An Inconvenient Woman

The life and death of Qandeel Baloch

“How I’m looking?” That’s the question Qandeel Baloch asked in her first viral video, writhing sexily as she pouted for the camera. Pakistan duly clicked on the link and didn’t quite like what it saw. Scratch that. They hated it. But even as the outrage flowed and the abuse got more graphic, “How I’m looking” became a catchphrase in that country, and Qandeel became a bonafide social media star – albeit one that everyone loved to hate (or so they claimed, at any rate).

Sanam Maher, a Karachi-based journalist, tells the improbable tale of this unexpected breakout star in The Sensational Life & Death of Qandeel Baloch. The book begins with the death of Qandeel, and the media frenzy that followed. And then traces her journey from her impoverished life in a small village near Multan, to a doomed first marriage at 17 (which resulted in the birth of a son, whom she abandoned), a disastrous appearance on Pakistan Idol, to the hard-scrabble existence she led as she tried to establish herself in the ‘glamour’ business, and finally, to her short-lived triumph when she became an international star.

It was not an easy haul, by any standards. Pakistan, a conservative, hide-bound society that swears by Islamic mores of propriety and modesty, had never seen anyone quite like Qandeel Baloch. There had never been a woman who had no compunctions about doing a ‘strip-tease’ for the Pakistani cricket team to encourage the players to win in a match against India (she promised to go the whole hog for Shahid Afridi if he managed to beat India). Nobody had ever posed in a skimpy outfit and sent out a video message proposing marriage to Imran Khan. Or, for that matter, released pictures of herself with a respected Islamic cleric which seemed to suggest that the two of them had got up to no good in a hotel room.

So, as is usual in such circumstances, Qandeel was dismissed as a ‘whore’, a loose woman who was bringing shame on her family, her country, her religion. She was forced off Facebook (briefly) after a concerted campaign to paint her as a blot on Pakistan. She was threatened with rape and murder. And she was inundated with abuse every single day of her life.

The only problem was that Qandeel declined to play along with this narrative. She refused to be shamed. She refused to apologize for the way she looked, the way she dressed, the things she said, or the videos she released. She was a woman who owned her own story; a woman who was comfortable in her own skin; a woman courageous enough to live the life she had created for herself.

In many other countries, she may well have gotten away with it. Sexy videos, revealing outfits, and outrageous statements are the staple of ‘social media stars’ all over the world. As Qandeel admitted in an appearance on a Pakistani TV show, she was ‘inspired’ by such Indian women as Poonam Pandey, Rakhi Sawant and Sunny Leone. And she was routinely described as the ‘Kim Kardashian of Pakistan’ in both local and international media.

But while all Poonam Pandey and Rakhi Sawant had to contend with was being the butt of cruel jokes in India, Qandeel had to deal with actual hatred and contempt, not just from Pakistani society and media, but also her own brothers, one of whom ended up killing her for the family ‘honour’. While Sunny Leone could follow up a porn career in America by forging a new mainstream avatar in Bollywood, Qandeel was doomed to being dismissed as a ‘beghairat aurat’, a woman with no honour, forever beyond the pale of polite society.

It is tempting to speculate what Qandeel Baloch’s fate would have been if she was born in India rather than Pakistan. Would she still be alive today, putting up risible videos on Youtube, clocking up millions of likes, even as people laughed at her rather than with her? Would she have achieved mainstream stardom if she had fulfilled her ambition of starring in Bigg Boss? Would she have become the new Sunny Leone in our lives and on our screens?

But this is not a story about India. It is a story about Pakistan, and Maher tells it with journalistic rigor and creative flair, pulling together several strands with deceptive ease.

And like all good writers, Maher doesn’t restrict herself to telling the tale of the transformation of a young girl who was born Fouzia Azeem but turned herself into Qandeel Baloch. Instead, she uses the prism of Qandeel’s transmogrification to tell the story of a slice of Pakistan itself, through the medium of different characters.

There’s Khushi Khan, a model coordinator in Islamabad whose family lost everything in the 2005 earthquake, and who had scrambled to make a living ever since, dealing bravely with all the misogyny and sexism she encounters along the way. There’s Nighat Dad, the founder of Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) based in Lahore, which helps women deal with cyber harassment. And then, there’s the handsome ‘chaiwallah’, Arshad Khan, whose picture, taken at his humble tea stall, goes viral and changes his life.

But shining through all these stories is the shimmering figure of Qandeel Baloch, the quicksilver star who burnt all too briefly before being snuffed out for being far too bright.