Who doesn’t know Feryal Ali Gauhar?
A novel at the top of The New York Times international bestseller list, years of television appearances and a highly publicised marriage to Jamal Shah that became fodder for countless gab sessions, have caricatured and made famous her persona. Had I not known her personally, I too may have fallen for the half-imagined tales littering the drawing rooms of socialites in this land of the pure. But I have had the pleasure of Feryal’s acquaintance for years, and not a moment of our friendship has resembled the images painted by petty gossip and lazy misinformation.
Feryal is a celebrated actor, filmmaker, journalist, activist, development worker and above all, a renowned novelist. Our recent meeting in her Zaman Park, Lahore residence took place after a long interlude. That afternoon, with the winter sun at our backs, we sat in her garden and talked with abandon while several of her cats and pet dogs meandered in and out of the plant-life; silent witnesses to our conversation and its occasional unfettered laughter.
Feryal is the youngest child of dynamic, accomplished parents. Her late mother, Khadija Gauhar, was a leading intellectual in Lahore who came to the city from South Africa after marrying her father, Sayyid was a military man from the NWFP who later retired from the army and took to farming. Her elder sister, Madiha Gauhar, is a talented theatre personality who founded the Ajoka theatre group and has managed it for over two decades. Feryal was initially associated with Ajoka as its first female actor. The sisters also have an older brother, Aamir, an industrial engineer who operates a business in alternative energy products.
As a young woman Feryal attended the Lahore American School. Her experiences there included a reaction to the school’s requirement that all students, regardless of nationality, pledge allegiance to the United States. In response to this practice, the eight year old Feryal insisted that the Pakistani national anthem be played for the entire school as well. Later, Feryal was the first Pakistani and first female to head the school’s Students Council. She was an honour role student and captain of several sports teams. Several scions of leading feudal families at Aitchison College at that time remember Feryal leading her team into the school grounds to play soccer. What they especially remember is the soccer team uniform which revealed a rather shapely pair of legs. “Some have never forgotten that sight,” she chuckles.
Feryal followed her college years with a brief stint at Kinnaird, where she played basketball and acted. She then studied political economy at McGill University and was trained in documentary film production in Europe and later at the University of Southern California. Upon her return to Pakistan, Feryal married artist and sculptor, Jamal Shah. In 1984 Feryal moved with Jamal to Quetta where she braved a conservatism that required her to veil herself and threatened physical harm if she appeared on television. This was not an easy phase in Feryal’s life. She explains the end of her first marriage saying, “Jamal had aspirations which did not include me.” It was Feryal’s commitment to her marriage and her politics that enabled her to cope with life in the most remote neglected part of Baluchistan. Thus, she found it ironic that her husband took the first opportunity he had to get out of the marriage “and never looked back.”
After her split from Jamal Shah, Gauhar married a successful Pakistani doctor practicing in California. Feryal divided her time in those years between America and Pakistan. Her experience in California was bittersweet, ending with her second divorce. It was in California that Feryal became a serious writer. The isolation she felt there, while painful, sparked her career. Feeling isolated in small town America, Feryal turned to writing for remedy and release. Writing at this time meant salvation. “Words, for me, are a balm. They soothe me when the anguish is too deep,” she explained in an interview given last year. In addition to her fiction work, Gauhar has been a magazine writer and newspaper columnist for twenty six years.
Referencing the characters of her novels at the 2006 Afro-Asian Writer’s Conference in Dehli, Feryal commented
I am an empty shell in whom many lives, met and unmet, live. What is autobiographical [in my work] is what comes from the personal space. Many times, I do not create the characters, they create me. I also write a political column, which is personal too. My marriage between my personal, professional and political lives is the most successful one yet.
As the interview continued the light of early January waned, and our shadows stretched along Feryal’s expansive, neatly scaped lawn. Feryal passed a small plate of dried fruit and offered home brewed coffee. She shared details of her impending trip to India for the Jaipur Heritage International Festival where she was invited as a speaker alongside South Asian luminaries such as Vikram Seth, Kiran Desai and Salman Rushdie. Requests such as this are largely the result of her first novel, The Scent of Wet Earth in August, which was widely acclaimed. The work is a remarkable blend of Feryal’s filmmaking sensibilities, consciousness of the “other” and her knowledge of animal behaviour. The novel was published by Penguin in 2002 and reached fifth on The New York Times international bestseller list.
Scent is based on Feryal’s film Tibbi Galli. The work reveals the endangered lives of outcasts living in the Lahore red-light district. The choiceless-ness Feryal’s characters encounter there is woven into lucid, at times heart wrenching prose. The plot is unconventional, the mood somber. The novel centers on the protagonist, Fatima, a mute girl who falls in love with the local maulvi’s protege, and the tragedy that ensues.
Gauhar’s forthcoming book, No Space for Further Burials, is set in the wild, violent terrain of contemporary Afghanistan and concerns the socio-political situation there. No Space explores the deaths suffered by Afghans and Americans. Captivated by the subject matter, she penned the book in several weeks. Before 2001, No Space was intended to be a film script. It was inspired by both the fallout of the 1989 Soviet pullout from Afghanistan and the three year war between the Serbians and Bosnians that began in 1992. The 2001 World Trade Tower attacks and their impact on Afghanistan added another dimension to the novel.
No Space is the diary of a US Army medical technician incarcerated by warlords in a mental hospital in Afghanistan. “I wanted to reverse the experience of looking at America through my eyes. I wanted Afghanistan to be seen through an American’s eyes,” the author explains. No Space for Further Burials will be released by Women Unlimited Press in March. A French publisher has purchased its rights and translations are underway in Dari, Pushto and Spanish. Finally, the work is being translated to film. Gauhar recently returned from a writer’s residency at Sanskriti Kendra, near Delhi, where she has been writing the screenplay. She hopes to go into production by the end of the year.
In addition to her novels and plays, Feryal has produced several works of non-fiction. Several years ago she completed a documentary simply titled, Pakistan Poverty Assessment. The work was the result of research from 54 districts and concerned the poor’s perception of their poverty. It underscored the need for land redistribution in the country. Almost immediately after its release the Prime Minister announced that there would be no further land reform in the country. Feryal remained undaunted. “My task was to get the message across through the voices of the poor, and I did it and it was heard quite clearly,” she comments.
In Lahore, Gauhar scorns the rapid consumerism draining the soul of the city. She is also critical of the senseless tree-cutting binge. In recent months, Feryal has been a hyper-active member of the Lahore Bachao Tehreek, under the aegis of the Lahore Conservation Society and members of civil society at large. She is optimistic about the group. She discusses a senior provincial bureaucrat she admires named Suleman Ghani who is currently conserving and developing the Walled City. Feryal praises Ghani but is cautious about the possible gentrification of an area which, as she says in the introduction of her film, Tibbi Galli, is where “dreams are spun during the day, and sadness sung at night.”
Feryal plans to extend her commitment to environmental preservation by registering for the PhD programme in Conservation Management at the National College of Arts, Lahore. In the future, the writer would like to work on conservation issues full time, and she would like to create a national trust modeled after the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage. Here her goal is to, “develop a new paradigm for development which respects cultural identities and the natural environment while enhancing the quality of life on this planet.”
A loner by nature, Feryal can be extremely gregarious when the occasion arises. Such dynamism makes her an enigma for those who have not met her personally. Feryal is not a high profile scandal seeker. She shuns vacuous social scenes, preferring to spend time with her beloved pet dogs and ‘underdogs.’ An animal rights activist, Feryal cares for an astounding eighteen cats, seven dogs, three goats, and one donkey. Most of these animals were stray or rescued from animal cruelty. “ I would much rather talk to my donkey, Sanober, than feign interest in the lives of women of means, who are often merely mean women,” she declares curtly. Despite her low profile lifestyle, in recent years the news media has linked Feryal to powerful figures throughout the country. “This is simply not the case,” she insists. “We live in a country that thrives on mediocrity and the ludicrous. All such rumours have to be understood as a manifestation of boredom in people’s lives,” she says, laughing uproariously.
Feryal’s second novel is due for release this month. The accompanying screenplay is underway, and her film, Tibbi Galli, will be showcased at the Rome International Film Festival later this year. Feryal is at a landmark moment in her life. These achievements and her acceptance by the world community is no small feat given the often virulent xenophobia aimed at Pakistan from abroad, complemented by misrepresentations about this place and its people. Such news may seal the lips of national and international gossip fiends alike. Let us hope that it inspires them to emulate Feryal and adopt more constructive endeavors.
Raza Rumi is an international development professional and an avid literati. He also writes for The Friday Times and blogs at Jahane Rumi; an earlier version of this was carried at both TFT and his blog.
Faryal,s physical and intellectual beauty is the joy forever
for all serious readers.
Here is an excerpt of a great speech by her.
Honourable Minister for the Environment, Dr. Anjum Arshad, Country Director of the Asian Development Bank Mr. Peter Fedon, Chairperson Planning And Development Board, Government of Punjab, Mr. Suleman Ghani, Respected Guests:
Allow me to take this opportunity to thank the organizers for granting me the opportunity to share a slightly different perspective on development. Much as I do not want to act as the Devil’s Advocate, and much as I do not want to point out the irony manifest in the fact that the Punjab Development Forum is being held in the hallowed halls of what used to be the Free Mason’s Lodge in Colonial Times, I feel I am compelled to do both, for that is the role of a member of civil society, a citizen of this beloved country who refuses to be cowed down
by allegations made earlier against organizations such as the Lahore Bachao Tehreek for being invested with vested interests. Allow me this opportunity to place on record that the Lahore Bachao Tehreek is a civil society movement of ordinary citizens as well as highly respected professionals, renowned in their own fields of law, architecture, urban planning, traffic management, the management of the environment, political economy, and sociology. I myself am proud to be amongst the first professionals in this country working towards a PhD in Conservation Management, and I refuse to swallow the intimidation which comes our way each time we have tried to confront the powers that be, powers such as the land and development mafia, powers which lurk behind the powerful, nurturing vested interests behind closed doors.
Ladies and Gentlemen: in the earlier session a remark was made by Mr. Shahid Javed Burki about transforming the Punjab from a granary to an orchard. While I have great regard for Mr. Burki’s achievements, I was dismayed to think that the spirit of Marie Antoinette still lives amongst the best of us – it was she who, during the great French Revolution, ordered to feed the peasants “Cake if they have no Bread�. In a similar manner, I presume Mr. Burki is suggesting that we plant fruit as a cash crop instead of nurturing our staple food crops, thereby
ensuring a vibrant fruit market for the wealthy but perhaps jeopardizing the already precarious food security of our people. How ironic that the people of the Punjab, the Breadbasket of the Subcontinent, cannot produce their own food, and that they should be asked to grow bananas instead. I now understand why another term for the rapid veering towards neo-liberal economic growth models is known as the Banana Republicization of sovereign states.
Ladies and Gentlemen: what seems to be missing in this entire
discourse is the paramount importance of human life, of human potential and achievement, of human happiness. We need to recontextualize this debate within the larger framework of human rights and development. There can be no development without addressing the issues of rights, needs, and priorities. The question to be asked today is: Development of what and for whom?
We need to listen to the voices of the marginalized, we need to understand the priorities of the people: the Pakistan Participatory
Poverty Assessment, a research project funded by DFID for the Planning Commission, Government of Pakistan, yielded the following results: (I know these by heart since I was a part of that 2.5 year effort taking place in 54 of the poorest districts of the country, using participatory research and analysis methodology): That the poor need access to land and natural resources such as water and air, that they need access to basic services such as health care and education and sanitation, that they need meaningful employment, they need access to the political process, to credit, to gender equity, and lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the people demand access to Justice.
Honorable Chair, this morning I spoke to the World Health Organization and was not surprised to learn that our country shall not meet the Millennium Development Goals by the year 2015 – we shall not be able to reduce hunger by half or to save infants and mothers from dieing in the birth process. However, listening to the presentations today at the Punjab Development Forum, I can honestly say that even without achieving a single one of the MDG’s, we shall still have the finest IT Park in South Asia, and we shall have ever-widening roads on which to run our ever-expanding retinue of luxury cars. Ladies and Gentlemen: I served for five years as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund and can say with certainty that more mothers and children die in this country than anywhere else in South
Asia. As a political economist I can say with certainty that 40% of our people live below the poverty line. And as an eager listener to the speeches of General Pervez Musharraf, I say with absolutely no certainty that Pakistan is well on its way to a high growth path, a statement predicated on the high incidence of cell phone and split-unit usage. What I do know is that unemployment has risen at almost the same rate as inflation, both of which are greater than the economic growth rate. What I do know is that rapid urbanization takes place because of deterioration land to people ratios in the rural areas. And what I can say with absolute assurance is that the
trickle-down theory bandied about by the lofty minds of this government have been debunked and thrown out of the window by eminent economists all around the world. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, that no trickle-down effect takes place without extremely high economic growth rates such as those achieved by China in the last decade. Growth rates of 13-14% are extremely hard if not impossible to sustain, and the impact such growth leaves on the environment is devastating, I repeat: devastating, permanent, and irreversible. Today, in Pakistan, the degradation of the environment is costing us 6% of the GDP – this is totally
unacceptable, and practices which degrade our environment as well as jeopardize the future of our children must stop.
We must stop and take a long, hard look at out reality. We must remove the blind spots which hamper our vision and our collective ability to hammer out a strategic vision for all, and for all times. We must consider the most fundamental problems of poverty and burgeoning populations, and we must focus on the role of women in alleviating poverty and reducing population growth rates, if only we could empower women, not merely enthrone them. We must consider seriously the
fact that in Pakistan the universal biological norm of the ratio between sexes has been reversed: where all over the world there are 106 women for every 100 men, in Pakistan there are 93 women to every 100 men. This was not always the case, and this shameful reversal is a direct result of the positioning of women under patriarchy and the willful neglect of almost half of the population by the state which professes to be gender-sensitive. By merely appointing women in positions of political power we are not empowering the women who form the backbone of our economy, be they the cotton-pickers of Multan or the construction workers of
Muzzafargarh. We need to remove the blinders which obscure our vision, replacing a vision of social justice and equitable distribution with notions of the free-market economy marked by decentralized, automobile-driven, single use models of urban sprawl development.
What should our vision be: Simply this: We wish to see a country where all children are ensured adequate health care, and equal chance of life regardless of their sex, adequate and meaningful education, and a clean and secure environment in
which to reach their fullest human potential. We wish to see all citizens have equal access to land, to natural resources, to basic services, jobs, the political process, and to justice. We wish to see the meaningful involvement of citizens who have the right to participate in partnerships with government in all aspects of the lives of the individual and the community. We wish to see citizens given their due share in decision-making, including needs assessment, planning, implementation, enforcement, and evaluation. Communities must be enabled and administratively assisted to participate fully in decisions effecting all aspects of their lives. Citizens must be encouraged to develop environmental stewardship; we must be allowed to live our lives with
some sense of justice, in particular, environmental justice.
We wish to see a vision inspired by the Mayor of Bogota, Enrique Penalosa who presided over the transition of a city that the world had given up on. Bogota had lost itself in slums, chaos, violence, and traffic. During his three-year term, Penalosa brought initiatives that would seem impossible in most cities. He built 100 nurseries, 50 new public schools, increasing enrollment by 34%. He built a network of
libraries. He created a highly-efficient “bus-highway� transit system. He built or reconstructed hundreds of kilometers of sidewalks, more than 300 km of bicycle paths, pedestrian streets, and more than 1,200 parks.
Ladies and Gentlemen: it is time we considered seriously the work of people like Enrique Penalosa, it is time we learnt to listen seriously to the words of our own people. In conclusion, I offer such words to you, gleaned from my research into poverty in our country. In a village in
Sindh, I had come to know that natural gas was to be provided after a wait of many years. I asked the women who had gathered to meet me whether this would ease the burden of their chores. There was total silence until one woman spoke, and I have been haunted by these words and do not tire of repeating them at the public fora where I speak. She said to me that indeed, the burden of their chores would be lightened, but the burden of their hearts would be heavier, for it is in the smoke of wood fire that they can weep their tears, and this new fire, fueled by natural gas, has no smoke.
Thank you.
I think she is not in Pakistan, so why worry :)
Dear readers
Many thanks for liking the post and leaving your comments. Feryal is a real talent as I tried to highlight and this is beyond the good looks (though looks are quite important in this case and who hasn’t gone through a ‘crush’ phase with her?). Most importantly, she is one of the few novelists in English and this is a great thing for Pakistan’s representation in the world of fiction.
Her new book has not been launched in Pakistan yet. It will be out soon I believe and let’s see how it reads..
I must admit I have never really been a Feryal Gauhar fan, something she exudes seems on the fake side to me but this article really made me rethink my opinion of her and my judgments based on vibes. That animal loving bit was really moving.
Faryal and Jamal were the most charming couple of their age. Unfortunately the marriage could not work out.
I had a chance to meet her twice in some social gatherings and have found her an intelligent and well articulated lady.
Raza sb thanks for writing a wonderful article.
Has her second book come out already? When is it expected? Could not find new info on it on teh web.
Tarar sahab, absolutely right on. TV drama these days is not even a shadow of what it used to be until early 90s. Most of those actors, Shakeel, Firdous Jamal, Abid Ali, Shafee Mohammad, Uzma Gilani and co. are still working but they have joined the comercial bandwagon thanks to the advent of the “Mega Soap” culture. The only thing mega about them is that they are mega stupid! Perhaps ATP would be kind enough to go down memory lane and do a nice post about those great dramas from the yesteryears, Waris, Uncle Urfi, Andhera Ujaala, I for one grew up on those dramas! Those were the days man!