But I had to do it for Kalsoom, for her siblings, and for Khadija.
The day of the move, I sent a jeep to Kotri to help them move their stuff from the mud haveli. Even though I was excited for Kalsoom, my heart ached. That haveli was where we had played, where I had memories of Khadija, where early in the mornings the delicious smell of chai made on coal and parathas with traditional ghee wafted in the air, where we slept on cots outside in the yard. Life had changed so much. Everything in that house was gone, but the memories stayed, mocking us all.
The jeep brought their few belongings to the little apartment I had rented close to our house in the Gizri neighborhood. Later that day I went to greet them. I took the broken stairs up to the second floor. There were no lights, and the building was dark and humid, but it was a good start. Inside the apartment were small sacks with clothes and books strewn across the floor. Kalsoom was standing with her hands on her hips as Uncle Liaqat balanced on a tiny stool, fitting a ceiling fan to the ceiling, sweat dripping from his forehead. In her overwhelmingly stressful life, Kalsoom had put on weight, but she was plainly happy to be in Karachi. They had left a large haveli, with plenty of sunshine and breezes, for this tiny hotbox that had two holes for windows near the roof. But one must sometimes sacrifice one thing for another.
I stepped inside in my ironed cotton dress and simple chappals (sandals), hair tied back, and hugged her. I asked how they were doing, if they needed anything. The little ones looked grateful, hopeful, and shy. Gazing up at where Uncle Liaqat stood on the stool, his shoulders and underarms sticky with sweat, his eyes fixed on the fan, I felt deep pride. Life was changing for the better, right before my eyes. Things were going to be different now. My cousins now would have a shot at happiness.
SEPTEMBER WAS WHEN THE MONSOONS finished opening the drains of the old city of Karachi, and the sky began to darken quickly. It felt like a joyful time. Our work in the villages was thriving, and although I hadn’t heard from Amina, Sughar was becoming successful, and news of it was spreading around the world.
One day, after delivering some products to our store in the mall, I stepped into a fully packed restroom where girls were fixing their hair and putting on lipstick to go to a movie on the mall’s third floor. A group of them were laughing and pointing at something. A thin girl in a black burqa was crouching in a corner, her face turned up and her mouth open as if she were sleeping. I shook my head disapprovingly at the young girls making fun of this poor soul. I went over to straighten her head so she wouldn’t wake up with a sore neck—and realized she wasn’t sleeping. She was unconscious. I tried to wake her up, but she wouldn’t budge. I called for Fauzia and Hina, my younger sister and her friend who helped us in Nomads. We splashed water on the girl’s face.
Her lifeless eyes looked blankly at us as she told us to let her be.
“I can’t let you be like this,” I told her. “Where are you from? You probably need the hospital. We want to help you.”
“You can’t,” she finally replied.
My sister Fatima, who often helped us with communications at Sughar, brought her some juices. We continued to ask her questions as she lay there. She was reluctant to tell us anything, but eventually she divulged that her name was Noreen, that she had left her home and did not want to go back. No matter how many times we offered to help, she told us to leave her alone. I took her phone number and gave her my card.
At home that evening, I called Zehra, a Pakistani friend whom I’d met at the Unreasonable Institute. Zehra, through her incredible insight and wisdom, had stolen my heart and become a true friend forever. She was now one of the most highly networked and powerful women in Pakistan and always leveraged her connections to do good for others.
“Hello,” her kind voice said, calming my nerves.
I told her about Noreen and requested help in finding a shelter for her. I sensed my siblings in the other room, silent, listening in, and my father eying me, wondering what I was up to now. He had seen me do so many outrageous things, and I could sense his frustration as he flipped mindlessly through TV stations after a long day at the office.
Zehra gave me the phone numbers of several shelters, and soon I was calling them, pleading for help. The shelters wouldn’t send a vehicle to get someone, they told me. I would have to bring Noreen in myself.
As I hung up, Aba asked carefully, “What’s going on?” His voice was irritated and stern yet he could see my worried face. I told him about Noreen, and he became livid. “It’s none of your business, Khalida! Do you understand these things can be political or tribal, and you could get us all in a lot of trouble?!”
I realized that although my family had risen—with great hardship—to the lower middle class, I was potentially endangering them all by inserting myself into a tribal or family feud that could turn against us. If the issue was tribal, and if the girl came from a rich and powerful family, I was seriously endangering my life and my family’s.
I called Noreen and sadly gave her the number of a shelter, instructed her to get a cab, and called the shelter to let them know she was coming.
That night I heard Aba speak to Ammi before bed, a mix of disgust and disappointment in his voice. “Who does she think she is? She thinks she has hundreds of leaders backing her, all these people who cheer for her on the Internet. But none of them will come to save her if someone tries to kill her tomorrow.” Ammi listened quietly, and so did I. My heart sank. The pain, the shame, and the hurt in Aba’s voice were like stabs of a knife. At that moment I wished I were married. Things would be so different if I had a husband who allowed me to do what I thought was right.
I tossed and turned that night, the sad eyes of Noreen and the angry eyes of my father in my mind. I finally dozed off around three or later, but then my phone rang. I saw Noreen’s number. My heart pounded. “Hello,” I said weakly.
“This is the police,” a voice boomed from Noreen’s phone. “This woman says she knows you, and she’s refusing to give us any information. You need to get down here this minute.”
My heart seemed to lose its place in my chest. It fluttered around in my whole body until I felt faint. If Aba found out about this call, everything I wanted to do for women would suffer. Oh God, please help me, I pleaded. You have helped me in everything. Please guide me now. What am I to do? I was a twenty-two-year-old girl from Balochistan. My family still struggled to overcome poverty and educate their children. My father’s circles kept questioning him about his daughter’s behavior and why he sent all his daughters to good schools when everyone in the tribe knew that respect and opportunities were for boys, not for girls.
And at the same time, in the midst of all his sacrifices, I had chased the dream of becoming an activist, not a doctor as he had wished. I had let myself be drawn to other people’s issues, to help others when I was the one who needed help, when our family needed help as much as anyone else did. Aba was right, one political blow would destroy what he had struggled to create for us—a little house, good schooling, and a life of hope and dreams to become somebodies.
For the first time I thought that in order to be an effective activist I would have to be rich, like many other activists I had met at conferences. They came from big bungalows, not tiny old flats and mud houses. Some had uncles who were police officers. Some had relatives who were lawyers. Their aunts ran businesses. They would be protected if something went wrong. They had a safety net that allowed them to take important risks. I had no power. My uncles lived on tops of mountains and drove fruit carts in villages. No one in my family could save me. And my actions constantly put them at risk.
Tears of defeat and frustration welled in my eyes. I remembered the time when Ali and I had sold pieces of wooden crates to fruit vendors in the market to bring home some money for that day’s meal. We were little children, but still Ali had felt embarrassed. I had seen the shame of poverty and the feeling of helplessness
rise up on his face as the vendor handed us a few rupees in exchange. Now that shame lived on my face. I hated my helplessness and my whole being.
And I hated myself in that next moment, when I whispered to the police officer on the other end of the line, “Sorry wrong number,” and turned off my phone.
I live with the shame of that moment to this day.
I COULDN’T LIVE IN KARACHI ANY longer. I had experienced too much stress recently and wanted to go somewhere comforting and far away and get some quiet time to recalibrate. I decided to go to Balochistan for a few days to check on our centers’ work. I loved my mountains and my people in Balochistan. They were my identity. Every time I left, I missed the place more. As the rental car rolled past the thunderous cliffs, valleys with tiny mud homes, small schools, children laughing and playing in the dirt, women fetching water, men working in fields, I kept wondering how to make things right with Aba.
While I was in Balochistan, I spent my days in the office. One evening I was typing on my laptop, responding to emails. The rest of the team had left around five, but the social mobilizer and the project manager were briefing me about a recent success story in one of the villages, where the tribal leader had invited the whole team for dinner, happily celebrating our efforts.
Around eight-thirty the phone rang. At the haveli, my aunts had started dinner and were waiting for me. I often stayed at work until nine or later, but I felt guilty about making them wait, so I quickly packed up my stuff. The three of us walked out. I got in the car, waved to them, and the driver pulled away.
We had just turned onto a small road lined with small mud houses when I heard a loud thud. I thought nothing of it until we pulled up at the haveli. A boy frantically rode up behind us on a bike, threw it down, and ran toward us out of breath. “Office has been attacked!” he said to me. A small crowd gathered, and I learned that the sound I had heard driving away was the explosion of a bomb.
It had exploded mere minutes after we left, not only destroying the office and one of our vehicles but injuring our security guard, who was rushed to the hospital. The bomb had been intended to hurt me. The bomber had failed only because I happened to leave early that day.
This news brought the same hollow sadness to my heart that I had felt when I heard the news of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in 2007. Not only had we lost an incredible woman leader that day, but many of the young girls who dreamed of becoming the next Benazir Bhutto were now going to be afraid. On the day the bomb destroyed our office, almost killing me and my team, I knew that many other initiatives would cease because of this news.
I wasn’t hungry anymore. I returned to Karachi right away.
In all my worry about what would happen next, I had not imagined the rage Aba would show me, and his fear. “You could have been killed, Khalida! And before that you almost died of a stroke!” he bellowed. “Your doctor told me to stop you from putting your health in danger any further, but you begged me, and so I didn’t stop you from your work. But then you went crazy and started rescuing people off the roads, getting into messes, creating messes, bringing my brother—who was the reason I left home—right next door to me! Why, Khalida? I ask you, why have you started this enmity with me?” The pain in his voice made my eyes blurry with tears. My whole body shook with guilt, embarrassment, and shame.
That night, back in Karachi, the pain between my father and me became impossible to contain. We had reached the point where we could no longer be under the same roof. And as if to read my thoughts, later that night, while my family pretended to sleep, he asked me:
“You must choose, Khalida, between me and this work. Which do you choose?”
The taxi arrived at two-thirty A.M. Filled with sweat and sadness, I dragged my bag down the stairs. The sound woke the watchman, who instantly came up to help me. I got into the taxi, the tears soaking my neck, my hair a mess, and my dress wrinkled. That night I was leaving everything behind.
I boarded a flight to San Francisco. When I arrived, with my mascara smeared and my hair disheveled, I was heavily interrogated by the Department of Homeland Security. My documents were jumbled, and I didn’t know how to answer their questions. I was confused. It was as if I had no words. I had come to the United States without a plan, hoping to meet with entrepreneurs and mentors and speak wherever people would listen.
Later that month Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (now a two-time Academy Award–winning documentary filmmaker), a beautiful and strong woman, personally invited me to speak with her at Google Zeitgeist in Phoenix, a conference that brings world leaders together. I stayed in a room that was bigger than our entire house in Karachi. On the first day of the event, I met Megan Smith, another incredible woman, a powerful leader, disruptively brilliant, and deeply driven. Until my last day in Phoenix, I didn’t realize that among her many roles was vice president of new business at Google. Megan introduced me to many people, including Joi Ito, the director of a place called the MIT Media Lab. Joi invited me to come to the Media Lab and share my experiences and ideas with students.
So later that November I flew to Boston to visit MIT. I didn’t know what I was in for until I stepped through the huge glass doors of the Media Lab and onto its shiny marble floors. The way the students spoke to one another, the large machines, the gorgeous hallways full of scientific books—instantly I was self-conscious. The mud walls of my haveli, the tall mountains of Balochistan, were many worlds away.
At MIT, I spoke to people about my experiences and about the need for the women of Sughar to have access to affordable technology solutions. Whenever I Skyped with my family, my father immediately left the room. Now, as I walked through the streets of Cambridge, as I met with students and professors, I again heard his words—that he regretted giving me my freedom.
If relations with my father were going to be broken anyway, I decided that I was going to do something dramatic that would deliberately upset him. I would take a Greyhound bus across the United States on my own, with no particular place to go, simply to meet people. This had to be the most rebellious thing I could ever do.
I had traveled by Greyhound once before, and it had been an exhilarating experience. Greyhound was nothing like the Jhalwan Express buses we had taken to Balochistan, which had jingle bells attached to the front, were painted in bright red, orange, yellow, and blue, had lights circling like Christmas decorations, and played Bollywood songs all through the night. I rode by bus from Boston to Boulder, then went on to Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, passing through at least thirteen states on my trip. I met all kinds of people: in the bus, on the seat next to me, at the stations, and on the streets. I met people who lived in poverty, people who didn’t have jobs, and people who had left their small towns for cities where they tried to make a new life for themselves, as my family had done. I tasted a green paste called guacamole. I was offered my first cigarette—and politely refused. I heard stories about abortion and its laws. I talked to all kinds of women on those buses who, like me, were trying to figure out their lives. On New Year’s Eve 2012, on a desolate road in Utah, I blasted Bollywood music from my phone, and bus passengers danced in the aisles.
My Greyhound trip opened my eyes to the reality that every country has its struggles, that the hardships Pakistanis face aren’t unique to our society—they exist everywhere, even in America. I discovered how diverse and beautiful America is. Only then, when my heart was open to joy again, was I prepared for what God planned for me next.
IN THE FIRST WEEK OF 2013, my Greyhound trip landed me in Los Angeles, a sprawling, beautiful city with big skies and busy people. I stayed with Deryn, the mother of my American roommate at the Unreasonable Institute. Deryn was an actor, a writer, a director, and a bona fide student of human behavior, as well as a health junkie. She had traveled a great deal and was very interested to meet me, a woman from Pakistan. She gave me my first taste of green tea without sugar. (I found it sharp
and bitter, like the medicine my grandmother would make us for stomach pains.) She asked me about village life in Balochistan, questions I answered mostly yes or no. She had framed pictures of her family members smiling and casually doing fun things. In our village, all the children would line up for photos, hold our arms stiff at our sides, and look straight at the camera without blinking, let alone smiling.
Deryn asked me if we exercised in our village. To prove to her that we villagers weren’t lazy, I said, “No, we climb mountains. In heels.” She was thrilled! She went running every morning, she told me, and asked me to join her.
I was not so thrilled. My rebellion against my family had never included the idea of getting healthy. A woman in my culture running called to mind a lady doing haphazard laps around a garden in chappals and a chiffon scarf flowing behind her like a cape. But Deryn would not be denied. She gave me a pair of shoes that I could only think of as boots (since anything that closed around your foot was considered a boot in my village). They had long, fat laces and looked like they should be worn by Olympians. I would later learn that Americans call them sneakers.
The next morning I changed into my least colorful dress. (I realized my multihued dresses made me look like a blob of rainbow in America.) I tied my scarf like a sash and put on the boots. The laces were so long, I had to tie them twice in knots and then shove the ends inside the boot itself. (I had not yet learned the “bunny ears” technique, which to this day I am still mastering.) Just as we were about to leave for the park, Deryn’s son called and asked her to babysit his infant son. Saved! I heaved a sigh of relief—until she suggested her neighbor could go running with me instead. I didn’t know what to do. She picked up her phone, and suddenly I was stuck again. Not wanting to be impolite, I put my hair in a ponytail and stepped outside in the boots.
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