How I work to protect women from honor killings

While preparing for my talk

I was reflecting on my life

and trying to figure out

where exactly was that moment
when my journey began.

A long time passed by,
and I simple couldn't figure out

the beginning or the middle
or the end of my story.

I always used to think that my beginning

was one afternoon in my community
when my mother had told me

that I had escaped three
arranged marriages by the time I was two.

Or one evening when electricity had failed
for eight hours in our community,

and my dad sat, surrounded by all of us,

telling us stories of when he was
a little kid struggling to go to school

while his father, who was a farmer,
wanted him to work in the fields with him.

Or the dark night when I was 16
when three little kids have come to me

and they whispered in my ear
that my friend was murdered

in something called "the honor killings."

But then I realized that,

as much as I know that these moments
have contributed on my journey,

they have influenced my journey

but they have not been
the beginning of it,

but the true beginning of my journey
was in front of a mud house

in Upper Sindh of Pakistan,

where my father held the hand
of my 14-year old mother

and they decided
to walk out of the village

to go to a town where they could
send their kids to school.

In a way, I feel like my life

is kind of a result of some wise choices
and decisions they've made.

And just like that,
another of their decisions

was to keep me and my siblings
connected to our roots.

While we were living in a community
I fondly remember called [?????],

which means community of the poor,

my dad made sure that we also
had a house in our rural homeland.

I come from an indigenous tribe
in the mountains of Baluchistan

called Bravi.

Bravi, or Brohi,

means mountain dweller,

and it is also my language.

Thanks to my father's very strict rules
about connecting to our customs,

I had to live a beautiful life
of songs, cultures, traditions,

stories, mountains,

and a lot of sheep.

But then, living in two extremes

between the traditions of my culture,

of my village, and then education,
modern education in my school wasn't easy.

I was aware that I was the only girl
who got to have such freedom,

and I was guilty of it.

While going to school in Karachi

and Hyderabad,

a lot of my cousins and childhood friends
were getting married off,

some to older men, some in exchange,

some even as second wives.

I got to see the beautiful tradition

and its magic fade in front of me

when I saw that the birth of a girl child

was celebrated with sadness,

when women were told
to have patience as their main virtue.

Up until I was 16,

I healed my sadness by crying,

mostly at nights
when everyone would sleep,

and I would sob in my pillow,

but until that one night
when I found out my friend was killed

in the name of honor.

Honor killings is a custom

where men and women
are suspected of having relationships

before or outside of the marriage,

and they're killed by their family for it.

Usually the killer is the brother
or father or the uncle in the family.

The U.N. reports there are about 1,000
honor murders every year in Pakistan,

and these are only the reported cases.

A custom that kills
did not make any sense to me,

and I knew I had to do
something about it this time.

I was not going to cry myself to sleep.

I was going to do something,
anything, to stop it.

I was 16. I started writing poetry

and going door to door
telling everybody about honor killings

and why it happens,
why it should be stopped,

and raising awareness about it until
I actually found a much, much better way

to handle this issue.

In those days, we were
living in a very small,

one roomed house in Karachi.

Every year, during the monsoon seasons,
our house would flood out with water,

rainwater, and sewage,

and my mom and dad
would be taking the water out.

In those days, my dad brought home
a huge machine, a computer.

It was so big it looked as if
it was going to take the half

of the only room we had,

and had so many pieces and wires
that needed to be connected.

But it was still the most exciting thing

that has ever happened
to me and my sisters.

My older brother Ali got to be in charge
of taking care of the computer,

and all of us were given, like,
10 to 15 minutes every day to use it.

Being the older of eight kids,

I got to use it the last,

and that was after
I had washed the dishes,

cleaned the house,
made dinner with my mom,

and put blankets on the floor
for everyone to sleep,

and after that,
I would run to the computer,

connect it to the Internet,

and have pure joy and wonder
for 15 to 10 minutes.

In those days, I had discovered
a website called Joogle.

[Google] (Laughter)

In my frantic wish
to do something about this custom,

I made use of Google
and discovered Facebook,

a website where people can connect
to anyone around the world,

and so, from my very tiny,
cement-roofed room in Karachi,

I connected with people in U.K.,

U.S., Australia, and Canada,

and created a campaign

called "WAKE UP Campaign
against Honor Killings."

It became enormous in just a few months.

I got a lot of support
from all around the world.

Media was connecting to us.

A lot of people were reaching out
trying to raise awareness with us.

It became so big that it went from online
to the streets of my hometown,

where we would do rallies and strikes
trying to change the policies in Pakistan

for women's support.

And while I thought
everything was perfect,

my team, who was basically
my friends and neighbors at that time,

thought everything was going so well,

that we had no idea
a big opposition was coming to us.

My community stood up against us,

saying we were spreading
un-Islamic behavior.

We were challenging centuries-old
customs in those communities.

I remember my father receiving
anonymous letters

saying, "Your daughter is spreading

Western culture
in the honorable societies."

Our car was stoned at one point.

One day I went to the office
and found our metal signboard

wrinkled and broken as if a lot of people
had been hitting it with something heavy.

Things got so bad that I had
to hide myself in many ways.

I would put up the windows of the car,

veil my face, not speak
while I was in public,

but eventually, situations got worse

when my life was threatened

and I had to leave back to Karachi

and our actions stopped.

Back in Karachi, as an 18-year old,

I thought this was the biggest
failure of my entire life.

I was devastated.

As a teenager, I was blaming
myself for everything that happened.

And it turns out,
when we started reflecting,

we did realize that it was actually
me and my team's fault.

There were two big reasons
why our campaign had failed big time.

One of those, the first reason,

is we were standing
against core values of people.

We were saying no to something
that was very important to them,

challenging their code of honor,

and hurting them deeply in the process.

And number two, which was very
important for me to learn,

and amazing, and surprising
for me to learn,

was that we were not including
the true heroes

who should be fighting for themselves.

The women in the villages had no idea
we were fighting for them in the streets.

Every time I would go back,
I would find my cousins and friends

with scarves on their faces,
and I would ask, what happened?

And they'd be like, our husband beat us.

But then we are working
in the streets for you.

We are changing the policies.

How is that not impacting their life?

So then we found out something
which was very amazing for us.

The policies of a country

do not necessarily always affect
the tribal and rural communities.

It was devastating, like, oh,
we can't actually do something about this?

And we found out there's a huge gap

when it comes to official policies
and the real truth on the ground.

So this time, we were like,

we are going to do something different.

We are going to use strategy,

and we are going to go back and apologize.

Yes, apologize.

We went back to the communities
and we said we are very ashamed

of what we did.

We are here to apologize,
and in fact, we are here

to make it up to you.

How did we do that?

We are going to promote
three of your main cultures.

We know that it's music,
language, and embroidery.

Nobody believed us.

Nobody wanted to work with us.

It took a lot of convincing
and discussions with these communities

until they agreed that we are going
to promote their language

by making a booklet of their stories,
fables, and old tales in the tribe,

and we would promote their music
by making a CD of the songs

from the tribe, and some drumbeating.

And the third, which was my favorite,

was we would promote
their embroidery by making

a center in the village
where women would come every day

to make embroidery.

And so it began.

We worked with one village,

and we started our first center.

It was a beautiful day.

We started the center.

Women were coming to make embroidery,

and going through a life-changing
process of education,

learning about their rights,
what Islam says about their rights,

and enterprise development,
how they can create money,

and then how they can create
money from money,

how they can fight the customs
that have been destroying their lives

from so many centuries,

because in Islam, in reality,
women are supposed to be

shoulder to shoulder with men.

Women have so much status

that we have not been hearing,

that they have not been hearing,

and we needed to tell them
that they need to know

where their rights are
and how to take them by themselves,

because they can do it and we can't.