Narratives as Sources of History
Urvashi Butalia
CUTTING FREE: THE EXTRAORDINARY MEMOIR OF A PAKISTANI WOMAN by Salma Ahmed Roli Books, 2008, 83 pp., 585
February 2008, volume 32, No 2

I read Salma Ahmed’s book around the same time as I was reading the story of another Pakistani woman, Mukhtar Mai. The two stories, both about women battling against difficult odds, could not have been more different. Mukhtar Mai, subjected to rape as a form of tribal justice and recovery of ‘honour’ for a suspected ‘crime’ (her young brother was accused of oggling/desiring an upper caste girl), poor and powerless, and Salma Ahmed, rich, privileged, married at a young age, caught in abusive marriage after abusive marriage, but always landing on her feet with the help of powerful connections and wealthy parents. Both women gutsy, strong, articulate, and completely different. At one level, Ahmed’s book provides the reader with insight into how, even in the most privileged of homes, with easy access to those in power (Ahmed is able to set up businesses about which she knows little, for example, ship breaking, simply by getting hold of the right politician at the right time), the woman does not count. Salma Ahmed is beaten, lives and loves fiercely, she refuses to be tied down to the conventional expectations of women, and wives.

Thus it is that she is able to leave her first child with her first husband. While this is hurtful and upsetting, there is little evidence, in this narrative, of the grief many mothers feel at being torn away from their children. But while she is unconventional in many respects, she is conventional enough to become pregnant again, and again, seeing motherhood and marriage as part of her life.

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