Khan Vs Khan

Reham Khan's memoir about her life - and her short-lived marriage to Imran Khan - is both racy and readable 

The one image that readers will take away from this book is of a stark naked Imran Khan, lying in bed, rubbing kaali dal (black lentils) all over his body (including his genitalia) when his wife, Reham Khan, walks into the room. Unperturbed, the former Pakistani cricket captain – and now, the man widely tipped to be the country’s next Prime Minister – rolls off the bed, shaking the dal off his body and on to the bed. The dal is then collected, boiled for 72 hours, and then thrown away – along, presumably, with the evil spell that had been cast on Imran.

In her re-telling, Reham Khan refers to this incident as her entry into ‘Hogwarts’ (Harry Potter and the Devil’s Dal, anyone?) because this incident was yet another illustration not just of her husband’s love of black dal but also his belief in black magic. Imran Khan comes off as a superstitious man who was constantly worried that someone had hexed him, and would consult with ‘pirs’ (religious leaders) on how to remove the curse. The solutions ran all the way from magic amulets tucked away in drawers to kaali dal strewn all across the bed.

There’s more to these black magic stories than mere black magic, of course. They are a way for Reham to illustrate that Imran does not have what it takes to be the leader of a truly Islamic nation. Belief in superstition is strictly forbidden in the Sunni version of Islam, which Reham and most Pakistanis practice. And she uses these incidents to paint her former husband as a lesser – and less observant – Muslim that herself, helpfully pointing out that Imran doesn’t know Arabic so he can’t even read the Koran.

But the impatient reader will have to wait a long time before getting to all the juicy Imran gossip. The book begins with Reham’s childhood, her brief stint as a child star on TV, followed by an early marriage to a first cousin whom she barely knew. Ijaz Rehman is a psychiatrist and the young couple fly off to England, where he starts practicing while she plays the dutiful housewife.

In Reham’s version of events, the abuse begins almost immediately, and she recounts in excruciating detail her first husband’s controlling behavior, his emotional torture, and his physical attacks on her. This part of the book makes for troubling reading and is the more powerful for that. Reham Khan skillfully paints a portrait of a young wife and mother trapped in an intolerable situation, looking desperately for a way out.

It is only 12 years and three children later that Reham manages to break free of this relationship. And then begin the single years, in which she works two to three jobs to bring up her kids, working in radio and television. It is hard not to root for the young mother as she drives herself from job to job, to make sure that her kids have the best life she can make for them.

But these are not the bits that people will buy the book for. It will sell only because of whom Reham marries next – and the acrimonious divorce that follows. It will sell because of the scandalous, and mostly unsubstantiated, gossip that abound in the latter half: Imran’s alleged penchant for sending naked pictures of his genitalia to journalists in Pakistan (one woman who apparently asked for proof that this was, in fact, Imran’s junk was sent another picture with his watch in the frame); his promiscuous lifestyle that took in everything from drugs, drink and fornication; the women who sexted him all the time even after he and Reham were married, with one of them promising to ‘ride him hard’; his inability to perform because of his drug habit; the size of his ‘package’ (‘naam baray aur darshan chhotey’ a famous 70s Bollywood star is quoted as saying); his bisexual tendencies; and so on and so salacious.

The book, though pacy and readable, is rather unevenly written. It starts off with a high-minded tone as the plucky tale of a young woman who is stuck in a loveless abusive marriage and how she summons up the courage to leave. By the time Reham has her first ‘encounter’ with Imran, it has veered irredeemably into Mills and Boon territory. (“He started to say something, and as I looked up expectantly, he instead closed the distance between us and leant down to kiss me. It was a light brush initially. I froze in fright. As he proceeded to kiss me more ardently, I put both my hands on his chest and pushed him away…In a daze I fell to the ground beside the swimming pool…”) And after the marriage collapses, the narrative descends into straight-out revenge memoir territory.

Nobody knows the truth behind the allegations that Reham Khan was paid off by Imran’s political opponents to publish this tell-all book just before the elections were held in Pakistan to destroy his prospects. But equally, nobody can deny that this book has the potential to do much damage: if only to Imran’s reputation rather than his actual election tally.

Maybe it’s time for Imran Khan to break out the kaali dal again. This time, with a brand-new recipe, to cope with the fury of a woman scorned.

  

The Ex Files

How to stay friends – or at the very least, civil – after you break up

As I sit down to write this column, social media – and Pakistani TV – is awash with coverage of Reham Khan’s tell-all book about her life and short-lived marriage to Imran Khan. The book is yet to be published but even before its release, cricketer Waseem Akram (among others) has filed suit against it. And Imran Khan’s first wife, Jemima Goldsmith, has threatened that if the book is published in the UK she will sue for defamation on behalf of her son.

I don’t know how the story will have developed by the time you read this, but it doesn’t really matter. This column may have been triggered by one bitter ex-wife wrecking revenge on her ex-husband by dishing the dirt on him (allegedly, I hasten to add, I haven’t seen the book myself) but it is really about how you can prevent your ex (wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend) from going all bunny boiler on you.

Success is, by no means, guaranteed. But if you follow these simple rules, you will at least, have the satisfaction of knowing that you tried your best.

·       Get closure: Don’t just ‘ghost’ people once you’ve decided to excise them from your life. As in, don’t close all doors of communication and have nothing further to do with them. Accord them the courtesy of a face-to-face meeting in which you have an honest conversation about your relationship before it ends. Yes, it may get teary. It may get acrimonious. It may even get violent. But you owe it to the other person to let them have their say. And you owe it to yourself to listen.

·       Cooling-off period: Rare is the couple – married or otherwise – who can go seamlessly from being a romantic pair to becoming really good friends. No matter who broke off with whom and why, residual feelings always linger after a long and meaningful relationship. There’s wisdom in acknowledging that and allowing one another space to grow apart before you try and come to a new accommodation – if that is, in fact, what both of you want.

·       Stop re-litigating the past: If you have managed to re-establish a friendship, then stay focused on the present and the future. Stop looking back to see where you went wrong. Don’t fight about who did what to whom when you were together as a couple. Draw a line in the sand and stay on the right side of it.

·       Don’t presume on old bonds: Once you have moved on, stay in the new space that you have found. Don’t revert to old habits just because your ex is still in the vicinity or part of your extended group of friends. It is not his or her job to pick you up because you’ve had too much to drink. And nor is it your job to clean up their messes just because that’s something you always did when you were together. You are in a different space now. And the rules must be different.

·       Don’t bad mouth one another: I know, this one is hard. Its human instinct to vent when you are unhappy. And when you are angry with your partner, the temptation to slag them off to anyone who will listen is hard to resist. But resist it you must. If that seems impossible in the immediate aftermath of your break-up then set a deadline for yourself. Give yourself a week, a month, or even a couple of months to get all that bile out of your system. And then shut the hell up. Going on and on about them after all that time is just allowing them to live in your head for free. You don’t want to do that.

·       Respect their new relationships: Nobody expects you to become best friends with your ex’s new partner (least of all your ex!) but a little civility goes a long way when you’re dealing with your replacement. So say hello, be pleasant, maybe even pay him/her a compliment on their taste! But whatever else you do, don’t perform that old do-you-remember-when dance with your ex while their new partner listens in, feeling increasingly awkward with each new anecdote.

·       Don’t drag the kids into your battles: If you share children, then you are going to be stuck with your co-parent for the rest of your life, no matter what. So, whatever your problems with your ex-husband or ex-wife may be, keep them to yourselves. Your children love both of you. And they need both of you. Trying to turn them against either mom or dad is just setting them up for therapy for the rest of their lives.

·       Try and remember the good: When a relationship ends, it’s human nature to focus on its last, dying gasps. But when we do that, we forget the promise of love and romance with which it all began. So, when you are being split apart, throw your mind back to what brought you together. That may encourage you to be more loving and respectful of your partner even as you separate. And who knows, in time, it may even bring you back together as friends.

When Imran wed Reham

What did we learn from the wall-to-wall coverage?

So, after claiming (a tad disingenuously) that the rumours of his marriage were ‘greatly exaggerated’, Imran Khan finally bit the bullet and got married a second time round. His new begum, Reham Khan, is a lovely, lissome, long-haired beauty, cast in the same mould as his ex-wife, Jemima Khan (who has since announced that she intends to revert to her maiden name, Goldsmith, now that there is a new Mrs Khan on the scene).

But amid the wall-to-wall coverage in Pakistan, India and Britain (where Jemima – and hence Imran – is still a staple of the gossip pages), and the many, many jokes doing the rounds of social media, there are still some things that stood out in the Imran-weds-Reham coverage. 

So here, in no particular order of importance, is what we learnt:

• It doesn’t matter how old, or how important, a man is. When it comes to marriage, his immediate family will always have strong views – and won’t be afraid of airing them in front of the international media. So, even though Imran is now a venerable 62, his sisters still managed to throw a hissy fit about his marrying a woman they did not approve of. They had no idea about the wedding, they snorted, and in any case, they had no intention of attending. So, that’s one in your face, Reham. On the brighter side, things can only look up from here.
• As that old cliché goes, a second marriage represents a triumph of hope over experience. But sometimes experience plays a role in the choice of the new spouse as well. So, after years of trying to make his ‘multicultural’ marriage to Jemima work (though frankly, she had to do most of the work: adjusting to life in Pakistan, learning Urdu, adopting the salwar-kameez, bringing up two boys, and coping with the anti-Semitic attacks of the Urdu press) Imran has chosen a woman who he has much more in common with. Reham was born of Pakistani parents but educated mostly in Britain. She now lives in Pakistan and works in the media, but like Imran, feels at home in both cultures. Fingers crossed, everyone.
• No matter how hard we try and convince ourselves that a measure of gender neutrality exists in the media, the sad truth is that sexism is still alive and well in the newsroom. So, every story of the Khan nuptials takes great trouble to tell us that Reham is a divorced mother of three. Nobody really bothers to make the point that Imran is a divorced father of two. And then, there are some who helpfully point out that at 43, poor old Reham can’t hope to make any bonny babies with Imran (tsk, tsk).
• Age-gap relationships never bother us much when it comes to older man-younger woman combines. No surprises then that the 20-year age gap between Imran and Reham doesn’t merit much discussion (though you can be sure that if their ages were reversed, the commentary would be quite different). So, full marks to the Pakistani channel that showed visuals of their wedding overlaid with an audio track of that old Hindi film song, “Mai kya karoon Ram, mujhe budha mil gaya”. Way to land a blow for gender equality!
• No matter how good-looking the man, he always looks spectacularly silly in his wedding finery. And Imran – who has broken a million hearts in his time, but is now beginning to look like that wrinkly uncle who scowls bad-temperedly in every family photograph – is no exception to the rule. Looking ill-at-ease in a shimmering gold sherwani, paired rather ludicrously with what looked like a platform-heeled sandals, Imran was less Lion (or Loin, as they fondly call him) of Punjab and more Rabbit Caught in the Headlights.
• Ah, now Reham, on the other hand: she looked simply spectacular. But then, we all know that weddings are essentially about the dulhan. And boy, did she make the perfect bride! All demurely wrapped-up in white and gold, with just a splash of red brocade, she looked radiant and oh-so-in-love, flashing a smile of sheer happiness (never mind the scowling dulha, glowering by her side).
• But no matter how old and wrinkly the man, and how radiant and beautiful the bride, he is always the Big Catch and she is the Lucky One who managed to land him. We saw this during the George Clooney-Amal Alamuddin nuptials. And now much the same sort of stuff is being recycled for the Imran-Reham pairing. How did she get so lucky? Surely, he deserves better? How did she manage to trap him? Why did give up his long-time bachelor (well, okay, divorcee) status for her? But if you ask me, the only people who got it right were those who captioned the Khans’ wedding picture: “Former BBC newscaster marries Taliban sympathizer.” Score!
But never mind the jokesters and the naysayers. What’s not to love about two people in love? And two people brave enough to take another chance on marital bliss? So, Imran and Reham Khan, many congratulations. And may you live happily ever after…