Review: Society Girl: A Tale of Sex, Lies, and Scandal by Saba Imtiaz and Tooba Masood-Khan

As a fan of murder mysteries, I was intrigued to hear about Society Girl: A Tale of Sex, Lies, and Scandal by Saba Imtiaz and Tooba Masood-Khan. The writers–freelance journalists originally from Karachi–explore the scandal surrounding the mysterious death of Mustafa Zaidi, a civil servant and renowned Urdu poet.  On October 13 1970, Zaidi was found dead in his bedroom. In the next room, Shahnaz Gul, a “minor socialite in her late twenties” with whom Zaidi was rumored to be having an affair, was found unconscious. Though Zaidi’s death was initially ruled a suicide, police began to suspect that he had been murdered. Shahnaz quickly became the main suspect in his death.

In their Introduction to the book, Imtiaz and Masood-Khan note that they were particularly struck by the fact that West Pakistani newspapers devoted so much attention to the Shahnaz Gul case during a time of intense political turmoil in East Pakistan. The political turmoil caused by the disputed election of 1970 led to civil war in East Pakistan and the eventual secession of that province to form the independent country of Bangladesh.  Yet the news media was inordinately focused on high society scandal in Karachi.  They write:

It is true that the press was largely controlled by the state, and that people had little to go on but propaganda. But it is incredulous that so many did not question the narrative being peddled by the Pakistani government, and that they so quickly forgot any lessons that they had learned from the events of 1971. The press played a role in manufacturing a narrative for the state’s repressive, brutal actions in East Pakistan, and then ignored the country’s most pressing issues to cover the travails of Shahnaz Gul (xiv).

Imtiaz and Masood-Khan provide a detailed look at the events surrounding Zaidi’s death, the subsequent investigation and Gul’s trial.  The book reads almost like a novel full of complicated characters.  From the perspective of today’s Pakistan, it seems unbelievable that a scandal involving “revenge porn”, adultery, suicide, and possibly murder could take place in 1970s Karachi high society.  The book unfolds at a fast pace and it would not be far-fetched to imagine a successful drama miniseries made about the scandal.

The writers lean towards the theory that Zaidi’s death was a suicide.  They note that Shehnaz was also the victim of a crime: “revenge porn” (though of course that was not understood as a criminal act in 1970).  Shehnaz was publically shamed by society, when all she did was have an affair.  They write:

This story is ultimately not just about Shahnaz and Mustafa; but about the forces that existed during that time–the press, the elitist social structure, the power dynamics–all just as powerful today. But in the process of introducing our work over the years, it has been striking to see how young people have responded to it and understood just how devastating this was for Shahnaz, the nuances of a campaign of public shaming, the ramifications of her character being under constant scrutiny, just as much as an older generation in Pakistan had often sought to occlude all of this, to present half-truths as fact, to secret away archives and gate-keep the very history of Pakistan.(264-65).

In conclusion, I would highly recommend Society Girl to those interested in a social history of 1970s Pakistan as well as to fans of murder mysteries and true-crime.