“She’s a ‘Badly behaved’ woman and she’s using the internet to communicate. And strangely enough those are the two things Pakistan can’t seem to deal with.” –Masterjee Bumbu, Bumbu Sauce (2016)
A year after her death Qandeel Baloch stands an entrenched Pakistani pop-culture icon. Her life played out like a fast paced, contemporary made-for-tv tragedy. None of the Shakespearean presumption of a detailed backstory or plot development, all of the piquant twists and turns, and over too soon to reach closure.
Her demise too was nothing if not fast, brutal and anticlimactic. Fauzia Azeem, despite what can crudely only be called her lack of natural talent, joined an exclusive club of performers that did not play their characters but became their characters to the extent that the two turned inseparable.
It had only been a recent development at the time of her passing that the starlet’s identity as Fauzia Azeem had been revealed. The media’s incessant hounding of her had revealed the person behind the persona that was Qandeel. The stories that arose from that seemed to be made for a contemporary tv-tragedy too. Abusive marriage? Check. Estranged child? Check. Born in poverty with 6 brothers and 6 sisters? Check. Widely seen interview with a smug newscaster intent on ripping a girl with questionable maturity into shreds and further divulging her into a cesspool of confusion and hate? Check.
The story was very much still in progress. Qandeel was mid character development, because that’s all she ever was for the media and the public: a character. The spell she had put on the nation was still in its prime. Qandeel’s life was still unraveling and with it she was progressing.
It was thus only natural that when Qandeel Baloch was murdered one year and a day ago, Saturday marking the first anniversary of her death, the one statement whole heartedly adopted as the nation’s go to belief was “I do not agree with what she did BUT she should not have been killed.”
Sure, not everybody used those very words. There were people that spent more time condemning her life than they did on condemning her death. There were people that did it the other way around. Some of them spelled words wrong and others used needlessly big words to feel big. But regardless of circumstances, level of communal comprehension, the facts, the timing, the symbolism, and the tragedy, the general feeling was the same:
“I do not agree with what Qandeel was doing BUT her death is wrong . . .”
Everyone knew what had happened was wrong. Yes, there will always be those quarters of society that will support such barbaric acts, but the general feeling was that what had happened, whatever it was, was definitely wrong. This was the line toed onto by those confused about the murder and incapable of reaching a verdict. Moreover, it wasn’t just that the act itself was wrong, it was the timing as well. Because we could not comprehend Qandeel’s death. The story hadn’t ended and the star was gone. So what next?
We’ve taken it upon ourselves at this point to finish Qandeel’s story for her. In turn we are finishing Fauzia’s story as well. A biopic starring Saba Qamar will be out soon about the life and struggles of Qandeel Baoch. A facebook page called ‘Qandeel ki Kahani’ has posted 7 heartwarming stories they claim are form Qandeel’s life including an alleged meeting she had with Abdul Sattar Edhi as a child. She has now been accepted as a mainstream icon for feminism in the country.
And while she cannot really be taken as an ideological feminist, she was at the end of the day a woman that was the by-product of her society and that in some way or form rebelled against the status quo and paid the price for it.
Whatever happened, we as a nation cans still not understand, yet it weighs heavy on our collective conscience. And no matter what we do, deep down we will never be able to forgive ourselves. And while those privileged enough to think this way stand guilt-ridden, Qandeel Baloch and Fauzia Azeem both stand vindicated.
