Nazneen

Age 20
Country: Pakistan

Some of the most important decisions we face, we face alone. These are the decisions that go against our parents’ wishes or diverge with cultural norms. They are also the decisions that force us to define who we are, and who we are to become.

For twenty-year old Nazneen, enrolling in the Asian University for Women was one such decision. Nazneen grew up in a poor, remote village in the Hunza Valley, a mountainous area in northern Pakistan near the Chinese border. When she was a child, the village houses were made of mud, there wasn’t enough food to eat, and she, along with her neighbors, drank water from the nearby stream. It was only with the development of a historical site, the Altit Fort, that the village began to prosper, and amenities like running water, brick buildings, roads, schools, and a government hospital were introduced into the area.

The gender disparities confronting Nazneen in Pakistan’s education system were formidable. According to a 2004 estimate, the Pakistani government spends only about 1 percent of its GDP on education. Chronic underinvest­ment in education has led to an overall literacy rate of 49.9 percent and an adult female literacy rate of only 36 percent. In contrast, the male literacy rate is 63 percent (2005 census)1. The gap between gender literacy rates has increased in past decades, despite the government’s best efforts to launch educational initiatives aimed at closing it. Gender disparities in education have been further widened by cultural norms: women are expected to adopt traditional roles within the family that severely restrict mobility and access to the public sphere.

Nazneen is the daughter of a farmer who also works as a laborer-by-hire in construction. Her mother operates a small tailoring business out of their home that allows her to also take care of the family. The two parents stretched their income to send six of their seven children to school; Nazneen, the eldest, became the exception after winning a scholarship to study in an English medium school. Her college was in a distant neighboring village, and with no transportation system to speak of, Nazneen rose early every morning to walk the long distance. After walking home in the afternoons, she tutored thirty young students in her home for three or four hours, then helped her mother with dinner, and finally turned to her studies. Like most of the people in the Hunza Valley, Nazneen is an Ismaili Muslim, a breakaway Shia sect that follows the teachings of the spiritual leader His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV.

Nazneen heard about AUW and its offer of full scholarships from Aga Khan Culture Services Pakistan, the NGO she had joined. Prince Karim Aga Khan heads an organization called Aga Khan Development Network that does good works around the world. Its many branches in Pakistan include the NGO Nazneen worked for, which was involved with the Altit Fort restoration in her region. Nazneen was responsible for overseeing their interns.

Upon learning about AUW, Nazneen told nobody but her parents. She alerted them that she planned to take the test, but offered no further specifics. She went through the entire application process without breathing a word to anyone else in her village—friends, relatives, and neighbors remained oblivious to her standing on the cusp of change. When she learned of her acceptance, Nazneen sought advice from the most educated members of her community, her teachers and the NGO: “They told me what is right, and what is good for me. And I believed them.” She confided in only these select few, apparently fearing that others in her village might disapprove and somehow force her to give up her emerging plan.

The quiet determination necessary to remain silent on such a decision offers a glint of something harder beneath Nazneen’s girlish surface. When she speaks, her English is inconsistent at best and these frequent mistakes unleash cascades of giggles. Her admission of secrecy seems out of place for a person whose jovial laughter punctuates every conversation. But it’s there, in the quiet lull of her voice as she describes the obstacles posed by cultural expectation, so pervasively interwoven into the fabric of Pakistani life, her strong, carved features studying the fabric of Pakistani life, her strong, carved features studying the floor. For a brief moment, before her face rearranges like puzzle pieces and the giggling ensues, one glimpses the demeanor of a grown woman.

Nazneen finally told her village. In all likelihood, she told just a few relatives, but as she notes, “If we say one thing in our home, the whole village knows.” There was an immediate outcry. Friends, relatives, and neighbors all objected, but Nazneen remained steadfast. She explains, “Other people were uneducated, they can’t know. They just say there’s conflict [between Pakistan and Bangladesh], and it’s a poor country, but they don’t know the importance of education.” Nazneen had anticipated these reactions and arranged accordingly. The Aga Khan NGO she worked for helped her secure her passport and visa before she went public with her decision. When her uncles, who wielded considerable power in the village’s tribal system, ordered her to stay at home, she was already one step ahead of them. “They refuse me,” she says, “but they can’t do anything.”

The enormity of what she had done hit Nazneen on the plane to Bangladesh, her first time outside Pakistan. She admits she cried the whole way (and for the next three months). Yet an unexpected and new community awaited Nazneen: her religious sect, predominant in the hills of her valley, had made its way to Chittagong. With the help of Kamal Ahmad, she discovered an Ismaili center, and once the community was alerted to her presence —“They know I’m here, a religious girl is living in Chittagong”—she was quickly welcomed into its folds. She enthusiastically attended the programs and met the center’s members, many of them also from different countries. In the spring, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV visited Dhaka at the invitation of the Bangladeshi Government. The visit enabled the Prince to forge a relationship with the groundbreaking of a school he had founded. The Ismaili center sponsored a trip to Dhaka to bear witness to this occasion. Nazneen stayed in the program director’s house for a week in the capital during which, she recalls with a mischievous smile, “They spoiled me.” She also attended a banquet in the Prince’s honor, where she was seated near members of the government and some of the Prince’s most devout followers who had trailed him from India. It was a unique opportunity for Nazneen. The Prince now lives in Paris and seldom visits Pakistan, maybe once every ten years. “We get this kind of chance very rarely," she says. "We are his followers and we respect him.”

AUW has also been an experiment in religious diversity for Nazneen. Religious beliefs are strictly homogenous in her home region: faith begins and ends with Ismaili Islam. Until AUW, she had never before met anyone of a different religion. She was relieved to discover that all the students follow their separate customs in peace: “We all say our prayers in our own styles, it does not create a problem,” she says.

Although she misses her village and can only speak to her parents every two weeks because the phone calls are too expensive, Nazneen claims that the teachers have made AUW home. One hundred and thirty girls, plus faculty and administrators, study, work, and live in close proximity on ten floors. Despite the possibility of conflict, she says, every person “acts like our family member.” Nazneen’s real family members tend to be less welcoming. Since she arrived at AUW five months ago, her uncles have refused to speak to her. Her mother bears the brunt of their anger. They hold her responsible for allowing Nazneen to leave the home and disgrace the family within the community. She reveals little to Nazneen about the gravity of the situation. Nazneen only knows: “They are not good with her.”

Despite pressures that continue to radiate across country borders, Nazneen cherishes the opportunity AUW has presented her and her family. “I feel happy because if I was [home], it would become difficult for me to study there because my parents weren’t able to continue my education,” she says. She plans to pass on the gift of free education in the future, using her degree to support her four brothers and two sisters as they go through school, while taking the burden off her parents. “After getting education I can help with my six siblings. I can support them to study at institutions, so they can do something for others; in this way, we can do something.” She hopes to empower women in her village, working to improve the accessibility of education by offering more scholarships from a position of leadership in her village’s school system. Nazneen points to the AUW teachers as inspiration. Because of them, she says, “We get courage. I want to do the same.”