FarQuest Fariha's Quest: Finding an answer to the question "Why can’t Utopia be a reality?" Wish to add some colors of Utopia to this world because I dare to dream and strive to turn my dreams into reality!

Even the slightest of harassment of any form could bring huge levels of stress for a female. A common [Pakistani] girl/woman has to suffer from different forms of harassment several times in her life. No matter how much does her family try to protect her, she does get subjected to it. (Remember, being offensively stared by someone is also harassment and this is something that a woman gets subjected to very often.)

I’m no different, I have also been a victim of female harassment quite a number of times but a few times it got almost impossible for me to ignore and so, I decided to speak up instead of just weeping and keeping everything up to myself.

First it was when I received some really offensive messages and scraps. At that time I was LITERALLY shivering with fear and then started crying madly. I confined myself to my room hiding myself from mummy and my bro, because I didn’t want to disturb them and also because my bro being my BHAI the gr8 gets completely out of control in such situations….. I didn’t want to get the guy messaging me killed (I didn’t even know who he was). So, instead I called two of my very good friends N and Y asking for help, which they provided instantly; may Allah (SWT) bless them for this. Later on it was found that the sender was some 17/18-year-old guy who sent such offensive messages not just to me but to most of my classmates (including guys) because he had a fight with one of our classmates A and so he decided to mess up with the scrap books of all the people on A’s list. But anyhow, I hated the feeling of anguish, of being helpless and also I hated myself for I showed my tears to my friends making them unhappy

The second time I decided to speak up was when I got to experience mobile phone harassment. It started during the month of Moharram this year. On 9^th of Moharram, I received a call from an unknown number at midnight and the guy on the other side wanted to speak to someone by the name of S. Despite my telling him that he has dialed a wrong number he kept calling me and then sent me some romantic messages. When after a while he called again, I handed my cell to my brother thinking that he wouldn’t dare to call again after hearing a male voice but ahh how wrong was I. He did hang up the phone when my brother received the call but started calling again the next day.

As said earlier, my brother gets out of control in such situations and so did he this time as well. He called him from his number to warn but he used extremely abusive language. After that he sent short messages filled with such abusive language not just on my number but bhai’s number as well. It was then when mummy and bhai asked me to get a new SIM so as to get rid of this all. I protested and simply REFUSED to change my number. In my opinion getting a new number was not the solution as after some time I might start receiving such calls on a new number as well. I calmed my brother and mother down and told them not to worry because he’s looking for some S, which I’m not so let’s wait for sometime and see if he continues to call/msg on my number. He did and bhai used some of his connections to get him warned officially. As a result he stopped calling for a month or so but then started again and when I did not receive his calls, he started giving missed calls at all times of day and night and from several different numbers. I’m in a habit of switching off my cell before going to bed (I haven’t yet started a billion dollar business…so no disturbances during few hours I manage to take out for sleep)…I used to switch it off then as well but in the morning used to find my cell phone memory overflowing with romantic shair-o-shairi filled messages. It was getting way too irritating but I had made it a point not to tell anything about it to my brother and mother when they would ask, so as to avoid being pressurized for changing my number.

This all continued for good 2-3 months and during this entire period I felt being mentally tortured. I used to keep my cell-phone silent at home so as to conceal from my family the fact that I was being harassed. But one day…I told myself not to take it anymore and so called one of my teachers who’s a divisional engineer at PTCL (Having a telecom major really helps ) I gave him the number that I was getting most of the calls from and asked him to get it tracked. He didn’t just get for me all the details of the culprit but also got him issued a warning and told me that if you now receive any irritating call, just let me know and then this rascal would get in serious trouble. His warning worked and I stopped receiving those annoying calls and messages.

I took a sigh of relief. A couple months passed this way but then one day I again started receiving those irksome calls and messages…this time, that guy was forcing me to talk to him, which I obviously didn’t and instead used to attend his calls and drop them immediately thinking that he might stop calling because I was harshly WASTING his money :p. I was wrong again…. he was so mulish, he kept calling and again started flooding my cell’s memory with his dim-witted messages.

Luckily, by this time I had read about fellow bloggers’ such experiences here and here so, I got the strength of taking some formal action against it. I had been ignoring this jerk for the past 5-6 months, which is a long period, and now I didn’t want to suffer from any more agony because of him.  So, I picked up my phone and called CPLC. The on-duty operator A was very courteous and told me to fax a written application. I showed my inability to fax but told him that I could email him the application immediately. In response, he gave me an email address on which I sent an application against this harassment stating in it all the numbers that I have been receiving calls from.
More than a month has passed now and I haven’t received even a single call from that jerk. I would thank Allah (SWT) and then CPLC for this.

However today something strange happened which made me write this long post. At about 4:30 p.m. I received a text message from an unknown number addressing me with my name and asking me the reason why I was not coming to the university friends meet-up at Nandos (Note that my entire SZBAIST class had decided to meet up today for iftar at Nandos but I was not going because I couldn’t eat nething there..thanks to ulcer ) I guessed from the text style that it was from my classmate IZ so replied to it. After a few minutes I received a call from that number and there was some guy asking me why I messaged him and who I am. I told him that I received a message from his number but he said nobody messaged from my cell. I asked him if he has got a brother/sister or friend at SZABIST thinking that any of my friends might have used his cell to msg me but he said no. He kept asking me about my name and where I was talking from….I said “main apne ghar se baat karrahi hoon” to which he replied “tu phir main bhi apne ghar se baat karrahoon hoon”….I just was not in mood to prolong this stupid conversation going on between the two of us so hung up the phone. But he started calling again….I received his call and told him to better take care of his SIM/ cell because I just replied to the sms I received from HIS number, he sounded paindoo and said in his typical paindoo accent “OK…jinaab” I said “Sorry if I caused you any inconvenience” and disconnected. I started calling IZ because I was pretty much sure that the message was from her….she was not picking up her cell and while I tried calling her again’n’again…I received a msg in between….arggg….this guy was trying to impress me with some romatic poetry….uff….I have heard about love at the first sight……but love after listening somebody’s voice for the first time…NOT a GOOD IDEA!! Poor guy called me again…he was probably expecting some vows from my side about living and dying with him but was disappointed to hear my anger filled “Hello”….I deliberately said “Hello” in a rude tone and he (stammering) said, “Sorry..iss dafa ghalti mujh se hui hai…main ne pehli dafa kiya hai…aap ko ghusa dilanay k liye….app ko isi lane (he meant to say line) se message aaya hai…check kiya aap ne?” I said, “ Ji ..aap ko pata chal gaya k kis ne aap k phone se msg kiya tha?” He continued denying that somebody messaged from his cell…huh I had already heard all this and couldn’t figure out why he called me again to repeat the entire story…..I had even apologized.

To further camp on my nerves he tried to begin a friendly conversation asking me about who I am. I said, “I am not going to tell even a single thing about myself and if I get one more call or message from your number, then I’m going to give this number to CPLC…so better be careful.” He started saying something but I hung up the phone. Tried calling IZ again and was able to talk to her. The message indeed was sent by her but from her personal Ufone number, which I have got on my list. However, the number shown in the message was from some unknown Ufone number…..arggg…..I’m wondering if there was some sort of network glitch which caused this entire confusion.

My cell-phone is silent again so that my brother’s blood pressure doesn’t shoot up if this loser calls me again but I’m just going to keep it silent for may be one more day and if I receive any further calls/msgs then he would also find himself greeted by some CPLC personnel because now I’m Alhamdulilah strong enough to fight against this sort of harassment…..Thanks to CPLC

If you or any of your relatives/friends is also experiencing this sort of harassment, I would suggest to contact CPLC immediately and help curb this menace. Getting worried and crying just like I used to previously, is of no help.