The world often seems to demand that women seek permission for almost everything they do. Hunia Chawla’s play explores this theme through the experience and resistance of the young woman Hanna (Anisa Butt), taking her from Pakistan to student life in London. It is told from the point of view of women, this being emphasised by the male characters being simply voice-overs.
The show opens with police tapping on the window of a car in which Hanna sits with her boyfriend Umer whom she describes as her brother to the suspicious officers because, as she explains shortly afterwards to her friend Minza (Rea Malhotra Mukhtyar), a woman is supposedly only safe outside “with a guy”, but even then that has to be a “respectable” relationship.
Meanwhile, her parents, with whom she still lives, think she is out studying chemistry, though she doesn't even take chemistry. However, her life is about to change when she secures a place at a London university, which her father (Bhasker Patel) points out will cost “more than people here earn in a lifetime.”
Her taste of London delights begins with her waiting in position 40 at an incredibly long airport immigration control queue.
Two events create unexpected difficulties in her new life. The first is a call from Umer (Asfandyar Khan), who misses her and suggests she send him a sexual picture. It somehow gets released on social media, causing problems for her with her family.
Her life is also shaken when, with Anushe, her student friend in London, she joins a student occupation of a campus building in protest at the university's investments in the arms industry. The audience is invited to raise their hands if they support it (over half did), and a few are asked to help raise banners at the back of the stage that read “The University funds Genocide” and “No one is free until Palestine is free”.
A police raid on the protest results in a number of students, including Hanna, being suspended by the university. The Government, faced with this clash between students for justice versus the genocidal profiteers of the arms industry, decides to revoke Hannah’s visa and effectively kick her out of the country.
Refusing to be defeated by these experiences, back in Karachi, she joins Minza on a march for women’s rights.
The cast of two plus voice-overs gives a confident, fluent performance of this believable coming-of-age story that lightly touches on important issues concerning the rights of women.
Although everything in this watchable play is interesting, the main issues, such as the consequences of social media shaming, are undeveloped. Even the student occupation's high-energy point of the play, with its exciting audience involvement, seems to rise and then return to the more flat energy of the rest of the show very quickly.
All the same, the warm, hopeful mood of the performance sends us away cheering the lives and struggles of Hanna and Minza.