Much is being made of the letter Fifi Haroon sent Conan O’Brien of The Tonight Show regarding his comment about Pakistan Fashion Week. O’Brien wondered whether us Pakistanis sent a wave of burqas down the catwalk, the audience laughed, and Haroon shot off an email to the show that sought to put its host right.

Of course no burqas were sent fluttering down the ramp. Far from it. The event was widely hailed as an in-your-face defiance of the Taliban. And it would have been exactly that if it had not been about 3.7 or so Pakistanis making a statement and the international media picking it up, while the rest of the country woke up the next day having totally missed the revolution.

Having lived in Karachi for over a decade now, I am actually wondering whether O’Brien had a point. The number of burqas one spots on the street has been possibly the only ‘fashion’ trend that’s been on the steady increase in the metropolis. In fact, the only way you could have missed the creeping sea of burqas is if you spend all your waking hours traversing Zamzama and the two malls that are ensconced between the sea and The Bridge and then step out at night to attend a wedding or a GT hosted by one of the lucky 3.7 who made it to fashion week too.

There are parts of this monster of a metropolis, on the wrong, but overwhelming side of The Bridge, where you’d be hard pressed to find a woman out and about. And there are parts where you could easily drive for several miles and see women only in abayas or burqas if you are lucky enough to see them venturing out at all. Entire localities, which would never register on the fashion set’s radar, are burqa-clad, which they weren’t a decade or so ago. But then entire localities wouldn’t believe that the 3.7 exist and are Pakistani.

Hang on, though, wearing a burqa is a choice, right? But is it always? In the case of Karachi, a lot of women from the lower-middle class have been using the garb only during commutes. There has been a steady increase in working women who use public transport to get to their workplaces in offices and homes, who upon reaching their workplaces whip off their burqas, roll up their sleeves, and work around men they are not related to. So for many, the burqa is increasingly used to convey an overt signal of respectability and a way to avoid harassment in mohallas where everyone else is doing the same. Particularly useful if you don’t own a car, or have relatives in high places, and feel vulnerable much like 90 per cent of Pakistan.

And then there is the burqa donned to pull the wool over people’s eyes. Walk into any fast-food outlet at lunchtime and spot the number of girl in burqas playing footsie and handsie with not-their-brothers.

The deceptive burqa-clads include those of a dangerous bent, as I discovered while walking around – sans burqa, the 3.7 will be glad to note – at Gulf Mall. While bargaining at a shop, I heard a small cry go up around me as a shopkeeper bounded my way and pulled a burqa-clad hand out of my handbag. A women covered till she had only slits left for her eyes to peep out had been fishing around for my wallet and cell phone! What surprised me was that this particular burqa-clad didn’t raise a hue and cry when a man touched her as he yanked her hand out of my handbag and then started to pull her by the shoulders to hand her over to the police. He later lost her as she slithered off into the crowd of women.

So in several parts of greater Karachi at least, and in large parts of the country that still discourage the presence of women in public places, the burqa is ubiquitous. No stereotype is 100 per cent true, but there is definitely a huge fire where all this smoke is coming from. And it’s not because they’re burning those black things just yet.

And fashion week? It was a smart way to garner business for our fashion industry and if the world media saw it as defiance of the Taliban or the burqa-brigade, well that’s a nice little by-product, now isn’t it?  But we are not like this only. How it made a dent in the reality of the overwhelming majority (who would be overwhelmed if you told them how much some of that skimpy stuff displayed at PFW cost) in a country in the throes of several crises, including one of identity, is beyond me.

Now that I have made myself extremely unpopular with the 3.7s and am looking for a place to hide, I wonder… should I too don a burqa?

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