The last wife before our author was Shehrezad, a beautiful, highly accomplished woman whom Khar married because he had to meet US delegates and wished to impress them with his trophy wife. All of these women are mostly insignificant except for the fact that they caught Khar’s eye, and his spur of the eye decision to marry them resulted in their subsequent signing off of all their power to a man who was a true description of the term feudal lord. And for most of this story, it is misogyny we must encounter, in the characters as well as in ourselves: Tehmina’s adultery, Mustafa’s horrible behavior towards his pregnant wife; Mustafa’s mental and physical torture of Tahmina; his affairs with Tehmina’s sister and her own reactions to it, blaming the sister but not her husband; her parent’s divorce; the treatment of Mustafa and Tehmina’s children, poor souls caught up in a family drama being played out in front of newspaper reporters and the world.

Most of the people who read this book state pretty much the same thing: that they loved it when they read it, but now that Tehmina Durrani has married Shahbaz Sharif, they can’t believe she would marry into the same social circles, and that she probably deserves any more shit she gets, for choosing to marry such a corrupt man. Sometimes I feel like once again to feel elite she still wanted to be known as Mustafa Khars wife, and that's why she came back to him. Its real in the sense that as you keep reading, you eventually fall under its spell, which is perhaps intentional on the Author's part, she does try too hard to justify her actions (and reactions) throughout the book. Given my faulty knowledge and my position of privilege, it really isn’t fair for me to try to answer this question, but only to empathize, to place the fault where it belongs: with the abuser. Mind you, this is Pakistan right after the Zia years and the book detailed a sexual affair that leads to marriage, and sexual humiliation at the hands of the feudal husband.

It’s impossible to not encounter deeply held patriarchal beliefs when discussing this book in public. I think we need to have a very honest conversation about why we assume patriarchal notions won’t exist where they do, and how stereotypes can plague even those who mean well. This sort of intertwining of the personal with the political is a thread that runs throughout the book, primarily because Mustafa Khar was a politician. In describing how her son Ali is unable to cope with his kidnapping to rural Pakistan, she cites the "dirty village boys" he does not want to play with (Pg.

The people of Pakistan did not know him in the home so their love for their leader was understandable, they saw a farce and nothing else, but she knew better. Italian mother left Pakistan after falling out with the chapter run by Musarat Misba of Depilex over financial discrepancies. In private, however, the story-book romance of the most talked-about couple in Pakistan rapidly turned sour. She stood by him in the toughest period of his political career; however, Mustafa rewarded her patience and benevolence towards him with infidelity and betrayal. Also at certain points it felt like protagonist was insecure of her youngest sister since the start.Like all women of her rank, she was expected to marry a prosperous Muslim from a respectable family, bear him many children and lead a sheltered life of leisure. It seems to be written with a Western audience in mind, to at once demonstrate how chauvinist and cruel the feudal lords can be, and simultaneously how uniquely courageous of a woman she is to have escaped one of the men of this class. Mustafa is a ‘first-gear’ type of person, who likes to start things but nothing held his attention for long, leaving his messes to be cleaned up by Tehmina or their slave-servant.

Caught in the web of family drama and the prospect of social stigma Tehmina endured for a long while, but there comes a point when enough is enough! Throughout, Durrani skates around the periphery of a multitude of complex social issues including colourism, patriarchy, emotional abuse, and classism but fails to develop any of them beyond mere mentions of their existence. Reviewing a biography, however, sort of makes that an impossibility, because what you are commenting on is the author’s life itself. That was because every time I brought it up, everyone around me had not only heard of it, they were all very opinionated about it too. While she claims it was love, I fell it was her desire to be one of the elites and followed her lust.

In multiple scenes, the ghastly things that Khar did are presented as an example of his prowess or his thinking abilities rather than as a testament to his foul personality. I would have wanted this to be more about her but all the additional details about Khar's political life only ruined the experience for me. It sounds like how a person, horrified by someone’s cruelty and misogyny, is simultaneously awed by them and how, by indulging in their horrible behavior, the person has managed to gain and retain power.