Early last week a strange number flashed up on Jemima Khan’s mobile phone.
Puzzled, she picked up the call to hear a familiar voice on the other end
saying urgently: “Jem, it’s me.”
It was her exhusband Imran Khan, the Pakistani cricket captain turned
politician, who has been on the run since security forces tried to put him
under house arrest last weekend. The brief call – terminated abruptly so as
not to be traceable – was to reassure her and their two sons that he was
safe. “It was like hearing a ghost,” she says, laughing with relief. “He’s
fine. Obviously he’s outraged but he’s safe, thank God.”
Imran was at his father’s home in Lahore – where he and Jemima lived for the
first five years of their marriage – when President Pervez Musharraf
declared a state of emergency, ostensibly because “terrorists” were
threatening his presidency.
Musharraf’s critics believe it was an attempt to preempt a Supreme Court
judgment that would have declared his recent reelection as president
invalid. For months the president has been at daggers drawn with the
judiciary, which prides itself on being a neutral and secular upholder of
Pakistan’s constitution.
In the brutal fall-out from the sudden declaration of emergency rule, which
also follows the devastating bomb attack on Benazir Bhutto’s welcome-home
parade last month – which killed more than 130 people – lawyers, human
rights activists and government critics have been rounded up and imprisoned,
and political opponents such as Imran and, “for her own security”, Bhutto,
have been put under house arrest.
Imran believes that if he had not made a run for it he would have ended up in
Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail. In a statement issued through his ex-wife he said
his house had been “ransacked” by the police and his family “roughed up”.
His two sisters and their families live in the house with his father and
though he told Jemima on the phone that everyone was fine she has not been
able to speak to them to establish exactly what happened.
“The police put Imran under house arrest, then went away to get an arrest
warrant,” says Jemima. “He was tipped off that they were going to put him in
jail and so he managed to escape over the back wall. He’s lucky that he has
family bordering the property, so he was able to go straight into another
friendly house.”
Much as his flight might sound like a scene from a sitcom, the tenor of the
police visit was decidedly menacing. “He said they were very brutal and much
more belligerent than he’d ever seen before,” says Jemima.
“Normally the police are very respectful towards Imran, because quite a lot of
them are fans from his cricket days. But in this instance they were very
aggressive with both him and with everyone in the house. And I think that
was probably quite a shock to him.”
Jemima spent last week in a flurry of activity, drumming up support for a
protest in Downing Street yesterday that brought together influential
expatriate Pakistanis such as Mohammad Sarwar, the Glasgow MP, and Hina
Jilani, the lawyer and human rights activist, under the banner of the
Campaign Against Martial Law. She and numerous well-placed Pakistani exiles
are piecing together information – mainly e-mails – from friends and family
back there. She loathes Bhutto, but was hoping her supporters would also
turn up. “I hope everyone comes, that anyone who is critical of what
Musharraf is doing comes and protests,” she says.
“What’s happening in Pakistan is unthinkable. My sons’ teacher from their old
school has been arrested. Lawyers and teachers have been arrested. Despite
getting billions in aid, Musharraf has failed to find Osama [Bin Laden],
failed to curb the resurgence of the Taliban and failed to control
extremists. There are terrorists on the loose now and the jails are over
spilling with lawyers, human rights activists, all of civil society. There
are so many they can’t even fit them into the jails – they’re sitting in
handcuffs in the police stations.
“We probably know more here about what’s happening than they do in Pakistan
because the media’s been completely gagged. They’ve gone into radio stations
and television stations and beaten up the presenters. They’ve carted the
best newspaper editors and journalists off to jail – anyone who has opposed
the regime. And such brutality! You can’t imagine the stories of beatings.
They’re beating women, beating old people and we are only getting to hear of
a small part of what is going on.
“You can’t really call people on mobiles and even if you do get through,
they’re terrified to talk. Anyone who is in any way related to Imran – and
that’s a large number of people I know and am friends with – are worried
about talking on the phone because the authorities are desperate to know
where he is.”
Imran and Jemima married in 1995 after a whirlwind romance. She was just 21,
he twice her age. The daughter of Sir James and Lady Annabel Goldsmith,
Jemima was an impossibly glamorous young socialite – sister of Zac
Goldsmith, now David Cameron’s adviser on climate change – whose family
split their time between Ormeley Lodge, the family home in southwest London,
a Paris mansion, a villa in Marbella and an estate on the coast of Mexico.
Friends wondered how she would cope with her new life in Lahore with the
serious-minded former cricketer who had just founded the Movement for
Justice and was dipping his toes into the hazardous waters of Pakistan
politics. Jemima was part-Jewish by birth and raised a Roman Catholic but
converted to Islam and “learnt Urdu and really impressed everyone”,
according to Imran.
She gained a masters degree in international politics, but her life in
Pakistan was dogged by controversy. At one point she was accused of
exporting antiques from the country, a charge later dropped and widely
believed to have been politically motivated in order to smear her husband.
She admitted later she had felt his marriage was, politically, his “Achilles
heel”. She tried to help Imran on the campaign trail but confessed that she
felt lonely during his long absences from home.
In 2004 the marriage was dissolved and she moved back to London with their two
sons, Suleiman, now 10, and Kasim, eight. It is interesting that in his time
of need it is Jemima that Imran should turn to for help.
Talking to her in her beautiful, high-ceilinged drawing room in London,
surrounded by books and pieces of Islamic art, it’s easy to see why. In
high-waisted jeans and white shirt, with her hair scraped up into a ponytail
she is an elegant and passionate advocate for democracy in Pakistan.
“It’s no surprise I feel passionate about it. I lived in Pakistan for 10
years, my sons have a very strong sense of their Pakistani identity, my
exhusband is Pakistani,” she says. “But even friends who have no connection
to the country are outraged at what’s happening there.”
She has explained to Suleiman and Kasim everything that is going on. They were
in Pakistan only a couple of weeks ago for half-term and she’s thanking her
lucky stars that they are back safely. “Sunday is usually the day they
travel, so if half-term had been a week later . . .” They were accompanying
her to the demonstration yesterday – and bringing friends – and she was
spending Friday evening making placards with them to take along. She was
amused to receive a message from Imran via a friend saying: “I’m very
excited about Saturday’s demo. Make sure my tigers are holding placards.”
Jemima is carrying out his instructions. “I really want the boys to understand
how lucky they are. I take it for granted that we live in a democracy and
we’re allowed to protest and I want them to understand that that’s actually
a privilege and there are a lot of people in the world who don’t have that
privilege,” she says. “I want them to understand what their father is trying
to do in Pakistan, why he’s not available to them as much as he’d like to
be, the seriousness of what he’s involved with.”
Much of the background to politics in Pakistan the boys must have picked up by
osmosis. “I should think they’ve sat through hundreds of political
meetings out there,” she laughs. “The house is pretty much one big political
gathering at all times.
“But I sometimes wonder how aware they are of how volatile it is over there.
Obviously I’m aware because since I’ve been there they’ve been through
several changes of government. Nobody served out their time while I was
there, there was always a forced end to whoever was in charge so
everything’s always been very dramatic. They were too small to be aware of
that but they know about everything that’s happening now.”
But young as they are, she wants them to take their trip to Downing Street
seriously – by writing their own slogans for their placards, for instance.
“I want them to think; I want them to be involved. I don’t want to just
shove something into their hands and say ‘now just wave this about’ without
them understanding. My little one’s a bit young, but the older one’s quite
capable of thinking this through so he can decide what he wants to call for.”
Hundreds of Imran’s party workers have been arrested in the past week and,
cool as she seems, she must be concerned for his safety. “I can’t imagine
he’ll stay in hiding for long. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were arrested
next week. He believes that God will protect him,” she says, with a smile.
“I’ve always teased him that there’s supposedly a saying of Prophet
Muhammad’s, which was ‘Believe in God, but tether your camel’. I used to try
to urge him to be a little more cautious, using that as my back-up.”
But he never seemed to take any notice. “He’s not easily frightened,” she says.
Just as well: in Pakistan, politics is a brutal business. If the police were
so much more aggressive than before, what does it mean?
“I suppose it signals that they really mean business,” she says. “If Imran
hadn’t escaped I’m pretty sure he’d be in jail now and those that are in
jail are not being allowed visitors. Nobody knows where they’re being put
into jail either – they’re being moved from city to city so the family does
not know where they are, to create as much confusion as possible. There have
definitely been instances of torture, so it’s a very serious situation.”
It is complicated by the fact that Musharraf has been seen by the West as an
ally, a bulwark against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda sym-pathisers in
neighbouring Afghanistan. US aid to Pakistan since 9/11 has totalled about
£5 billion. But last week President Bush called on Musharraf to give up his
army post and restore democracy and David Miliband, the foreign secretary,
called for free elections saying this was a “defining moment” for Pakistan
and its leadership.
So what does Jemima think Britain and the US should do?
“Pressure, just keep up the pressure,” she says. “America and Britain have
enormous influence in the region and if they apply serious pressure on
Musharraf, he will listen.”
Jemima hopes yesterday’s demonstration will “make noise, just send the message
that what’s going on in Pakistan is not acceptable. Musharraf says he will
hold elections sometime before February 15 but it’s very vague. He hasn’t
said whether the judges will be restored, whether the courts will be
restored, whether the constitution will be restored. He hasn’t talked about
political prisoners and whether they will be released, he hasn’t talked
about the media – so all those things need to be in place before they can
have free and fair elections.
“Right now, all the people the West needs to be talking to are in jail or in
hiding. I wouldn’t be getting involved if it weren’t for the fact that so
many Pakistanis I know aren’t able to demonstrate themselves. Nobody’s able
to protest legitimately because they just get flung into jail or beaten with
batons.”
Her vision for Pakistan is simple: “human rights and democracy, what every
country deserves”. And she is scathing of the popular notion that democracy
is “unIslamic”. “I don’t see any contradictions between Islamic values and
democracy. None at all.”
