PAKISTAN’S TOUGHEST WOMAN
QAZI AHMED (Pakistan): As 200 armed men surrounded their house on a hot August night in 2005, Nazo Dharejo and her sisters grabbed their Kalashnikov and puny stock of ammunition and climbed to the roof.
The gunfight which followed earned her the moniker “Pakistan’s toughest woman”, and became the subject of a film which has been entered in next year’s Academy Awards.
At the ancestral home Dharejo fought for in Sindh province, she described the night which could lead to Oscar glory.
“I will kill them or die here but never retreat,” Dharejo, now in her late 40s, recalled saying as assailants attacked her home.
Her husband begged her to stand down but she refused, facing down her own relatives, who were armed and had long sought to take her family’s property after her father died leaving no male heir, she said.
Dharejo had persuaded her father to allow her and her sisters to study English, which paved the way for her to gain her Bachelor of Arts in economics at Sindh University. Her family had taught them that they were as good as boys, and the sisters were willing to give their lives to prove it.
From their position on the roof their tiny army, the three sisters, Dharejo’s husband, and friends and neighbours, held off the onslaught, with household staff making daring runs for more ammunition.
A five-year legal battle over the land saw her foes pay half a million Pakistani rupees (RM19,600) in compensation and offer a public apology — an act of utmost disgrace in rural Pakistan.
In 2013, Dharejo’s story came to the attention of a British-born Pakistani filmmaker, Sarmad Masud. Fascinated, he got in touch. The result is My
Pure Land, the 98-minute Urdu-language film version of Dharejo’s story starring Suhaee Abro, which became the United Kingdom’s entry in the Oscar’s foreign language category.
It faces tough competition: a record 92 countries have entered this year. AFP