It's 2 o'clock on a dry, dusty Sunday afternoon in Peshawar. A windstorm is blowing swirls of dust all over the city. A rally of Imran Khan's fledgling political party, Tehrik-e-Insaf, is underway at the city's Shahi Bagh.

Party workers from all over the province are in attendance, gathered under an open-sided tent, listening politely to one of their party leaders talking about the water problems in faraway Sindh.

Suddenly there is a flurry of excitement. The speaker pauses, and then aborts his speech to announce the arrival of the person the entire assembly has eagerly been awaiting.

Necks are craned among the seated audience that suddenly becomes animated and expectant. Party members rush to form a line-up along the
path this much-awaited guest will traverse to reach her seat on the stage. "Here she is, the person we've all been waiting for!" goes the announcement.

There is cheering, clapping, a standing ovation as she makes her way to take her place among the movers and shakers of Tehrik-e-Insaf.

Jemima Khan is clearly a celebrity. Shouts of "Imran Khan Zindabad! Imran Khan Zindabad! Jemima Khan Zindabad!" greet her as her slender, heavily garlanded frame makes its way to an empty chair among the women on stage.

"Nazuk si hai (she is delicate)," says a woman in the audience. She is indeed - a dandelion enveloped in a stringed mass of fleshy gainda and gulab(marigolds and roses).

No sooner has she sat down, a swarm of photographers encircles her in a cacophony of clicks and flashes. A bemused Imran, seated a few chairs away, smiles at all the attention his young wife is attracting. Once the photographers have had their fill, the autograph seekers swing into action. At first a few, approaching hesitantly, wondering if the English wife of their beloved cricket hero - now politician - will oblige. She greets them with encouraging smiles and the trickle becomes a steady stream in no time. She signs away furiously, making sure her self-appointed bodyguards do not push or turn anyone away.

An old lady approaches her, cups Jemima's smooth face in her wrinkled hands, kisses the top of her head and blesses her. "Sweet," says Jemima, moved by the gesture and the outpouring of love from her well-wisher.

But Jemima is also nervous. It's her first political speech, her debut if you like, in the murky world of Pakistani politics which her husband is determined to lead into less murky waters. And it's in a province where women are barely seen or heard. "I hate public speaking. I'm really nervous," she admits candidly. Though masking it with a smile, the shivering of her leg from time to time, and her nervous biting of nails, tell another story.

A delegation of party members arrives to drape her in a symbolic chaddar, a gesture of respect and love for their leader's wife. A block-printed beige chiffon dupatta covers her head, from which wisps of her dyed brown-blonde hair escape. There is applause as she is red raped. "One dupatta is difficult enough to deal with," she quips good-naturedly as she takes her seat again after the 'ceremony', struggling to adjust the garlands and dupatta.

A rally in the heart of patriarchal Pakistan is hardly a place for a British heiress, a Londoner born and bred, a European socialite whose circle of friends included the deceased Princess Diana. Yet Jemima seems quite at home among the largely male, largely conservative gathering. Her nervousness is over the speech she's going to deliver - not the company she's in. Her husband conveys a message for her to relax and feel at ease. "Yahan sab apne log hain (All the people here are our own)," he says reassuringly. The leg continues to shake, however. Her speech is in her hand - two typewritten pages of Urdu written in English, rather than in Urdu script. "I'm not that ambitious!" she says when I allude to it.

When she delivers her speech, though, exhorting women to participate in the elections, both her Urdu accent and pronunciation are almost flawless. "Mein khawateen se darkhwast karti hoon ke woh aage aaein aur election mein bharpoor hissa lein (I would like to request the women to come forward and participate fully in the election)," she tells her attentive audience.

She also says a few lines in Pushto to thunderous applause and cheering. "I'm learning Pushto and next time I come here I hope I'll be able to speak to you in Pushto instead," is what she says, and the crowd goes wild. She returns to her seat flushed with adrenalin. "Relieved!" is how she describes her sentiments later to an Abu Dhabi TV crew who wanted to know how she felt after her first political speech.

This is only the beginning. Her first in what will likely be a string of political appearances closer to the October elections, when Pakistan will be returned to democracy. As the wife of a Pakistani politician with designs on the prime minister's seat, Jemima's relief may be temporary. But for the time being it is quite enough to put her in a buoyant, almost chirpy, mood as she climbs into her Land Cruiser for the long drive back to Islamabad.

Her worries are now about her driver who is diabetic and has not had lunch. "Keley khareed lein raaste mein (let's buy bananas on the way)," she suggests. The driver decides otherwise, and we are soon speeding down the famous Grand Trunk Road for the return journey.

In the comfort of her Land Cruiser, our conversation is as much about me as it is about her. The interest in me and my family, the concern for her driver - all this is typically Jemima. Little wonder then that she has taken so naturally to social work and fund-raising for charities. And surprising that she hasn't been doing it all her life.

"The cancer charity was something I married into," explains Jemima. She had never done anything "on that kind of scale where it dominates your life" before marrying Imran.

After the Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital experience, fund-raising and charities seem to be linked with Jemima, leading inevitably to comparisons with Princess Diana.

"I didn't really decide to help the Afghan cause; it just happened," she says. Moved by an article describing children dying of cold in Herat, she wanted to go into Afghanistan but ended up in Jalozai instead - a refugee camp near Peshawar - laden with tents, blankets, and other relief items bought with the half-a-million-dollars her newspaper campaign in the UK had collected.

"I was just horrified by the conditions there," says Jemima, relating what she saw. "What I found most upsetting was the desperation among people for shelter."

Little children came to collect tents for themselves, seven or eight year-olds. "There was one little boy whose parents had died and he had come on his own. This little boy had to struggle about three miles with this huge tent - and they're heavy, big things," Jemima recalls, unable to shake the memory.

"There was another little girl, about nine. She was in charge of a family of five children. I could hardly see her beneath this tent. She was holding her two-year-old brother's hand and struggling to hold on to the tent as well. Those kind of images I guess will stay with me forever," she confesses. The publicity her involvement in Afghanistan generated won her a goodwill ambassadorship for UNICEF. As special rep for UNICEF UK, she promotes their yearly campaigns. The first was "growing up alone" and targeted children orphaned in conflict, a natural extension of her work in Afghanistan. This year's theme, which she promoted in Bangladesh in March, is the eradication of neo-natal and maternal tetanus.

The trip provided an opportunity for her to play journalist too, as a reporter for Britain's new Channel 5. She is dismissive of her on-camera reporting skills but she does nurture journalistic ambitions.

"Had I not got married when I did, I would probably have become a journalist of some description," she confesses. She makes up for this thwarted ambition, though, by occasional columns for British newspapers. "I write if there's something I feel strongly about," says Jemima. The topics she has chosen to highlight through mainly the Telegraph, a fiercely right-wing paper in the UK, range from the quaint (from a Western perspective) to the controversial.

An article in approbation of arranged marriages, for example, in which she wrote: "In Pakistan where people have more realistic expectations, marriages are based on more solid and less transient foundations that just the emotional or physical. There is social pressure to make marriages work and society revolves around, and is protective of, family life so it is hardly surprising that the divorce rate is a fraction of what it is in most Western countries."

An article on the Israel-Palestine issue became highly controversial, especially when her father's lawyer of more than 30 years, attacked her views in print and refused to represent her any more. He accused her of not understanding "what being a Goldsmith means."

In the controversial piece titled 'Tell the truth about Israel', Jemima criticized the media bias in covering the Middle East conflict, and explained that it was because the most powerful media in the world was controlled by the Jewish community, who wielded immense financial and political power. Though she is extremely sorry she hurt people because of her views, which were interpreted as anti-Semitic, she is not apologetic for them. "I didn't mind the furor as long as I believe in what I write. If I am passionate about something, I can face any kind of criticism. The only thing I found hard to deal with was that I had obviously hurt people that I care about," she explains.

But she is firm in her belief that "when you see injustice, and when you see it reflected in such a prejudiced way, it's hard not to speak out if you have a voice."

One day soon, she hopes her 'voice' will be heard in the form of a book. "I love writing. I want to write a book and feel frustrated I haven't got around to it yet," she says.

While writing a book is another unfulfilled ambition, she has partly realized her dream of continuing her education. In March, she submitted her dissertation for her Bachelor's degree in English Literature from Bristol University, which she abandoned to marry Imran in 1995. While she is keenly awaiting the results, she is figuring out what to study for her Master's. "I've narrowed it down to Middle Eastern Politics, International Relations or Comparative Religion," she divulges.

Comparative religion is a subject close to her heart. Raised as a Protestant and baptized and confirmed when she was in her teens, religion was never a driving force in Jemima's life before she met Imran. Her own father was raised as a Catholic but had a Jewish father. This religious eclecticism meant that Jemima "didn't have any particular religion but felt an affinity to all religions and had a more or less non-religious upbringing."

When she became engaged to Imran, however, he gave her books to read on Islam. She confesses to being greatly moved by 'Road to Mecca' by Mohammad Asad, a Jewish convert to Islam, and 'Islam and the Destiny of Man' by Gai Eaton, a Western convert to Islam, who was subsequently a guest at her wedding.

"I don't know how someone who is born a Muslim would react to these books, but they move me even when I read them now," she says.

Jemima embraced Islam before she married Imran. But it was not the "hasty decision" of a "naive, besotted 21-year-old", as she wrote in a column for the Telegraph in May 1995. Jemima chose to become Muslim because of an "eventual dawning realization of the universal and eternal truth that is Islam", she wrote in the same article, a powerful and impassioned piece of writing for a 21-year-old socialite.

At 27, the independence of thought and conviction is more pronounced. Her views on politics, for example. "Politics . . ." she begins to say, and then screws up her nose in an expression that portrays her views more effectively than words. " . . .it isn't the easiest path to take."

For husband Imran, politics is an extension of his social work. Essentially an intensely private person who loves nature and the outdoors, Jemima discloses that Imran chose public life out of a sense of duty as a privileged Pakistani to use his influence for social change.

That makes it easier for his wife to accept his choice of career. "I'm glad he's gone into politics with those intentions," she says, and not out of a lust for power. Personal misgivings notwithstanding, Jemima can't help but be involved in Pakistani politics. She was excited about voting in the referendum, and is very supportive of the General. "In a lot of ways I think he's been great for Pakistan and my impression is that he is sincere and honest," she says enthusiastically. On a more serious note, she says: "I hope the next election will represent a turning point in Pakistani politics and things will start to change for the better."

She has had her own share of political 'excitement' and has in a sense performed her rites of passage into Pakistani politics. Like other Pakistani political figures, she has been accused of a serious crime - trying to "smuggle" antique tiles out of the country. She has lived in self-imposed exile for almost a year in London as a result. And finally, she was able to return home after a coup deposed the government of Nawaz Sharif which had framed the smuggling case against her.

"The tiles episode was such a nightmare," she recalls. Tiles bought as a Christmas gift for her mother sparked the controversy at a time when Imran was seen as a threat to Nawaz Sharif ahead of an election. Accused of smuggling old tiles from various tombs in Sindh, Jemima took a sample tile she was carrying (to show her mother) to Sotheby's, the British Museum, Bonham's, and even had a thermo luminescent test carried out. "The experts laughed and said if the tiles were even 10 years old, they would be amazed," she clarifies.

But smuggling being a non-bailable offence in Pakistan, Jemima wasn't prepared to take the risk of coming back to be thrown in prison. "At that point Nawaz Sharif had gone so mad, that I was advised that he was quite capable of putting me in jail as part of his political victimization," recalls Jemima. It meant her being away from Pakistan for 11 months, with her newborn baby Kasim, and two-year-old Sulaiman, unable to return home. "It was really hard. After 11 months had passed, I said to Imran, 'I can't take this any more. I'm coming back regardless.' He had hardly seen his new baby. We'd been living separate lives," she reminisces. Imran told her to "just pray. I'll pray, you pray."

The following morning she found a message from him on her machine - "Well, our prayers have been answered!" she recalls, imitating Imran's voice and accent. She flew back the next day and now says with glee, "Thank God for the coup!"

Since the coup, there have also been fewer stories about her in the local press. As with all international celebrities, Jemima too is media-shy, particularly so in Pakistan what she see as a lack of accountability for the Press makes her extra cautious.

"What I find disturbing is, if you're libeled here, you can't sue. There's no accountability at all in the press, and that really disturbs me. I've been libeled so many times here, even criminally libeled. True, it happens in England too but there you can go to court," she argues. "I guess that's why I'm a bit apprehensive and skeptical about journalism here," she concludes, sounding a tad apologetic.

That explains the low profile. "I generally live a quiet life," she says. "I'm not really hassled. Only when I go out to something like today (the rally) are there photographers or press around. I suppose the paparazzi are a bit more intrusive in England than here. I'm more or less left alone here."

Later, at her Sector E-7 home in Islamabad, nestled among shady trees a stone's throw from the Margallas, Jemima in a cool white shadow-worked cotton shalwar kameez - a reminder of her now defunct couture business - alternates between accommodating interviewee, attentive hostess, affectionate wife and protective mother.

She orders and pours green tea for me and inquires if it is to my taste, playfully admonishes Imran for arriving late for the photo session, politely requests that her children be kept out of the media limelight before disappearing into her bedroom to change into another outfit for the camera.

She's back in minutes, dressed in a muted green khaddi outfit with gold edging, not Shamoon Sultan's designer khaddi but a bargain buy from Dhaka. "This was the only thing hanging in my cupboard that was ironed," she says candidly. No affectations. No pretences. No pseudo elitism. Just Jemima Khan.

(Source: The Dawn)