Women

Naseem Hameed, a 22-year old girl from Karachi has won the 100-metre race in 11.81 seconds to become the fastest woman sprinter in South Asia. She returned to a tumultuous welcome here after a historic performance at the South Asian Games in Dhaka, Bangladesh and hoped her feat would inspire other female athletes from the [...]

A Pakistani all-girl pop band – Zeb and Haniya – is creating quite a stir with the Pakistani youth. They recently debuted their first album Chup (“Quiet” in Urdu) much to their delight as it was hailed by all major Pakistani reviewers. Breaking stereotypes, Zeb and Haniya are becoming a living and vivid example of [...]

Anmaar Habib, an 18-year old Pakistani girl trained in California, plans to represent Pakistan in the 2010 Winter Olympic games. In 2002, Anmaar Habib was the first female skier to represent Pakistan in any international ski event. Skiing in Pakistan is not for the faint hearted. AJ describes her voyage to the Karakoram mountain range, [...]

Ali Saleem, or Begum Nawazish Ali as known to hundreds of thousands of Pakistani television viewers, remains upbeat about what he or she does best. It’s a message Saleem usually delivers swathed in gorgeous saris and thick makeup, with glitter on his hairless arms and a mischievous lipstick smile on his face. Ensconced in the [...]

What is it about the Pakistani men that attracts such numbers of beautiful western women? Princess Diana, Jemima Khan, and the latest being Britney Spears with her beau Adnan Ghalib. The West acknowledges it. Wonder when the Pakistanis will wake up to this fact. Quite naturally, its people are culturally and socially wealthy. Let us [...]

Namira Salim, the Pakistani explorer and adventurer, and a woman being trained to go into space, landed to a ferocious weather welcoming her in Antarctica. It took more than 40 hours of flights, plane connections and even an emergency landing before she arrived at Punta Arenas, Chile, the southernmost tip of South America. During her [...]

Something cheerful for Pakistanis to begin the new year 2008 with. San Francisco-based Saman Hasnain, a 37-year-old mother of two and real estate agent by profession, was short-listed for the competition and crowned Mrs Pakistan World by voters online. She will now represent Pakistan in Mrs World 2008 and Mrs Globe 2008 pageants. The pageant, [...]

The first Pakistani being trained to go into space, Namira Salim – a well-known artist who will blast off into space in the world’s first commercial space liner in 2008 – is now also set to become the first Pakistani to travel to the North and South Poles when she travels there next month as [...]

Nigar Nazar speaks of her creation with obvious affection. “Gogi is a Pakistani woman who wears polka dots ? because I love them.” Though internationally recognized and honoured as Pakistan’s first female cartoonist, Nazar modestly confesses, “I doodled long before I became an artist.” She approached the principal of the Arts Council of Pakistan in [...]

The notion that Pakistan is more dangerous than Iraq is absurd. I hired a car in Islamabad and headed out onto the partially completed M2 motorway that will eventually connect Lahore (near the Indian border) with Peshawar (the last city on the road to the Khyber Pass and Afghanistan). Suicide bombs, battles in tribal areas, [...]