Society Girl by Roli Books

in praise of

‘A captivating true crime drama that will have you gripped till the very last page.’

Sonia Faleiro

‘They take a sensational story and turn it into our social history... a leisurely exploration of early ’70s Pakistan, social mobility, a woman trying to have a family and a life, occasionally a collage of the social mores and a series of what-the-hell-just-happened moments.’

Mohammed Hanif

‘Vivid, gripping and meticulously crafted, this is a wonderfully fascinating journey into ’70s Karachi high society, a mysterious death shining a light on the whirl of social and political undercurrents of the time.’

Mahesh Rao

Saba Imtiaz is a freelance writer and researcher. She is the author of the novel Karachi, You’re Killing Me!, which was adapted into the Indian film Noor (2017), starring Sonakshi Sinha. Saba writes about culture, food, religion, and urban life, and has reported features from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, and Lebanon. She was raised in Karachi, and has worked as a full-time reporter, a stringer, fixer, translator, TV show host, radio jockey, and scriptwriter. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Marie Claire, and on the BBC. She is the co-host and co-producer of the ‘Notes on a Scandal’ podcast. Saba lives in the Netherlands. Her work can be found at: sabaimtiaz.com

Tooba Masood is a communications specialist and freelance journalist based in Karachi, Pakistan. She has worked at news media organizations in Pakistan for over thirteen years. Her reporting has been featured on the BBC, fiftytwo, NPR, Dawn, HuffPost India, and Samaa. She has also worked with Al Jazeera, LA Times, and Aks Films. Her writing ranges from covering the elections, documenting Karachi’s history and building regulations, to longform work on sexual harassment at the workplace, and writing about women’s health in the country. She was short-listed for the Zeenat Haroon Rashid writing prize in 2020.

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Lotus Collection

First published in india 2024

the Lotus Collection

An imprint of roli Books Pvt. Ltd

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Front cover photograph: Zahid hussein’s archive of Musawat images. Back cover photograph: happy Minwalla’s archive of Metropole photographs.

Translations of Mustafa Zaidi’s poems: sadia Khatri

Fact-checking: Ammar Yasir

Production: Lavinia rao

Layout: Mohammed Firoz

insert images: Akhbar-e-Jahan/Bedil Library: page 1, below, left; Herald/Dawn archives: pages 3–4; Hurriyet/Punjab Public Library: page 6, above, left; page 8; Jang/sindh Archives: page 1, above, right; Mansoor raza’s digitized collection of Marghoob raza’s archive: page 7; Mashriq/Liaquat National Library: page 1, below, right; page 2, row 1, left; page 2, row 2, right; page 2, row 3; Musawat archives courtesy Zahid hussein: page 5; page 6, above, right & below; Naseer turabi: page 1, below, middle; saba imtiaz: page 2, row 1, right; Star/Dawn: page 2, row 2, left; The Leader: page 1, above, left.

isBN: 9788193984697

typeset in Crimson text by roli Books Pvt. Ltd

Printed at Naveen Printers, New Delhi

Bacha gayiin kayi logon ko muttahid lahrain

Dubo diya humain payaai tamanna ne

Main kis ke haath par apna lahu talaash karun

Tamaam shehr ne pehnay huay hain dastanay

Countless were saved by raging waves But I, drowned by a longing met Tell me. Do you see my blood on anyone?

The entire city has washed itself clean.

Mustafa Zaidi

My behaviour towards the deceased was never warm hence there was no question of it becoming cold.

Shahnaz Gul

It has been over half a century, but there is, even now, a sense of stillness around Mustafa Zaidi’s house in Karachi. It feels unusual – even disquieting – in a city where it is virtually impossible to find a few seconds of silence. At night, it is disconcerting to drive past it; the patch of road it is on always seems enveloped in darkness. Even during the day, when there is an unceasing flow of traffic nearby, there seems to be little going on around the house. The building is in a state of disrepair; the rooms appear to be gloomy. But a bougainvillea tree sprinkles its flowers onto the street. Framed in the light, it feels like the perfect setting for golden hour, a romantic tableau – hardly the kind of place that was once a crime scene. But this house made headlines in Pakistan in 1970 for being the scene of a mysterious crime. Saiyid Mustafa Hasnain Zaidi, its illustrious occupant, was a well-known former bureaucrat, and an established poet, a particular favourite of the literary icon Josh Malihabadi. His death, at the age of forty, initially seemed like suicide. But it soon turned into a criminal investigation, ensnaring a young

woman who had been discovered at the scene, seemingly drugged.

Her name was Shahnaz Gul. A minor socialite in her late twenties, she emerged from her state of unconsciousness to find herself in a hospital bed, with a concerned police officer watching over her, and a photographer ready to take her picture. Soon, she would become the focus of the undivided attention of the country’s police, politicians, and press, generating thousands of headlines over the course of the next year. What seemed like an apparent suicide turned into a scandal, ensnaring Shahnaz, and threatening to expose Pakistani high society.

The story made headlines internationally – the Associated Press dubbed it Pakistan’s ‘first jet-set murder case’. A mosaic of Mustafa’s last hours would be recorded and recounted and printed, and discussed in police stations and newspapers and prayer services, in rooms where children would first be ushered out so their sensitive, innocent ears could not hear the speculation, and finally, in a court of law.

We came across this story in very different ways.

Saba had seen the Associated Press story around 2012 while browsing through archived newspapers online, and asked a senior colleague, the late journalist Abul Hasanat, whether he knew of the case. He remembered the case well, Mustafa’s poetry, and particularly, the legendary beauty of Shahnaz Gul. Saba mentally filed it away as a story to look at in the future.

Tooba discovered the story in 2015, while going through newspapers from the 1970s at the Dawn newspaper library. She was looking for the case specifically because after her father had passed away, a friend of his had mentioned two things: one, that he liked Mustafa’s erotic verses, and

two, that both Mustafa and her father were found dead in mysterious circumstances.

The second thing stayed with Tooba for months. As she read on, she realized that the story wasn’t as simple as it seemed. It wasn’t a doomed suicide pact as many people thought. However, the press coverage and this intangible connection to her father’s death, made her sympathetic towards Mustafa, and she wanted to know more.

We had worked together at a Pakistani newspaper years ago, and by chance, we discovered our shared interest in this case in the summer of 2019. We thought we would attempt to tell this story again, and it would be seemingly straightforward: we would do some interviews with people who were familiar with Mustafa and his poetry, and write a longform piece.

But we quickly learned that this wasn’t as easy as we had thought. The story didn’t seem to hold up, and had become overshadowed by the circumstances leading up to Mustafa’s death, instead of how he had died. There was an established narrative that looked at the case through one lens. We would ask people in Karachi who remembered it, or knew of Mustafa, and stories of sex, pornography, sexual preferences and sexual relations between consenting adults would come rolling out. Gossip and conjecture had largely replaced facts. It seemed like the focus – then, and even fifty years later – was only on the life and times of one of Karachi’s society girls: Shahnaz Gul.

The keyword was scandal: people would say that the way the press covered the story was so scandalous that newspapers were barred from their homes. What could possibly be in staid Pakistani newspapers that was banned from a family’s consumption?

The answer was within the archives. This was a story

about society at large, the lives of Pakistani society girls, what happened on the dance floors at hotels, the behind the scenes stories of private members-only clubs.

Even all these years later, people would ask to go off the record to share their theories of what happened, whispering names of people – who no longer had any influence in Pakistan – as possible conspirators in the death of Mustafa Zaidi.

With every additional detail that emerged, the mere juxtaposition of Mustafa’s death with the political and social events in Pakistan in 1970–71 became that much more jarring. The devoted attention of the press on the events of Mustafa Zaidi’s death in the midst of a pivotal year for Pakistan seems unbelievable.

Reexamining the archives is a lesson in what was missing from the West Pakistani narrative: the state’s discrimination towards East Pakistan, the insurgency and civil war in East Pakistan, the genocide of the Bengali population, and the truth about Pakistan’s war and defeat.

It is true that the press was largely controlled by the state, and that people had little to go on but propaganda. But it is incredulous that so many did not question the narrative being peddled by the Pakistani government, and that they so quickly forgot any lessons that they had learned from the events of 1971. The press played a role in manufacturing a narrative for the state’s repressive, brutal actions in East Pakistan, and then ignored the country’s most pressing issues to cover the travails of Shahnaz Gul.

It was deeply illuminating to see the role of the press in creating a sense of hysteria around Shahnaz Gul, to turn the event into a ‘scandal’ instead of focusing on what might have led to Mustafa’s death or the inadequacies in the examination of the crime scene and the forensic

investigation. There was little context about mental health, the dynamics of relationships, and the idea of consent. While it is true that the appetite for gossip and scandal is not an unusual thing, it seems surprising how quickly the press abandoned its usual norms when it came to this case.

Reexamining the events of Mustafa Zaidi’s death is challenging enough as it is; but in Pakistan this often felt like a losing battle – the archives are crumbling into dust, simply unavailable – having been destroyed or neglected years ago – or access is made difficult by government administrators. It was difficult to piece together the story with few surviving primary witnesses; since many of the people involved with the case had been dead for decades. The Covid-19 pandemic meant we were unable to interview and report for a prolonged period.

But we were fortunate in many ways: tranches of documents that people entrusted us with, librarians who are committed to their work and to preserving records, and people who are generous with sharing – not gatekeeping –their knowledge. We found ourselves in empty graveyards, in people’s private libraries, and on the streets of Gujranwala. We would often learn that we were connected to this story with far fewer degrees of separation than we might have realized.

Our work took over three years, and several directions. We produced and hosted a podcast called ‘Notes on a Scandal’, which ran for two seasons, and helped us bring this story to a new audience.

We are also glad to have Sadia Khatri translate most of Mustafa’s poetry for this book. Her work is a freer translation, a choice we made over a literal interpretation. There was, and continues to be, a sense of defensiveness about Mustafa. That is bound to be expected, given the

circumstances of his death, and the tarnishing of his poetic legacy because of the ensuing revelations. But it has often come at the expense of slandering Shahnaz to glorify Mustafa. Still, we hope that we have attempted to provide some clarity to the murkiness and gossip around Mustafa’s death; to at least put some of the facts – that have survived being consigned to the recycling bin – forward. We hope that this story helps open the door to the other stories that have remained mysteriously unsolved in Pakistan, that there is at last some clarity instead of conjecture.

‘Mustafa Zaidi’s aesthetic taste could never compromise with the norms of the time he lived in, and nor could he make his heart’s demands fall in line with the realities of life,’ the famed writer Sibte Hasan wrote after Mustafa’s death. ‘In the end, it was these contradictions that led to his end.’

This is a story about those contradictions.

Above (left to right):

Shahnaz Gul at a party.

Saleem Khan and Shahnaz Gul at a party.

Below (left to right):

Shahnaz Gul and Mustafa Zaidi at an event. Mustafa Zaidi with one of his closest friends in Karachi, Naseer Turabi (right). Shahnaz Gul.

Saiyid Mustafa Hasnain Zaidi: Poet and former bureaucrat. Married to Vera Zaidi. They had two children, Mujtaba and Ismat.

Shahnaz Gul: Homemaker and minor socialite. Married to Saleem Khan. They had two daughters: Mahenaz Khanum and Mehrnaz Khanum.

Vera Zaidi née von Hill: Mustafa Zaidi’s German wife.

Saleem Khan: Shahnaz Gul’s husband, businessman.

Mujtaba Zaidi: Mustafa’s elder brother, who worked for the Civil Service of Pakistan, and was killed in a road accident in 1957.

Syed Irtiza Hasnain Zaidi: Mustafa’s younger brother; civil servant.

Saba Zaidi: Mustafa’s niece; Irtiza Zaidi’s daughter.

Mohammad Iqbal: Chowkidar at Mustafa’s house in Karachi.

Syed Qaiser Raza: Mustafa’s nephew, and the son of his stepbrother. He worked at United Bank Limited.

Shahid Raza: Mustafa’s nephew and Qaiser Raza’s brother. He worked as an aerodrome officer at Karachi airport.

Hassan Mustafa: Mustafa’s distant relative, referred to as ‘Mamoon’ (maternal uncle). He worked at the State Bank of Pakistan.

Shahid Abidi: Mustafa’s friend; he was assistant vice president at United Bank Limited.

Jaffar Raza Rizvi: Mustafa’s friend, and the brother-in-law of Shahid Abidi.

Faiyaz Malik: A Karachi-based businessman; owned the house in Karachi where Mustafa Zaidi lived in 1970.

A.A.K. Qureshi: Friend of Saleem Khan.

Kunwar M. Idris: Bureaucrat, district magistrate in Karachi.

Parvaiz Khursheed: Friend of Mustafa Zaidi, owner of Bombay Motor Stores.

Naseer Turabi: Poet, and friend of Mustafa Zaidi.

S.S. Shaikh: Prominent criminal lawyer in Karachi, and president of Karachi Gymkhana.

Waheed Farooqi: An advocate in Karachi.

Masood Asher: Writer, journalist, who became friends with Mustafa in Lahore in the early 1950s.

Ahmed Pirbhai: Businessman in the cotton trade. Socially acquainted with Saleem Khan and Shahnaz Gul, as well as Mustafa Zaidi.

Jamshed Qureshi: Founder of Bond Advertising, an advertising agency in Karachi, Pakistan.

Shireen Qadir: Woman accused of smuggling gold.

Shahla Ali Khan: Socialite of Afghan heritage, friend of Shahnaz Gul.

Zeenat Saeed Ahmed: Socialite in Karachi, knew Shahnaz Gul socially.

Shortly after midnight on 13 October 1970, a call came through to a telephone exchange in Karachi. The person on the line had a complaint. They had been trying to reach the telephone number 417935, but it wouldn’t connect.

Syed Jamal Ahmed Kazmi was the operator on duty that night, working the graveyard shift from midnight to 6 a.m. He put the caller on hold while he tested the line. He came back on and told the caller that the number was engaged.1

Jamal only recorded one complaint for that phone number during his shift. But that wasn’t the only call that couldn’t get through. For the past day or so, people trying the number were met with a busy dial tone – a relic of a different age, of a time before call waiting and texts and voice notes.

It meant that the person was on an unending call, which was fairly strange, given that this was 1970, and phone calls were expensive. At first, the callers thought the handset might be off the receiver. Still, they kept trying.

Inthe days after Mustafa’s death, the police continued their routine inquiry into the circumstances of the case. They were waiting on the report of the autopsy. But before they could declare it a suicide and close the file, they had to talk to Shahnaz.

Shahnaz had told the police about her relationship with Mustafa during the interview at the hospital and then later when questioned at her house. She didn’t share every detail of the affair but told them enough. The police did not release either statement, but verbatim quotes were leaked to the press.

According to the newspapers’ reporting of Shahnaz’s statement, she told the police that she had met Mustafa Zaidi a year and a half before his death, that she liked him, they were close, but she could not marry him.

The police cross-examined her again in the early hours of 17 October, a marathon session that reportedly lasted about four-and-a-half hours and only ended at 4 a.m. ‘She admitted that she and Mr. Zaidi had several “love sessions”

Ona corner of Karachi’s Club Road, stood an imposing building called the Metropole Hotel. Nothing has survived of it other than the facade, which is likely to disappear soon. But on any given night in 1970, it was unmissable. Spilling out of its front doors were the city’s richest men, the scions of landed feudal families, occasionally getting into a fight outside, business magnates who couldn’t hold their drink, their wives in saris and elaborately done hair, who had been going from venue to venue, party to party, sitting by the dance floor as a bevy of dancers and entertainers walked out. One night, it was the dancer Marzi Kangna, with her feathers and pasties; another night, it was a touring Australian singer.

Darayus Cyrus ‘Happy’ Minwalla took over the Metropole when his father passed away in 1967. His sisters helped run the hotel, and together, they made the Metropole one of society’s favourite venues, with the Samar supper club, and the discotheque.1 ‘We basically say that the whole of Karachi society – I think every member of the Sind Club, every member of the Boat Club, every member of the

After one month in Pakistan, Vera made plans to leave and return to her children in West Germany.1 She thought that she would come back to Pakistan one day, perhaps even resettle. It didn’t happen. Vera never moved back, but she visited sometimes and kept in touch with her in-laws.

Before leaving Vera issued a statement to the press:2

Before I bid farewell to this country for a while, where I spent the moments of my life with my late husband Mustafa Zaidi, I want to share some things with you. Firstly, I would like to thank you for your support in the investigation into the death of Mustafa Zaidi. Certainly, this was a remarkable thing that journalists in a developing country were committed to this with such bravery and without fear. In my opinion, one can find few examples of this in other countries.

I particularly want to thank the Sindh High Court and the officers of the Sindh Police who have shown displays

Thenew year began with the entertainers Duo Angelo and the dancer Amy Minwalla performing at the Samar. The Soviet Circus came to Pakistan, with a planned tour of Karachi, Hyderabad, Lyallpur, Multan, Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Peshawar. Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau visited the country. Yahya was going to meet Mujib-ur-Rehman in Dhaka.1 Karachi’s socialites continued to party. Basir Hassan and Muniza Basir hosted a dinner at the InterContinental Hotel.2 Muniza wore a sari with ruffles. The socialite Saadia Pirzada attended, as did Maria Jatoi, resplendent in a sheer black sari with her hair set in elaborate ringlets, who was photographed smoking a cigarette.

Shahnaz had at least one piece of good news. Given that there was no evidence or cache of jewels to support the accusation of smuggling, the police had to drop the charges.3 Shahnaz’s lawyers went back to court to get their client released on bail. Her lawyer Waheed Farooqi made another pitch. ‘The whole idea seems to harass her to the point of utter ruination. To prejudice and sabotage her defence and