Word: fakhra
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...sharp water. Acid, nitric or hydrochloric, has long been the weapon of retribution for Pakistani men against disloyal, disobedient or overly determined women. One reason is that acid is cheap and readily available. Another: surviving an acid attack is often worse than dying. The acid burned the hair off Fakhra's head, fused her lips, blinded one eye, obliterated her left ear and melted her breasts. More than a year after the attack, the once full-lipped, large-eyed, long-haired beauty is unrecognizable. She breathes with difficulty. "I don't look human anymore," she says. "My face...
...Fakhra was born in the Napier Rd. red-light district. Her mother is a heroin addict, and Fakhra began work as a nautch (dancing girl) at age 11. The nautch tradition goes back centuries in certain parts of the subcontinent; sometimes the dancing girls are legitimate performers, often they're prostitutes. Fakhra started sex work immediately after she began menstruating. A customer bought her virginity for $2,000, a set of gold jewelry and a Rado watch. "Whatever you're going to do," she told him, "do it quickly because I want to go home...
...already the mother of three-year-old Nauman, she met Khar at a party in Karachi. "I thought he was a very big, rich, generous man," Fakhra recalls. "Why should I not catch him?" At the start, he impressed Fakhra by paying $340 to simply stay with her and talk. "Your face is so innocent," he said. "I like you so much." Fakhra had never encountered anyone like him. "I thought, 'What a man,'" she recalls. "'He hasn't done anything to me and he's so handsome...
...marrying Khar, Fakhra ascended into one of the most recognizable families in the country. Khar's father, Ghulam Mustafa Khar, is a major landowner and property is still the primary source of power and wealth in Pakistan. The Khars rule their area of Punjab province as feudal lords. Mustafa Khar was once dubbed the "Lion of the Punjab" after a massive election victory, and served as the Chief Minister and Governor of the province in the 1970s. Son Bilal treated his new, second wife as a possession, and beat her severely when she displeased him. When she abandoned...
After three months, Fakhra was released from the hospital and a grotesque reconciliation took place. Fakhra returned to Khar, who kept her hidden away in cheap hotels and brought her for a time to his family farm, where she was put to work in the kitchen. Khar insisted that he loved her?but his abuse did not stop. After six months, the exhausted and fragile woman decided to break her chains. Although her life as a woman largely ended the day of the acid attack, Fakhra, after the doctors surgically separated her fused lips, was able to talk, could still...