ISLAMABAD
In Pakistan’s capital city of Islamabad, 20-year-old Sofia is struggling physically and mentally to find her rightful place in society. Wearing a bright pink outfit and a dismayed look, Sofia described her gender identity crisis: “My mother gave me the name of Saba Haseen (a girl’s name) while my father called me Roomi Khan (male name) but I like to be called Sofia,” she told Gulf News.
A string of tragic moments form the thread of her life. In the immediate years after her birth, Sofia enjoyed a happy childhood. She was growing up in a loving and affluent family and all was well ... until the day her parents realised that she was not like other children. She was nine years old and was taken to a doctor who put her on a 11-year-long regimen of hormone medication. “I never really understood what was wrong. It was a painful process with the medicines. I was told that I was sick [and that is why I needed to take those medicines].”
The problem was that Sofia was neither wholly a male nor female but her father was determined to transform her into a male through hormone treatment. “After having six daughters, my parents wanted a son. And I turned out to be a disappointment,” said Sofia.
As he entered her teens, Sofia began to have facial hair and along with this change, came the psychological desire to be like a woman and dress up as one. This proved to be the last straw for her father who then brought her world crashing down. He told her that she was an adopted child, whose biological parents had abandoned her at the doors of a mosque.
“My [adopted] mother begged me to leave the house,” Sofia recounted.
Distraught at the turn of events in her life, Sofia got in touch with a transgender rights organisation and left home to make the journey from Hyderabad to Islamabad. Along the way she was subjected to many episodes of abuse and derisuion. “I thought of killing myself many times but in Islam, suicide is haram (religiously illegal) and that kept me alive.”
Sofia now lives lives with a transgender friend in Islamabad’s impoverished suburb of Bari Imam where the rich go to pay tributes at a shrine the area is famous for, and the poor flock in quest for free food. “I don’t want to beg or dance. I just need a job to support myself and live with dignity,” said Sofia, as she appealed to her government to support her quest for a livelihood.
