Which room am I standing in?

I am dedicating this piece to Ishmal - nine years old, from Madyan, Upper Swat. She went to school, came home, and was raped and killed by a neighbour before she could live to see the protests that followed - led by us, the women in burqas. Her story leaves me with a question about myself: which room am I standing in? I am not writing this as a confident, blunt, intersectional feminist today. I am writing it as an ordinary Pakistani woman. Powerless - not helpless. There is a difference, and most days I am the only one who seems to know it. Everyone will remember patriarchy in November - the international 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, running from November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, to December 10, Human Rights Day. Sixteen days, a hashtag, a candle, a panel. This is not that piece. This is about the other three hundred and forty-nine days, when nobody is counting. A woman was hurt for looking at the sky. A woman was eliminated for dancing. A girl was punished for a TikTok. A woman was silenced for asking for a career. Go and read about them yourself. I will not do that homework for you. The newspapers exist. The NGO reports exist. Some government data exists too, if you know where to dig, and if you are honest, you already know some of it without digging. I only have questions today. No numbers. Numbers let you close the tab feeling informed. Questions do not let you close anything. How free am I, really? How liberal am I allowed to be, and by whose permission? How moral do I have to prove myself, every single day, just to walk out of my own front door? Which place is safe? Home - is home safe? Bus stop. Road. The bus itself, packed, someone's hand where it has no business being. Park, in daylight, with children playing twenty feet away. Workplace, where "networking" and "mentorship" wear a hundred different faces. Grave - is even the grave safe? And what about the space that does not exist in any of those places - the inbox, the DM, the comment section, the group chat I am added to without being asked? Which age is safe? Tell me. The diapers of a baby have not made her safe in this country. The diapers of an old woman, decades later, do not make her safe either. So where, exactly, in between infancy and old age, is the safe part supposed to be? I have been looking for it since I was a girl. I am still looking. Whom do I trust? The aaya who raised me. The naukar who has been in the house longer than I have. The driver who knows my school run better than my own mother did. The cook. The father. Dada ji. Nana ji. Bhai jan. The uncle - mamu jan, chachoo, taaya jee - trusted like a holy figure simply because he was family, and family was not a category anyone taught me to question. The teacher. Sir. Molvi sahib, who is supposed to be closest to God. And the mother sometimes - who knows what is happening under her own roof and looks away, because looking away is easier than the alternative, or because she has nowhere else to take her children if she looks straight at it. I am not accusing any one person on this list. I am saying I no longer know, walking into a room, which one of these people is a guarantee and which one is a warning, and neither does any other woman I have ever asked. Recently I had to ask The Express Tribune to remove my email address from my own introduction. I even changed my byline. A woman author with a listed email, whatever her age or social standing, apparently reads as an invitation for unasked messages. Call me a coward, call it bizarre, call me unable to handle a simple inbox - I am only admitting a vulnerability. And if I am this frightened, at my age, with my name, imagine the young, pretty girls and women with no social support, no wallet of their own. Imagine what happens to them - in the courtyard, in the courtroom, in some heavily funded NGO running a helpline for survivors of domestic abuse. Imagine. Is geography our destiny? Are we simply in the wrong country, or carrying the wrong labels? So this month, before anyone lights a candle for November, I am only asking. Not accusing, not quoting, not citing. Asking. Which room am I standing in, right now, today, in this country I love enough to still be asking?