As Meharjan dashes across the football field, dribbling swiftly and dodging the opponents, she’s confident this battle to score more goals than conceding them will culminate at the blow of a whistle, yet some of the clashes she’s inherited don’t simply end at Lyari’s football pitch. They extend far beyond that: her whole life, at least that’s lived thus far, and perhaps till what’s foreseeable.

Making a daily beeline to Azaad Football Club from her house means traveling the 13-kilometer route that involves industrial zones, deserted areas, and graveyards, that, too, in a bus alone followed by walking some blocks at each point. Gulshan e Mazdoor, adjacent to Naval Colony, is where her mother, Kulsoom, moved to after conceding a ghastly acid attack. Her husband, or Meharjan’s father, being the alleged attacker now ‘regrets’ it blaming it all on Kulsoom’s sisters. They provoked me against you, he’d say.

Penny by penny, Kulsoom collected the donations arriving from across the world, once her case was made public, and she settled with her six children in the godforsaken area because anywhere else she could neither afford to rent a space nor her family members would own her. She says they still demonize her. They cast aspersions on my character because ‘obviously something must have warranted the acid attack’, shuddering she shared.

“My whole life is a set of unfortunate happenings and disloyal relatives,” Kulsoom said with an unassailable belief. “But my daughters have been my only sources of support through thick and thin.”



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