Asia Bibi woke up earlier than usual that day. A farm worker, she was part of a falsa berry harvest taking place outside her village. It was the morning of June 14, 2009, a hot Sunday in Ittan Wali, close to Nankana Sahib in Pakistan’s Punjab province. Bibi left her husband and daughters sleeping and made her way to the fields to pick fruit. By the time she arrived, fifteen other women were already there, their backs arched in the bushes.
Bibi was handed a bucket to fill with berries. She would get 250 rupees ($1.2 in today’s terms) in return, money that would afford her family two kilos of flour, enough to make chapatis for a whole week. She noticed that her bucket was larger than the other women’s and wondered if it was meant to serve as a reminder that she was Christian, that she would have to work harder to get paid the same amount as the Muslim women beside her.
