Awab Alvi is a dentist in Karachi. He runs the blog Teeth Maestro.

 

 

Haroon’s audience is fairly restricted, because his stand-up shows are both in English and Urdu. Only educated, middle-class and mostly urban Pakistanis speak both. Maybe if he reached a larger audience he would have to be more careful about what he said.

 

Personally, I really didn’t find “Burqa Woman” offensive. I posted it on my blog, asking my readers what they thought, and got one response on Twitter from a person who thought it made a negative stereotype of women who wear burqas. That’s really not how I saw it. First of all, even the great Urdu poets Faraz and Ghalib made fun of romance and the attitude of women during the courtship process, so why shouldn’t Haroon? Secondly, if anything, I found the person he most made fun of in the video was the man, swooning over the slightest bit of exposed skin. The fact is that men in our country are not used to seeing exposed skin, so when they do it tends to trigger inappropriate thoughts in their minds. This is the reason why many women chose to wear a burqa (in Pakistan, we use the word burqa to designate any kind of full veil), or at least a large shawl, when they go out in public.”

Najma Sadeque, a former journalist, works for a women's rights NGO in Pakistan.

 

The reference to texting at the end of the video makes complete sense: SMSes are the most common way to flirt discreetly for young people in Pakistani cities. The cell phone companies have been very helpful in overcoming barriers to romance!”