Gone forever: ‘He never wanted me to cry, not even on his death’

Karachi cop Ch Aslam’s widow is left with nothing but fond memories.

KARACHI:

She is not your typical widow in mourning - dressed in white with swollen eyes or a hoarse voice, results of incessant crying.

Instead, Naureen is clad in a tiger print dress that clings to her, wearing light makeup and sporting a gold watch as she leans back on an elegant couch to talk about the departed man of her life - CID SP Chaudhry Aslam.

“He never wanted me to cry, not even on his death,” said Naureen. “Had I burst into tears after seeing his body, I would have let him down. Do they really think Chaudhry’s woman is that weak?”

After all, the wives of policemen, especially those of daring ones, are different from other women. They share the triumph of their husbands when they catch criminals and their grief when political pressure forces them to set them free. They become used to the demands of the jobs - the odd timings and the seven-days-a-week schedule.

And as the police continue to be openly targeted by their enemies, their wives often hear their husbands wishing for heroic martyrdom and are told to be mentally prepared for their deaths.

“Days before the attack, he kept on saying that he was going to be a martyr,” recalled Naureen. “Now his words come back to haunt me for I did not take him seriously then.”



Aslam died in a bomb blast on January 9, ending a marital bond of 22 years - a marriage, which for Naureen, was initially forced.

She had always disliked policemen and did not want to be wedded to one, but had to give in to her family’s insistence. A cousin of Aslam, both their roots could be traced to Abbotabad but to separate villages.

Sturdily built Aslam, 12 years her senior, had been her Math tutor in grade five, and made her family reject the other marriage proposal they had received for her.

Soon after the two tied the knot in 1991 in Karachi, the days of the infamous military operation against the Muttahida Qaumi Movement started. For Aslam, who headed the Gulbahar police station, the situation was a game changer. For his wife, a nightmare.

“I would spend the days crying or praying. He would not come home for 15 days straight. …It was only when he returned home safely that I could sleep in peace.”

Naureen tries hard to recall but can’t name the place where they last went out together. “It was only when we went to Saudi Arabia for Umrah or Dubai for holidays that we would get some time together. But even then, Aslam would just stay back in the hotel room.”

Treading carefully on Aslam’s controversial reputation of being involved in extrajudicial killings and shooting innocent men in fake encounters, Naureen tells of the time she cornered him at the Holy Kaaba and asked him, “Aslam, tum nay kissi bayqasoor ko to nai mara, saach batao [Tell me honestly, have you ever taken the life of an innocent man]?”

The bearded man looked her in the eyes and replied in the negative and said that, save for two to three bystanders who were accidently caught in exchanges, his bullet never touched an innocent man.

The day an explosive laden vehicle rocked their house in DHA in September 2011, she remembers waking up the knocked out Aslam amidst the dust and black smoke, jokingly asking him to recite the Kalmah.

When the officer came around, he asked her if she was ready to brave further attacks in the future. “I said I was ready, and that is when Aslam told the media that day that he would send the Taliban to their graves.”

As Aslam focused only on his work, Naureen took care of everything, from picking the kids from school to buying household groceries. Not many people know but he was interested in Islamic history and had a library filled with related books.

Aslam was a stubborn man and refused to change his ways. “The only change I was able to bring about in him was that I made him switch his cigarette brand from Gold leaf to Davidoff,” mused Naureen.

Despite what happened to him, Naureen wants her children to join the police force, to follow in their father’s footsteps. Right now they can’t even go to school, fearing attacks, she adds. But in their 12-year-old son, she sees his reflection and wants to see him in Aslam’s place.

The iron man, as he is often known, believed that life is practical and often harsh, without dreams. It could turn into anything in seconds. Now, Naureen believes that too.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2014.