“I’M TELLING YOU THAT MY LIFE IS IN DANGER”
The idea for the show is simple: in each episode the host gives viewers a peek into the lives of well-known Pakistanis. Political leaders, musicians, former and current prime ministers, lawyers, actors, models, dancers, athletes and filmmakers let the cameras into their homes and introduce their friends and family members to the host—a man named Sohail, who puts on a slow, sing-song voice for the interviews and likes to say that in fifteen years he has interviewed practically every Pakistani worth interviewing, and those he hasn’t will also eventually make their way on to the show.
Episodes have previously featured Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari, Imran Khan, the actresses Meera and Reema and musician Shahzad Roy, and the show has been shot in other countries including Spain, Sweden, China, Norway, and the US. Budding politicians like Benazir Bhutto’s son have promised Sohail that his first local talkshow interview will be with him.
For the show’s annual Eid special, the producers could have any guest they want, but that year they want Qandeel. She has thousands of followers online—her Facebook page has been restored after briefly being taken offline following a deluge of complaints—she has been mentioned in the National Assembly (as the butt of a joke, but even so her name has been spoken there), and it is impossible to count how many people have watched her videos as they are copied and shared on multiple platforms the minute she uploads them. And the whole business with Mufti Qavi is even more of a reason to feature her on the Eid special, which always attracts a significant audience. She is the talk of the town, as Sohail says. Although he does not reveal exactly how many people tuned in to that episode, he knows that it was in the millions. Yes, millions. More than any of his other 500-plus interviews.
Qandeel demurs when the producers ask if they can shoot the interview at her home in Karachi. She insists on doing it in Lahore, where Sohail is based. They guess that her home isn’t like some of the others that have been featured on the show and she is embarrassed by it. She wants a ticket to Lahore, accommodation at a five-star hotel and plenty of time for outfit changes to show off the wardrobe she wants to bring with her. And she has requested a pair of swimming goggles. She would like to be filmed in a pool, just like in the BBC interview with Amber, and she doesn’t own a pair of goggles.
On the day of the shoot Sohail is nervous about how irritable Qandeel seems to be. She is on edge, quick with a comeback or an argument. He overhears her on the phone, talking gently to her father, and asks if he would like to be featured on the show. Does he live in Lahore? But she refuses. Sohail will realise later when he sees that the man is lame and old, wears a dhoti and a kameez and mumbles why Qandeel did not want him to appear on the show.
Between takes she scrolls through messages on her phone and shows them to the crew. When she shows Sohail a text message from a man who is accusing her of not being Baloch, he cautions her, “The higher you fly, the more people will try and yank you down towards earth.” She mentions to Sohail that she has quarrelled with her brothers. They are threatening her and she isn’t sure if she will go back to Multan to see her parents over Eid. Later he wishes he had asked her more about this, but she mentioned it so casually that he hadn’t thought it was a big deal. It certainly isn’t an uncommon complaint from women in show business in Pakistan.
Sohail concludes that she is just another attention-seeking woman who likes to talk about her problems. She wants sympathy. He knows what some of the actresses he has interviewed think about Qandeel. They gossip about her and raise their eyebrows at some of her photos and complain that what she is doing isn’t right. She is “low,” they say, by which they mean common. When Qandeel tells Sohail that she is going to star on Bigg Boss—but don’t mention it to anyone—he thinks that if this is true, it is very likely she will make a name for herself, and the offers for films or Bollywood projects will inevitably follow. And then those actresses will stop saying horrible things about her—in public at least.
The episode opens with Sohail walking up a driveway towards a sprawling farmhouse with lush green gardens, miniature bridges over gurgling streams, a swimming pool and a lone horse which wanders into the frame. He introduces Qandeel as Pakistan’s “social media queen,” and as he puts his hand out to shake hers and greets her with a salaam, she throws her arms wide open as if to give him a big hug. He baulks. She cackles. “What? Did that scare you?”
As they walk to some chairs in the garden, Qandeel’s stiletto heels sink into the grass and she stumbles. She is wearing a wig—a sleek chestnut-brown bob parted on the side so it covers much of her face—and large tinted sunglasses. She is not in the Western clothes her followers are used to, but wearing a shalwar kameez with a dupatta. After all, the episode is scheduled to air on Eid.
She changes into a wetsuit for the swim, and is handed a large towel the minute she gets out of the water, and then they drive to a hotel in the city, where she puts on leggings and a fitted top for the gym. When she is done with her workout, a waiter brings her a tall glass of chilled orange juice. She is filmed walking out of the hotel trailed by a few well-dressed men and women who look like members of her entourage but are in fact hotel staff.
Back at the farmhouse, three men—friends? fans?—have been stationed at the gate, their arms full of bouquets of red and white flowers for Qandeel. A shiny black four-wheel drive waits in the driveway. Qan–deel changes into a deep-purple sporty peplum top and tights for a dance session with a choreographer. The men with the flowers join them in a large dimly lit room and watch her writhe and do some belly-dancing moves while vacant-eyed trophy heads of hunted deer on the wall look down on them. Sohail knows that some of the shots from the dancing segment will have to be cut because the dancing is a little too…well, you know. This is a family-oriented show.
The producers want to show her working out, dancing, and partying with her friends, but there are no friends or family she wants them to meet. In the end someone invites Sohail to a dinner, and Qandeel and the whole crew tag along. In the show it looks like a dinner her friends have thrown for her. When the show airs, some of the present people are annoyed with Sohail. They did not want to be seen—much less on national television—with a woman like Qandeel.
Qandeel changes for the dinner. She puts on a pair of black trousers and a grey shirt and twists her long hair—the brown bob is gone—into a topknot, and is taken in a brand-new white car. Some of her friends and family members watch the show and wonder where she got the money for the cars and the house with the swimming pool. On the drive over to the dinner Sohail presses her about how she earns her money, and she says simply, “I don’t depend on show business. I have side businesses, some online businesses, some trading on the side…It’s enough that I live my life very well.”
She tells him about her sister Shehnaz in Islamabad, her school days in Multan and her brother who is in the army. It is the first time she has spoken about her family so candidly, and a journalist in Multan watching the episode, whose ears prick up at the mention of a brother in the army, later remarks to his friend, “She’s going to get into trouble for that.” She is leaving tantalizing clues about herself for anyone who wants to dig into her past.
Qandeel comes across as honest—maybe a little too honest, as parts of her interview are cut out because the producers don’t want to get into trouble for obscenity—and she does not seem to filter her thoughts or give measured answers to questions. At one point she even seems to forget she is being filmed and says, “What the fuck?” and then she giggles with embarrassment. They will need to beep it out.
Five days ago, after her meeting with Mufti Qavi was broadcast on practically every news channel in the country, an Urdu-language newspaper based in Multan managed to find out her real name. A reporter even discovered that she had worked as a bus hostess. He had picked apart the threads of the story she had woven—the story of Qandeel Baloch—for her social media followers. The paper had printed pictures of her passport and national identity card. Now everyone knows her real name: Fouzia Azeem. The news is online and has been picked up by mainstream English and Urdu media outlets.
During the interview with Sohail, her first major one since her real name was revealed, she downplays the story. When he briefly touches upon it and asks her to confirm what her real name is, she reminds him, “Well, now the whole world knows it.” She airily tells him that everyone in her family calls her Qandeel, and has done so ever since she was a little girl.
Did the people who put out that story think that they could hurt her by telling everyone her real name? By telling everyone where she comes from? She is certain she is being targeted because she has humiliated Mufti Qavi. She was trying to show people what a fake person, a fake scholar who uses religion for his own purposes, looks like. Now she is being called an impostor, a “fake person” simply because she changed her name when she entered show business. “Message to my country’s people,” she writes on her Facebook page. “Just be aware of such fake people who have two faces and who are cheating people in the name of religion.” She adds, “Qandeel Baloch is not two faced as like such people. What I am my fans know me [sic] #DoubleStandardPeople #Hypocrite_Fake #No_Support.”
I’m literally feeling alone in the fight. I tried to reveal the true faces but actually I’m banged for that. I should not take such steps.
She has heard that Mufti Qavi has been removed from his post on the Ruet-e-Hilal committee, a position he loved to brag about. She doesn’t take pleasure in his humiliation. She feels bad for him, but something tells her that he will bounce back from this stronger than ever.
Mufti Qavi deserves worse than this.
She does not want to talk about Mufti Qavi in public any more. Only people in show business seem to be pleased with the scandal. She received a phone call the other day from an event planner who wants Qandeel to be the show-stopper in an upcoming fashion show. Everyone has seen the photos and videos from the Qavi meeting and everyone is talking about her, the planner says. But Mansoor warns her to be careful when talking about religion—not everyone is pleased with how she has been talking about the cleric. There are no more gleeful tweets from Qandeel (“Now this is called halal selfie 
”). Instead, she proclaims on her Facebook page: “I’m too upset with what has happened in the past couple of weeks and I here by [sic] announce that I do not have any issues with Mufti Qavi, whatever has happened between both of us is PAST now.” She makes an apology: “I respect my religion and this issue is portraying Islam in a wrong way which is surely not acceptable for me.” So when Sohail asks her about Mufti Qavi during his interview she will only say that whatever has happened is God’s will.
The day after the shoot she calls Sohail. She wants to tell people about the text messages she has been receiving and how angry she is that pictures of her passport and identity card were printed in a newspaper. She wants to hold a press conference. Can he tell her how to go about it?
He sees her the next day on TV in that same sleek brown bobbed wig as her press conference at the Lahore Press Club is carried live by many channels.1 She wears a modest shalwar kameez with a dupatta and purple-tinted sunglasses that make it impossible to see her eyes. Is she on the verge of tears?
She sits at a table with a bouquet of microphones fanned out in front of her. “I have called you here today because you must have seen how there has been so much said about me on social media and the media,” she tells the reporters. “I have one question: why is Qandeel Baloch being maligned? What have I done? I am, by the grace of Allah, a Muslim and a daughter of this nation.” She also wants to address what she has been saying about Mufti Qavi. “I don’t think that all muftis are bad, and not all ulema are bad,” she explains. “Being a Muslim girl, I respect all the clerics because they keep Islam alive…but it is people like Mufti Abdul Qavi who disgrace Islam with what they do behind closed doors. I have no quarrel with other clerics. I respect them. I didn’t set out to humiliate Mufti Abdul Qavi. Whatever has happened is God’s will.” Her voice quavers. “But after this whole incident with Mufti Abdul Qavi, I’ve got so many threats, so many threats that I cannot sleep at night,” she says. She is getting calls from numbers in Afghanistan, and threatening emails and messages. “My sources have told me to go underground,” she reveals. “I am a prisoner in my own home.”
She is afraid of the strangers who are getting in touch with her. She fears for her life and for her family. She wants the government to provide her with protection. “If something happens to me tomorrow or something happens to my family, then the [government] will be held responsible,” she declares.
The reporters press her. There are many women in showbiz, one says to her, and they aren’t getting these kinds of threats. Perhaps it is because they don’t get up to the antics you do. You say that you have showed us Mufti Qavi’s real face. Who are you planning to expose next? Sohail watches the press conference and admires her for having squeezed in both an interview and a dramatic press conference on her trip to Lahore—paid for by his producers. He doesn’t worry too much about the threats that Qandeel mentions. After all, she seemed like an attention-seeker, didn’t she?
I’m telling you that my life is in danger and you’re accusing me of a publicity stunt? I can’t say anything to that.
When she gets back to Karachi, she meets her old friend Mansoor, and he takes her over to a friend’s house. She often breaks her fast with this friend in the evenings. He scolds her for the videos and photographs with Mufti Qavi and says she does not understand the danger she is putting herself in. Stay with me for a few days, he offers. It’s safe in my home with so many guards and people around all the time. She refuses and says she is planning to go to her parents in Multan for Eid, as she does every year. She also says she wants to leave Pakistan for a little while, perhaps with her parents, after Eid. She jokes that he has not given her Eidi [gifts of money given on Eid] yet. As she is leaving, he hands her a hundred dollars. He does not understand why she is going back to Multan now. It isn’t safe for her. “They’ll get you killed,” he says unhappily, but perhaps she is too excited about the crisp green note to pay attention or ask him who exactly “they” are.
Things are not going according to plan. On 8 July she released one of her boldest works yet—she starred in a video for a song called “Ban.” The producer and director have worked with some of the biggest names in the music industry. They told her she would become an international artist once people saw the video. She could even go on tour in Canada. Look at the other women who have made these videos. Look at how their careers have taken off—they’re hosting talk shows, commanding great sums of money for appearances in other videos, and some of them have even put out their own songs. She wants to be more than just a social media star, right? They know she understands that a flash of skin will always get people talking. And doesn’t she want to change what people are saying about her? Give the people something that can drown out all the other stories and rumours.
She falls out with Mec over the video. He didn’t want her to do it. He told her he didn’t like what they wanted Qandeel to do in the video. The director was ready to pay 300,000 rupees for Qandeel, but then she went behind Mec’s back. She didn’t know about the offer on the table and ended up accepting half the amount. She is given a free hand to do whatever she likes—clothes, hair and make-up, dancing. She wears a bobbed black wig and colours her lips a glossy hot pink. She brings her tinted sunglasses and the black lace dress from her video for Imran Khan. Her blue and pink bra peeks through the lace as she bends over and pushes herself against the singer, a kid in his late teens who likes to style his mop of hair in spikes.
Fine, the wardrobe is cheap. I agree it’s cheap.
With every thrust of her hips, the kid sings about her dangerous “thumkas” (hip thrusts), how sexy her moves are. She likes the lyrics, especially the line, “Baby, please don’t do it again.” She changes into a black bodysuit with sheer stockings and stiletto heels for some of her solo shots. She wears a low-cut pink babydoll dress with a push-up bra and tries to twerk. She sucks her finger. She isn’t happy with the twerking. She isn’t sure how to do it. She turns away from the camera and squats and thrusts her hips in and out, in and out, and then gazes over her shoulder and lightly smacks her ass.
Fine, I don’t know how to dance.
In between shots she sits on one of the props, hunched over and hugging herself as she watches the cameramen and lighting guys set up.
But look at my confidence. How would I rate this video? 10/10. Why not? I broke a record in Pakistan. No one has done this before.
She isn’t happy with some parts. She asks the producers to delay it, to take out some shots, but they refuse. Why is she so worried? Nothing in the video will be a problem, they assure her.
The video is watched more than 5.5 million times on YouTube alone. It is too risqué to be shown on television. But between Qandeel’s social media following and the production company’s, who needs airtime? The video is released on Facebook and YouTube with a cheeky disclaimer: “This video can shock, offend and upset people. Are you sure you want to watch it?”
Mec is furious with her. He refuses to share the video on his Facebook page. She tries to make peace. She calls him and weeps and complains about the shots she did not like. He scolds her. She doesn’t know how these people work. How they can secretly film you or fool you. She is still so naive. Let it go, she pleads with Mec. Let’s have a clean start. I swear I’ll listen to you now. She says that many times in that last month, every time she does something that lands her in trouble—Let’s start afresh—and each time Mec believes she really does want to.
It doesn’t matter. No one is talking about the video any more, not since a man appeared on TV five days after “Ban” came out. He told everyone he was Qandeel’s ex-husband and was sitting next to a small, full-lipped, serious-looking boy. The boy is her son, Mishal.
Ever since that newspaper revealed her real name, she has had bad luck. There are now two court cases against her accusing her of not being Baloch and threatening her with a fine of five crore rupees if she does not stop using “Baloch” as a name. Just dogs barking, she reassures herself. She receives a phone call from a man who says he is close to her father. His name is Safdar Shah. He tells her his house is right next to hers. She doesn’t understand what he means. In Shah Sadar Din, he says. Your home in Shah Sadar Din. Who is this man? she wonders. He says he is a lawyer and so she asks him for advice on the legal cases. Are they serious? Could something come of them? And is there any law which could stop her using “Baloch” as her surname?
Safdar Shah likes to tell Qandeel with indignation that if the daughter of a rich man can go to India and act in films there, then why can’t the daughter of a poor man from some no-name village do the same? When he mentions this for the fourth time in their conversation, she retorts that perhaps he should forget about these other actresses and think about Qandeel Baloch, who is the number-one top model in Pakistan. He chuckles.
People in Shah Sadar Din are burning with jealousy, he tells her. They can’t stand how successful she has become. It doesn’t matter to her. She is setting her sights higher—a career in politics might be in her future. Perhaps in Imran Khan’s party. Shah is very enthusiastic about this idea. She is curious about who has been feeding information about her life in Shah Sadar Din to the media, but she is not scared—after all, the stories keep her in the headlines, and who doesn’t want that? She likes being in the limelight. Let the dogs keep barking.
But then she sees her little boy on television.
Her phone will not stop ringing.
“I am in Multan,” she messages Mec. “Handle all these calls, please. Need your support. I am very much alone. Everyone against. Even my family. What should I do? No one can understand me.”
He tells her to stay away from the media. Ignore the calls and requests for interviews. Don’t say a word.
“Can you please handle all these people?” she replies. “The cases. I need a lot of support.”
Later, “It’s very hot here.”
There is a picture of her being shared online and shown over and over again on the news. In it she stands with her husband and his mother in a field. She remembers that picture. She hadn’t wanted to stand close to them. Her gold bangles had clinked as she crossed her arms and held herself. People start posting that photo in the comments section of anything she shares or writes on her Facebook page.
An entertainment reporter from one of the English-language newspapers calls her. She tells him about how her husband would beat her and how she has not seen her son in years.
No one tells me, “Qandeel, you have gone to war against a society, against a kind of place where men think women are as lowly as their shoe. The kind of place where it’s so common for a man to hit a woman, that if some man doesn’t hit his wife, people call him beghairat [dishonourable].” Why don’t people see that?
She cannot stop crying. The reporter is irritated. Does this woman ever stop being such a drama queen? He had admired her for the stunt with Mufti Qavi, but really this is too much. But he needs to keep the conversation going. He needs something, a nugget of information that will make his story stand out from all the others. He tries to sympathize with her. It must be troublesome that you cannot meet your child any more, he offers.
“They will kill me,” she replies, sniffling. “I can’t go back.” How dramatic! She just wants to be in the news all the time, doesn’t she? He does not ask her who “they” are and she does not say. “I took a divorce because I wanted to study further and work, but I was forcibly married,” she explains.2
The reporter wants an exclusive face-to-face interview. She tells him she is in Multan, and when she comes back to Karachi she doesn’t plan on doing anything for a month or two. She doesn’t want to speak to anybody. She wants to file a custody case for her boy.
The reporter ends the call, walks back into the newsroom and tells everyone the drama queen is crying again and saying the same old things about threats to her life. Remember all those videos where she sniffled and complained about a fever or a headache, or the time she wailed and sobbed after Pakistan lost the T20 match against India? This story about the husband is just another excuse to make a video. The reporter files his story. It instantly goes online, and everyone in the newsroom is delighted because they have never seen such high traffic. They covered the Mufti Qavi meeting and her “Ban” video when it came out, because they know that anything to do with Qandeel Baloch brings a tide of readers to their website.
The numbers on the story about the drama queen’s husband will only be surpassed by those for the piece about her death two days later.
On her visits home she does no work. She sleeps for most of the day. A lady comes to the house to rub mustard oil in her hair and massage her body. Qandeel dyes her hair on the trip, peering into a small mirror above the sink in the only bathroom in the house. She gets a call from Mansoor. He tells her some of his friends want to meet the Qandeel Baloch. They are planning to hold a party on a boat this week. Come with me, Mansoor says. She tells him she is in Multan. When I come back, she promises, we’ll go on a cruise together.
She does an interview over the phone with a man who hosts an online talkshow.3 He takes a few calls from listeners. One man asks her why she does not use her fame and celebrity to do something good so the people who curse her and call her names can then have something to praise her for. “I definitely plan to do some positive work, but these days there are so many issues I am dealing with,” she replies. “There are the court cases…the controversies that won’t leave me, and then on top of everything, my brothers want to kill me.”
The caller interrupts her. “But you are planning to do some work which will bring glory to Pakistan?”
The host does not ask her about her brothers, and she does not mention them again.
She likes to sit with her mother and massage her feet. She feels happiest when she is doing this. Her father has come down with a cold. She plays Abida Parveen songs for him on her phone. Her younger brother is there as well. After they eat dinner together, he offers to go out to buy the milk that her mother gets every evening. He pours swirls of sweet ruby-red Rooh Afza syrup into the chilled glasses of milk. Her phone’s battery dies. She goes to her room to charge it. She gets a phone call.
At last! Some good news.
She texts Mec, “I am very much happy.” She is out of credit on her phone. Send me some balance, she tells him. I have something to tell you. She calls him promptly when the credit comes through. Why didn’t you let me call you if you have no money on your phone? he chides. But she wants to be the one calling. In the future, years later, she wants to remember that she had called him and told him her life was going to change.
He asks her if everything is all right, and if she is still having problems with Mufti Qavi.
She tells him that has been cleared up. Promise me something, she says.
What promise?
Promise me you’ll come to Karachi with me.
Mec says he can’t travel at the moment. He has too many events lined up.
Are they more important than me? She pretends to sulk. When she finally gets him to say what she wants to hear, she tells him she has received a phone call from the woman who organizes the entertainment and fashion industry’s biggest annual awards show. This year they want Qandeel to open the show, she says to Mec with a squeal. With Ali Zafar! One of Pakistan’s best-known singers! The organizer’s daughter had shown her Qandeel’s photographs and videos. People—women—in showbiz have been talking about her. Some are envious, some are in awe, and others are disgusted. But there is a great deal of respect after the incident with Mufti Qavi. For so many years people in the industry have been judged by the religious conservatives and scolded on live TV shows or been subjected to fatwas about everything from how they dress to their personal lives and the films they star in. Now, finally, one of their own—yes, they could accept her as one of them—has thumbed her nose at them all. She has guts, they grudgingly accept.
Mec has to come with her to Karachi. She won’t go without him. Forget everything else that has happened. Now she will start again, and she will do things differently. No more secrets—everything she has hidden for years, the life she has pretended to live, all of that is finished. She has known it all along: if you have strong willpower, nothing can keep you down. Life taught her lessons at an early age. It has not been easy to become a woman who supports herself and her family. She will tell everyone exactly how she did it.
Maybe she can even start some organization, some agency to help girls who have the same dreams as her. She will make sure that they do not have to go through what she did. Do you know what she is? What she is becoming? A girl power. A one-woman army. An inspiration to those ladies who are treated badly and dominated by society. Everything is going to change now. There will be new tricks, or perhaps none at all. After all, she is no longer just Qandeel Baloch. She is also Fouzia Azeem. Will Fouzia Azeem make videos and take selfies and tell Imran Khan she loves him? What will Fouzia Azeem, the woman who escaped an abusive marriage, the woman who supported her family, the woman who has a child, have to say?
There will be more work, more countries to visit, but can she leave the country if there are two court cases pending against her? Perhaps she should ask Safdar Shah to look into that. Get a passport for yourself, she instructs Mec. We’re going to have many travels together. She is going to make it as a singer. She will do concerts. Concerts in Dubai! She wants to be back in Karachi as soon as possible. She wants to book her flight first thing in the morning. Will Mec make sure she is up early tomorrow? She has been told to get back to Karachi as soon as possible to choose her wardrobe for the awards ceremony.
He promises to call in the morning to wake her.
Promise you’ll come with me, she insists. I’ll send you a ticket as soon as I’m back in Karachi.
He promises.
The next day, 16 July, a Saturday morning, Mec keeps his word and calls Qandeel. There is no answer.
Silly girl. She must have stayed up late again, and will now sleep until the afternoon.
He had sent her a message the night before. “I am so happy. May you remain happy. I’m always praying for you. My heart is so happy.”
I think I’m afraid to be happy, because whenever I do get too happy, something bad always happens…
It is 10.30 a.m. She has not called him back and is not answering her phone.
He messages her: “Good morning. Have a nice day.”