in the same country just a few hours away from the village my cousin was dragged and killed.”
Non-profit work: Women's freedom and rights in Islam
Brohi says her work with Sughar Foundation keeps her positive and it involves two parts.
"Going to the tribal leaders and reminding them that women’s rights in Islam are much different than the way they’re actually treated.
"When we go back to the Holy Koran, when we start learning about what women’s rights are in Islam, we are extremely shocked ... stories after stories of Prophets who have treated their wives with such respect.
"Sentence after sentence where God is like ‘I allow both men and women to work’ - there is so much about women working, women walking shoulder-to-shoulder with men.
"We tell them [the tribal leaders] ... because they’ve not been doing that, these tribal leaders are actually not Muslim. By challenging them we are able to remind them that they have to do something about this."
She says the second part is passing on the same opportunities she was given to other women.
"Economic support is one of the biggest things. I believe that when women start earning they start realising what their worth is.”
One project is the establishment of training centres in villages to help women into businesses.
“After that six months training, we give them a grant to launch businesses in the village and get, slowly, income support and leadership.”
She drew inspiration from her cousins, who although uneducated were very smart.
"I slowly learnt that even though I’m becoming a very empowered woman, an empowered girl, I’m not different from them.
"The only thing that made me different and made me who I am is the opportunities and the education that my father gave me."
