[(My Feudal Lord)] [by: Tehmina Durrani]

Product Information

The reason I gave this book 4.5 stars is because I disliked the way she pitied Mustafa, sympathized his situations, helped him time and time again. For the In 1999, Tehmina accused the owner of the company Vanguard Books, Najam Sethi of stealing the profits earned by her book. She sued Sethi for mental torture, and he accused Tehmina of defamation. [2] Independent She hated her mother for strict discipline, maintaining family and Islamic values, helping her husband established financially, providing all the luxuries of life to her children etc.

Kashtan, Miki. 2017. “Why Patriarchy Is Not About Men.” Psychology Today, August 4. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/acquired-spontaneity/201708/why-patriarchy-is-not-about-men.

Did you find this helpful?

The book does not buzz with a nail-biting tale, as it certainly describes a woman’s fight against a deep-rooted social system – which has double standards. I do not own the book that hooked me. A friend loaned it to me over a decade ago and I returned it after reading. So, what I write here is from memory, and in a way that’s good because a decade has erased the sundry and filtered only the parts that matter. After many years of political exposure through her ex-husband, Mustafa Khar, who was a political leader, and in her struggle against corruption, she realized that the answers she was seeking would not come through politicians. In her search for someone who was in touch with the problems of the common man, and who had found a solution, she found Pakistan's most celebrated humanitarian, Abdul Sattar Edhi.

The political infidelity, the mere play of words and melodrama are already the sad realities of our country's political situations, but for men that identify with such duplicity, hypocrisy and instability to have rule and power adds to the readers' disappointment. My Feudal Lord, chronicles the story of Tehmina Durrani – a girl who grows up facing a seemingly impossible challenge that she is a girl! She is caught in the orbit within her own influential family, and her subsequent marriages – first to Anees, and later to Mustafa Khar, one of Pakistan’s prominent political figures. Riveting…one of the many remarkable qualities of Durrani’s story in her total frankness…she emerges as a woman to be admired.’ The Age, Melbourne Within a year, fueled by the hostile press, mainly in India and Britain, the battle for the liberation of Bangladesh had begun. The west seemed to have misread the plight of the East Pakistani people. West Pakistan was attempting to stop the Indian government’s dismemberment of their country, but it was projected as though we were the villains by not allowing autonomy to a people demanding their rights and freedom. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2012-05-17 18:08:49 Bookplateleaf 0010 Boxid IA153906 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City London Donor

Disclaimer

Their romance begins as all affairs do: clandestine, amongst protestations to Durrani from Khar's then-wife that Khar is not a nice guy - remarks totally ignored by a spoilt, flippant, beautiful social butterfly that Durrani was, being herself married at the time. And she promptly eloped to marry Khar, leaving her kid with the first husband. Even the final write-up ('My Feudal Lord') looks like the middle finger Durrani could give Khar from arm's length. In fact, if you read the book, the decision to leave Khar was not entirely hers to make - he got bored of her, and she could not take it! Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Growing up in a small town, I never realized that I lived in an opaque sanitized bubble – where my womanhood was sheltered, protected and cared for by parents. When I moved away, the bubble got flimsy. I was put in charge of my womanhood, but still too naïve to realize that you can’t just wear it like a batch pinned to your school dress. You are needed to protect it with an intensity that goes deeper than your mother’s wisdom talk – do not answer eve teasers or look at them in the eye, just walk away – and sharper than the safety pin you must carry on a crowded bus. Were her 'Islamic prayers' not disturbed when she broke her own home and the heart of her first husband Anees? Being the citizen of a patriarchal society where the cultural norm for women is to remain silent against oppression, I sensed the stifling darkness of the corner she was pushed into, which led her to offer “spicy” details of her life for public consumption. It’s entirely possible that all of this is true, and since her father’s eventual imprisonment ended with a trial which exonerated him, it’s also possible that historical documents can attest to this fact, but narratives can be edited to a person’s benefit, this also is true. People can manipulate events to their benefit, this also is true. And no reader of history, especially in the form of a biography, should be naïve enough to assume that what they are reading is, in fact, what actually happened. Which was why I read the whole thing with a grain of salt, paying special attention not to the events that happened but also how they are presented.

While they were both married when they met, Mustafa Khar manipulated the situation enough to ensure Tehmina's divorce. His marriage to her soon after, ultimately resulted in his own divorce from Sherry, his fifth wife. Horribly deluded, Tehmina always believed that Mustafa’s inability to hold a workable marriage all this while was because “he had not found the right woman” yet, but this was soon to be challenged. She endured his violent and volcanic temperament in silence for more than a decade, never finding enough courage to leave him. 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. 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! Durrani is essentially a feminist and not a man-hater. Had it been the latter case, she would not have detested the undue dominance of her mother. She is an advocate of a balanced relationship where understanding prevails and both are allowed to maintain their individuality. The book doesn't teach us much that we don't already know: Pakistan is a lawless, patriarchal society that allows men like Khar to be cruel to their wives, but also has men like Anees. Despite the fact that our mother had divorced her first husband, we were taught that marriage was a sacred and irrevocable institution. If a husband turned out to be a brute, it was the wife’s duty to persevere until she changed his character. A broken marriage was a reflection of a woman’s failure.Durrani's second book, A Mirror to the Blind, is the biography of Abdul Sattar Edhi, [21] who was Pakistan's highly decorated social worker. Over a three-year period, Durrani lived in Edhi's home and accompanied him on his visits. The book was published in 1996 by the National Bureau of Publications with the Edhi Foundation. It is the official document Abdul Sattar Edhi's life and message. [6] Blasphemy (1998) [ edit ] Tehmina Durrani mentioned in her book how Khar severely tormented her during all pregnancies. Even after parturition, she encountered humiliation and assaults on her hospital bed, and she was left alone to bear all the pain. She faced mortification when Khar stripped her naked and savagely beat her. Punjab's ex-CM Shahbaz Sharif confirms Marriage with Tehmina Durrani". Daily Times (Pakistan). Archived from the original on 3 September 2009. Born into one of Pakistan's most influential families, Tehmina Durrani was raised in the privileged milieu of Lahore high society, and educated at the same school as Benazir Bhutto. 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 air-conditioned leisure. When she married Mustafa Khar, one of Pakistan's most eminent political figures, she continued to move in the best circles, and learned to keep up the public façade as a glamorous, cultivated wife, and mother of four children.