Sing for him? Sue him? Stone him?

But first things first: as the news of the affair broke,there was no question of keeping anyone out of the bidding for the coveted players. Media on both sides broke into a sudden flurry of cross-border exchange of cordial news and views—something that has not happened post-Mumbai,2008—as Shoaib and Sania admitted to their match-fixing in Dubai.
The duo’s confessions ensconced collaborators,fixers and facilitators on both sides—non-state actors,to start with. Then,state actors too jumped to play their unlikely part by rushing to grant visas to the respective families to allow them into Hyderabad and Lahore at the appointed hours—police reporting exempted (as was the case only a week ago). There was little fuss made over security arrangements on either side for the visiting Indian and Pakistani squads for a two-round series that would see the trophy off to Dubai.

Funny,how in the recent India-Pakistan context,loaded terms like ‘bidding’,‘cross-border’,‘match-fixing’,‘collaborators’,‘fixers’,facilitators’,‘state and non-state actors’ and ‘security arrangements’ can acquire such benign meanings (only if state relations too worked like human relationships do). Shoaib,though an ‘infiltrator from across the border’,was welcomed by India. In Pakistan,Sania was embraced overnight as the most popular bahu since Jemima Khan! The sportstars have since been a riveting show,with all its twists and turns making the headlines all over South Asia and the diaspora.

But how could there be no spoilsports in this new,emerging liaison between the two countries,many wondered,and waited with baited breath. Just then came out the ghosts from the past,much like in Indo-Pak relations,to haunt the show. Ayesha Siddiqui (a.k.a. Maha) claimed Shoaib as a runaway husband no less. Divorce,she first demanded of him as a wife slighted and one who underwent ‘dangerous’ surgery to lose weight to win her husband back. She saw little of the bliss of marriage,and a lot of grief/ tyranny of sasural, having been confined to her mayka all these years,she said. Then she charged him with cheating and harassment over,what did she say,dowry? He broke his silence only to accuse her of cheating in return,alleging he never got what he saw (in a photograph). Incredible!

The dramatic turns in the saga made Pakistani channels change their playbacks from ‘Veer mera ghodi chadheya’,‘Mundeya Sialkotia’ and ‘Dilwale dulhanya le jaayenge’ to ‘Saiyyan jhooton ka bada sartaj nikla’ and ‘Thodi si bewafai’. It became the biggest developing story and everyone obsessed about the outcome of the drama even as they raised other questions: Will it be another Mohsin Khan-Reena Roy union? Or will it last like that of Zaheer Abbas and Sam(ina) nee Rita Luthra? If comparative statistics are anything to go by in their sporting careers and personal lives,then success definitely has an edge over failure for both Sania and Shoaib.

Their affair’s similarities with Sam and Zaheer Abass’s are uncanny: like Sam and Zaheer who had met in England in the 1980s,Sania and Shoaib also met outside the subcontinent (Dubai). The Luthras,like the Mirzas,had instantly agreed to the match; both Zaheer and Shoaib have served as Pakistan captains and both were born in Sialkot; of the two couples,one in each is Punjabi (Sam and Shoaib) and the other Urdu-speakers! Then,if Ayesha Siddiqui’s claim on Shoaib is true,then Sania,like Sam,will also be a second wife.

But all this was trivia compared with the scandal of Shoaib’s marriage to Ayesha/Maha,which promised not to go away anytime soon,even as he tied the knot with Sania. The jumping into the fray by Ayesha’s firebrand father Mohammed Siddiqui and Shoaib’s brother-in-law,Imran Zafar,vitiated the atmosphere. Siddiqui produced a copy of the Pakistani nikahnama (marriage certificate); Imran Zafar denied the veracity of the document,saying Shoaib was certainly not married to someone he called ‘Maha Apa’ who claimed to be Ayesha’s elder sister and whom he had met several times,but Ayesha,never even once. There were no witnesses as signatories to the nikahnama .

The denial by Shoaib’s family was followed by the running of TV clips from 2003-2004 in which Shoaib admitted that he was married to a woman in Hyderabad. There was never a denial issued as to the authenticity of these clips from the brave brother-in-law. Meanwhile,after the surfacing of the nikahnama ,the details in it also led to more talking points in the media. Geo TV ran a 50-minute interactive programme with live audience and experts,questioning the Rs500 as the haqmehr (dower money; literally ‘right to love’) that Shoaib allegedly promised to pay the bride as part of the nikah contract. The religious scholars on the show said the dower money’s equivalent today is no less than Rs 65,000. Few seldom pay anything at all,even at divorce.

The controversy reached a crescendo when Ayesha’s father demanded at a press conference that Shoaib be stoned to death under Islamic law because he committed adultery while living in sin with his daughter; that is,if he denied having married her! Shoaib’s brother-in-law responded by challenging the Siddiquis to take the matter to court instead of running a media trial. He also threatened to file a defamation case against the Siddiquis. Curiously enough,Shoaib’s brother-in-law too visited and stayed with the Siddiquis in Hyderabad on a number of occasions but said he never met Ayesha,who was kept away by Maha! Ayesha’s claim that cricketer Mohammed Yousuf’s wife was privy to her troubled marriage was diluted by the fact that Shoaib and Yousuf are now at odds.

The entire controversy assumed farcical proportions,with the public euphoria about the wedding itself rapidly taking the back seat. Many questioned whether the wedding with Sania would take place,even as the two families were filmed singing and dancing. Finally,the Siddiquis let Shoaib off the hook Wednesday morning in return for a divorce for their daughter,leaving the finer details of whether the first marriage took place or not for him to handle.
The writer is an editor with Dawn,Karachi

PAKISTAN’S MUSLIM FAMILY LAW,SHARIA LAW AND THE CONTROVERSY
*A man is allowed to take up to four wives at a time but a husband needs written permission from his wife (or wives) to take on another.
*Nikah over the phone is acceptable,but is tied to the bride’s guardian’s consent under Sharia law.
*Nikahnama,its registration and the presence of witnesses signatory to it at the time of contract,is necessary to establish a marriage.
*Either party has the right to unilaterally end the contract but informing the authorities concerned in writing is mandatory.
*Punishment for adultery (including fornication) can extend to the extreme measure of stoning to death in public,of both the man and the woman involved,with the stringent condition that both were married at the time,and provided that two honest men,or one man and two women or four women,had seen with their naked eyes actual penetration from close quarters during intercourse (there has never been a conviction in Pakistan under this controversial law enacted by the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq in 1979).