The comrade that fell: Shedding light on Perween Rahman’s struggle

Aquila Ismail and Arif Hasan discuss how she tried to change the perception of Orangi

KARACHI: Three years after her murder, civil society continues to revere the struggle of social worker Perween Rahman.

An intense discussion took place at the office of Irtiqa Institute of Social Sciences, with Rahman’s sister Aquila Ismail and architect Arif Hasan as speakers, to shed light on the life and struggle of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) director on Saturday. The two exchanged thoughts on how Rahman struggled constantly to change the perception of Orangi.

Ismail shared how close Rahman was to nature when they used to live in East Pakistan, where they had migrated to after Partition. Rahman finally came to Karachi in 1972 along with her family, after facing a tough time on the way from Calcutta to Nepal and Bengal. Ismail said that they used to live in Bengal even though they were not Bengali and, when Dhaka fell, they had to hide in camps because they didn’t have any other choice.

“Perween did her intermediate from St Joseph’s College,” she shared. “Soon after, she received a Bachelor’s of Engineering in architecture from Karachi’s Dawood College of Engineering and Technology in 1981 and joined a private architecture firm,” she said, adding that out of her 10 semesters, Rahman received gold medals in eight semesters.

Talking about her work in Orangi, Ismail said that she held it close to her as she often felt bad when she heard that the poor have been asked to leave their home. “She was the youngest of all, yet so brave to handle the entire Orangi Pilot Project alone,” said Ismail. Undeterred by the people who came to stop her, the work she did is something worthy of being recognised repeatedly as nobody after her bothers to complete the Orangi project, remarked Ismail.

Under threat

Talking about her murder, Ismail said that she warned her about her safety in the start of 2013 but she kept her work going with the same spirit.

She recalled that they were still suffering from the trauma of her murder when they heard from the then Karachi AIG that they have killed the murderer known as Qari Bilal. She added that they did not believe him and were convinced that behind her murder was a greater conspiracy. “We lodged a petition in Supreme Court, Islamabad, and the judge ordered a judicial inquiry that revealed that Bilal did not murder her,” she said. She criticised how her alleged murderer, Raheem Swati, who was caught recently, used to live near the OPP office and the police did not know about his presence.

Unique and indispensable

According to Hasan, Rahman was unique and not dispensable. He said that we can pay tribute to her struggle by following in her footsteps. “Perween Rehman knew of the risks and yet she continued her struggle,” he said. He added that she was a trained architect, who could have lived a comfortable life in Karachi’s up-market areas, but instead chose to dedicate her life to the poor of the squatter settlements of Orangi Town.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 5^th, 2016.