Karachi 3rd July (TNS): When Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy was studying for her A-levels while growing up in Pakistan, she heard that Michael Jackson was playing a concert in India. The 17-year-old was desperate to go, but when she told her grandfather, he forbade her – not just from the concert, but from the country. “He said, ‘You are going to India over my dead body.’ He was a very logical man, so I wondered why.”
It’s this mixture of nostalgia and hurt she is exploring in Home 1947, an art installation created for the Manchester international festival. Dressed in a director’s uniform of black, made less severe by her long, glossy hair and fuchsia lipstick, Obaid-Chinoy is a commanding presence. So the contemplative nature of this project is something of a departure. As she discusses it, her voice softens. “This is personal. It’s an ode to my grandparents’ generation. How did it feel that, when you left your home, it not only stopped being your home, but became part of an enemy country?”
Part of the artwork is a recreation of a pre-partition home, while another room contains films with personal stories. In one, a woman remembers leaving her childhood friend, recalling how they would sit for hours under their favourite mango tree, swapping secrets. A second has a police officer remembering the euphoria and spontaneous cheers that broke out when his ship docked in the new country of Pakistan.
“A Girl in the River has incredibly positive messages in it, too: a policeman who is a hero, a doctor who is a hero, a lawyer who is a hero. Am I glad international pressure forces society to confront an issue so horrific? Absolutely. If this is what it is going to take, I will work on that for the rest of my life.” The film has been shown, she says, in more than 300 screenings in Pakistan. One, at the University of Peshawar, highlighted why it was needed. “The boys and girls sat on different sides – the boys cheered the father, the girls cheered Saba.
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Asked about her next projects, she reels off an exhaustive list that includes overseeing a series of 14 films, a sort of how-to guide for women and their rights in Pakistan: “How to file a police report, how to get a divorce, how to report rape, where you can go if the police won’t file your case.”
Is she expecting a backlash? Of course, she says serenely. “It is very hard to be a woman in Pakistan and speak your mind. You know there will be an attempt to silence you.
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And the more people do that with me, the more I know I am being successful.” Courtesy Guardian UK.
