Sohaila Abdulali

#19/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Sohaila was 17-years old when she was brutally raped. Her fault? She had ventured on a walk ‘alone’ with a male friend. Today, she is one of the most well-known rape survivors who chose not to hide behind anonymity.

On that eventful day in July 1983, she and her friend Rashid had gone for a walk and were sitting on a mountainside about a mile and a half from her home in Chembur which is a suburb of Bombay. They were attacked by four men, who were armed with a sickle. They beat them, forced them to go up the mountain, and kept them there for two hours. They were physically and psychologically abused, and, as darkness fell, they were separated. Then, they raped her, about 10 times, keeping Rashid hostage. If either of them resisted, the other would get hurt. Thereafter, they were let go, with a final long lecture on what an immoral ‘whore’ Sohaila was to be alone with a boy. They acted the whole time as if they were doing her a favour, teaching a lesson. They took them down the mountain even as they stumbled on to the dark road, clinging to each other and walking unsteadily. They followed them for a while, brandishing the sickle and then let go. Finally she got home, broken, bruised, shattered. Sohaila’s father called the police. He was as anxious as Sohaila was to get the rapists apprehended. Sohaila was willing to do anything to prevent someone else having to go through what she had been through. The police were insensitive, contemptuous, and somehow managed to make her the guilty party. When they asked her what had happened, she told them quite directly, and they were scandalized that she was not a shy, blushing victim. When they said there would be publicity, she said that was all right. It had never occurred to her that she or Rashid could be blamed. When the Police said she would have to go into a home for juvenile delinquents for her “protection”, she even agreed to that. She was even willing to live with pimps and rapists, in order to be able to bring her attackers to justice. Soon she and her father realized that justice for women simply does not exist in the legal system. When they were asked what Sohaila and Rashid had been doing on the mountain, she began to get indignant. When they asked Rashid why he had been “passive”, Sohaila gave up and screamed. They just didn’t understand that his resistance meant further torture for Sohaila. When they asked questions about what kind of clothes Sohaila had been wearing, and why there were no visible marks on Rashid’s body (he had internal bleeding from being repeatedly hit in the stomach with the handle of the sickle), Sohaila broke down in complete misery and terror. That was when her father threw the police out of the house after telling them exactly what he thought of them. That was the extent of the support the police gave them. No charges were brought. The police recorded a statement that Sohaila and Rashid had gone for a walk and had been “delayed” on their return.

Three years after the horrific rape, Sohaila wrote down her story in a poignant article for Manushi, which works for Women’s Rights and Democratic Reforms. (It can be read here). She wrote, “Time and again, people have hinted that perhaps death would have been better than the loss of that precious “virginity.” I refuse to accept this. My life is worth too much to me.” Today Sohaila is a true embodiment of how a life should be celebrated. Today, Sohaila writes, reads and walks. She has published two novels; three children’s books; and numerous short stories, essays, news reports, blogs, columns, manuals, and just about every form of written material, which is in direct contradiction to her devotion to trees.

Sohaila Abdulali was born in Bombay, India. She did her schooling in India, and moved to the United States with her family when she was 15. Since then, she has lived in both countries. She has a BA from Brandeis University in Economics and Sociology, and an MA from Stanford University in Communication. Her undergraduate thesis dealt with the socio-economics of rape in India. When she was 20, she wrote the above-mentioned explosive article on the subject in an Indian magazine that won her notoriety for years.

Thirty years after her rape, in light of the December 16 rape of ‘Nirbhaya’ in Delhi in 2012, her old article written for Manushi suddenly started doing rounds on the internet and Facebook. She was all over Facebook, and she didn’t even have a Facebook page. She was suddenly not a writer, not a mother, not an ordinary, muddled, rather happy soul, but apparently, ‘The World's Most Famous Living Rape Victim’. She didn't want her 17-year-old’s cry of rage in a women's magazine to be her final word on the subject, so she wrote again, this time on the recovery process and the stupidity of equating rape with dishonour. In January 2013, she wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, "I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn't." It went globally viral, and brought an unprecedented response both to Sohaila and to the New York Times. The following week, Sohaila went live on the New York Times website to talk about rape in India as well as the op-ed. Then, all hell really broke loose. In the first month alone, her website got more than 2 million hits. She got several thousand emails from women and men all over the world. It was like a global outpouring of support. “Hats off to you, madam,” they said. “You are so brave. You are one helluva tough cookie. You are a saint. You are a hero. Please help me. Please be my friend. My husband beats me, my cousin rapes me, I never told anyone. Hats off. Heads off to you,” said one particularly eager soul. University students debated her piece. The Indian government quoted her. Media called, institutions called. Everyone wanted to hear more. But Sohaila was done telling her story, so, she wrote back, “I prefer not to.” Her logic was simple. She had chosen to speak out the first time. The second time, it really didn't feel like a choice. Almost all her relationships were given a good, bone-rattling shaking. Her immediate family shone like stars. Her extended family, in her own words, “buried their heads in the sand”. Some people cheered, and some looked away in embarrassment. Some people said truly nasty things. Her 11-year-old daughter was hastily told about the incident before she heard about it at school. She just nodded casually. She saw her normal goofy mother and wisely decided everything was all right. Sohaila later reflected, “Rape is like any other life-shattering event – no matter how hard you try, you remember how every person reacted to it, and you either love them forever or you spend the rest of your life not quite succeeding in forgiving them.”

Sohaila is now a Senior Editor at Ubuntu Education Fund, an international NGO working to transform the lives of vulnerable children in the townships of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. She writes and edits grants, annual reports, the Ubuntu website, op-eds and editorial stories, and regular blogs. She helped guide Ubuntu through an update of its communications strategy and is part of a successful team of dedicated, passionate people who are making a real difference in the Eastern Cape. For two years, Sohaila was the Director of Communications at AIDS-Free World, an international advocacy organization. In this position, she wrote briefs, reports, press releases, essays, letters and more, which were carried by worldwide media; helped set up the communications strategy of the organization; assisted in the development of a new website; and initiated several large ongoing projects including a comprehensive atlas of AIDS. As soon as she graduated from college, Sohaila coordinated the biggest, oldest rape crisis centre in the Northeast for two years. She worked as a journalist in Philadelphia, Boston and Bombay. She also began her fiction career, and, to support her writing, she did various odd jobs, from working in an independent bookstore, working with mentally ill adults, to doing sleep research in a psychiatric hospital. She moved to Delhi, India, for two years, where she coordinated publicity and publications for Oxfam. She traveled all over India and England, writing, speaking and producing reports, brochures and a film. Back in Bombay, she did freelance writing and research for the Ford Foundation, Oxfam, and the London School of Tropical Hygiene. In New York, from 1996 on, she worked as a freelance editor for several UN organizations, as well as private companies. She has edited books on computer systems in health care, human rights movements, and hedge funds. She ghostwrote two articles for Wall Street publications. She has produced reports for The Micronutrient Initiative, and worked as a proofreader for a busy advertising agency. During this time, she has had two Ford Foundation grants. The first was to research, produce and distribute three children's books on women's health in India. The results, the ‘RangBibi and Langra’ series, were sold all over India in four languages. The second grant was to write a book about aboriginal people in Western India. The book is called ‘Bye Bye Mati: A Memoir in a Monsoon Landscape’. 

Sohaila has done a lot of public speaking and teaching. In Boston, she spoke at hospitals, schools and many other institutions about sexual assault. When she worked for Oxfam, she spoke in public about issues such as poverty and women's rights. She has appeared on broadcast television in the US, India and on the BBC in England. She was a guest speaker at Clark University in Massachusetts, Northwestern University in Chicago, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among others. In 2004 and 2008, she was an adjunct professor at New York University, teaching South Asian Civilization to undergraduates. Her curriculum was based on her own book, ‘Bye Bye Mati: A Memoir in a Monsoon Landscape’. Sohaila's writing has been published in India, the US, England, and Canada. In 1998, her bestselling novel, ‘The Madwoman of Jogare’, was published by HarperCollins India. In 2010, Penguin India published her novel, ‘Year of the Tiger’. She is on the board of ‘Point of View’, a women's media group in Bombay, India. She continues to write and publish both fiction and non-fiction. She lives in the Lower East Side of Manhattan with her husband and their daughter. 

Source: Wikipedia, Google search and Sohaila’s own website (http://www.sohailaink.com)