There is a photograph that is often pasted on to telegraph poles and hung in city squares during protests across Pakistan. It is of a woman, her hair dishevelled, her lips severely parched, her head at a strange angle. It is also a picture of a very tired woman. In Pakistan, you’ll find hundreds of women who, after a very hard life, giving birth and raising children, and then losing them to state violence, begin to look like that.
The woman is Aafia Siddiqui, a neuroscientist and mother of three who is serving an 86-year sentence in a Texas prison for attempting to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Earlier this month, a British citizen, Malik Faisal Akram, held four people hostage in a Texas synagogue and demanded Siddiqui’s release. Akram was killed in a shootout and the media were once again full of Siddiqui’s story – with her presented variously as victim and terrorist, genius and pawn. So much of her story is unknown or contested that it can be co-opted by all sides to suit their own ends.
In Pakistan, we trot her out when we need to remind ourselves of our failure as a nation. We bemoan the fact that a monster called the United States of America came stomping in, took away our daughter and locked her up for life. Occasionally, noises are made that she should be released in exchange for this prisoner or that hostage, then we forget her again.
