A Woman Like Her by Sanam Maher
Hardback published on the 11th July 2019
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
A beautiful woman in winged eyeliner and a low-cut top lies on a bed urging her favourite cricketer to win the next match. In another post, she pouts at the camera from a hot tub. She posts a selfie with a cleric, wearing his cap at a jaunty angle. Her posts are viewed millions of times and the comments beneath them are full of hate. As her notoriety grows, the comments made about her on national talk shows are just as vitriolic. They call her Pakistan’s Kim Kardashian, they say she’ll do anything for attention. When she’s murdered, they’re transfixed by the footage of her body.
Drawing on interviews and in-depth research, Sanam Maher pieces together Qandeel’s life from the village where she grew up in the backwaters of rural Pakistan, to her stint in a women’s shelter after escaping her marriage, to her incarnation as a social media sensation and the Muslim world’s most unlikely feminist icon
MY REVIEW
Right now I’m trying to read more true stories.
A Woman Like Her The Short Life of Qandeel Baloch, is a true story of the killing of the world’s most unlikely feminist icon in Pakistan. In July 2016 she was murdered by her brother in a so called honour killing. Qandeel was Pakistan’s first celebrity by social media, she became known for the videos and photographs she posted to sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Her brother confessed to murdering her saying her actions had brought dis-honour to his family. Qandeel was a famous model, she was planning to travel to India to take part in a reality TV show there. News was breaking that In the area of Muzaffarabad that Qandeel Baloch had been killed by her brother. News of her death hit the Western media, and a BBC documentary released shortly afterwards that was watched millions of times.
I recommend reading Woman Like Her, as it is a fascinating true crime story about in how Qandeel was called Pakistan’s Kim Kardaashian and how appearances of video interviews, tweets or Facebook post was in character, she created about herself were part truth and part lies and exaggeration.
ABOUT JOURNALISTS SANAM MAHER who went in search for the truth about this paradoxical female figure, conducting interviews with Qandeel’s mother, father, close family and friends but found very little that could be verified. Instead Sanam stopped looking for more of that story, and tried to see and listen to what Qandeel told us about herself through her online presence.
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