Voices of Women in Pakistan
پردے کے پیچھے
The Blind Spot
In Pakistan, patriarchy watches women's relationships with men — monitoring virginity, marriage, respectability. But women's relationships with each other? They fall outside the frame of concern.
This is the patriarchal blind spot. Women like us exploit it. They call each other saheli — best friend, companion — and no one questions the intensity, the intimacy, the love hidden in plain sight.
Purdah — the veil, the curtain, the system of concealment — was meant to control women. But its surveillance is directional. The same veil that hides women from men's eyes hides what lies beneath from patriarchal detection.
They hide behind the purdah. Within the very system meant to control them.
The Archive
Poetry, prose, and art from women across Pakistan. Click to read the full piece.
I have seen no hallowed winds, I have seen no shallow springs, And if I did, they couldn't simply decide upon whim, Whether they should or should not let me in...
you've been insatiable, since the very day you learnt to chew, and as it so happens, there has been cultivated in you, a hunger. a gnawing, clawing hunger...
Androgynous figures — redefining beauty on our own terms.
This space awaits a voice...
This space awaits a voice...
This space awaits a voice...
How We Survive
چنیدہ اظہار
Careful decisions about what to reveal, to whom, under what framing. Living double lives — one version for family, another for those who truly know.
"Navigating my sexuality in Pakistan is political. It has to be well thought out."
سہیلی
Framing what cannot be named within the culturally sanctioned category of intimate female friendship. The relationship is visible; its meaning is not.
"We use the term saheli all the time. That's my best friend. No one questions it."
خفیہ زبان
Systems of recognition through vocabulary, shows, music, signals — legible to insiders, opaque to outsiders. We find each other without ever asking directly.
"We gauge each other by talking about shows — Yellowjackets, Girl in Red. If they know, they know."
ظاہری گفتگو
Using dress, hair, piercings to express identity while maintaining ambiguity. Small acts of resistance — visible enough to be found, deniable enough to survive.
"I have piercings they don't know about — my septum, my navel. Those are for me."
The Weight
"The closet is like a dehumanisation chamber which strips you of your identity, rights, and free will." "It is like throwing away my own self every single day."
But we rise from ashes.
Every day.
Phoenix.
ہم موجود ہیں