I Should Have Honor

A fearless memoir about tribal life in Pakistan--and the act of violence that inspired one ambitious young woman to pursue a life of activism and female empowerment.

From a young age, Khalida Brohi was raised to believe in the sanctity of arranged marriage. Her mother was betrothed to a thirteen-year old boy when she was only nine; Khalida herself was promised as a bride before she was even born. But against the odds, her father was a man who believed in education, not just for himself but for his daughters, and Khalida grew up thinking she would become the first female doctor in her small village. Her father refused to let her be given away as a child bride, when the time came for her to do that. Khalida thought her life was proceeding on an unusual track for a woman of her circumstances, but one whose path was orderly and straightforward. Everything shifted for Khalida the year she was sixteen, when she found out her beloved cousin had just been murdered by her own uncle, in a tradition known as an honor killing. Her crime? She had fallen in love with a man who was not her betrothed.

This moment ignited the spark in Khalida that has led to a globe-spanning career as an activist and social entrepreneur, working to change the lives of women in Pakistan, and to eduate others about women’s rights. From a tiny cement-roofed room in Karachi where she was allowed ten minutes of computer use per day, Khalida created a Facebook campaign that went viral. This led to the creation of a foundation focused on empowering the lives of women in rural communities through education and employment opportunities, but more crucially working to change the minds of the men who are their partners, fathers, and brothers. This book is the story of how Khalida, while only a girl herself, shined her light on the women and girls of Pakistan, despite the hurdles and threats she faced along the way. And ultimately, it is the story of how she learned that the only way to eradicate the parts of a culture she despised was to fully embrace the parts of it that she loved.