Excerpt: MY HUMAN RIGHTS!

It was still early in the morning, so there was hardly anyone in the office. Sitting in front of my computer, I was trying hard to get my mind focused on work. I was moving the cursor down the list of my emails, clicking on some random ones just to be sure that my Inbox would not look untouched. The heaviness in my heart was weighing on me as I sat there preoccupied by my conversation with Tammy the day before. Tammy was a compassionate woman and had been a competent senior secretary. She was deeply depressed about losing her job. She had been coping with the tensions of a traditional wife living in a joint family with her lower-middle class in-laws and trying to be a competent professional woman. Even with two children, she had still been able to build a real career in the UN. She needed that job to hold her ground in her domestic life in the face of an abusive husband and oppressive in-laws. She also depended on it to retain her self-esteem and sanity. Her story sparked a flood of resentment, mixed with frustration, helplessness and disgust. As the computer blurred in front of my eyes, I wondered if I would respond to my own inner cries for justice or just shake off the pain and continue putting on an act of being a professional woman, oblivious to her own situation, focused on the good she could do in this UN position for women of her country. I looked at my desk calendar. I had circled today’s date with a red pen several times. I took a blue ballpoint and circled it a few more times. It was the 10th of December, the United Nations' Human Rights Day. I always considered this day an opportunity to join hands with my friends to raise our voices against human rights violations, but today, I was feeling like a goose that had lost touch with her flock. I knew my friends would be making placards, banners and preparing for the big rally today, and not being a part of the preparations made me feel distant from the day’s significance, especially since I was concerned about violations of my own rights. I kept staring at the date until the number 10 blurred in front of my eyes. Life started to emerge in our office building. I could hear the cleaning staff making noises outside my office. Soon, I heard Sadia coming in. “You are certainly here early!” I said lifelessly without a smile on my blank face. “I use the UN transport so I have no choice but to be here right on time or a little early,” she replied as she pulled her chair out. “Were you here all night?” she asked, pressing her lips to avoid smiling. She put her bag away, adjusted her large dupatta and sat by her desk opposite mine. She gave me a naughty look and said, “I am serious, you work so much I was waiting for the day when I would come and you would tell me that you forgot to go home last night.” She then burst into a shy laugh, but suddenly became serious, noticing the expression on my face. “What is the matter, Fouzia?” she asked with concern. Her fair color looked even lighter in the sunlight coming through our thin vertical window, her dark brown hair reddish. “What is the matter?” she asked with her voice growing louder with concern. “Oooooh…” I moved forward in my chair, set my elbows on the desk and fixed my chin on my palms. “I’ve just been feeling sad about not being able to fully participate in the Human Rights Day activities. It is quite ironic that being in the UN system I am so busy that I have no time to take part in these events like I did when I was just a ‘civilian’. There is no concept of acknowledging this day within our own organization.” “Why do you care?” she asked, as she turned on her computer. “I need to draw energy and strength from this day. I need it very badly.” I suddenly got up, put my hands on my head and said, “I bet that most of my colleagues, including the senior managers in our United Nations Development Program office in Islamabad don’t even remember it.” I threw myself back in the chair and closed my eyes. “Why don’t you take the day off?” Sadia asked without looking at me, wrestling with her old machine. “You know we have a full day workshop scheduled on ‘Country Office Work Planning’,” I replied. “Oh, yes! We all have to be there, don’t we? I was getting in the mood to start my work, but I guess I better not,” Sadia responded. This was a planning exercise to help us transform our office culture and our procedures so we could work more efficiently. Since I was the head of my Unit, I was obligated to attend. I was in no mood to spend all day in what seemed to me to be a superficial exercise. I already had problems with the way management had organized the session, turning it into a mere rubber-stamping exercise. Speaking my mind and being critical had always gotten me into trouble. Raising issues was simply not an acceptable behavior in our office. The way I was feeling that day, I was afraid that I might say things that would elicit a sharp reaction from the management. Despite that premonition, I convinced myself to go. I saw other colleagues from my Unit, hugging each other, exchanging morning greetings, quickly settling into their offices, taking whatever papers they needed for the workshop and rushing towards the elevator. I did not acknowledge any of the ‘hellos’ directed at me and mostly tuned in and out of the discussion throughout the morning. During one of my ‘tuned-in’ moments, I got involved with a small group focused on the office work environment. I raised my usual concerns about our office and work culture and suggested we put good governance down as a target. I got dirty looks from my colleagues, as my suggestion was admission of the fact that there was something wrong with the office culture. Even though many colleagues suffered from the same concern, they had learned to make only positive comments, knowing that anyone who named the problem would be punished. Edward Manchester wanted to make sure that we said whatever he had planned for the exercise, so he felt free to continually interrupt, re-interpret and infer from comments of the participants. He held a blue whiteboard marker in his hand and kept playing with it, looking intently for things he liked and highlighting them. When the small groups were presenting their results, one colleague mentioned developing a system to check “delays in procedures and management issues”. Everyone held their breath and stared at him. “Wow!” I whispered to myself. “That was brave of him.” At least he touched a real issue. For some reason, another manager got up and asked loudly, “Let’s be brave, WHAT ISSUES?” This man was not known for taking stands. I was not sure if he really meant to pursue the point or if he was attempting to intimidate him and scoring a point with the big boss. I had promised myself that I would not say a word, but I could not help it. Seeing the man who raised this point suddenly become so quiet, I got up and started speaking. All eyes turned towards me. I saw Edward give me one of those looks where he makes his beady eyes even smaller and just stares at you. “The problem is not WHAT issues, the problem is that there is no space for ANY issues,” I said. “I have suffered because I raise issues, suffered to the extent that now I try my best to remain silent on everything. What kind of an office culture is this? We now call our office a Center of Experimentation. We are supposedly going through a “change management process” to streamline our office. The management has gathered the staff together to suggest better ways of managing our work, but the minute anyone makes a critical comment it gets shot down. What we need to debate is whether we will allow ourselves the space to raise issues and listen to them or whether this 'change' business, with all these group discussions, will end up being just another superficial exercise.” Everyone looked at me in surprise. Looking back at all the open mouths and worried faces, I thought I should conclude my outburst so I said, raising my chin high, “I, for one, do not find this space in our system at all.” As I sat down after making my mini-speech, a perceptible current ran through the group. I clenched my fists. After a long moment of silence, the discussion went on without any acknowledgement or response to my comment. I thought about all those who might have taken a note of what I said and what plans they might have to reprimand me. I kept thinking, “Why am I wasting my time in this suffocating office?” But I knew I could not think of leaving this organization without taking care of the issue that weighed so heavily on me. My palms started to sweat and my breathing became faster. I felt so heavy that I could not possibly think of starting a new job somewhere else. I could not just ignore it and move on. I could not be so unfair to myself. I was not able to hear what happened in the meeting after that. There were about fifty people in our conference hall. I stared at the floor. My own sadness fully occupied my thinking. Tammy’s question from the day before kept echoing in my mind: “Are you going to do something about it or not?” I wondered, ‘How can I help solve her problem when I do not have enough courage to solve my own?’ I was jolted out of my thoughts when a female colleague put her hand on my shoulder to say hello. I quickly smiled back and looked around. The Country Office Planning Workshop had just broken for lunch. With a long sigh, I gathered myself and took the elevator up to the ninth floor. Back in my office, I quickly threw myself in my chair, checking my urgent email messages like a robot. Sadia and others had gone straight from the conference hall to the cafeteria for lunch, so I was alone in my office. Just then, Tammy walked in. She was wearing a blue baggy shalwar kamiz and a big dopatta draping over her front. She wrapped one end of her dopatta around her arm and promptly sat in one of the two chairs in front of my desk. She said, “I can’t stay away from the office, you people have to help me out.” Her eyes were swollen from crying and her face was pale from worrying. She started as if she was continuing from where we left yesterday. “Fouzia, tell me what to do? He continued to push me to go out with him. Fouzia, I am a married woman. We live in Pakistan. This is not Europe. This man has no shame.” Tears started rolling down her cheeks. “If someone in the street says something to me I would slap him, but in an office I can’t do it. He is so powerful. All I did was to avoid him and continue to tell him politely how inappropriate I found his behavior.” She lowered her head and put it on the desk. She told me how once, when Edward was out of town, Tarik called her into his office. She was too afraid of him to go in alone and tried to stand in his doorway, but he yelled loudly for her to get inside. Once inside the room he forced her to listen to his latest sexual exploits with some woman she did not know. When Tammy asked him if he needed something from her related to her work, he made a snide remark that a woman is useless after two childbirths. Tammy knew that his wife also had two children and Tammy was pregnant with her second child. She was not sure if he was commenting about his wife or her, but she bolted out of the room. On several occasions, he told her that she was his special friend and he could only confide in her to share personal information. She said she never gave him the impression that she was flattered to hear that and continued to tell him that she was only interested in work-related issues. Tammy broke down again, unable to control her combined anger and sadness at feeling so helpless against a man who thought he was a god. I passed her some tissues. She continued, “What angers me is how he dares to talk to us like this. Fouzia, can you believe it? He thinks he is some feudal landlord and we are his poor tenants working in his fields. He is on such a power trip. He thinks he can get away with anything. He thinks no one will speak up.” Sadia suddenly came into the room like the wind and planted a big plate of sandwiches in front of me. I looked at her and she nodded her head, instructing me to eat. She did not see me in the cafeteria so she knew that I had not taken time out for lunch. She worried about my food and rest like a little mother. She opened a bottle of coke and put it on my desk and turned to Tammy, “Do you want me to get something for you?” Tammy said, “Just a glass of water, please.” Sadia left the room and Tammy continued. At some point, I remembered that Sadia came to remind me that the planning workshop had resumed, but I did not register it at the time. Tammy went on telling me that when she came back from her maternity leave Tarik had changed her assignment from Edward’s secretary to a program secretary with Renata’s unit. He did this on his own without discussing it or informing anyone. Tammy was angry, but did not object because she needed the job badly and could not afford any confrontation. His main attack came when she complained about the transport route of the bus that brought her to the office. UNDP managed this shared transport for several UN organizations. Tarik gave instructions that Kausar, his girlfriend, should be dropped first going home in the evening and the last to be picked up in the morning. Tammy had to spend nearly one hour in the bus each way. This caused difficulties with her in-laws and was doubly burdensome because she was still partially breast-feeding her newborn son. When her requests to Tarik did not yield any result, she made a formal complaint to the UN Transport Committee. After deliberation, the committee decided in her favor, stating that to maintain fairness, the one who is picked up the last in the morning would be the last one to be dropped in the afternoon. That news made Tarik furious. He saw her now not only as a woman who had continuously disregarded his sexual invitations, but also as someone who dared to question his authority. Tammy said with trembling voice, “This was the last straw. He called me in his office and humiliated me so badly. He yelled and yelled. He screamed, ‘How dare you go to the Transport Committee to appeal MY orders? How dare you question ME?’ Fouzia, he yelled so loud I was frightened. This is an office of an international organization, for God’s sake.” I shook her hands to snap her out of this cycle of continuously re-telling her story. I said, “Now you have to listen to me. This is very important.” She moved forward and looked at my face as if I would now give her a magic solution and all her problems would go away. I said, “Tammy, I am a victim of the same man. I have been harassed by him for more than three years.” Before I said anything more, a look of total shock came over her face as if she had seen a ghost. “YOU! I know he is flirtatious with women, but I cannot believe that he would dare talk to you like that.” “For men like him, all women are the same,” I said with a firm voice. “They see us as inferior to them. They think we are creatures who should be available for their pleasure whenever they call. They can flirt with us when they like. And, yes, most importantly, they are certain we will never speak out because of the deep fear inside us of what will happen to our own reputation if we do.” I lowered my eyes, pressed the edge of my desk with my hand and stood up. I told her that it was so difficult to talk about it because it had all been done so subtly, wrapped up in official business and with no witnesses. Although I knew throughout that he had been the one who was wrong, I found it so embarrassing to talk about it, as if it were my fault. Tammy asked what he had done to me. I took a few deep breaths and told her that this was my biggest fear that people would ask what he did to me because nothing short of rape would be acknowledged as a real problem. I feared that people would not understand the devastation I experienced from his pressure and control over my every action. They might not even understand that the fear of sexual assault is a burden you have to carry all the time while performing your job. I explained to her that in our region, we fight against men who burn their wives, who kill in the name of honor, who rape and throw acid on women who reject their advances. In the face of all that, how do I explain to someone that it tears me apart when this office superior of mine touches my hand with his finger with a lustful smile on his face as he hands me an official memo? How do I explain that it disgusts the hell out of me when he forces me to listen to his sexual tales about his affairs with his girlfriends? How do I explain that the pressure of the system that stops me from saying anything kills me from the inside? I fear that I would not be able to express the depth of my despair at continuing to work in an environment where someone has all the power and can control every action of mine on his terms. I tried to seek reassurance from Tammy, but she did not fully understand what I was saying. I told her a story of a friend of mine who decided to get a divorce. Everyone kept asking her what her husband did: Did he drink a lot, gamble, take another woman or was he beating her? It seemed that nothing short of these reasons could justify two adults going their separate ways. My friend had spent five suffocating years with a husband who completely dominated every aspect of her life. She had never had the opportunity to find any space to be herself, but our society only recognizes overt problems like violence, rape, drugs or alcoholism. The idea that a woman's mental health may be seriously affected by a relationship simply does not register. Tammy innocently asked me, “What does your friend’s divorce have to do with our problem?” “Oh, forget it; just forget my friend, okay?” I said. Looking down, Tammy said in a caring voice, “Three years!” My voice trembled and I could not speak anymore. I turned back towards the wall and cried. I controlled my tears, wiped them with a tissue and sat in my chair facing her. I cleared my throat and said, “Now, what I am thinking is that perhaps if we do a joint complaint they might listen to us. I have been thinking about this a lot and I still need to think more, but I feel that if I gather the courage, we both can do it together.” She took a long sigh and started again in a tone we usually use to mourn the dead. “If I would have listened to his filthy jokes and laughed and had tea with him then I would be getting favors from him instead of such punishments. Is Edward blind? This man has such a control over Edward and this office. He does not even leave married women alone. Not even pregnant women.” We both cried. We knew that people can easily recognize physical violence from the wounds, but the scars of the mind and soul are difficult to see. At times, they are far worse.