One appearance at a media seminar in the UK, one interview with Sunday Times, one piece with her own byline in The Guardian, one TV interview with the BBC. It would appear Reham Khan is checking the list of all possible media formats through which to get out her side of the story.
But, somehow, it doesn’t seem she is really frantically trying to get press. It is the press chasing her, not the other way around, lest anyone accuse her of trying to hog the spotlight.
In the personality cult that is the PTI (only the most rabid of its supporters still insist it is an “ideology”) anything she says is going to be deemed as an insult to Imran Khan. But, to be fair, neither her Guardian piece, nor her BBC interview seemed malicious. Maybe slightly passive-aggressive at times, but not malicious.
You can read more here: Imran Khan’s ex-wife: Divorcees are ‘not criminals’
Her views on the marriage: conspiracies there might have been but they would have amounted to nothing had the two people involved in the marriage not let them affect the relationship.
On the divorce: sometimes love means letting go.
On the rumours: I am a spy? I tried to poison him? Would speak volumes about the capabilities of the intelligence agencies were those things true.
The thing with Reham Khan is that even though her ample charisma still falls short that of her former husband’s, she is better put together than him. She thinks her statements through. She is articulate. Don’t expect a meandering ramble from her.
The lady has class, it has to be admitted.
And her now former husband has also shown class, speaking at the launch ceremony of an initiative for KP’s street children, he took her name regarding the effort.
In the BBC interview, she did say one thing which no one, not even the PTI’s online legion of trolls, can deny: the times are tough in our part of the world for a divorced woman. Yes, they are even tougher were one lower on the socio-economic ladder, but tough nonetheless, regardless of your social standing.
True, the odds were always going to be stacked against you, but there was the divorce from her first husband, where even some within our misogynist society would believe her side of the story. And then there is the divorce from one of the most popular people in the nation. No such luck here.
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One doesn’t know what will happen to Ms Khan. I would think even she herself faces this uncertainty.
She might not write the tell-all (if you know what I mean) book that she is said to have been offered. But she would most definitely be able to secure a media job back in the UK. Not something quite like her jobs in the past, but something more substantive. And things would retain a sort of quiet equilibrium.
But if she comes back to Pakistan and sticks to the media specifically, all bets are off regarding how the PTI will interact with her. Perhaps she needs to ask Javed Hashmi on how the PTI treats once-loved figures who have fallen out of favour.