TRIBULATIONS OF FEUDAL LOVE. Review on My Feudal Lord - Tehmima Durrani

MY FEUDAL LORD TEHMIMA DURRANI

My Feudal Lord is an autobiographical account of the travails, brutal beatings, incarceration, mental and physical sufferings and humiliation of Tehmima Durrani, herself from feudal background. As she describes in the book her feudal lord beat her black and blue with not only with hands and foot and slaps and hair pulling but also with boots to kick her away to a far corner of the room or down the stairs. Then, to avoid publicity and face humiliation of being observed by others, confinement in a room and no treatment was the consequence. The lord wanted complete obedience and even a moment’s delay meant slaps and boots. This treatment was being meted out to their young obedient woman-servant day in and day out and the hapless creature was suffering and tolerating because she had nowhere to go. Tehmima suffered because she married this lord out of one look crush over him and against family approval. It did not matter to her that she was already married and had a daughter but left all that to love this lord and ultimately write this book, a devastating account of the high society in Pakistan and the socio-political conditions there.

The feudal lord is one Mustafa Khar from the village of Kot Addu. The book has photographs of the lord and their children. The lord does look dashing but does not look soft or caring type. Tehmima was his sixth wife. He had already married five and divorced four of them. When Tehmima fell for Mustafa, he was married to one Sherry. They all suffered the same fate of beatings and humiliation as did Tehmima. But each one of them accepted the beatings and tried to please the lord and save the marriage. Tehmima was also married to a gentle soul (her description) and had a daughter Tanya. But love is a strange emotion which perhaps makes one oblivious to everything else. She saw Mustafa in a high society party and swooned over him. Mustafa was much older than her still she wanted to marry him and marry she did. She bore him four children two daughters-Nasseba and Nisha and two sons-Ali and Hamza. They lived in exile in England having been given asylum by the then British Government. At no point of time there was any shortage of funds and they lived almost in luxury. Even the servant Aisha accompanied them. But all this did not change one wee bit Mustafa’s treatment of his females. Tehmima tried to divorce him there but somehow could not. Tehmima’s family owned property in Britain and also in Spain- Marbella. Tehmima and Mustafa with their two daughters also spent good time in Spain. All this notwithstanding, Tehmima refers to the Islamic rituals and directions many times in the book. Mustafa also never forgot to remind her of her duty towards him and that she must not question and only obey without a moments delay.

Another important and well dealt aspect of the book is the politics of Pakistan. Mustafa Khar was a follower of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto but himself very ambitious and opportunistic. Bhutto made him the Chief Minister of Punjab and later he became Governor. He was known as the Lion of Punjab. The struggle for dominance between the military and the political parties is discussed and the supremacy of the military is clearly brought out when General Zia Ul Huq imprisons Bhutto and even executes him without even the pretence of a trial. Uncharitable references to India also form part of the 382 page narrative. Mustafa, living in Britain, was cunning enough to even organize armed struggle against the Government in Pakistan with the help of a person in the Indian embassy. Arms were to be smuggled into Pakistan from the Indian side across the border. When General Zia died in a plane crash and for some time a civilian Government came to power headed by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s daughter Benazir, he was made a minister in her Government. He had several criminal charges against him. Tehmima makes a point of it in her indictment of the Pakistani politics and Society. Tehmima finally could not take any more of his beatings and decided to divorce Mustafa. He tried to first blackmail her and then also to beg her and threaten her till the last. She had to give up her right on her children and all property. They had a joint account in Britain from which he had withdrawn all the money, when Tehmima thought of the joint account money. Finally she gathered courage and even started an organization called Jehad Movement for the betterment of women, and expose the socio-political milieu of Pakistan.

After her divorce her family disowned her and her father sent a notice to the press disowning and disinheriting her. It is very heartening to learn that a character like Tehmima finally, finally after all that she underwent as described in the book, gathers courage to expose.

This book was written with the help of English authors and originally published in Britain. It was published for the first time in Pakistan in 1990 and one can easily understand the storm it unleashed. People also tried to malign her by raising the call of the ''Hadood'' ordinance which is a punishment for adultery-death by stoning. I found the book captivating because of the description of the cloistered society, the politics and the politicians, the lordship of men and the treatment of women folk, the high society drinking and smoking freely without any taboo in a Islamic State.