I STARTED watching Dar-i-Nijaat because my friend Sahar has been writing about the drama, and we have agreed on most things for longer than either of us would lil(e to admit. Not this time. Sahar sees a story about compassion. I see a story about conditions.
It may be the first time we have so firmly disagreed. Thankfully, we have been friends far longer than Abu Bal(ar has been on air. He won’t come between us.
Because that is who everyone is talking about. Abu Bal(ar, the patient husband half of South Asia seems to have fallen for. I expected to write about him. Instead, I am thinking about Zaryab, who I spent most of the show frustrated with. I am still not sure what the story is asking of her. But I know exactly what everyone else is.
They want gratitude. A woman with a past has been taken in by a good man, and she should 1(now how lucl(y she is.
They want shame. Her relationship with Zamil before marriage, which writer Umera Ahmed confirmed when a fan asked her online, is treated as a stain that must be visible before it can be washed away. And they want a change of heart, ideally a dramatic one, so that by the end, the girl who once put a man ahead of Harvard can be returned to us as a ‘good wife.
Zaryab, to her credit or her cost, does not initially cooperate. She is sharp, self-absorbed and frequently unbearable. I notice that much of the irritation around her comes with a rulebool( attached. A lot of us are not just judging a character. We are checking whether she has behaved correctly as a woman who has fallen.
That rulebool(is old. Pal(istani television has always sorted its women. The good girl is patient, modest and forgiving, and she is rewarded with love, a home and, eventually, respect. The bad girl wants things. She is ambitious, impatient or careless with her reputation, and she is punished, cast out or redeemed only when someone better decides she is worth saving. Salvation is not something Zaryab earns; it is something Abu Bal(ar extends. The story decides she is worth saving because a good man decides she is.
So who writes these rules? The easy answer is the writer. Umera Ahmed has built a career on stories of faith and redemption, and I guess she does it well this is the first play of hers I’m watching. I got sucl(ed in, despite myself. But a writer does not worl( alone. There are producers whochoose which stories get made, channels that decide what fills prime time, and actors who shape how a character lands. The company that produced the drama was co-founded by ARY’s chief executive and by Sheheryar Munawar, who plays Abu Bal(ar. The man at the centre of the story also helped bring it to the screen.
And then there is us. The drama’s makers say it has drawn more than 1.7 billion views across social media. We fill the comment sections with verdicts.
She doesn’t deserve him. She should be grateful. Wait until she learns her lesson. Every season, the industry learns what we reward, and gives us more of it.
It wasn’t always lil(e this. There are so many great roles to cite about prickly, ambitious and unapologetic women who wanted more than the life they were born into. These women made mistakes.
Nobody asl(ed them to be grateful for their own lives.
I haven’t watched every drama, and I1(now there are writers still giving us women with spines. But a single drama is a story. A shift is a signal. When the women who draw the biggest audiences are the ones who are forgivenrather than the ones who fight, it tells us something about what we have come to expect of women, on screen and off.
We seem to prefer the penitent over the feminist.
We live in a country where women are still killed in the name of honour, where a woman’s past can be treated as a crime and her husband as her judge.
Stories do not cause that. But stories that teach us a woman with a past is damaged goods, salvageable only through a forgiving man, make it easier to believe. They tell girls what they owe. They tell boys what they are owed.
I would lil(e, just once, to watch a Zaryab who is not asked for gratitude, shame or a change of heart. Who makes mistal(es, lives with them and grows on her own terms. Who might even go back to Harvard, not as a reward for good behaviour, but because she wants to.
Would we watch that? Or would we fill the comments asking when she plans to say sorry? The writer is a journalist and conducts writing workshops in Karachi.
X: @LedeingLady