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My Marriage, 1995-2004

WHEN I WAS leaving for England for the first time at the age of eighteen, my mother's last words to me were, 'Don't bring back an English wife . ' She believed it would be impossible for a Western girl to adjust to our religion and culture. However, the decisions in my life have rarely been made through rationality and logic, more by impulse, to chase my dreams and my desires and passions. In both marriage, and my post-cricket career, I made somewhat unconventional choices for somebody of my background. Combining the outcome of those two decisions was to prove more difficult still. If marriage made me realize the happiness that comes from fatherhood and family life, politics taught me the price of taking on the status quo in Pakistan. This establishment is so venal that, unable to wield the usual weapon of corruption charges against me, they instead attacked me through my personal life, most particularly my wife. The thing to understand about Pakistani politics is that many politicians have so much to lose they will stop at nothing to gain or hold on to power. In terms of quality of life, political success is of no benefit to me, but for the likes of Zardari and Sharif, losing power might mean losing everything - their wealth, their homes, their status, their privileges and potentially their liberty - since many of them deserve to be in jail.

Jemima and I were to discover how vicious this political mafia could be.

It was many years after my mother's warning before I even started to contemplate marriage. At a certain point, my deepening spiritual belief made me realize that I could not reconcile the life I had been leading as a bachelor with Islam. This was the most difficult part; everything else - fasting, praying, giving zakat - was relatively easy. The reason it was so difficult was because I had lost faith in the institution of marriage.

Growing up in Zaman Park I used to think getting married was the most natural thing in the world and assumed that, like my sisters and cousins, I would one day have an arranged marriage. But the older I grew, the more disillusioned I became. Most of the cricketers who played with me in English county cricket and on the Pakistani team found it difficult to make a success of their married lives. For most of them it seemed like a burden. Quite a few of them found the temptations that existed in the life of an international sportsman irresistible. Besides, most married men used to look at my life with envy. So it was hardly surprising that I was disillusioned.

The only marriages I saw working were those of my sisters and cousins from my large extended family. Three of my four sisters were married and all had arranged marriages from within the large extended family. This was always the case with Pashtun tribes that had settled in Punjab or other parts of India. All three to varying degrees had their ups and downs with their husbands - especially in the early days when readjustment naturally takes place. Couples in arranged marriages face the same problems as those who have chosen their own partners, although expectations in arranged marriages tend to be somewhat lower. The crucial difference is that since it is a coming together of families, separation becomes difficult and divorce rare. The respective families - mainly the parents - act as marriage counsellors during the bad times. It is considered a good deed in Islam if someone can help a couple to sort out their troubled marriage.

In Pakistan most marriages are arranged. Parents choosing a husband for their daughter will look at the candidate's financial stability, his family's reputation and compatibility in terms of personality. In most cases a son or daughter can decline their parents ' suggestions but it varies from region to region and class to class. In the north and north-west of Pakistan young people are not given a lot of choice, especially girls, whilst the children of the urban elite play a bigger role in choosing their own partners. In villages girls and boys grow up together and often know each other, so most of the matches are easy for parents to arrange. Problems arise when there is no eligible boy or girl in the village. Then a spouse will be found from further afield and it is quite possible that the couple will meet for the first time on their wedding day. Traditional families will most likely know a groom's entire background. Parents would not allow their daughters to marry someone who could not be pressurized through his family to keep the marriage going during rough patches. Marriage not only knits families together but the entire social life revolves around the extended family structure. The more powerful the family is, the harder it is to divorce a person belonging to that family.

Some of the worst problems in arranged marriages arise where parents marry their children off to a certain family because of their financial status, regardless of whether the couple is compatible or not.

Whatever the problems, the underlying idea behind arranged marriage is that sacrifices must be made for the sake of the children. Over the years I have seen a lot of unhappy arranged marriages where couples have stuck it out for the sake of their offspring and their respective families. Women, who can be more vulnerable in our society, sometimes put up with mistreatment from their husbands just for the security of their children. However, there are of course lots of cases of men having to put up with difficult marriages too. Mian Bashir looked after his wife, who had fits of madness, for fourteen years. Doctors advised him to put her in an asylum but given the state of our mental health institutions he could not bear to do so. When she had her fits, she could be violent and his face bore the scars of that violence.

Whatever the ups and downs of their marriages, I could see that my sisters took great joy in their children. There was a time when they and their families lived with my father and me. Instead of being an imposition, it was wonderful - especially for my father. All their children grew up like one family in the same house and the three sisters treated all of them as if they were their own offspring. It was this that began to change my mind about marriage. I used to notice how their husbands would literally rush back home to be with their children. Even I began to spend more time at home so I could play with them. When any of my nephews and nieces did well at school, all of us, including the other children, considered it a family triumph. When two of my sisters moved into their own homes, the house felt empty. Fortunately they only moved a few hundred yards away and most evenings their children would still come round.

Making the decision to get married was one thing, but finding a Pakistani wife meeting the girl and her parents over a couple of brief meetings. Usually what happens is that the mothers, along with the sisters, survey their social scene and, after a careful process of elimination, pick a few eligible candidates. Then during marriage festivities amongst the community the potential spouse is pointed out. If the boy and girl in question are both interested then more intimate meetings, like a tea appointment, are organized. As for most Pakistani families, our weddings were segregated. It was too awkward for me, in my position and at my age, to go to the women's section to look at

eligible girls. This would have been quite acceptable if I were in my mid-twenties. but in my mid-thirties it was a terrifying prospect. At one point my father got fed up (like the rest of my family) and decided to take matters into his own hands. He arranged tea at a friend's house so that I could meet his friend' s daughter. I tried everything to get out of it but in the end. out of respect for my father and not wanting to embarrass him with a last-minute cancellation. I went along. The whole situation was horribly awkward for all concerned. When the girl came into the room I was so embarrassed I could not even look at her. Meanwhile her mother treated me as if I was a 25-year-old. rather than someone who was approaching middle age. I was even asked about my university days - again a question more apt for someone in their early to mid-twenties. The agony finally ended when my father and I begged to leave. On the way back he did not even bother to ask me what I thought of the girl. He realized how ridiculous the whole situation was - all he said was that since my mother had passed away he had simply tried to do his duty. We both laughed and I politely requested him not to make any more attempts to find me a bride.

I was still so busy playing cricket during this period that I was never in Lahore long enough to make a concerted attempt to find a wife. However. once I retired I made more of an effort. The girls I tended to meet were the westernized ones but I could not see them fitting into my conservative family. My sisters had strong characters and were not likely to be very tolerant of someone who flaunted family tradition. The last thing I wanted was that my marriage should isolate me from my family. As for the ones who would have been compatible with my background. educated girls from conservative families. it was too much of a lottery. How could I at my age marry someone after a few conversations? The idea of going to more tea appointments like the one I had been to with my father simply terrified me. In the end I had to accept the fact that I was too old for an arranged marriage.

I was still intent on marrying a Pakistani girl when by chance I met Jemima in London at a dinner organized by my Persian friend Sharia. I immediately found her attractive and intelligent and was particularly impressed by her strong value system and the fact that despite her young age she already had a spiritual curiosity. While I had previously met Jemima' s siblings and cousins. I did not meet her parents till just before we got married. I had worried that it would be impossible to convince them - not only because of our age difference but also because of Jemima having to live in Pakistan. I was amazed at how firmly both Lady Annabel and Jimmy Goldsmith stood behind Jemima's decision. Of course there were warnings about the problems of a cross­

cultural marriage - but neither was at all against Jemima' s conversion to Islam. I was amazed at their tolerance. especially given the prejudice against Islam in the West.

When the news of our marriage broke in mid-May 1 995. the media in both Pakistan and the UK went berserk. particularly over Jemima's conversion. There was no shortage of advice for her in the English media about how dreadful life would be in Pakistan. The tabloids' prejudices about Islam and Pakistan were fully apparent. Jemima was told she would not be allowed to drive a car and would be veiled from head to toe.

The only positive aspect of this perplexing media coverage was that outraged Muslims put forward the Islamic point of view. something that was not often visible in the Western media. The gist of the advice given to her in the UK was that she was too young and innocent to realize that she was being lured away by an older man because of her wealth to a country where women were enslaved. I was not surprised that my motive for marriage was thought to be her money (that very accusation was put to Jinnah when he married his bride. twenty-four years younger than himself and a Parsi convert to Islam) . After all. people with a materialistic mind set would think that. I felt this was extremely unfair to Jemima and failed to do justice to her intelligence and her attractive personality. It took great strength of character to cope with such unfriendly media

exposure, all the more so because until then she had been almost entirely protected from this kind of intrusion. It was really tough on her and she coped most admirably. Though I did help Jemima by recommending books on Islam, I never tried to force my views on her. I remembered how hard my mother had tried to make me a practising Muslim;

despite my great love for her, she had failed to convince me. It had been Mian Bashir who won me over with his gentle way of never asking me to do anything and allowing me to discover the truth myself.

In Pakistan Jemima received a warm and gracious welcome. As long as they adapt their behaviour to local customs, foreigners have always been received with great hospitality in Pakistan. It is only since 9/1 1 and the CIA drone attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that antagonism towards Americans and inevitably other Westerners -has crept in. There was an initial frostiness amongst certain sections of the westernized elite but once they got to know Jemima they were friendly. This wariness would have been because Jemima, as a Westerner, made some of them feel insecure because their sense of superiority in Pakistan stemmed from their considering themselves to be westernized. However, what was hardest for Jemima were the politically inspired media attacks on her. Even though I was not yet in politics, I was already regarded as a threat by the politicians because of great public appreciation for the cancer hospital. The government -sponsored media portrayed my marriage as an intricate plot by the Zionists to take over Pakistan through Jemima. It did not seem to matter that she was not actually Jewish. In fact she was baptized and confirmed as a Protestant. Her father Jimmy Goldsmith's father was Jewish and his mother was a French Catholic but he grew up in an atheist household. This campaign intensified when I announced my political party a year after our marriage.

When I married Jemima I had no intention of setting up my own political party.

The country's rapid decline was alarming me, though, and I was already mulling over the idea of getting involved with some kind of political movement. I had been hoping same understanding of faith that I did. Sadly I gradually realized that while some of the members of these parties had genuine faith, plenty of others had only a superficial understanding of Islam. Most of them were only using religion, as others used the ethnic or regional card, as a vehicle to get into power. They turned out to be just as corrupt as other politicians too. The more my understanding of political parties and specifically the religious parties deepened, the more I realized that faith without wisdom and knowledge could produce bigots completely lacking in compassion and tolerance. No wonder the Prophet (PBUH) considered the ink of a scholar to be holier than the blood of a martyr.

No wonder either that the public usually rejects the religious parties at the polls. At no point in time have they garnered more than 1 9 per cent of the seats in the national assembly and their share of the vote is lower still. Hence the apparent paradox to the outsider, that while people in Pakistan will sacrifice their lives for Islam, they don't want religious parties running the country.

When the dust had settled after the furore over my marriage, I again started meeting politically minded people and having endless discussions about how to put up a challenge to the political mafia in Pakistan. I say mafia, because democracy is just a cover for the two parties that take turns in plundering our country. I was appalled at how the ruling class had squandered Pakistan's talent and resources, there seemed to be no limit to their greed. At the same time, I was struck by the generosity and fortitude of the Pakistani people that I had seen because of my work with the hospital. and the raw talent

and resourcefulness of the Pakistani overseas community. So many of them, when given could not work out how I would finance it. The reason why politics in Pakistan had been concentrated within a few families was because the vast majority of people had neither the time nor money to have the luxury of participating. True, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1 970 elections created a movement that captured the masses' imagination so completely that he was able to defeat the established political houses with political nonentities.

However, Bhutto was fortunate that money did not play as big a part in politics as it did after Zia's 1 985 non-party elections. Bhutto also had three other advantages. One, he had been a cabinet minister for eight years in Ayub Khan's military dictatorship so already knew the political scene from within. Secondly, there was a huge political vacuum in Pakistan after A yub Khan because he had crushed all the political parties in West Pakistan. Thirdly, in the Cold War politics of left and right, the entire highly organized left supported Bhutto. My dilemma was how to form a party of 'clean' people who had the time and money to work in politics.

I also had another issue to think of. I was a married man now and Jemima was trying to adjust to a completely alien environment and culture. If all my time was spent on politics and keeping the hospital going, how would I do justice to my marriage? We discussed the issue endlessly. It was clear by now that there was simply no way left but for decent Pakistanis to get involved in politics. Otherwise the country would be sunk by our politicians. Since Jinnah the quality of our leaders had been steadily deteriorating.

All over the world career politicians are disliked, but in Pakistan, as in many developing countries, they are seen as crooks - and with a great deal of justification. What amazed me was that while almost every dinner-table conversation in the country condemned the politicians for destroying Pakistan's potential. no one was prepared to do anything about it. The affluent classes' response to the country's downward spiral was to get Canadian passports or US green cards. They just did not have the guts or the will to give up their comfortable lives and take on the corrupt political class. In Islamabad it was quite

All over the world career politicians are disliked, but in Pakistan, as in many developing countries, they are seen as crooks - and with a great deal of justification. What amazed me was that while almost every dinner-table conversation in the country condemned the politicians for destroying Pakistan's potential. no one was prepared to do anything about it. The affluent classes' response to the country's downward spiral was to get Canadian passports or US green cards. They just did not have the guts or the will to give up their comfortable lives and take on the corrupt political class. In Islamabad it was quite