Word: fakhra
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...anyone could empathize with Fakhra, it was Durrani. She was the sixth wife of the Lion of the Punjab. She helped raise Bilal Khar, Fakhra's husband, and, at age 36, the younger Khar still refers to her as "Mummy." Durrani detailed her life with the Khars in a 1991 autobiography called My Feudal Lord, and it is a hair-raising tale. The elder Khar beat Durrani, kidnapped their children, had a rip-roaring affair with her youngest sister and once forced Durrani to strip naked when she disobeyed his orders. Domestic abuse is routinely swept under the carpet...
Durrani had heard of Fakhra's plight shortly after the acid attack, but was reluctant to interfere. "I never wanted to get involved with this family again," she says. But after meeting Fakhra, she found it impossible to turn her back?especially after recalling how Mustafa Khar had threatened to disfigure her with acid years before. "Fakhra," she says, "could have been...
...result, she has rejoined the battle against the Khars. After Fakhra moved into Durrani's house, the younger Khar began making daily threats over the telephone. "First I will shoot your mother in the knees with a 12-bore gun so she crawls," Khar told Durrani's son Ali, his half-brother. "She's become too used to standing up. No one will be able to catch me." Given the power of the Khar family, that is probably true. In their ancestral village of Kot Addu, Durrani explains in My Feudal Lord, "the Khars were the law." Fakhra's family...
Bringing acid attackers like Bilal Khar to trial is Durrani's long-term goal. Her immediate concern has been to restore a semblance of physical normality to Fakhra?which will take at least three years and an estimated 30 operations, after which her face and upper body should be restored. When she received a courage award in April from the Milan-based Sant'Angelica cosmetics firm, Durrani brought Fakhra's case to the company's attention and it offered to underwrite the cost of her reconstructive surgery. The next challenge was to procure a national ID card for Fakhra...
...Fakhra's pain may never cease. She is in Italy awaiting surgery, learning to speak Italian and getting used to a foreign land that will be her home for the foreseeable future. "I not only have hope," she says, "but I also have strength." Durrani hopes when Fakhra is ready to return home, she can do so in safety. One thing she does not tolerate is Fakhra's shunning of mirrors. "I made her remove her veil and look at herself," Durrani says firmly. "Fakhra's face is the crime of a man against a woman. It is not shame...