Reham Khan, the person, is extremely likeable. She is friendly, exuberant, outspoken and self-deprecating. She intersperses information and anecdotes with jokes and laughter. It’s hard not to be charmed by her. But it’s harder to come up with a one-word or even one-line description for her, or even her recently released self-titled memoir.
But whatever you make of her or her literary foray, one thing becomes increasingly clear after just one cursory conversation with her: the book does not do the person justice. The book is self-indulgent, the woman I spoke to several times in the days leading up to the official book launch is not.
In the course of our conversations, Reham repeatedly emphasizes that the book does not tell everything about her famous second husband – the current Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan.
“In so many ways it’s a story about all women, everywhere. It’s a story about how we women act like blind fools when we’re in love. How we make excuses about the men in our lives, and continue to give them opportunities, whatever they do,” said the 45-year-old British-Pakistani journalist.
“My story is about the penetrating power of conditioning. Despite being an educated, free-thinking woman, I was so desperate to please my mother, both as a child and as an adult, that I chose to be trapped in an abusive marriage for thirteen years. The idea of getting a divorce was such a shame that I didn’t even think about it for a long, long time. Being miserable was easier.”
Reham’s claim is partially true. Although the book is most certainly a detailed, brutal picture of what goes on in Imran Khan’s life, away from the public eye and the glare of the camera. But it’s not just that.
For the first 200 pages, little or no mention is made of Imran Khan. Ironically, they make for the most compelling reading, easily drawing the reader into her world and empathizing with what seems like a hopeless situation.
In the first half of the book, Reham describes her early childhood in liberal Libya. As the unexpected and much younger third child of expat parents, she lived a life of luxury and indulgence, along with a western education. She talks about her independent nature and free-spirited nature, even as a toddler, and how everything about her personality was at odds with conservative Pakistani culture when the family suddenly moved back home. Reham’s prose is quietly proud as she describes how she understood and associated with her Pashtun origins.
But the real gist of the book is the way she describes her reportedly emotionally and physically abusive 13-year marriage to first cousin Ejaz Rehman, and the transformation of a 19-year-old bride with roe deer into a mother of three who finally finds the find the courage to call the police on her “respectable” doctor husband to protect her son and two young daughters.
“Everyone asks me about Imran as he talks to me about the book, but almost half of the book is devoted to talking about domestic and sexual abuse in marriages, and the impact it can have on the partner experiencing the abuse. going through. I talk at length about being a single parent, even if you’re married, and desperately trying to keep up appearances for the sake of so-called “respectability.” But nobody thinks about that,” Reham regrets.
That part is true. She really sinks her teeth into the parts that describe a woman’s loneliness as she struggles to protect her children in a hostile home environment – with no money and in a country with no family or friends (the couple lived in the UK) – until finally One day, after more than a decade of moving and landing at the whims and fantasies of her paranoid husband, she decides she’s finally had enough.
But the empathy and emotion she evokes quickly fades as the memoir suddenly finds itself in a story that reads like it came straight from the pages of a banal romance, rather than the introspective memoir of an intelligent woman.
Reham painstakingly describes her crossing Imran several times in her capacity as a journalist, and his cringe-inducing attempts to win the affection of her and her three children. Despite her own better judgment and her family’s advice, Reham finds herself secretly marrying Pakistan’s favorite bad boy.
The marriage lasted only 10 months, but was doomed from the start, if Reham’s elaborate descriptions of Imran’s bewildering world and its vices are taken at face value. She speaks at length about his sexual perversions and substance abuse, and her many shocks when she comes across evidence of his many indiscretions and uncontrolled drug and drinking habits.
“It was a bizarre life. It was all sex, drugs and rock and roll… Imran would even brag about having a threesome with a famous star that he really wanted to replicate with me. He even went so far as to suggest going to a discreet place like Hong Kong where no one would recognize him… His stories had a terrifying effect on me,” Reham writes.
Excerpts from the book, which were leaked several weeks before the book’s release, paint a similarly lecherous picture. They talk about Imran’s illegitimate children (five, according to the book) with married women, his superstitious nature and belief in black magic. One particularly eyebrow-raising account spoke of how Imran rubbed black lentils on his genitals to thwart the effects of some black magic being worked on him. The book is full of shocking revelations of an equally brutal nature.
“On the one hand, all these things were happening around me, on the other I said things like, ‘Mera Shauhar hello mera zevar hai‘ (my husband is my jewel) to the press’, she laughs. “Love really makes us say goodbye to our senses.”
Reham Khan doesn’t care as she analyzes and destroys everything related to Imran Khan: his abusive marriage to Jemima Goldsmith, terrible relationship with his sisters, fascist politics, misogyny beliefs, lack of principles, ignorance of the Quran and sycophantic boot lickers; but casts a rather benevolent glance at her own place in the circus. He is irreparable, but she is blameless; an innocent spectator who watches the drama wide-eyed, curiously untouched by all the power and wealth at her disposal.
Believe that, if you will. And if you don’t, read the book for its meaty first half, and entertaining, albeit harsh, second.