Cutting Free: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Pakistani Woman

By Salma Ahmed

Beginning with a privileged childhood in an elite family of pre-partition India, to a troubled youth in Pakistan, this is the inspiring story of Salma Ahmed - a woman who surmounted formidable odds to achieve extraordinary success in business and politics. In this strikingly honest and candid account, Salma talks of her three marriages - to a naval officer, a scion of a leading feudal family, and a cricketing star; her conflicts as a mother as she makes the agonising decision to give up two of her six children; and her efforts to build a career as an entrepreneur and political figure in an emerging Pakistan. As she recounts the events of a life filled with dramatic highs and equally painful lows, she does not spare herself any more than she does other players in her story.

This is a book that unabashedly reveals many of the hidden taboos of contemporary Pakistani society, bringing into question customs that are an integral, if unpleasant, part of subcontinental culture. Salma Ahmed's gripping narration of her political career is fast-paced and often amusing. The book relates events of the 1985 Assembly, which no other author has yet commented on. Her interaction with the late President Zia-ul-Haq and Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo, MQM leader Altaf Hussain, the charismatic Pir Sahib Pagaro, and several others, gave her a unique opportunity to witness first-hand the intrigue, power plays and unfolding drama of Pakistani politics. Her frequent visits to India brought her into contact with Indira Gandhi, her son Rajiv, and many other leading figures of the sub-continent. This is the absorbing tale of a woman who was a pampered child, an unhappy wife, a repentant mother - but one who emerged triumphant as a woman of substance, in business and politics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: May 31, 2007
• ISBN: 9789351940616

Book preview

Preface

It didn’t occur to me that one day I would write a book. The four-year process started in 1999, after my world came crashing down on me when I lost my eldest daughter, Bina.

To begin with, the attempt at writing was slow and hesitant. It was only when the story started gradually to emerge, that it became clear to me that this was something which needed to be done.

The reader will discover that it required courage to candidly narrate the story of my life. However, having received much unfair and hurtful criticism over many years, I became convinced that to recount my side of the tale was a duty I owed to myself and those whom I love.

This book might never have been written had it not been for my daughter Bina—the girl who warned me, ‘Mummy, if you don’t write about yourself, I shall.’ My child didn’t live long enough to savour the joy of seeing her wish fulfilled, but this book and the tears that I have shed in writing it, is dedicated to her with all my love.

On 5 February 2005, Hamida Khuhro, a childhood friend and Sindh minister of education, launched Cutting Free in Karachi. There was little premonition that fateful day of the bitter harvest I was to reap soon thereafter.

Barely a month after the launch, a bizarre series of events started to unfold leaving me dumbfounded with shock. All I could do was helplessly watch in silent horror as my world crashed around me. These dreadful events will form part of a sequel to my autobiography which is now underway. What I can say for the moment is: Muqabilla tau dile natawan ne khub kiya (Mir Taqi Mir).

It is a matter of deep personal satisfaction that my autobiography is to be published in India. Because of the great similarity in the social and cultural milieu of the South Asian sub-continent, there is much in common in the attitudes and behavioural patterns of women of the region. Cutting across boundaries of politics and religion, women of the region stand on a common platform because they share the same aspirations and encounter similar difficulties. It is therefore my hope that this autobiography might provide some guidance to those women who intend to venture into a life of business and politics.

Finally, my greatest reward in writing this book would be if it were to give courage and hope to the countless women of Pakistan who are faced with challenges similar to those I had to encounter. If the story of my life can inspire even one single woman, I would consider my life’s work accomplished.

Karachi Salma Ahmed

December, 2006

1

From India to Pakistan

Iwas born Indira Salma Husain, at 4.30 a.m. on Friday, 10 September at Granchester Hospital, Granchester Meadows, Cambridge. Saturn was falling retrograde in my Seventh House, meaning that for Virgos no partnerships, including marriage, would be successful in the long term. What a portentous beginning!

My father, Akhtar Husain, had taken my mother to Cambridge to learn English while he did a course at Corpus Christi; it was while they were there that I was born. My mother, Zakia Begum, had a difficult delivery. She was short and petite, and I was her first child. In those pre-Partition days, to be born in England was considered a special privilege. My parents brought me back to India by ship. During the journey, my mother mulled over nicknames in order to explain to the family the ‘Indira’ in my name. My father was a nationalist but this would not sell to an orthodox Muslim family. Mummy came up with Indu Bala. ‘Oh, but that’s not good enough! Ena… Eny… yes, Eny is fine,’ was my father’s response. And Eny I became.

My father was then district magistrate at Saharanpur, a member of the coveted Indian Civil Service (ICS). My mother came from a feudal family in Moradabad, her ancestral village being Mankula in Uttar Pradesh (UP). Her ancestral home was called Dera, so named perhaps because of her family’s Pathan background.

I have some brief memory flashes of the place I thought was home. Little did I know then that I would grow up in another country, so different from the familiar surroundings I knew and loved. Nostalgia haunts me even today.

My earliest memory is of my father’s house in Ajmer. I have fallen in a lotus pond, and I am drowning; water is going into my eyes and nose. I have been pulled out of the pond. I can still breathe; I am breathing. There is a cut on my head that is oozing blood. My ayah is trying to stop the bleeding with her sari. My father is shouting, berating the servants. He picks me up in his arms. We are in a jeep, and I am sitting in his lap.

Another flash! Daddy is asking me to raise my hands. He holds my hands, turns my palms upwards and says, ‘Repeat after me—sun, sun, warm my hands.’ I repeat my father’s words. I am two years old.

I see a little creature lying in bed next to my mother. I hate her. Who is she? She is called ‘the little baby’. She is Najma, nicknamed Minal. I am taking Mummy’s jar of cream, digging into it with my fingers, and stuffing cream up the creature’s nose. I hate her. She is choking. ‘Don’t pull me away, don’t pull me away Ayeji,’ I plead with my ayah.

I am riding my pony, and suddenly I am falling. I have fallen to the ground but the pony continues trotting. I am being dragged. I cry out. I scream as the mud gets into my mouth. The syce has gone to the kitchen to have a paan. My father hears my screams. He runs out. There is hell to pay.

I have been locked up in the bathroom. I am frightened. It is cold, and there is nothing to do. I call out to Mummy, she opens the door, and I prattle in a childish mix of Urdu and English, ‘Mimi walk say aye, ne kar batoo bund Ena ko, Ayeji baltat [My mother has returned from her walk, and she will not shut me in the bathroom. Let us send the ayah away in a bullock-cart].’

There is loud noise from downstairs. It is my grandfather. We are in Dera. The house has a very large, circular aangan and all the bedrooms look into it. Here, at my grandfather’s, one cook makes large, thin chapattis called rumali rotis, and another prepares thick rotis that Abba, my grandfather, likes to eat. Amma, my grandmother, is here also. She has a slight limp in her left leg. She is wonderful. She stops Mummy from beating me and hides me in her lihaff (comforter). ‘Mein to kootun gi, main to peesun gi, main to amma ke ghonsley mein ghus jaun gi [I will pound and I will grind. I will do anything to get into my grandmother’s nest].’ I love to be snuggled in Amma’s lihaff. It is so warm and cosy. Abba is having some potatoes taken out from the aloo gosht curry. These will be washed so that the chillies and spices are removed. I cannot eat spicy food.

Oh, Daddy has come! Now we shall have fun. Daddy has got his guns ready for the next day’s shikar. I put on my sola topi and hold on to Daddy’s hand. Rahim, our faithful servant, is with us. We go off for the shikar. Daddy has left me-–where has he gone? I search for him. I cannot find him. I hear a bullet being fired. It is very close. ‘Eny Baby, Eny Baby,’ he calls, but I am on the other side of the lake. My father is shooting at ducks. I fall in a faint with fright. He sees me and runs to pick me up. My sola topi has fallen off. ‘Daddy Daddy!’ I cry. He quietens me.

Mummy has given me a black wristwatch. She says Uncle Shafaat (her paternal uncle) gave it to her. I take a stone and break it because I want to see what’s inside, and why it makes a tick-tock sound. Ayah is very angry. She says, ‘Mummy will beat you.’ Yes, I know mother will beat me. Uncle Shafaat’s watch is no more. It is broken. We are in the Victoria Memorial Park, Calcutta. We go home to our Elgin Road flat. Mummy shakes me and gives me a sound thrashing. I run sobbing and hide under the bed, so she cannot get at me. I hear the horn of a car. Daddy is back. I call him ‘Chief ’. He is the director general of munition production, posted in Calcutta. It is 1945. I scramble out from under the bed. ‘Chief is back, OK Chief, OK Chief. She has beaten me. Mummy has beaten me.’

‘Don’t cry Eny, do not cry. Zakko (my mother’s pet name), why do you beat her so much?’

Another memory flashback. ‘You look like me Eny.’

‘No Daddy, I do not want to look like you. You are so dark, I want to be fair like Minal, like Mummy.’

‘But everyone says I am very handsome.’

‘No Daddy, I don’t want to look like you.’

A colonial complex. Colour.

I am very tiny in Ajmer, but I remember a great fuss. A stiff, white taffeta dress is being made for me. I am being taught by an English lady to stand with my feet together, then draw a semicircle with my right toe while going down in a curtsey. I am also being taught to say ‘bouquet’ with an emphasis on the latter part of the word—making it sound like ‘bookay’. This was all in honour of Lord and Lady Linlithgow, the Viceroy and Vicereine, who were visiting Ajmer where my father was the deputy commissioner, and Sir Edward Souter was the British commissioner. I remember my father later remarking several times, ‘They were so amazed that Eny is bilingual.’ Yes, I had learnt to speak English before Urdu, but that again was due to Mummy. Perhaps, this was something to be very proud of in those days.

I remember my father often going on shikars when he was the deputy commissioner in Bahraich (UP). The local raja or maharaja were only too pleased to arrange the shikars. I accompanied my father on a few of them. A machan would be set up, and beaters called in to hustle the beast of prey, normally a tiger, towards the shikaris, who would take aim and open fire with their Holland & Holland guns or Purdy rifles. Sometimes, two goats, bleating away, would be tied to a tree. They were used as bait to draw tigers within the range of the guns of the shikaris. At such close distance they could hardly miss. This sport was the fad of the day amongst the elite and a source of excitement and entertainment for the villagers. We still have several tiger skins, relics of my father’s shikar days.

Once my father brought home a baby deer for me. He had a cage built in the garden for it. I loved my pet. She was beautiful, but didn’t like being caged. One awful night, in desperation, she banged her head against the bars until she died. I saw her the next day lying in a pool of blood. It was the first dead animal I had seen. I was inconsolable and cried for days.

In Bahraich, we had a virtual zoo in our house. I remember the day when a stork tried to go for Minal’s eye. That day my mother put her foot down and had the birds and animals sent away.

It is Diwali, the festival of lights, and a myriad lights are shining in the house. There are mysterious comings and goings from our house to a hospital. Mummy is in the hospital, and suddenly we are told to celebrate. Sweetmeats are distributed. A baby boy has been born—my brother Akkoo, named Syed Akbar Husain after the great Mughal Emperor, Akbar.

India. What else can I remember? It is night, a dark, dark night in Mankula. It is very hot. It is the month of June. My sister Minal and I are lying in my grandfather’s bed. There is a servant outside constantly pulling the rope that swings the large cloth fan. He will be relieved by another servant, and then another, round the clock. We need the fan, it gives us some relief. The rope makes a strange, rhythmic sound—wheer, wheer, wheer.

The silence of the night is rudely shattered by the awful shrieking of an owl, a wild, dreaded and eerie sound. Just then, the heat breaks. There is a gust of wind and a dust storm gathers velocity. It bursts, and there is lightning and thunder. An old oak tree that has stood for centuries in the courtyard starts shuddering in the strong wind. It is so frightening. There are dreadful sounds. The wind howls. The tree keeps shuddering! Oh my God, we are so frightened, we are shivering, Minal and I, in Abba’s bed. It takes an hour for the tree to fall. It sways violently, and then there is a great crashing sound. We are petrified, frozen with fear and cannot move; the ayah, affectionately called Bua, and Rahim carry us to our own beds. Next morning, we learn that the giant tree has indeed fallen, ripping the earth from under it.

It was June 1947. India was partitioned soon after, in August 1947. Ominous portents!

2

Early Years

Ithink those of us who were too young or not enlightened enough to understand the meaning of Pakistan certainly felt that they had left behind a way of life—their memories and roots—to become displaced citizens of a new country with an alien terrain and unfamiliar surroundings.

My sister Minal and I came to Karachi together on 25 September 1947, by plane from Bombay, accompanied ironically, by a Dutch priest, Father Floregius Rumpa. He had volunteered to ‘rescue’ us from Nainital, where we had been studying at the Wellesley Girls High School. This was in response to an advertisement placed by my father in Dawn, Karachi. I was six years old at the time. My parents had already left for Karachi about a month earlier, when the killing and looting after Partition started—my mother travelling by Fokker plane with Akkoo, and my father following. Father Floregius was from St Patrick’s School in Karachi. He came to Nainital to fetch us without explaining what had happened, or why we had to leave. We were made to wear crosses around our necks, and were told to call ourselves Eny and Meeny Henderson. We went by train to Lucknow, and from there to Bombay, from where we flew to Karachi.

All I remember of that nightmarish journey is that I fell from the top berth of the train we were travelling in from Nainital to Lucknow, and cut my chin. I bear the scar till today. The month of September meant my birthday and I remember my mother holding a little yellow doll for me at the airport when we landed at Karachi. I clutched my doll; I was dripping with perspiration and my face was swollen because I was sick in the plane. The drive to our house at 6, Bleak House Road appeared to be never-ending; we learnt that we were sharing the house with my father’s ICS batch-mates. These are just shadowy, hotchpotch memories—nothing emerges clearly.

Later we moved to the second floor flat at 3 Bath Island Road, facing the Clifton Road entrance. Relatives started to flow in from India. At one time, we had four uncles, my grandmother, and my mother’s aunt and uncle all living with us in that tiny flat. How did we make do? I don’t know but somehow we managed. I remember the heat, and the constant perspiration. We had never known such heat. We all slept in one room—Minal, Akkoo, and I—under fans and wearing only vests. My mind would wander back to the days in the hills of Nainital, where we had a cottage. My father would send us there every summer with Mummy, even before Minal and I were sent to Wellesley. We had never known what it was to be hot and sticky.

Minal and I were admitted to St Joseph’s Convent School in Karachi. I started in the second standard. We met girls whom we were to remember and be friends with all our lives. They were mainly daughters of bureaucrats, but what we shared most was living through those early years of Pakistan. Something that struck me even then was that our dresses were simpler than those of the other girls. We wore cottons whereas they wore silks, even to school. Then a uniform was enforced and we didn’t feel the difference so acutely. We would take a bus from the road opposite our house and we all felt equal to each other. We didn’t think that we were underprivileged going to school by bus. The long line of cars that crowd the better schools today were certainly not the order of the day at that time.

My mother was not happy about Minal and myself being in the plains of Karachi during the summers. I think she also did not approve of us wandering around in the evenings on cycles. Sometimes we would play cricket, and sometimes just walk with the boys living in the neighbourhood. Moreover, she also felt that we were gradually becoming aware of the pecking order of the bureaucratic hierarchy. Daddy was now senior joint secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Frontier Regions and States. We would get invited to parties given by children of senior politicians and government officials—the sons of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, daughters of the foreign secretary, children of Ghulam Mohammad (later the governor-general), daughter of Choudhry Mohammad Ali (later the prime minister of Pakistan), and many others. Such occasions were considered routine, and part of the normal social pattern. There was a complete absence of the so-called ‘VIP culture’ that prevails today—the distinction between the ‘important’ and the ‘less important’. One was guided by self-respect, and felt equal to all. We have travelled a long way since then, and have become shallow, and have no real values.

I even had the opportunity of seeing the legendary Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, on the first anniversary of the birth of Pakistan on 14 August 1948. My father took Mummy, Minal, and myself to see the Independence Day parade held at the Polo Ground in Karachi. It is a vivid memory. The Quaid-e-Azam and his sister, Miss Fatima Jinnah, first drove around the ground in a buggy (a ‘Victoria’, as it was then called), and then alighted amidst thunderous applause. It was the first time I had seen either of them. After the march past, the governor-general and his sister entered a marquee, where tea had been laid out, and where both were receiving officials. My father, Minal, and I joined a queue to offer our adaabs to them.

I remember Mr Jinnah patted me on the head. That was the only time I saw him. He was thin and had a perfect posture—a distinguished-looking gentleman with a karakuli cap (now popularly known as the Jinnah cap) and a sherwani. Miss Jinnah looked amazingly like her brother. She was tall and thin, had curly white hair cut fairly short, and was wearing a white dupatta. She was smiling—naturally, it was a great triumph to witness the first anniversary of the birth of a country. The whole place had an air of great joy and happiness.

When I next heard of the Quaid-e-Azam, it was of his death. I remember that so well. There were a lot of comings and goings in 3 Bath Island Road, many telephone calls, and a general air of commotion. 10 September was my birthday, and my father was not there. Girls from St Joseph’s school and daughters of Mummy and Daddy’s friends had come over, about twenty-five in all. I was waiting for Daddy to come so that I could cut my birthday cake. He was so late in coming home that I was angry with him, but he looked tired and drawn. He had been at the prime minister’s house for half the night. The next day, 11 September 1948, we learnt that the Quaid-e-Azam had died after a prolonged illness.

Birthday celebrations have always been a ritual in our family. Perhaps they were a colonial legacy, especially espoused by those who had served under the British and liked to follow their customs. Mummy usually made a great fuss about celebrating our birthdays, so I will always remember Quaid-e-Azam’s death anniversary because it falls a day after my birthday. Even today, we celebrate our birthdays and the birthdays of those whom we have befriended. It makes one feel special, at least for a day. I think it is a very beautiful custom bringing with it laughter and joy.

Mamoon Jan (Uncle Sultan, Mummy’s younger brother) went to fetch my grandfather from Mankula in 1950. That was the year Mamoon Sahib (Uncle Aftab, the eldest of Mummy’s brothers) married Nayyar Mumani. The wedding took place at 3 Bath Island Road. My parents vacated their bedroom for the couple. We learnt that Nayyar Mumani was from Hyderabad (in the Deccan), the daughter of Nawab Ahsan Yar Jung. She was a beautiful woman, about twenty-two years old, but she had a hard and cold look about her and disliked me at sight. I was at an ugly and gawky stage, but my Uncle Aftab loved me and would let me sit in his lap. I remember the warmth and affection he had for me, the eldest of the nieces.

Abba gave up Dera and other properties in India which were confiscated by the custodian of evacuee property. In lieu, and in accordance with the land settlement formula, my grandparents received 2000 acres of land in Moro, Nawabshah (Sindh). Our uncles gave this out on mukhata or contract, to some local landlords. Money would be sent to my grandparents every six months. Uncle Sultan looked after the lands, as Uncle Aftab was in government service, a deputy secretary in the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs, and Li Mamman (Uncle Shahzad, Mummy’s youngest brother) was in the Pakistan Railways, posted in Lahore. Uncle Aftab was able to exchange some of my grandmother’s property with a Sindhi Hindu. In lieu of her village home in Bareilly she got a house in Garden East in Karachi, which became our family home, and land in Deh Buharo, beyond Gharo, in Sindh. What a poor exchange!

In 1950, my parents decided to send Minal and myself for further studies to the Convent of Jesus and Mary, a boarding school in Murree, a hill station about 25 km from Islamabad. My father had been sent as secretary-general to the first Pakistan delegation to the UN, with Sir Zafarullah Khan, the foreign minister, as its leader and Choudhry Mohammad Ali the deputy leader. The delegation made history, as it persuaded the UN to pass a resolution on holding a plebiscite in Kashmir.

My father stayed behind in the US for over a year. When he returned, he started to point out many little lapses of which we were not even aware. For example, we were not to slouch while working or sitting, we had to use the correct knife and fork, we had to know how to talk to grown-ups in company and many other such behaviour patterns that he must have observed in American children but of which we were ignorant. Minal and I started wearing American dresses, going about in our brand new blue Pontiac, using American gadgets in the house and became quite conscious of the change in our station. We also started to notice how our father snapped at us for being gauche and childish. No more cricket, no more sports, perhaps a game of Scrabble, but we knew that our father was not happy with our upbringing and manners. Hence, the immediate move to the convent to learn from the nuns how to become ladies.

There was also another reason for being sent to the boarding school. My father was posted to London to attend a course at the Imperial Defence College, an essential prerequisite then for promotion to the rank of federal secretary (he was a senior joint secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time of Partition). My mother and Akkoo accompanied my father to London while Minal and I were conveniently sent off to Murree, sobbing and weeping at the thought of boarding school and the discipline that went with it.

The Murree convent school, however, was a good experience. I met several very interesting girls belonging to different backgrounds, mostly Pathans, sheltered and cloistered in their homes and entering a boarding school for the first time. The girls I remember from school were daughters of the chief minister of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and other tribal chieftains. Minal and I were in separate dorms and quite inimical towards each other. I blame myself for this as I was very belligerent, confident, and sure of my position as the eldest sibling, whereas Minal was fairly shy and retiring. She was also slight of build while I was quite hefty and large-boned.

We had a difficult childhood together as I didn’t feel any particular warmth or affection towards her. This sibling rivalry had been encouraged by maidservants with vested interests and served to create a wedge between Minal and myself. This strained relationship