She wanted to be the part of high society attention of the most powerful man of Punjab and did everything for it. This was a trailblazing book that celebrated a woman's courage to get out of a bad marriage and stand up for herself. Tehmina’s mortification became tenfold when her own younger sister Adila fell in a liaison with Mustafa. 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. Durrani's second book, A Mirror to the Blind, is the biography of Abdul Sattar Edhi, [21] who was Pakistan's highly decorated social worker.

Its real in the sense that as you keep reading, you eventually fall under its spell, which is perhaps intentional on the Author's part, she does try too hard to justify her actions (and reactions) throughout the book. Victim blaming is a pretty common theme running through most of these critics’ arguments: Didn’t Durrani already know he was an abusive man? You know what they say behaviourism and how relationships are built with other people can be determined by our early relations with our parents. She is particularly critical of Mustafa Khar as he is shown as playboy,ruthless political animal and some one who corrupts her younger sister, a 16 year old (whom he later marries after divorcing Miss Durrani, not before making her a woman in the due process, quite a scandal). This is a woman who selfishly conducted an affair with a married man while she was at the time married to a good Muslim husband.There's a lot of politics involved in the book which often made me feel that I was reading Khar's biography instead. 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. Unlike Tasleema Nasrin, Durrani does not challenge the Islamic point of view, instead she challenges male chauvinism in a feudal and intolerant society.

She continuously strived to justify her choices rather than telling the story with complete honesty. I am not saying anything written in this book is wrong because I very well belong to the same society. Hypocrisy, egoism, cruelty, nepotism, immorality, tyranny - these are the themes that dominate this book and its characters, the author included. I think everyone should definitely read it once, and then engage in a long, healthy debate about all of the things that surround it. I suppose I ought to have known that this story, tragic though it may be, would not be the insightful commentary on Pakistan's patriarchal feudal system I'm hoping for.

Sir Liaqat Hyat Khan's brother, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, was a pre-1947 Punjab Premier, a statesman and leader. All of these women are mostly insignificant except for the fact that they caught Khar’s eye, and his spur of the eye decision to marry them resulted in their subsequent signing off of all their power to a man who was a true description of the term feudal lord. Is anyone surprised that she is now married to another "Lion of Punjab", and no less a feudal lord, Shahbaz Sharif? But, whether the creation of imagination or a patch from reality, if Mustafa Khar is as how this text has analysed him, I am throughly hurt. Tehmina's story, adapted now for western readers, provides extraordinary insights into the vulnerable position of women caught in the complex web of Muslim society.

Tehmina suffers rejection from her mother during childhood, marries her first `love', has a daughter, then has an affair with Mustafa Khar. Were her 'Islamic prayers' not disturbed when she broke her own home and the heart of her first husband Anees? My Feudal Lord”, is a brave attempt on part of Tehmina Durrani to break free from our societies double standards towards women. When she married Mustafa Khar, one of Pakistan's most eminent political figures, she continued to move in the best circles, and learned to keep up the public façade as a glamorous, cultivated wife, and mother of four children. 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.Caught in the web of family drama and the prospect of social stigma Tehmina endured for a long while, but there comes a point when enough is enough! It’s impossible to not encounter deeply held patriarchal beliefs when discussing this book in public. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. She is tormented by mental childhood scars and the fact that her mother favoured her lighter skinned sisters.

For him, wives were perfectly acceptable venues for expressing his anger, laying his hands on, exerting control over. But in the biggest irony of all,after leaving Khar,Tehmina Durrani got married to Nawaz Sharif's brother,Shahbaz Sharif ! She started hating her first husband whom she loved, when she saw a powerful charming man, and started developing excuses to leave him, that time she found anees powerless and dumb. In private, however, the story-book romance of the most talked-about couple in Pakistan rapidly turned sour.

Which is why one of the reasons I liked reading this book was the historical perspective it provided. However, circa 2016, Durrani hopped on to twitter to throw soft-focussed light on CM Sharif's 'achievements in governance' (mentioning none of the violent, regressive and polarizing legacies of his tenure), tout plausible deniability on CM Sharif's 'ill-begotten wealth', and lambast his PM brother for that very wealth.