'Who's Shehzori in the house?'

Name: Nusrat Sohail

Based in: New Jersey, United Stated

Occupation: Educator and Founder of Women2Women forum

Language and identity are closely intertwined - with language having the power to transform communities. But these communities can’t thrive alone. They will always need people who are ready to take responsibility for the future that we’re about to step into, and the present that we’re living. Nusrat is one such person, who was generous enough to share bits from her life and her work.

‘There’s always this evaluation going around at home, as to why am I the way I am?’ Nusrat tells me and we laugh a bit. Her ideas and work could be considered odd - for there’s no reason for a woman to put herself in a position where she has to work more or in a way not known to the Pakistani society.

She is, however, named after her great grandmother who was fierce and way ahead of her time. ‘I have her soul!’ she tells me.

Nusrat was born and raised in Karachi where she did her masters in South Asian history and worked as a teacher. After moving to the US, she did her post graduate fellowship in educational administration and also studied at Teachers College, Columbia University as a doctoral student for four years. Alongside her educational journey, Nusrat also served as the principal of AnNoor Academy, an Islamic school in New Jersey.

Among the various things that she does, being an educator is what drives her. I can tell by the way she talks about it and how this quality is visible in all her endeavors.

After moving to the US, Nusrat founded Women2Women (W2W) forum, a non-profit organization that aims to build communities that can recognize, strengthen and advocate for Pakistani-American women. ‘I wanted girls to have role models, to have the confidence to come up on stage and for them to have such a platform’ she explains. Moreover, the lack of acceptance towards a hyphenated identity as a Pakistani-American formed a great barrier towards women achieving things that their counterparts were. This was something that Nusrat strongly advocated for.

As an immigrant, Nusrat also felt that there was a growing generational gap between the elders and the first-generation immigrants which she thought stemmed from the language barrier. It is easy for cultural intricacies and emotional understandings to get lost between two languages, leading to a greater divide. ‘Someone has to do something about this’ she thought. This is how she got engaged in Urdu teaching and then went onto build an Urdu summer camp with a grant from a local government. She also speaks wonderful Urdu as we speak and I can not help but think of how exciting it would be to be in one of her classes.

While she was doing everything that she could to uplift women and the youth in the US, it occurred to her that there’s a need to do something back home as well. Possibly in the field of education because many girls in Pakistan, never get to go to school. And so one day, she found herself in Swat, alongside Zebu Jilani who is the founder of Swat Relief Initiative (SRI). Her anecdotes from the trip are eye-opening but heart-warming at the same time.

“I met this little girl in Swat who asked me if she could apply mehendi on my hand. I agreed. She then went on to tell me that she had passed 5th grade and would love to study further but there’s no school in my village. ‘Khala, can you do something for us?’ she said and it was then when I knew I had to do something about it” Nusrat recalls. This is how W2W forum started supporting the Girls Model School in Salampur, Swat in partnership with SRI. They have plans of expanding the capacity of the school this year and so Nusrat was all occupied with meetings and travel plans.

Another one of W2W forum’s projects that personally touched me was the shelter home that they started last year through a state funding but are now trying to self-sustain it. It serves as a temporary home for women who may have faced domestic abuse and as a safe space for all women, just like ‘Ammi ka ghar’ Nusrat tells me. ‘I had to give up my job in order to develop this shelter and I thought that it’d be enough - but it has a life of its own.’

Very interestingly, the shelter is named ‘Shehzori house’, which may seem like any other name but it has a history attached to it. Nusrat’s grandfather, Azeem Baig Chughtai was a writer who wrote a story that was later developed into a television serial by Hasina Moin, a famous Pakistani playwright. It went on to become famous and was considered to be an early feminist literature because of its strong female characters. This serial too, was named ‘Shehzori.’ Both the ‘Shehzori house’ and the serial ‘Shehzori’ are similar in what they are trying to achieve: a society with resilient women.

‘Where do you see W2W in ten years?’ I ask.

‘We didn’t know we'd be here when we first started off. I just hope that we keep giving back to the community through thought provoking ideas, that we continue to build pride in the community and to continue to let women know that dinners and dawats are not the only ways to socialize. There’s always so much more they are capable of doing.’

Nusrat finds herself in a position where she wants to do more, as much as she can for others. This is also partly because of the struggles she faced earlier in her life. Her father passed away when she was just 13 and so she had to bear responsibility for a lot of things earlier in life. Among the many familial and financial difficulties, she had to navigate her own path which she now calls her ‘training time period’ and what prepared her for today. I enjoy her wisdom and her ability to look back retrospectively. I know this is what I want to take away from our conversation.

“Back in my Dada’s house, if we ever fell or got hurt, we are always asked ‘who’s Shehzori in the house?’ and so that’s where my influences have come from. We were called ‘Shehzori’ and brought up as such.”

Here’s to women who are the backbone of our communities. Here’s to Shehzori. May we see more of them, may we be more like them.

Women2Women Forum: https://www.women2womenforum.org/