Slain star was caught in clash of cultures
Pakistani woman lived independently in a Muslim nation, and died for it
SHAH SADDERUDD, PAKISTAN— In this Punjab village where a family’s worth is tallied in the number of males it can produce, Muhammed Azeem was different.
He valued his daughters as much as his sons.
He raised the three girls to be independent young women. When one of them married, she refused to take her husband’s name.
Another changed hers to Qandeel Baloch and became famous, shocking this conservative Islamic country with risqué videos that showed her in skin-tight clothing grinding against men.
Azeem didn’t care. He loved Qandeel — whose new name meant “torch” in their native language.
“I supported everything she did,” Azeem says. “I liked everything she did.”
Her father’s love helped make Baloch a role model to a generation of young Pakistani women. But it may have also planted the seeds of her destruction. Her younger brother Muhammed Wazeem seethed.
Villagers would constantly show him her Facebook posts and criticize his family for allowing her to make the videos.
He decided he had to save the family’s “honour.” Last month, he allegedly drugged Baloch and then, as their parents slept downstairs, strangled her.
In most so-called honour killings, families close ranks around the killer. Not this time.
“My son was wrong,” Azeem says. “I will not forgive him.”
This is the story of a girl from one of the poorest, most backward areas of Pakistan who emerged to transfix a nation — and then was killed for her role in its clash between tradition and modernity, between Islamic fun- damentalism and secularism.
Baloch’s home village, Shah Saddaruddin, is a seven-hour drive from the capital, Islamabad, a journey through sugar-cane and mango fields, often on roads that are no more than dirt tracks.
Most girls are hidden away once they reach puberty, and many are married shortly afterward to a boy chosen by their parents. In a country where 1,000 people die each year in honour killings, women are the main target.
“Women here are strictly controlled,” Baloch’s sister, Munawar Azeem, says.
“It’s our tradition, but Qandeel was stubborn, she always wanted more, had different ideas.”
Weeping for her sister, she says their father loved his girls “too much.”
Baloch was always different, even when she was still a little girl named Fouzia. Her mother, Anwar Bibi, smiles at the thought of her daughter.
“I don’t know why she was the way she was, but she never cared what anyone thought,” Bibi says. “She was always brave.”
Fouzia told her mother she’d be famous one day. Her first public performance was in 2012 on Pakistan Idol. It was a disaster. Judges cringe as she sings, and afterward she sobs backstage. The video went viral.
Her notoriety grew, and soon she was amassing millions of views on her YouTube videos.
Baloch’s father is devastated by her death.
His daughter, he says, “was more of a son” than any of his six sons, providing for the family.
“I miss everything of her. You were my daughter. God gave you fame. May God bless you.”