cbecSIUT Volume15Issue2 December2019 Pakistan CentreofBiomedicalEthicsandCulture BioethicsLinks FemaleFriendshipsandPakistani Cinema Kamran Asdar Ali* Scholarly literature on gender in Pakistan share a reading that questions its more has traditionally ignored the everyday obvious interpretive reception (polygamy). The experience of women, especially the domestic film was directed by S.M. Yusaf, a veteran of experiences of women within the household.i the Bombay film industry who had migrated to In order to explore this gap, we may have to Pakistan and tells the story of two female turn to women's voices that are present in friends, Jamila (Shamim Ara) and Razia non-formal archives such as diaries, (Nayyar Sultana), who grow up together in biographies, memoirs, and even fiction Rawalpindi with Jamila's mother and her elder sources where we find women speaking in brother. non-public spaces (Rouse 1996).ii When Razia is called away to her relatives Following the above discussion, I in Hyderabad, the two friends constantly miss elaborate on these insights by focusing on the each other and write letters to stay in touch. 1960 filmSaheli ( Female Friend ), to address But these are intercepted by Jamila's brother the question of domestic life and sexuality in who has a soft spot for Razia, yet also has a Pakistan by turning to an underused archive: mistress whom he keeps promising to marry. cinema. This analysis enables me to open up The friends, hence, are unable to an argument about women's representation in communicate. popular media in Pakistan, in order to create a Pining for her friend, Jamila fakes an different archive of women's cultural and illness and wants the doctor to tell her mother sexual politics and histories. that she should be sent to Razia to recuperate. The passing of the Family Law Ordinance The doctor, played by Darpan, falls in love with in 1961 was seen as a major victory for Jamila. She reciprocates his feeling and their women's rights in Pakistan as it provided marriage date is fixed. On the day of the some legal curbs against polygyny, expanded wedding, the doctor dies in a car accident and the right for women to initiate divorce Jamila, traumatized, enters a shock-like proceedings and also dealt favorably with condition. The family takes her to Karachi to a inheritance rights for women. This move by specialist renowned for healing psychological General Ayub's military government may not problems. When Jamila opens her eyes in the have been reflected in its cultural politics. The Karachi hospital she sees Darpan again, who is same year the Ordinance was passed, the film now playing the character of the elder brother Saheli received five President of Pakistan of the deceased doctor (but looks identical) medals for different categories. The film's and is married to Razia. central theme was the friendship between two Jamila, of course, does not know this and women and depicts one of them letting her she is eager to get married to the doctor. Razia friend marry her own husband as a second persuades her husband to marry her friend as wife. that is the only way she would recover from her Let me offer a brief plot of the film and then condition. Jamila gets married Continuedonpage2 *KamranAsdarAliP, rofessorofAnthropology,UniversityofTexas,Austin,USA CentreofBiomedicalEthicsandCulture,SIUT,Pakistan Page1 cbecSIUT BioethicsLinks Pakistan Volume15,Issue2(December2019) “FemaleFriendshipsandPakistaniCinema” frompage1 without knowing that Darpan is already generosity and mutual indebtedness. The married to Razia. book concedes that the power of men, Jamila's brother in the meantime takes patriarchy and the institution of heterosexual the intercepted letters to Darpan and marriage defined lives for these women, but convinces him that his first wife, Razia was also asserts that we need to understand the actually in love with him (Jamila's brother). strong affective and complex bonds that The letters were of course addressed to Jamila women had between each other that these but only through the term of endearment, forces could not undermine. habib(my love ) , and were signed by Razia. Although the film can be read as a The doctor is convinced of his first wife's melodrama, following Marcus, we can unfaithfulness and is willing to give her up. acknowledge that the two women In the meantime, the doctor's loyal servant protagonists of this film were part of a male tells Jamila that the person she was supposed dominated society where they could be seen to marry was dead and that Razia had to perpetuate the institution of heterosexual sacrificed her marriage for Jamila's marriage and even polygamy. But the viewers happiness. Jamila calls Razia on the phone also witness that the bond between Jamila and hears her shriek. Jamila's brother, who and Razia is far stronger than what they have lusted after Razia, had forcefully entered her with their respective male companions. At the house and was threatening to rape her. Jamila very beginning of the film, the script allows arrives at the house with a gun, confronts her them to address each other ashabib and brother and shoots him through a broken mahboob, both terms of endearment used for window-pane. lovers in the Urdu language. In fact, when they The movie is actually a flashback that write to each other they do not address each Jamila narrates in front of the judge hearing other by name, but rather with terms that are the murder trial. At the end, Jamila's brother's normally reserved for relationships between long-suffering mistress comes forward and men and women (there is clearly an eroticized says that he was actually killed by her bullet. message being conveyed, which the censors She killed him, she says in her testimony, or the general public did not object to). because she could not see him ruin another Since the strongest bond of affection in life. The last shot shows the two friends the film is among these two women, the embracing each other and then riding back to separation created by Razia's departure to their mutual home in a large convertible, the Hyderabad results in a creative dilemma that husband nowhere to be seen. the script needs to resolve. This is akin to the In her book Between Women: Friendship, tropes offiraq (separation) and vasl Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England (meeting), so common in Urdu literary (2007), Sharon Marcus reads Victorian fiction writings. In this case, irrespective of the to discuss female relationships in England of conventional tropes, the reunion of these that era. She shows the intensity of these women could only happen with the removal of relationships in terms of mother-daughter one male love interest. Hence, Jamila's fiancé dynamics, in female friendships, in the mutual had to be killed in order for the friends to be investment of women in images of femininity together again, without conforming to the and the range of different ways women demands of two husbands. We may condemn associated with each other. the institution of polygamy, but in this film we These homo-social relationships were may want to see it as cultural metaphor (a deeply imbibed by ideas of altruism, bowing to convention or a Continuedonpage3 CentreofBiomedicalEthicsandCulture,SIUT,Pakistan Page2 cbecSIUT BioethicsLinks Pakistan Volume15,Issue2(December2019) “FemaleFriendshipsandPakistaniCinema” frompage2 cinematic sleight of hand) that allows the two who truly desired each other to come together within the patriarchal tradition of taking the second wife. As mentioned above, despite the twists and turns, the relationship between the two women is the one that triumphs and the last scene focuses on them, while the husband is off camera. The film does develop a triangle of desire between the two females and their mutual husband, but the male character remains superfluous and is used like a prop. In Saheli, the affection between the two women remains paramount and the narrative arc creates an ending that shows them being together. This in itself was a radical decision by the director. He pushes this narrative by subtly bringing attention to how women work, live, care for, provide support to, and also desire other women. My revisiting (and re-reading) Saheli may be a small step in opening up a discussion on forms of cultural aesthetics in Pakistan and their representation of what may remain unsaid and silenced in national histories, the history of desire, of sexuality, of domestic violence, of gendered subordination. Endnotes: i Hence the famous title of a book - nods to Lenin's tract notwithstanding - written by two Pakistani feminists, Khawar Mumtaz and Farida Shaheed, Women of Pakistan: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? (1987). ii Autobiographies and fiction have been used effectively in the Indian context, especially in historical writings on gender by participants in the subaltern studies project. In the Pakistani context, there is some work by feminist scholars who have engaged with female voices from low-income backgrounds on their experiences during processes of urban conflict or forced migration. See Chaudhry (2004) and Khattak (2001), among others. CentreofBiomedicalEthicsandCulture,SIUT,Pakistan Page3.