20. Women in Sindh

My first day spent among the womenfolk of my Sangi family, Dec. 2014.

Prologue - Surprises

    Passing through security in the Karachi airport is different for a woman than it is for a man. This is true, I believe, in most airports in the Muslim world, but my first experience of it was in Karachi. Men place their bags on the nearest conveyer belt and continue through a typical open-frame metal detector. I think I attempted to heave my carry-on bag onto that belt at first, since there were very few people there and I had no reason to think this was a men-only line, but I was soon directed to a separate and less obvious line for ladies. The luggage conveyor belt looked the same as the other, but the metal detector leads directly toward a curtained cubicle, where all women must be privately inspected. A female security officer held open the curtain and beckoned to me as I passed through the metal detector. She was wearing a smart uniform that includes a dupatta over her hair, beneath the hat and tucked in place at the shoulders. I obeyed, and she swiftly closed the curtain behind me. In that moment I couldn’t help but think of the purdah, with all its complex associations. The women’s security check could perhaps be called a miniature purdah.

​     Inside that room, the woman used her wand device to check under my arms and around the edges of my clothes. Given the often loosely flowing garments worn in this part of the world, it is easy to see why this sort of check is prudent. But her attitude was gentler than what I’m used to from Western security checkers, who are trained on high alert and treat each passenger as a likely threat, whether they be men or women. But this woman treated me with a sort of collegiality, like a fellow woman, almost as if she were performing a service rather than forcing an inspection. She asked where I was flying, and smilingly sent me on my way. The whole thing took only a few seconds, and as I left I was surprised to think how pleasant it actually was. My first instinct had been to think it was a bit silly or maybe even degrading to be sent to a separate line and treated differently from male travelers, especially since it necessitates a longer procedure. But the effect was not a feeling of being belittled or made to feel second-class. As she lifted the curtain for me to leave the little room, I felt that I had actually been given a strange privilege. And along with that was a feeling of surprise which has accompanied so many of my discoveries about women’s lives in Sindh, which have so often defied my expectations. 

Camera-shy ladies in my ancestral village, Vikyasangi.

It has been in my mind since the beginning of this blog project to write an entry about women in Sindh. Questions about women’s lives, opportunities, hardships and advantages, have been asked me more than perhaps any other topic, and I have probably spent more time pondering these issues than any others. 

So why have I so long avoided the actual writing of it? I will admit to a certain degree of cowardice. The subject is simply so vast, so nuanced, and so sensitive. I think most people will agree with me that there is no simple answer to the question, “what are women’s lives like in Sindh?” Nor yet is there a clear answer to the question, “where are women better off: in America, or in Sindh?” I cringe at having to give a glib answer to these questions, and so I often avoid it--but the reason is not a lack of thought on the topic. The reason for my hesitance is that I care so much about the question, and it is so weighty, that I have never wanted to treat it superficially.

I will not be able to avoid speaking in some broad generalizations, but I will try to temper them with careful consideration. For the world is full of exceptions, and there are unexpected realities in all the different levels of society. In fact, the expectations placed upon women, especially daughters, have given me some of the greatest challenges during my time in Sindh. It has been a challenge not only to attempt to conform to these expectations, but often a challenge even to learn what they are. And what can be more embarrassing than to discover after the fact that you have behaved inappropriately, simply because you didn’t know what was expected? Sindhi people are forgiving of these errors, fortunately, and I think I have caused no major catastrophes.

People often pose the question to me of which country is better for women, Pakistan or the USA, as if this would be easy for me to answer in a few words. But I cannot make that call without deep pondering, and perhaps cannot make it at all. What is “better” perhaps comes down to the individual woman and her temperament. But there are two broad statements which I can make with confidence, and perhaps those will help me to build some more specific arguments. The first statement is that, as a woman, I unquestionably have more freedom of movement and of choice in the USA. For those who value freedom above all else, the USA is clearly the better place for a woman to live. I will speak more of what I mean by “freedom” in the paragraphs to come. But I must say first that, at least in my view, freedom is not the only blessing a woman may enjoy. And there are certain honors, luxuries, and beautiful relationships that can grow in a society like that of Sindh, and which do not thrive in America. And my second broad statement is that, to my mind, the societal construct concerning women and the segregation of women from men is the most powerful social force at work in Pakistan, for good and ill.
​

I. My own early life, for comparison
​

Feminine but fierce: practicing my "monster face" with my great-grandmother

Curiosity starts early.

Before I begin to describe women's lives in Sindh, so that my own perspective may be understood, I will first attempt to sketch out my own experience as an American female. Of course, there are gender inequalities in America just as there are all around the world. But my peculiar experience was remarkably free from those injustices. My parents never showed any preference between myself and my brother, even though he was the younger one and quite an adorable child as well. If I felt some additional challenges in my life, it seemed to me only because I was the first child, and more inclined to blaze my own trail than he was. I cannot recall ever feeling limited or belittled for being female. I can’t recall my work receiving less attention or praise than that of boys in my class at school. Throughout my education, from primary school onward to my years of graduate study, I considered myself on equal footing to my male peers, and never felt any resistance to that notion, nor any need to question it. 
​
I grew up during what seems now a golden age of enlightenment (the ‘80s and early ‘90s) when it comes to childhood, as reflected in our memories by the kind of optimistic, all-embracing public television programs that we watched and loved. We were taught to understand that all people are equal, that all races and religions can be friends, that girls have as much innate ability as boys and can do all the same work, especially mental work. I say “we were taught” these things--but that of course does not mean that these ideas were all realized. This is clearly not the case, or we would be living in the utopia that those children’s programs so hoped to create for us. It is painfully apparent in the present day that America is not a land where all can live as equals, and, poignantly, it is not yet a land where a woman can become President.

While I recognize that the country of my childhood could not have actually been an enlightenment utopia, nonetheless I cannot find, even after intense scrutiny, any evidence of gender inequality in my own life. This is very much to the credit of my parents and also my teachers, all of whom have been a blessing to me. It has come as a great surprise to me to hear from colleagues of mine, usually women I’ve known since college or later, that they have not always felt so blessed. Many women of my age have often felt belittled by their male co-workers, having to work doubly hard to achieve recognition, and often feeling subject to various degrees (sometimes very serious degrees) of sexual harassment. I have not yet been able to discover why I myself have never been subjected to these things, but I am at least one example of how it is possible (if not common) for a woman to live her life in the United States without feeling the sting of sexism.

I should disclose one other thing about myself, a sort of open secret now, which still causes me to blush in certain company. And that is that I am an old-fashioned sort of creature, and I have always harbored a secret wish to be a housewife. In my America, this was the kind of criminal wish that you do not utter aloud, for fear of scorn. Women were supposed to be piloting airplanes and running corporations and proving that they are the equals if not superiors of men, according to my American teachers. According to them, to become a housewife was equal to throwing away your life, and furthermore it was a betrayal of the feminist cause. I can recall a few times in my life when I revealed this secret wish to various individual women, usually of an older generation, and I saw the look of bewildered disappointment in their eyes. These older and distinguished women would be thinking, how can a talented and intelligent child, top of her class and headed for success in higher education, possibly harbor a desire as backward as that of being a housewife? In their minds, this must mean either that I was dangerously primitive or else simply lazy. In my own embarrassment, I would then usually laugh and say, “but of course I’ll become a professor” or something like that, and the women would breathe a sigh of relief. And I learned not to touch on to that heretical subject again, and simply pretend that I also was driven by the dream of Career and revered the Workforce just as they did. The truth is that I care a great deal about being active and creative, but the necessity of forming a “career” has never driven my ambitions.

---

At my most recent workplace, WHYY-FM Philadelphia, a few years ago.

And indeed I remained on that particular career path until my late twenties. After my undergraduate study, I went on to graduate school in the field of German Literature, with the expectation that I would indeed become a professor, as I always rather assumed I would. And I continued on that track with some success, though I soon realized that I do not actually have the right temperament to be a professor at all. I would have continued to the end of it nonetheless, had I not become very ill for several years. That illness forced me to reconsider the direction of my life, and to reapportion my energies towards things which truly mattered to me. I did not intend at that point to become a housewife, and so kept learning new skills (photography, video editing, new languages) and developing those I had already attained. I got a wonderful (though low-paying) job at the public media statin in Philadelphia, where I learned almost all that I know about the media, and I stayed there for a few years.

​Nonetheless, my old “housewife” dream has tended to prevail, and the work I feel driven to do has been outside of the recognized workforce. I still feel the pinch of embarrassment when trying to explain what I "do" to new people, because I don't have a proper career to name. Sometimes I claim I am a writer or a photographer, or that I do freelance creative work. These things are not untrue, but I wish it weren't necessary for me to prove myself by naming a career in which I toil forty hours per week. Even now, I often feel that I am a disappointment to the brave feminists who came before me. But I am following the path that is meaningful to me, and I've had the good fortune of being able to avoid the necessity of a regular job in order to travel, learn, and explore in my own way. 

---

II. Sindhi Women at Work

In the office of a hard-working Sindhi woman: my adi Shagufta Shah, during her tenure as Vice Principal of the Junior's Section at Public School Hyderabad.

Marvi braids a traditional Sindhi ornament into my hair for one of my brother's wedding festivities.

I indulged in lengthy narrative about myself in part so that the reader may understand the particular way in which I am able to fit myself into Sindhi culture as well as American. Though I bear the imprint of my American upbringing, I am by no means a “typical” American. I am sensitive to my particular angle of observation when I compare women’s lives in the two societies. Taking my own peculiarities into account, I hope that other Americans will be able to sense how Sindh might look from their different viewpoints; and I hope also that Sindhis will be able to see not only my specific perspective but get a sense of the range of other perspectives that my fellow Americans might have. Even as I try to make concrete observations, we cannot ever forget the vastness and variety of women’s experience; women are, after all, roughly half of the world’s population, and their stories will be as varied as their faces. But in order to come up with something meaningful to say, I have to seek out broad patterns and risk generalizations when necessary. And since I have said a lot about my own rather fraught relationship with the idea of “career,” I will offer here a few of my observations of how Sindhi women relate to their careers.

There are some women in Sindh today whose experiences are not so different from what I described of my own upbringing. They go to school, pursue higher education, and take respectable jobs, particularly in the fields of medicine and education. My sister Marvi, the eldest of the Sangi brood and closest to myself in age, gives me a good place to start. Marvi is just a couple of years younger than I am, and, like me, grew up as the first child of the family. Marvi is bright-eyed and beautiful, and unusually sunny in her disposition. All three of the Sangi daughters are beautiful, such that it is impossible to say which of them is the loveliest, but Marvi has a kind of classical beauty worthy of the heroine of Sindhi folklore who is her namesake. All of the Sangi daughters (and one of the sons) also inherited Papa’s interest in medicine, but Marvi has also been blessed with Papa’s apparently boundless energy -- the one trait which I cannot help but envy. Marvi has used that energy along with her natural intelligence much to her credit, pursuing medical school and becoming a surgeon. She was already performing surgeries regularly when I first met her in person -- which, as it happened, was on the occasion of her wedding. Since that time, Marvi has given birth to her first child, Areej, who is now one year old. Marvi took a short maternity leave but was soon regularly back on the surgical floor.
​
By American standards, Marvi is the kind of woman who would be respected by everyone: the kind of woman who has managed to “have it all,” in the popular phrase. The “all” in that phrase always refers to two specific things: a successful career and children. And having that “all” is just as difficult in Pakistan as it is in America—but I think it is worthwhile to note some of the ways in which it is different. There are some ways in which it is harder, or more stressful, for an American woman to accomplish that dual success. Because Americans usually live in smaller family units, they have to be far more self-sufficient. When Marvi goes to work (and her husband is also at work), Marvi has many willing family members with whom to leave little Areej, including two full sets of grandparents. Many American mothers have no available family members to call upon at all, and thus have to pay high costs to babysitters or daycare organizations. Furthermore, a Pakistani woman of Marvi’s general social class will always have household help of one kind or another: servants, sweepers, housekeepers are standard and even taken for granted. This is not to say that a woman is entirely relieved of housework, but help is always at hand. By contrast, the American version of Marvi would come home from her surgery, likely picking up her child from the daycare, and then face all the work of cooking and cleaning in the evening ahead of her. There is no concept of a ‘sweeper’ in America, nor of a massi who comes to do your laundry. Fortunately, American husbands are becoming more and more adapted to helping out with those household tasks. But when both partners work full-time jobs, as many do (including my own parents), their lives become very full of required activities and leave very little time to relax.

But I do not mean to suggest that Marvi has had a uniformly easier life than her imaginary American counterpart. There are some ways in which she has been fortunate, but she has had an altogether different set of restrictions and expectations upon her, through which she has risen on her own strengths. Her lifelong home has been Larkana, in Upper Sindh -- and I think it is a recognized truth that Sindh becomes more and more conservative as you go northward, or inward, from cosmopolitan Karachi on the southern coast. In order to make such strides as she has done, in a place like Larkana, it is vital to have the support of an open-minded family, and to be more specific, an open-minded father. This is one of the many ways in which Papa Saeed is a blessing, to all his children, but especially to his daughters. For although his daughters must still follow many Sindhi conventions (and I will discuss them more later on), Papa has a genuine respect for women and he has dedicated himself to educating all his children equally and broadly. Marvi would never have felt any pressure from him to remain hidden away at home. Perhaps some of those pressures could have reached her from more distant parts of the family, but when it comes to the power dynamic of a Sindhi household, there is no force more powerful than the father. A girl’s greatest fortune or misfortune in Sindh lies in the attitude of that one man.
​
A supportive father is the necessary prerequisite for a woman’s success in Sindh, but it is not a guarantee in itself. A Sindhi woman must still prove herself capable in her chosen field, as she would in any other country, and additionally she must adapt herself to local attitudes around what women should and shouldn’t do, and learn which boundaries are firmer than others. To pick one example: Marvi is one of only a few women in Larkana who know how to drive, and who have the boldness of spirit to do it. She does not fear any harm coming to her when driving alone, particularly because she is known in the city—known all the more for being that one of Dr. Saeed sahib’s daughters who knows how to drive. Marvi’s blithe spirit takes well to such streets, but many other women in her place would not be so bold. There is nothing illegal about a woman driving in Sindh, and nothing even especially discouraged about it. The thing that is unusual is that it requires a woman to be seen. It has taken me quite a long time to come to understand the complex sensitivities in Sindhi society around the visibility of women—this again is the idea of purdah, with all its repercussions. Having hinted at that here, I will save the topic of a woman’s visibility until a little later. But my point for the moment is that a woman not only has to be given the opportunity (to drive, for example), but she must also have the extra gumption to take up the challenge, against significant odds, if she wants to succeed.

---

Erum Abbasi, an inspiring Sindhi-American.

Before I leave the topic of women’s careers, I will share another story, which begins in a similar place but follows a very different path. This is the story of Erum Abbasi, who is another beautiful young woman from Upper Sindh, almost exactly the same age as my sister Marvi. I had the good fortune of meeting Erum at a convention of SANA (the Sindhi Association of North America), at which she was assigned as my roommate. I might have been a little bit annoyed when I first heard I would have a roommate, but her friendliness and openness won me over instantly, and I knew that being given a roommate in this case meant being given a blessing. I didn’t get a chance to ask her about her own history until our time there was nearly over, but when I did ask, I was surprised to learn how much grief and hardship there had been in the life of this buoyant, youthful woman. I was so impressed with her resilience and determination that I asked her at the time if I could share her story with others on social media; now again she comes to mind as an exemplar of the courage of a successful Sindhi woman.

​Erum was born and raised near Larkana, and she was also blessed with a progressive and forward-thinking father who supported the education of all his children. But Erum’s course of study was disrupted during her teen years, when her father died and her mother remarried, leaving Erum and her eight siblings largely on their own. But Erum was determined to make something of her life. And her father’s generosity came to bless her again in an unexpected way, in the form of a cousin whom Erum’s father had helped at an earlier stage in his life; remembering that kindness, and seeing Erum’s predicament, this cousin now stepped forward to help her. Some years earlier, he had already emigrated to the US, and had become a successful businessman; now he was in a position to help Erum to make the same move.

Erum could speak almost no English at the time when she arrived in Houston, and she had completed very little education. Out of prudence, she accepted the marriage proposal of a family friend, though she was still very young. But she also enrolled in English language classes, with her husband’s approval. I have thus far neglected to mention the second great fortune that a Sindhi woman needs to have if she wants a life outside of her home: which is a supportive husband. The man Erum had married was indeed such a husband, and even if she had perhaps come into the marriage more out of practicality than love, she found in him a loving partner and a genuine heart.

Tragedy struck Erum a second time, however, when her husband was murdered during a robbery at the store where he worked—only a year into their marriage. It was a sudden and senseless act of violence that naturally sent Erum and her entire community into shock. But after some time to heal and regain her footing, Erum found that she had not lost her motivation to keep learning and build a life for herself. At this point, Erum had been robbed of both of those precious bearers of good fortune, her father and her husband. But she also was in her new country, where those two benefactors are not essential to a woman’s success. And Erum, in any case, is an unstoppable force of energy and positivity. She continued to improve her English—she is now fluent—and she enrolled in nursing school. Now, several years later, she works as a medical assistant and has achieved US citizenship. She maintains her Sindhi spirit of friendliness and hospitality, but she has also adapted herself to American ideas of work and freedom. She is a credit to both communities—Sindhi and American—and an inspiration for all.


It should be clear from my writing, but nonetheless I will make it explicit, that I do not compare these stories with any intention of rating the “success” of any one woman higher or lower than another. In fact, I am only willing to use the word “success” at all with the understanding that it is a highly flexible and personal idea. I compare these stories to give an illustration of the different forces of influence and opportunity that arise in these two different societies. These two women and others I will mention here are ones who have impressed me in some way, with their positive will and their capacity for growing and learning. And the women of Sindh have impressed me deeply since I first discovered their world; I have no desire to judge them, but merely to understand them, and to evaluate in some sense the societal struggles they face.
​
But although I do not choose to rank a person’s success by any set metric, I have observed that Sindhi society (and perhaps Indo-Pakistani society at large) is very concerned with rank and rankings. Of course, rank and influence play a role in all organized societies, but the American culture in which I was raised has tried to blur lines of rank, or at least to dissociate rankings from any idea of personal worth. To put it differently, the unspoken hierarchies of social life are often considered just as important as any professional rankings, and sometimes the two systems compete with one another—especially for women. We tend to downplay our own accomplishments for the purpose of being liked, of setting others at ease. But the opposite is generally the case in Sindh. Rank is always visible, and one always knows one’s position in the structure of power, whether at work or at home. I would hypothesize that reverence for rank is helpful for working women, because it removes some of the social pressure of making oneself pleasant all the time. An American woman feels pressured to be both authoritative and likable (which often means: self-effacing) in the workplace, even though those two forces might be in irresolvable opposition to one another. A Sindhi woman is expected to exercise the power of her rank, whatever that may be, and not be apologetic for it. The frequent use of formal titles like “madam” can make it easier for a woman to carry out her work without worrying constantly about whether she is being friendly. “Madam” is not expected to be likable in the workplace in the same way that, say, “Emily” might be. And therefore Madam can simply focus on her work. At the same time, Madam might feel lonely in her post, and have to steel herself in ways that Emily would not have to do among her jocular first-name-basis colleagues. So while the formality of rank might make work simpler for a Sindhi woman, this does not necessarily mean that she will be happier. For every way in which the two societies differ, there is a trade-off, and I am hard-pressed to choose the better option.

---

III. Outside of work: blessings and hinderances

Ammi Saeeda dancing at my sister Moomal's Mehandi ceremony.

An "Extreme Pakistani Makeover" at a Larkana salon: the only time in my life when I've fully straightened my hair or worn false eyelashes.

​There is much more I could say about the working lives of women in Sindh; there are other professions in which I have observed them in action, there are other difficulties I have seen them surmount, other attitudes that have surprised me. But work is not the only thing that defines a woman’s experience, even in the most industrialized society. Many of the aspects of women’s lives that have intrigued me the most have nothing to do with work and careers. And although I believe genuinely that women from all around the world could easily sympathize with one another on the level of the heart, there is no denying the vast differences in our actual activities.

Broadly speaking, the range of activities women are expected to be involved in is narrower in Sindh, at least in my own experience, than it is in the USA. In my own American life, at least, there is no limit to the range of activities women can choose for themselves. If I were to poll a group of my female friends here, I might find that one likes to spend her evenings dancing, another skydiving, another painting, another hosting parties, another reading quietly at home and not seeing anyone at all. Or perhaps one woman would like to do each of those things on successive evenings. And none of those findings would be remotely surprising. But I would be quite surprised if I found a Sindhi woman should answer the question in those ways—with the exception of the “hosting parties” option.

To go straight to the heart of the matter, it is my experience that Sindhi women are expected to spend their free time socializing with one another, and that there is relatively little variety in the way in which this is done. I don’t mean to say that no Sindhi women have other interests—I do have wonderful female friends in Sindh who are painters and poets and novelists, and who like to spend their free time in those pursuits. But I think those women are the ones who go against the grain. Most Sindhi women I know seem quite happy in their routine of social get-togethers. But this is no simple thing—this kind of socializing is not the same as being idle. On the contrary: women’s socializing has developed an elaborate culture with its own customs and expectations, which can be quite consuming.

Of these elements of social life, the ritual of dressing up and beautifying oneself is probably the most elaborate and time-consuming. And this is something that has simultaneously delighted my own girlish heart and also taken some difficult adjusting for me during my time in Sindh. Western women have abandoned many of the complexities of what would have been called a lady’s “toilet” in earlier centuries: our fashion has become simpler (though not less expensive), and we tend to wear muted colors and avoid bold “fashion statements.” A woman might treat herself to a spa weekend or a manicure for a special occasion, but she might just as likely avoid makeup in general and feel uncomfortable in formal occasions when she is expected to dress up. But even among those women who enjoy wearing dresses and doing up their hair, they don’t usually find many occasions in their lives to wear a gown, and even fewer occasions to wear a gown sparkling with gems or heavy with embroidery. If you aren’t a teenager going to your high school prom dance, or a Hollywood actress on the red carpet, such glamorous clothing is basically a thing of the imagination. But Sindh (and surely many parts of South Asia) is a place where those girlish fantasies are a reality—indeed, a commonplace. I love my Pakistani clothes and I enjoy wearing them here in America, where they always receive a warm welcome as well as a few raised eyebrows. But here in the States I mostly wear the simplest of my Asian clothes, generally the cotton shalwar-qameezes intended for everyday use. They might bear a bit of traditional embroidery or else a modern-style print, but these are usually the day-time dresses that my Sindhi family would consider too simple for an evening out, even among friends. Seen with American eyes, however, these simple suits are striking and elegant, and almost always greeted with exclamations of “how fancy!” I sometimes explain to American friends that in fact these are my simple clothes, and that my “dress-up” outfits are a thing of an altogether different breed. Those true gown-like outfits are dense with beads and embroidery, highly layered, sparkling, and far too magnificent for almost any occasion that I can find here in the States.

There are of course gradations of elegance in Sindh as well, which accord with the importance of the occasion as well as the amount of money a given lady has at her disposal.  (Incidentally, the word “lady” is considered old-fashioned in America, and perhaps even offensive in some contexts, because it suggests limitations upon women’s behavior. But the word is so appropriate in a Sindhi context that it is unavoidable.) My finest outfits are almost all the ones that were given to me for the purpose of attending weddings—and having had three siblings recently married means that I have been the grateful recipient of several elaborate gowns. But there is a vast array of levels of opulence when it comes to Pakistani clothing, and a subtle sense of which level of glamor is appropriate to what occasion, all governed essentially by social class. I myself am not a good judge of class, but would venture to guess that my Sangi family falls in the upper-middle class; they are very comfortable and Papa can provide many luxuries far above what the many impoverished Pakistanis can afford, and yet there are people far more wealthy as well, whose circles have occasionally but rarely intersected with my own.

---

Glamor is not just a fantasy but a favorite pastime in Sindh.

It has been quite challenging enough for me to try to learn the dressing conventions of our own social class, whatever we should choose to call it. I had to be taught, for example, that I should always change into something nice for evening visits, even among close family friends. And I had to learn what is meant by that “something nice,” because, being then a typical American, even the simplest of my Pakistani outfits seemed very nice indeed to me. But my Sangi mother (Ammi) and my sisters have guided me lovingly along the way. It amazes me to think back to my first trip to Sindh, at which point I owned only two or three of the simpler day-time dresses and two somewhat fancier ones—almost all of which had been early gifts to me from my Sangi family. Since then I have been given so many of these dresses for all occasions that I have had to buy myself a new and enormous wardrobe to house them all. But two short years ago they were still new to me.

Only after I had observed Pakistani women at length did I come to realize the significance that the dupatta bears among them, and that it is a societal convention much more than a religious one. The dupatta is a symbol of respect that she pays to her society, including to her own family. From her mid-teen years onward, a woman will almost never be seen without her dupatta, and if she does abandon it, it will certainly be noticed and commented upon. It is a mark of a woman’s dignity, whether she chooses to wear it over her head or only on her shoulders. The religious term for a Muslim woman’s head-covering is of course hijab, and many women do use their dupattas for the purpose of hijab. But this is a question of individual intention: a dupatta is always a societal convention, but whether it is additionally a religious statement, and to what degree, comes down to the individual woman’s beliefs. As a hijab, the dupatta can suffice, but many religious women choose to wear additional head-coverings, often the stretchier cloths wrapped tighter around the head, which cover all the hair and don’t have the dupatta’s tendency of slipping off. But even a woman with relatively little concern for hijab as a religious requirement will ensure that her dupatta is at least on her shoulders, because of the meaning that society has attached to it. I should clarify that I have never met any women in Sindh who openly disregard religion. The variety of outlooks to which I refer has to do with individual interpretations of the religion, and the meaning and requirements of the concept of hijab. In any case, I mostly mean to distinguish the dupatta from the hijab as separate concepts, which occasionally overlap in their function.
​
For me personally, however, the most helpful encouragement towards wearing the dupatta did indeed come from the religious sphere. On one of my first days in Sindh, as I was sitting next to my Ammi during a family gathering at our in-law’s home, I felt Ammi reach her arm around me for a moment, grasping gently at something. She had pulled my dupatta up from my shoulders and over my head. I looked at her with what must have been large, questioning eyes, and she gestured lightly towards the window, from which I now perceived we could hear a chanting voice. “Azaan,” she said, softly and pleasantly. There was not the slightest sense of rebuke in her tone; she was gently shepherding her new child into the fold of tradition. And so I came to learn the custom of covering my head for the call to prayer, every time it is heard. And how can one do this if one is not ready with a dupatta at least about the shoulders? Since that day I have been careful to have a dupatta at all times, and to cover my head whenever I hear those tones of prayer, regardless of what company I’m in. I do this, not out of coercion, but out of love. It is always a moment of peace, and a time for me in which the dupatta fulfills its purpose. For those moments, I don’t think of it as a piece of cloth disturbing me by slipping off and getting tangled, but like something that is a part of me, and something that binds me to the land and people I have come to love.

With Ammi Saeeda, on that day and in the same place where she lifted my dupatta for Azaan.

Even the poorest girls add beauty to Sindh.

​But that little rhapsody on the theme of dupatta has taken me away from the topic at hand, which was the nature of women’s social interactions in Sindh. So I would like to loop my thread back around to that topic in order to take it in a different direction. I have mentioned above that the social culture among Sindhi women revolves largely around dressing up and gathering together. The topics of conversation often cycle around these same subjects of shopping and dressing, admiring of cloths and embroideries, et cetera. I have sometimes been amazed at how extensively these topics can be discussed among women; there is an endless flow of interest in colors of lipstick, facial cleansers, jewelry, henna patterns, and on and on. I myself am always happy to admire others and be admired, but beyond that I don’t find either beauty products or shopping to be gripping subjects of discourse. Nonetheless, I don’t want to discount the fascination of Sindhi women with clothes and jewels as a purely frivolous thing. They take it too seriously for me to consider it that way. In these elegant draperies and sparkling baubles there is some more essential expression of the pleasures of life. And by decorating themselves in bright and glimmering colors, they add beauty to the entire landscape.

Beauty itself is something inextricable from the idea of “woman” in Sindh, and this should not be confused with vanity or frivolity. And it is not restricted to those who have been blessed with natural beauty: this is a more egalitarian concept. I would go so far as to say that beauty in Sindh is a right, shared by all women. Just as it is not restricted to the naturally beautiful, it is also not restricted to the wealthy classes, even though they have the means to indulge in it more extravagantly. Beauty is something that women participate in all the way down to the poorest and most deprived communities. And while the women of the upper classes can deck themselves out as glamorously as any movie star, the women of the lower classes can sometimes take on a beauty that is even more magnificent, in their ancient and traditional styles. I have visited many villages and nomadic settlements, some of them in states of wretched poverty, but in each one I find beautiful women, draped in bright color. Beauty is a right with no boundaries. No girl is too young, no woman too old to decorate herself: even toddlers wear jewelry and line their dark eyes with kajal, and care-worn great-grandmothers, should they wish it, may do the same. Their simplest kurtas of a village girl will always be graced with some hint of embroidery, and for special occasions rural women wear dresses embellished with traditional craftwork, interwoven with mirror tiles and intricate needlework, which can stand proudly beside any rich woman’s gown.  

---

Veiled beauty of Thar.

The averted gaze.

The beauty of rural Sindhi women is something close to my heart, because it was one of my first inspirations to study Sindhi culture on the whole. The sight of the rural women of the Thar desert genuinely changed my life. Back in 2011, a few months after having met my first Sindhi friend by coincidence on Facebook (see this post), I happened to see a photograph in my newsfeed of a reporter talking with villagers who had been displaced from their homes by flooding of the river Indus. Although their extreme poverty was unmistakable, the women of the photograph had a certain grace about them that fascinated me. They wore bright colors and encircled their arms with thick white bangles all the way up to the shoulders. Their faces, sun-darkened and strong, had a timeless quality that defies age, simultaneously young and ancient, and their features were clear and noble. To my eyes, these impoverished women seemed somehow to be queens of the earth.

I had my first chance to see these women in person during my visit of November 2015, when I traveled with buddies to the Thari capital of Mithi and a couple of nearby villages. And my first sight of a Thari village was even more enchanting than I expected. We arrived just as the sun was setting and a strange evening glow was settling upon those curving clay walls which seem to rise up organically out of the desert sand. Strolling among those sandy passages and around odd corners were the Thari peacocks, who seemed to be citizens of the village as much as any human inhabitant. And there were the Thari women, with their colored draperies, and their sleeves made of bangles, and the graceful postures with which they carry pots, just as they must have done for hundreds if not thousands of years. One of the younger women, an especially lovely one, invited me to sit on a woven mat inside her home, which was a circular hut with clay walls and a thatched roof, the classic Thari village style. I took her photo, but only after obtaining her husband’s permission, which he might just as easily have withheld. She herself was at first shy of the camera, but then she relented and gave me a radiant smile, which I captured as quickly as I could.

That issue of the husband’s permission touches upon something very sensitive and essential for the understanding of women’s roles in any rung of Sindhi society. There will always be exceptions to the rule, but broad trends can be observed according to economic status and cultural practice, and for this we can visualize a spectrum of relative freedoms and restrictions. On the one side of the spectrum, wealthy urban women can mostly expect a lifestyle that would rival any Western woman’s in freedom of choice and independent, secular thinking. The women of Thari villages, by contrast, occupy the opposite end of the spectrum. They are not only at the bottom of the economic scale, but also bound by especially powerful cultural traditions which can be traced back many centuries, back even to the time of the great Sindhi legends. This is a culture in which male power and ownership of female bodies is of extreme importance, and which has developed elaborate codes of ethics and behavior to suit that power. 
​
In the heart of this ancient Thari culture, you will see women carefully guarding their faces at all times, holding up their long veils and shading their eyes whenever in the presence of men or strangers. This restriction is not loosened even within the home; a woman must guard herself from any man who is not her husband or her brother. One sight that made a particular impression on me was a woman sitting outside of her hut, a few yards away from me, holding her bright blue veil so that it completely concealed her face. Her arms, which appeared slim and strong underneath her sheath of white bangles, were my only clue that she was young. Naz, one of my dear buddies who had taken me on this Thari voyage, motioned toward her discreetly and asked me quietly if I knew why that woman was sitting in that posture. “It’s because,” he explained, her father-in-law is standing over in that direction, and she has to be sure that even he does not see her face.”

Once again it is important to remember that these customs are primarily cultural, and only secondarily or incidentally religious. The Western mind has come to associate the idea of “purdah” and veiling of women almost entirely with Islam, but that assumption is misleading in many cases. The people of Thar are a good example, because much of Thar is not Muslim at all, but Hindu. The city of Mithi, the capital of the Tharparkar district, is roughly 80% Hindu. The desert itself is contiguous with Rajasthan on the Indian side of the border, and the culture is the same on both sides of the border, which was imposed at the time of Partition. Thus if the societal traditions in this region seem to fit onto the same spectrum as the province in general, it cannot be said that Islam or any specific religion is the predominant force at work. Religions do play into the ways in which these traditions evolve, no doubt, but much of what determines a woman’s lifestyle in Sindh comes from cultural tradition and not religious doctrine.

If the women of rural Thar stand on one extreme side of the societal spectrum and the wealthy urbanites on the other extreme, the next question to ask is where do the others fall in between, and how is the total population distributed along the way. I am not a sociologist and cannot pretend to offer any real data on the topic, nor am I qualified to draw serious conclusions. I can only share what I have observed and point to patterns as best as I can. But I can suggest with some confidence that the distribution is weighted heavily on the “conservative” side, and that the numbers dwindle rapidly approaching the “progressive” side of this scale. 
​
I would place my own Sangi family not far beyond the center point on this scale—on the progressive side, but still heavily influenced by conservative tradition. Women in my family are respected and allowed to work and follow their own dreams, but they must still behave as ladies in Sindhi society must do. The rules they must follow are not always explicit, and they are not always iron-clad, but they are known. Most of these rules concern what kind of interactions are appropriate with non-mahram males—that is, men and boys who are not your immediate family members. Dating is not allowed before marriage, and even after an engagement it is forbidden for the fiancés to spend time alone together. Women are not required to cover their heads, but they always do cover anyway when they are out of the house, and sometimes even at home. There are strict protocols around who can give invitations for social gatherings if women are involved, for example, if a woman is among those who are invited, it is essential that the lady of the inviting house be present at the gathering, and preferably all the daughters and other women of the house should attend, too. Then, it is common for the women and men to socialize in separate rooms, eat dinner separately, and remain separate, perhaps only to greet one another briefly in a group before the bidding farewell. I have attended some get-togethers with my Sangi family in which I was led away with the women without even seeing the men of the gathering, and did not lay eyes on the master of the house or any other male during the entire evening. ​

---

This kind of segregation of the sexes, I must admit, is unpleasant to me, and still grates against my personal sensibilities even now. Indeed, there have been many lessons of Sindhi cultural behavior that I have learned only unwillingly and with a goodly amount of complaining. I cannot help but wish, when I am in Sindh, for certain liberties that I am accustomed to in the America. And there are ways in which I will always be a rebellious Sindhiyani, though I am careful not to transgress the cultural expectations in any flagrant way. When one is used to freedom, and has been not only allowed but expected to blaze her own trail in life, it can be deeply jarring to come to a place where the choices are limited, where a woman does not make decisions on her own but in conjunction with family. My American parents can attest that I have always been a willful person, and that even as a very small child I was always striving for control. As a little toddler I was known to refuse help by proclaiming, “self self self!”—indicating that I was very much capable of doing whatever it was by myself, thank you very much. Who would have guessed that this little hard-headed self-driven child would grow up and become a daughter of Sindh?

​But there are two sides to everything, and while I lose much of my freedom when I come to Sindh, I gain many other blessings in its place. I have been made to feel, and I genuinely believe, that my family and friends keep such close watch over me because they truly love me. There is an affection toward women that is deep and true; women genuinely are the pride and beauty of the home and of the society. There is something extraordinary in being treated like a precious gem. When one gains freedom, one necessarily loses protection in equal measure. Western society ranks freedom so highly that any infringement upon it is assumed to be purely negative. I am Western enough (or perhaps simply willful enough) at my core that I insist upon a certain amount of freedom no matter where I am. But, perhaps paradoxically, I have come to love being protected as well. There is such grace, such harmony, in following in step with tradition. I would not advocate that Sindh should become Westernized, because then all this traditional beauty would be lost.

These are not easy thoughts to write down, because contradictions arise at every turn. While I praise the beauty of tradition, there are still far too many women in Sindh who become sacrifices to those same traditions, and not merely in theory, but in the nightmarish reality of honor killings. This has happened in my own Sangi ancestral village, and it can happen in more urban settings as well. It happens when a woman is accused of choosing a level of “freedom” that makes her, in her family’s eyes, no longer worthy of the “protection” which I have so admired. Honor killings and the mindset that surrounds them are not foreign influences in Sindh; they are endemic and have grown out of the same culture that I love and admire. Even in the course of days during which I have been writing this entry, I have read news from Thar reporting that a man had strangled his 20-year-old wife to death because he had “suspicions about her character.” It would be unforgivable to exclude these issues from my understanding of women’s lives in Sindh. They are the constant shadow at the periphery of all Sindhi women’s lives, against which all must guard themselves. And some women are unfortunate enough to be born in the dark heart of that shadow, and to live according to its dictates or face the consequences.

We must recognize this shadow, but it does not need to be the primary means of judging the society. All societies have their shadows, dark and menacing, no matter how progressive they appear. The darker and more oppressive impulses of my own country are currently boiling to the surface for all the world to see. And in any case, judgment is not at the heart of what I feel called to do. I travel to Sindh in order to learn, to appreciate, to discover differences and try to understand the forces which drive them. Criticism is crucial, of course, in order to effect positive change in society, and criticism involves judgment. But judgment must come from understanding if it is to be productive. The world is saturated with the kinds of judgments that come from hasty opinion, the kind which is likely to do more harm than good. I would like to tilt the balance in the other direction. There is joy in understanding. There is peace in understanding. Being cautious in judgment, in my belief, is not at all akin to cowardice. It is more akin to grace.

Coming to Sindh has taught me to be cautious in judgment, repeatedly surprising me by unravelling threads of prejudice I wouldn’t have even identified in myself. That strange feeling of courtesy and graciousness that I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, which was produced at a place I had expected to be the coldest and harshest of all: airport security. Experiencing that tiny moment of “purdah”, a veil was in fact lifted from my thinking. In moments like this, though they seem insignificant, important connections of the heart can be made. Another veil was unexpectedly lifted in my mind  in my papa’s cardiology clinic, when a pair of ladies wearing full burqas walked into the room. I didn’t realize how much of a negative impression I had previously held of the burqa until I saw these two ladies lift their veils and, in doing so, reveal the gentlest, most maternal faces I could imagine. Why should I be surprised? What could I have been expecting? Western minds might expect there to be something frightful under a burqa, a hardened face of an oppressed woman suspicious of the world. In this moment in Papa’s clinic, I was already familiar enough with Muslim society to have put aside such stereotypes. Wasn’t I? I had thought myself already immune to any foolish assumption about who might be beneath a burqa—but in this moment I knew I had been wrong. If I had truly been free of assumptions, then their gentle and friendly faces could not possibly have surprised me. When Papa introduced me to these two ladies, they embraced me as if I were their own daughter. The answer to the question of what is underneath a burqa was not only something non-threatening, but something filled with love. Moments like this can have a dizzying effect, as perspectives within the mind shift suddenly. But it is a beautiful kind of dizziness.

---