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"PinterestFacebookMeerwala, Pakistan, is not a place where you&amp;#39;d expect to see the stirrings of revolution. Our car judders over dirt roads to reach the village, which is just a few groups of houses huddled in green fields three hours from the nearest city. Boys bathe in the brown canal. Men loll under mango trees. Farmers tend sugarcane, as they&amp;#39;ve done for centuries. But in one compound, a minor miracle is under way.\nAt the Mukhtar Mai Women&amp;#39;s Crisis Relief Center, in a spare single room hung with inscriptions from the Koran, a clutch of women are gathered. They have come, traveling by bus and then by foot, in hopes that one woman, Mukhtar Mai, can help them fight their battles. In 2005, when Glamour first interviewed Mukhtar, she dreamed of starting a women&amp;#39;s shelter. A year later, it&amp;#39;s thriving. Recently, the center helped a 23-year-old victim of karo kiri&amp;#8212;the rural Pakistani custom of raping, maiming or even killing a woman suspected of having an illicit relationship with a man. Bludgeoned with an ax, she was near death when she reached the center. Mukhtar got her to the hospital, sheltered her for weeks and pressed police to register her case. Now the girl is safe back at home, and her attackers have fled. Mukhtar is well-known for such rescues, and her reputation draws a steady stream of anguished visitors, like the ones she sees today.\nGlamour&amp;#39;s photographer and I settle on a straw mat, batting away flies as the women share their stories: Amina tells of her brother, a father of seven, who has been kidnapped. &amp;quot;Only God can help us&amp;#8212;or you, Mukhtar,&amp;quot; she pleads. The man&amp;#39;s mother pulls his dog-eared photo from the folds of her shawl. Mukhtar says she will use her police contacts to investigate. Next a widow, Maksudan, tearfully claims a powerful tribe stole her land. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;m helpless,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;They will kill me if I go to the police.&amp;quot; Mukhtar listens, still as a statue. Then in her calm, low voice, she assures Maksudan that she will call her lawyer.\n&amp;quot;Not a single day is empty of these cases,&amp;quot; Mukhtar tells me later. As her influence grows, so does the horror of the cases she takes on. For women whose husbands have thrown acid at them, she finds doctors and lawyers. Some karo kiri victims have arrived without noses&amp;#8212;a common punishment&amp;#8212;and she has helped get them surgery. This summer, an entire family stayed with Mukhtar for three months, after rivals broke their children&amp;#39;s legs in a land dispute. Mukhtar turns no one away. She knows she may be their only hope.\nHer own battle\nMukhtar&amp;#39;s activism springs from a personal trauma. Four years ago, at about 28 (she is unsure of her exact age), she was gang-raped at the order of a tribal council. The rape was conceived as punishment for her younger brother&amp;#39;s alleged affair with a woman from the Mastois, a higher-caste tribe. (Mukhtar&amp;#39;s family says he&amp;#39;s completely innocent.) Afterward, Mukhtar considered suicide, a common response following such a loss of honor. When she raised going to the police, her father initially told her to keep quiet. Her elder brother threatened suicide himself if she went public. Only her mother, Bachual Haton, urged Mukhtar to seek justice. &amp;quot;I told her, It is your right,&amp;#39; &amp;quot; says Bachual, a heavyset woman with a strong, broad face and dark eyes. &amp;quot;I told her to fight. Someone has to be the first drop of rain.&amp;quot;\nWith her mother and her prayers giving her courage, Mukhtar went to court, testified and got six of her attackers jailed. When one of President Pervez Musharraf&amp;#39;s ministers came to pay his respects&amp;#8212;and $8,000 in compensation&amp;#8212;she batted away their platitudes: &amp;quot;I want roads in my area, I want a school and I want justice,&amp;quot; she told them, and used the money to open her town&amp;#39;s first girls&amp;#39; school. &amp;quot;If I had bought a car or jewelry, after a few years, it would be nothing,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But the school is still running. I&amp;#39;m helping to produce a nation.&amp;quot;\nOn the morning we visited the Mukhtar Mai Girls Model School, the nursery class loudly mangled &amp;quot;Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,&amp;quot; standing proud in their white uniforms. Across the way, older girls belted out answers in civics class. &amp;quot;This,&amp;quot; says Mukhtar, &amp;quot;is my dream. If these children weren&amp;#39;t here, they would be working in the fields and doing housework, like I did.&amp;quot; To start the school, Mukhtar had to first convince parents to let girls attend, a rarity in much of the developing world. For weeks, she went door-to-door, pledging to pay for uniforms and books herself. &amp;quot;You&amp;#39;re leading a difficult life,&amp;quot; she&amp;#39;d cajole mothers. &amp;quot;Do you want your daughter to do the same?&amp;quot; Many, worried that the girls would be less docile and more difficult to marry off, said no. Finally, 300 girls&amp;#39; parents agreed.\nUntil she enrolled in the school herself, Mukhtar had been mostly illiterate (now she&amp;#39;s reading at fifth-grade level). Her court battle&amp;#8212;waged by lawyers and publicized by journalists&amp;#8212;drove home the importance of schooling to her. &amp;quot;During my case, only educated people supported me. Uneducated people threatened me,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;The [courage] that should have been given by my brother and father came from outsiders.&amp;quot;\nFame, and fear\nThanks to &amp;quot;outsiders&amp;quot; in the media, Mukhtar is world renowned. When Glamour named her a 2005 Woman of the Year, she made news throughout Europe and Asia. On the wall of the Mukhtar Mai Women Welfare Organization (MMWWO) are photos of her posing with Kofi Annan and ringing the closing bell at NASDAQ. This spring, Time magazine named her one of its 100 most influential people. When Spain gave her an award, she accepted graciously, then took the country to task for its record of unequal pay for women. Accompanying Mukhtar on her trips is Naseem Akhtar, 29, general secretary of the relief center and a much-needed friend. We joined the two women for a boat ride on the river at dusk. It was a rare respite from the stress of their work, and they laughed like kids as they leapt from shore to boat. Afterward, we chased spicy fried fish with swigs of Coke. It was only when we started for home again&amp;#8212;with a truck full of Mukhtar&amp;#39;s armed security men beside us&amp;#8212;that we remembered how dangerous her life has become.\nFrequently threatened by the tribe she denounced, Mukhtar knows her life is no Cinderella story. &amp;quot;We&amp;#39;re still afraid of the Mastois,&amp;quot; her mother says grimly. &amp;quot;I think someday someone is going to kill Mukhtar.&amp;quot; In March 2005, the High Court reversed the death sentences of her attackers, releasing five of them. &amp;quot;It was harder to hear that than to be raped,&amp;quot; Mukhtar says, recalling how afterward, neither she nor Naseem slept for two weeks out of fear that the men would come for her. She appealed the decision, and the case is now in Pakistan&amp;#39;s Supreme Court. Four policemen, armed with machine guns, protect Mukhtar around the clock, courtesy of the government.\nSecurity is so tight that when I walk 50 yards down the road to interview men lounging by a canal, a gun-toting guard accompanies me. The group grudgingly acknowledges that Mukhtar has helped the community. &amp;quot;If Mukhtar Mai did not stand up, we would not see roads, electricity or a school,&amp;quot; says one. But later I find out that one of the men is the cousin of one of Mukhtar&amp;#39;s rapists. Having chosen to stay in Meerwala, she has embedded herself among her enemies. The children of her rapists&amp;#39; tribe attend her school, and Mastois men stand at a distance and watch as the foreigners come to and from her compound.\nThe international spotlight protects Mukhtar&amp;#8212;for now. But the attention has also led to local accusations that she has shamed Pakistan. In the eyes of the government, rape victims &amp;quot;are seen as tarnishing the country,&amp;quot; notes Hina Jilani, a prominent human rights lawyers and founder of Pakistan&amp;#39;s Human Rights Commission. &amp;quot;So they start discrediting the victim. They need somebody to target.&amp;quot; The criticism stings. &amp;quot;I liked my life before the incident,&amp;quot; Mukhtar told me softly, as we drove to a hearing for her case against a local newspaper that had published a defamatory story on her. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;m considered to be an honorable lady among people who live abroad. But in my society, I don&amp;#39;t have my honor. It&amp;#39;s a war of survival for me.&amp;quot;\nEven some educated women think Mukhtar Mai has gone too far. The principal of a girls&amp;#39; school in a different town told me, &amp;quot;If a woman has a little problem in her home, she should tolerate it or consult family members.&amp;quot; She refused to give her name because she said her husband wouldn&amp;#39;t like it. &amp;quot;Mukhtar Mai just wants to get famous and get lots of money.&amp;quot;\nThe fight for girls\nIf Mukhtar is getting rich, it certainly doesn&amp;#39;t show. Scattered goat droppings dot the floor of her family&amp;#39;s home, and a baby, one of Mukhtar&amp;#39;s nieces, sleeps in a cotton cradle strapped under a bed. To see where the foreign aid money is going, one must cross the courtyard, where chickens strut and goats nuzzle the mud, to find the schoolgirls behind their plain wooden desks.\nThe challenge for Mukhtar is to keep them in those seats, learning. In a society intent on marrying girls early, it&amp;#39;s a constant struggle. Mukhtar&amp;#39;s eyes fill with tears as she tells the story of Sidra, who dreams of being a doctor and whose teacher calls her the brightest in her class. The petite, almond-eyed 10-year-old was to be married to a 30-year-old man as compensation (a custom called wani) for the fact that Sidra&amp;#39;s brother eloped with a girl from the man&amp;#39;s family. Mukhtar begged Sidra&amp;#39;s parents not to marry her off, then pointed out that a nearby family had just landed in jail for practicing wani. &amp;quot;If you commit the same crime, you&amp;#39;ll end up in jail too,&amp;quot; Mukhtar warned them. &amp;quot;And I&amp;#39;ll be the one who will put you there.&amp;quot;\nSidra&amp;#39;s parents listened. At a recent school assembly, she delivered a speech about the value of women. &amp;quot;Islam teaches equality among women and men,&amp;quot; Sidra read solemnly. &amp;quot;But in our area, people don&amp;#39;t accept this\u2026. People marry their girls young. They beat them like animals\u2026. Dear President, why does this happen? Who will root this out with an iron hand? I would like to ask powerful people to join us, and eliminate this curse.&amp;quot; The schoolgirls applauded as Mukhtar smiled down. Having followed her mother&amp;#39;s advice to become the &amp;quot;first drop of rain,&amp;quot; she has created a storm.\nLondon journalist Carla Power regularly writes about women in the Islamic world. Glamour reader donations helped fund Mukhtar&amp;#39;s crisis center.\nIn her own words: the night of Mukhtar&amp;#39;s rape\nSent on behalf of her family to ask the Mastoi tribe for forgiveness after her brother was wrongly accused of an affair with one of its women, Mukhtar Mai knew to be scared&amp;#8212;but she didn&amp;#39;t know that night would change her life. Here, from her memoir, In the Name of Honor, she recounts the horror.\nI walk along a dirt path, followed by my father, my uncle and a friend who has been acting as an intermediary. The June night burns with the heat of the day; the birds are asleep, the goats, too. Somewhere a dog barks. Ahead, I see men, more than 100 of them, illuminated by a light at the entrance to the Mastois&amp;#39; farm. I spread a shawl out at the feet of the Mastois as a sign of allegiance. From memory, I recite a verse from the Koran, holding my hand on the holy book: &amp;quot;If my brother has committed an offense, I ask pardon in his place, and I ask you to set him free.&amp;quot;\nOne of the men, Faiza, shakes his head in disdain. I pray silently, and then fear strikes, like a monsoon, numbing my body with a lightning bolt: Now I see in his eyes that he wanted a Gujar woman so that he could take revenge in front of the entire village. This is the first time that the counselors have fixed upon a gang rape for &amp;quot;honor justice.&amp;quot;\nI am there, true, but it isn&amp;#39;t me anymore: This petrified body, these collapsing legs no longer belong to me. I am about to faint, but I never get the chance&amp;#8212;they drag me away like a goat led to slaughter. Men&amp;#39;s arms pull my clothes, my shawl, my hair. &amp;quot;Release me!&amp;quot; I scream. &amp;quot;In the name of God, let me go!&amp;quot; Escape is impossible. Prayer is impossible.\nThey rape me, on the beaten earth of an empty stable. Four men. I don&amp;#39;t know how long that vicious torture lasts. An hour? All night? I, Mukhtar Bibi, eldest daughter of my father, Ghulam Farid Jat, lose all consciousness of myself, but I will never forget the faces of those animals. They know that a woman humiliated in that way has no other recourse except suicide. They don&amp;#39;t even need to use their weapons. Rape kills her.\nThen they shove me outside, half naked, before the eyes of the village. My shawl draped over my face, I drift like a ghost toward my family&amp;#39;s house. My father and my uncle follow me at a distance.\nFor several days, I leave my family&amp;#39;s house only to relieve myself, but I never eat, or cry, or speak. I have made up my mind: I want to kill myself. I will swallow acid and die, to put out forever the fire of shame that torments my family and me. I beg my mother to go buy some acid. My mother bursts into tears, and by staying at my side day and night, she foils my suicide attempt. I can&amp;#39;t sleep, and she won&amp;#39;t let me die. For several days, I go insane with helplessness. Finally, out of nowhere, a surprising fit of anger saves me from that stupor.\nNow it is my turn to seek revenge."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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