In a conservative society, your decisions like following the passion of poetry can make your relatives sever ties and even advise your parents to kill their daughter. This is what happened with Noora Ehsas as the BBC shared her story in a report.
When she started getting famous for her poetry and video clips of verses started appearing on social media, the relatives pressed her parents that she must stop this.
“Some of my relatives also gave the advice to my father that I should be killed if I do not obey his orders,” said Noora Ehsas who is from Swat. She is one of the few poetesses in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa whose poetry is being appreciated on social media, as she also attends mushairas.
Noora says although she has been facing difficulties from day one after starting poetry a year ago, the situation was further complicated when the video of one of her verses was edited wrongly.
The meaning of her original verse is: my heart already has stains, what would happen in case of another stain. But a youngster from her village removed the word “dil” (heart) from the verse in his video which gave wrong meaning.
After that, Noora says, everyone started harassing her. She was not only harassed on social media but also everyone – from children to elders – chanted “taint, taint” whenever she left home or went to college.
Noora appears in videos and attends mushairas in veil as her parents do not allow her without face covering.
But despite this, the relatives wanted her quit poetry and stop appearing in videos as none of their girls has ever done this. And now she or her parents cannot even attend any family gathering like marriage or deaths.
According to Noora, her mother gets depressed whenever such gatherings occur with a feeling that everyone is there except them.
She says there are many girls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa who have expressed themselves through poetry and prose but do not share this, fearing that the people will start saying abusive or insulting things.
However, Noor says she has been advised them not to hide themselves and come forward so that they could encourage others.