An Open Letter to Jemima Khan

Dear Jemima,

May I cut the crap and get straight to the point? What has riled me no end about your divorce is the stuff that is being reprinted verbatim from the Western press.

You are being manipulated to reinforce the delusion of British superiority, which soaked into the soil so many years ago. The sun may have set on the British Empire, but its rays have been effectively channelled into solar energy, and continue to heat up every issue that has to do with Old Blighty’s heritage of colonial rule. The attitude is exceedingly patronising. In the old days they used to call Imran Khan a rich playboy, every woman’s dream lover. Once you came into his life, however, they began to say that he could hardly be called rich. Pakistan’s erratic electricity, water supply and the rumour that your husband did not even have a (shudder!) washing machine became tabloid chatter. They dug out old girlfriends who called him a cad.

And the British media did not know what to do with you. Where once they had flaunted your cleavage and projected you as a wild, wild child, they now began to worry themselves sick over their very own fresh-flower babe. And we in the subcontinent began to feel just a little sorry for you. Even though you’d married Imran Khan.

What if you, my dear, were caught red-handed with a glass of champagne? They wondered if you’d be awarded fifty lashes, they fretted about whether a poised, cultured Westerner would ever survive in such an uncivilised environment. (This was the same evolved society that was waiting in anticipation for your intimate honeymoon photographs to be published.)

We in the East have our flaws, but a Westerner has no business presuming they qualify as evidence of regression. Had you married an Indian they would have probably wondered whether you would be riding an elephant or milking cows. As it was a Pakistani you wed, they began talking about the veiled existence.

And they found a precedent to hark on about, no matter that it was a flawed one, to prove the compromises you would be forced to make: they said Benazir Bhutto gave up her slacks and opted for the shalwar kameez when she came to Pakistan. There are two problems with this. One is that Bhutto was head of the government, and represented a particular tradition. Surely she wasn’t expected to traipse around in strapless gowns at official functions? Two, if Asians in the West wearing traditional clothes become objects of curiosity, if not amusement, then why should Western garb be exempted in Asia? Or are jeans, T-shirts and other Western attire normal, while Eastern clothes are peculiar?

Everyone wants to clone a people’s princess. And you did have your own version of a prince. Only while Charles spoke to trees, Imran has been visiting palmists. Apparently he asked one of them when he would remarry. He has denied it and it is quite likely the Occidental press was pushing the Oriental exotica case. Pop psychologists have gone into overdrive. One pontificated: “…the remarks may reflect the hurt of Imran-on-the-rebound after his English heiress virtually abandoned him seven months ago for a life in London”. Another report quoted “a friend of the couple” as saying that it was difficult for Imran to accept his wife so openly in the company of other men; it was not a Muslim thing to do.

This is silly. Many celebrated alliances in the West have fallen apart due to straying and jealousy. But you, Jemima, were one neat shoulder from which to fire the gun at the ‘jihadis’.

Suddenly, you have become Blonde Power. You, who would have gone into the annals of history as a mere hello in Hello magazine or a pause between Brooke Shields and Britney Spears, are now a sanctified heroine. Breathless exclamations deify you: Look, someone broke into her Fulham house and it was a politically-motivated act! Look, she was called a Zionist conspirator yet she wrote passionately about the Palestinian cause! Look, she campaigned with her husband in the heat and dust and spoke Urdu and a bit of Pashto! Look, she lives with her in-laws and shares her bed with her kids! Look, she took Lahore shadow-work to London! Look, she became a UNICEF ambassador! You did this in your capacity as the wife of a man who may have changed jobs but has only one profession: Being Imran Khan.

This is not about the clash of civilisations. 4,000 miles, 20 years and a few million euros do not always create a chasm. Women in the East also feel stifled, but there are nuclear families here too. And while I agree our female population has problems aplenty, don’t your women have any?

I have been told that women in your part of the world at least have a choice. Do you realise that these choices are dictated by male yardsticks? Aren’t you sickened, just a little, when the media says that Hugh Grant is not that great a catch because his standards are low, he was caught with a common prostitute? Do you realise that had Divine Brown been one of Madame Heidi Fleiss’ girls, she may have entered the charmed environs of Annabel’s with any darned fop and that would gain her respectability? Do you see the irony?

At what cost are your women better off? There are women who break through the glass ceiling in the West as they do in India and Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. I would say the areas of exploitation differ and we mistake them for degrees of exploitation.

And you are being exploited, to buffer a stereotype propagated by your country’s media. Together with your marriage license, they handed you a baggage of fake superiority because of your money, your champagne, your colour, your nationality, your age. The neo-colonialists and even the feminists among them who were harping on these minor factors had forgotten the one all-important fact: that a supposedly independent-minded woman had changed her religion and name and effaced an important part of her identity. This should have bothered them and not whether you would get your Cointreau or not.

They are not concerned about the turmoil of a divorce. The pain of the break-up is something only you will be in a position to understand. Even if I were an heiress and my mother had a nightclub named after her, I would not want to be in your shoes. Bad enough that they would pinch, far worse to be told that well-shod as one was, the road was full of potholes. You chose a path; it did not lead to the desired destination. But you walked it, and discovered the milestones, the hurdles, the shade beneath the trees, the sunstrokes. Do not let others use you to fill prejudiced minds with imaginary demons. Only you know when you laughed and when you cried. Every woman is an island, and this is just a note in a bottle. An ephemeral dard ka rishta.