Even before its release, a leaked manuscript of Reham Khan’s book attracted legal notices in June from four persons featured in her narrative, and threats to sue her for defamation from Jemima Goldsmith, Imran Khan’s first wife. The book cover has the words ‘Reham Khan’ printed in large letters below a photograph of a striking woman, lightly made-up, her brown hair half-covered with a dupatta. That should leave you in no doubt that this is a book by Ms Khan, of Ms Khan and for Ms Khan. About two hundred of the four hundred and forty-eight pages of text are filled with horrifying details of her first marriage to Dr Ijaz Rehman, a UK based psychiatrist, and her struggle to raise three children. Dr Rehman is among those who have sent legal notices, and has, in an interview, denied accusations of violence against Ms Khan and contested her version of the story.
Khan’s book, which quickly became controversial, starts off on an innocuous note on her secure and rather rosy childhood, with loving parents. She grew up in a westernized, liberal Pakistan before General Zia ul Haq came on the scene. All that security and comfort changed when she married at nineteen years of age a much older cousin, and she lived on a razor’s edge in a household maniacally micro-managed by her husband whom she depicts as at the very least insecure and at worst a criminally violent, callous and uncaring man. She finally leaves him after thirteen years and takes up various jobs, as a TV presenter and later the Weather Girl for the BBC before landing up in Pakistan. That’s when she interviews the former cricket test captain Imran Khan, the President of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and now, the Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Khan’s journey is a graphic account of what she, like so many other women has had to go through in their lives. It was her meeting with Imran that probably changed her life in many ways. As a successful TV personality, though Pakistani journalists are disparaging about her credibility and didn’t take her book seriously enough, she couldn’t pass up an offer of marriage from the once-devastating Kaptaan himself. Despite her misgivings and those of her children, who remain her major support, she consented to marry this man, not known for his intellect or his fidelity by all accounts. She is not ecstatic about her life in his sprawling and unkempt mansion in Bani Gala, on the outskirts of Islamabad, overlooking the Rawal Lake, all the while trying to set so many things right. From repairing and re-decorating the house, paying for groceries, cooking and cleaning, fending off his predatory sisters and his coterie, and his demanding harem, Reham Khan tried to settle herself into her expected role as the ‘National Bhabhi’, and failed.