It was still early in the morning, so there was hardly anyone in the office. Sitting in front of my computer, I was trying hard to get my mind focused on work. I was moving the cursor down the list of my emails; clicking on some random ones just to be sure that my Inbox would not look untouched. The heaviness in my heart was weighing on my head as I sat there preoccupied with the thoughts of my conversation with Tasneem the day before. Tasneem had come to share her personal distress, but her tale had only added to my own anguish. Her story sparked off a flood of resentment, mixed with frustration, helplessness and disgust. As the computer blurred in front of my eyes, I wondered if I would respond to my own inner cries for justice or just shake off the pain and continue putting on an act of a professional woman, oblivious to her own situation, focused on the good she could do in his UN position for women of her country.

I looked at my desk calendar. I had circled today’s date with a red pen several times. I took a blue ballpoint and circled it a few more times. It was the 10th of December, the United Nations' Human Rights Day. This day meant a lot to me. I always considered this day an opportunity to join hands with my friends to raise our voices against human rights violations, but today, I was feeling like a goose that had lost touch with her flock. I knew my friends would be making placards, banners and preparing for the big rally today. I was aware of the plan of activities, but not being a part of the preparations made me feel distant from the day’s significance, especially since I was concerned about violations of my own rights. I kept staring at the date until the number 10 blurred in front of my eyes.

Life started to emerge in our office building. I could hear the cleaning staff making noises outside my office. Soon, I heard Sadia coming in.

"You are certainly here early!" I said lifelessly without a smile on my blank face.

"I use the UN transport so I have no choice but to be here right on time, or a little early." She replied as she pulled her chair out.

"Were you here all night?" She asked, pressing her lips to avoid smiling. She put her bag away, adjusted her large dupatta and sat by her desk opposite mine.

She gave me a naughty look and said, "I am serious, you work so much I was waiting for the day when I would come and you would tell me that you forgot to go home last night." She then burst into a shy laugh, but suddenly became serious, noticing the expression on my face.

"What is the matter, Fouzia?" she asked with concern.

Her fair color looked even lighter in the sunlight coming through our long, thin vertical window. Her dark brown hair looked reddish in that light.

"What is the matter?" she asked with her voice growing louder with concern.

"Oooooh" I moved forward in my chair, set my elbows on the desk and fixed my chin on my palms. "I have just been feeling sad about not being able to fully participate in the Human Rights Day activities. It is quite ironic that being in the UN system I am so busy that I have no time to take part in these events as I did when I was just a "civilian". There is no concept of acknowledging this day within our own organization."

"Why do you care?" she asked, as she turned on her computer.

"I need to draw energy and strength from this day. I need it very badly."

I suddenly got up, put my hands on my head and said, "I bet that most of my colleagues, including the senior managers in our United Nations' Development Programme office in Islamabad donot even remember it." I threw myself back in the chair and closed my eyes.

"Why donot you take the day off?" Sadia asked without looking at me, wrestling with her old machine.

"You know we have a full day workshop scheduled on "Country Office Work Planning"." I replied.

"Oh, yes! We all have to be there, donot we? I was getting in the mood to start my work, but I guess I better not," Sadia responded.

This was a planning exercise to help us restructure our office into something called a "Center of Experimentation" that was supposed to transform our office culture and our procedures so we could work more efficiently. The UN Headquarters selected only eight country offices to be a part of this exercise. There was a pot of funds associated with this exercise to make it attractive.

Since I was the head of my Unit, I was obligated to attend. I was in no mood to spend all day in what seemed to me to be a superficial exercise. I already had problems with the way management had organized the session, turning it into a mere rubber-stamping exercise.

Speaking my mind and being critical had always gotten me into trouble. Raising issues was simply not an acceptable behavior in our office. The way I was feeling that day, I was afraid that I might say things that would elicit a sharp reaction from the management. Despite that premonition, I convinced myself to go.

I saw other colleagues in my Unit, hugging each other, exchanging morning greetings, quickly settling into their offices, taking whatever papers they needed for the workshop and rushing towards the elevator. I did not acknowledge any of the ‘hellos’ directed at me. Sadia and I walked together. My mind was so preoccupied that I just followed my colleagues until I was standing by an empty chair in a big hall and I heard Sadia’s voice saying, “Sit down.” I sat and tried to shake myself out of my thoughts.

I tuned in and out of the discussion throughout the morning. During one of my ‘tuned-in’ moments, I got involved with a small group focused on the office work environment. About seven of us had moved our chairs into one corner. I raised my usual concerns about our office and work culture. I suggested that since the UNDP had good governance as a part of its mandate of engagement with the national governments, we should put it down as a target for our own office as well and put it in our work plan. I got dirty looks from my colleagues, as my suggestion was admission of the fact that there was something wrong with the office culture. Even though many colleagues suffered from the same concern, they had learned to make only positive comments, knowing that anyone who named the problem would be punished.

Robert England wanted to make sure that we said whatever he had planned for the exercise, so he felt free to continually interrupt, re-interpret and infer from comments of the participants. He held a blue board-marker in his hand and kept playing with it, looking intently for things he liked and highlighting them.

When the small groups were presenting their results, one colleague got up to present his group’s proposals for our annual plan. Among other things, he mentioned developing a system to check "delays in procedures and management issues". Everyone held their breath and stared at him. I whispered to myself, "Wow! That was brave of him." At least he touched a real issue.

For some reason, another manager, thin, with a high-pitched voice, got up and asked loudly, "Let's be brave, WHAT ISSUES?" This man was not known for taking stands. I was not sure if he really meant to pursue the point or if he was attempting to intimidate him and scoring a point with the big boss.

I had promised myself that I would not say a word, but I could not help it. Seeing the man who raised this point suddenly become so quiet, I got up and started speaking. All eyes turned towards me. I saw Robert give me one of those looks where he makes his beady eyes even smaller and just stares at you.

I said, "The problem is not WHAT issues, the problem is that there is no space for ANY issues." I continued, "I have suffered because I raise issues, suffered to the extent that now I try my best to remain silent on everything. What kind of an office culture is this? We now call our office a Center of Experimentation. We are supposedly going through a "change management process" to streamline our office. The management has gathered the staff together to suggest better ways of managing our work, but the minute anyone makes a critical comment it gets shot down. What we need to debate is whether we will allow ourselves the space to raise issues and listen to them or whether this 'change' business, with all these group discussions, will end up being just another superficial exercise."

Everyone looked at me in surprise. Looking back at all the open mouths and worried faces, I thought I should conclude my outburst so I said, raising my chin high, "I, for one, do not find this space in our system at all."

As I sat down after making my mini-speech, a perceptible current ran through the group. I clenched my fists. After a long moment of silence, the discussion went on without any acknowledgement or response to my comment. I thought about all those who might have taken a note of what I said and what plans they might have to reprimand me. I kept thinking, "Why am I wasting my time in this suffocating office." However, I could not think of leaving this organization without taking care of the issue that weighed so heavily on me. My palms started to sweat and my breathing became faster. I felt so heavy that I could not possibly think of starting a new job somewhere else. I could not just ignore it and move on. I could not be so unfair to myself.

I was not able to hear what happened in the meeting after that. There were about fifty people in our conference hall. I stared at the floor. My own sadness fully occupied my thinking. My conversation the day before with Tasneem came back to my thoughts. Her question kept echoing in my mind: "Are you going to do something about it or not?" She had come to my office to share her ordeal, expecting me, as the head of the Gender Unit and a person who works for women's rights, to listen to her and provide support and some solution. She did not know anything about my own personal struggles. I kept on thinking, ‘How can I help solve her problem when I do not have enough courage to solve my own?'

Tasneem was a compassionate woman and had been a competent senior secretary. She was a tall, heavily-built woman in her late twenties. Her short hair framed her round face and plump cheeks. Her deep eyes were full of tears as she sobbed in front of me. Her plump fingers with long polished nails kept pushing her tearful eyes further in as she dabbed them with tissue.

Tasneem was deeply depressed about losing her job. Coming from a lower middle-class family this was a terrible shock. She had been coping with the tensions of a traditional wife living with her in-laws in a joint family and trying to be a competent professional woman. Even with two children, she had still been able to build a real career in the UN. She needed that job to hold her ground in her domestic life in the face of an abusive husband and oppressive in-laws. She also depended on it to retain her self-esteem and sanity. Losing her job was a shattering experience, especially when she had tried so hard to fulfill all her responsibilities. It was doubly painful for her because she knew that the person who fired her was not even her supervisor. He did that in retaliation, only because she had refused his repeated sexual invitations. Through her sobs, she had asked me, "How can this system be so blind? How can he get away with doing something like this?"

I was quite familiar with Tarik's ability to abuse his authority, but arbitrarily firing someone, this way was beyond all limits. I muttered aloud to myself, "If he is allowed to get away with this and no action is taken against his misuse of powers, then God help us all."

I was jolted out of my thoughts when a female colleague put her hand on my shoulder to say hello. I quickly smiled back and looked around. The Country Office Planning Workshop had just broken for lunch. With a long sigh, I gathered myself and took the elevator up to the ninth floor. Back in my office, I quickly threw myself in my chair, checking my urgent email messages like a robot.

Sadia and others had gone straight from the conference hall to the cafeteria for lunch, so I was alone in my office. Just then, Tasneem walked in. She was wearing a blue baggy shalwarkamiz and a big dopatta draping over her front. She wrapped one end of her dopatta around her arm and promptly sat in one of the two chairs in front of my desk. Her eyes were swollen from crying and her face was pale from worrying. She started as if she was continuing from where we left yesterday.

"Fouzia, tell me what to do? He continued to push me to go out with him. Fouzia, I am a married woman. We live in Pakistan. This is not Europe. This man has no shame." Tears started rolling down her cheeks. "If someone in the street says something to me I would slap him, but in an office I can't do it. He is so powerful. All I did was to avoid him and continue to tell him politely how inappropriate I found his behaviour."

She lowered her head and put it on the desk. She told me how Tarik humiliated her by his sexually charged comments. Once, when Robert was out of town, he called her into his office. She was too afraid of him to go in alone, so tried to stand in his doorway, but he yelled loudly for her to get inside. Once inside the room he forced her to listen to his latest sexual exploits with some woman she did not know. When Tasneem asked him if he needed something from her related to her work, he made a snide remark that a woman is useless after two childbirths. Tasneem knew that his wife also had two children and Tasneem was pregnant with her second child. She was not sure if he was commenting about his wife or her, but she bolted out of the room.

On several occasions, he told her that she was his special friend and he could only confide in her to share personal information. She said she never gave him the impression that she was flattered to hear that and continued to tell him that she was only interested in work-related issues.

Tasneem broke down again, unable to control her combined anger and sadness at feeling so helpless against a man who thought he was a god. I passed her some tissues. She continued, "What angers me is how he dares to talk to us like this. Fouzia, can you believe it? He thinks he is some feudal landlord and we are his poor tenants working in his fields. He is on such a power trip. He thinks he can get away with anything. He thinks no one will speak up."

Sadia suddenly came into the room like the wind and planted a big plate of sandwiches in front of me. I looked at her and she nodded her head, instructing me to eat. She did not see me in the cafeteria so she knew that I had not taken time out for lunch. She worried about my food and rest like a little mother. She opened a bottle of coke and put it on my desk and turned to Tasneem, “Do you want me to get something for you?”

Tasneem said, "Just a glass of water, please."

Sadia quickly brought the water for her. She seemed concerned about Tasneem's problem. Everyone in the Gender Unit knew about it, but I think at that moment, she was more concerned that Tasneem’s repetition of the story was making me depressed.

Sadia left the room and Tasneem continued. At some point, I remembered that Sadia came to remind me that the planning workshop had resumed, but I did not register it at the time. Tasneem went on telling me that when she came back from her maternity leave Tarik had changed her assignment from Robert’s secretary to a programme secretary with Rensje’s unit. He did this on his own without discussing it or informing anyone. Tasneem was angry, but did not object because she needed the job badly and could not afford any confrontation.

His main attack came when she complained about the transport route of the bus that brought her to the office. UNDP managed this shared transport for several UN organizations. Tarik gave instructions that Kausar, his girlfriend, should be dropped first going home in the evening and the last to be picked up in the morning. Tasneem had to spend nearly one hour in the bus each way. This caused difficulties with her in-laws and was doubly burdensome because she was still partially breast-feeding her newly-born son. When her requests to Tarik did not yield any result, she made a formal complaint to the UN Transport Committee. After deliberation, the committee decided in her favor, stating that, to maintain fairness, the one who is picked up the last in the morning would be the last one to be dropped in the afternoon. That news made Tarik furious. He saw her now not only as a woman who had continuously disregarded his sexual invitations, but also as someone who dared to question his authority.

Tasneem said with trembling voice, "This was the last straw. He called me in his office and humiliated me so badly. He yelled and yelled. He screamed, 'How dare you go to the Transport Committee to appeal MY orders? How dare you question ME?' Fouzia, he yelled so loud I was frightened. This is an office of an international organization, for God's sake."

I shook her hands to snap her out of this cycle of continuously re-telling her story. I said, "Now you have to listen to me. This is very important."

She moved forward and looked at my face as if I would now give her a magic solution and all her problems would go away.

I said, "Tasneem, I am a victim of the same man. I have been harassed by him for the last three years."

Before I said anything more, a look of total shock came over her face as if she had seen a ghost. "YOU! I know he is flirtatious with women, but I cannot believe that he would dare talk to you like that."

"For men like him, all women are the same," I said with a firm voice. "They see us as inferior to them. They think we are creatures who should be available for their pleasure whenever they call. They can flirt with us when they like. And, yes, most importantly, they are certain we will never speak out because of the deep fear inside us of what will happen to our own reputation if we do."

I lowered my eyes, pressed the edge of my desk with my hand and stood up. I told her that it was so difficult to talk about it because it had all been done so subtly, wrapped up in official business and with no witnesses. Although I knew throughout that he had been the one who was wrong, yet I found it so embarrassing to talk about it, as if it were my fault.

Tasneem asked what he had done to me. I took a few deep breaths and told her that this was my biggest fear that people would ask what he did to me because nothing short of rape would be acknowledged as a real problem. I feared that people would not understand the devastation I experienced from his pressure and control over my every action. They might not even understand the fear of sexual assault, the burden you have to carry all the time while performing your job.

I explained to her that, in our region, we fight against men who burn their wives, who kill in the name of honor, men who rape and men who throw acid on the faces of women who reject their advances. In the face of all that, how do I explain to someone that it tears me apart when this superior of mine touches my hand with his finger with a lustful smile on his face as he hands me an official memo. How do I explain that it disgusts the hell out of me when he forces me to listen to his sexual tales about his affairs with his girlfriends? How do I explain that the pressure of the system, which stops me from saying anything, kills me from the inside? I fear that I would not be able to express the depth of my despair at continuing to work in an environment where someone has all the power and can control every action of mine on his terms.

I tried to seek reassurance from Tasneem, but she did not fully understand what I was saying. I told her a story of a friend of mine who decided to get a divorce. Everyone kept asking her what her husband did: Did he drink a lot, gamble, take another woman or was he beating her. It seemed that nothing short of these reasons could justify two adults going their separate ways. My friend had spent five suffocating years with a husband who completely dominated every aspect of her life. She had never had the opportunity to find any space to be herself, but our society only recognizes overt problems like violence, rape, drugs or alcoholism. The idea that a woman's mental health may be seriously affected by a relationship simply does not register.

Tasneem innocently asked me, "What does your friend's divorce have to do with our problem?"

"Oh, forget it; just forget my friend, ok." I said.

Looking down, Tasneem said in a caring voice, "Three years!"

My voice trembled and I could not speak anymore. I turned back towards the wall and cried.

I controlled my tears, wiped them with a tissue and sat in my chair facing her. I cleared my throat and said, “Now, what I am thinking is that perhaps if we do a joint complaint they might listen to us. I have been thinking about this a lot and I still need to think more, but I feel that if I gather the courage, we both can do it together.”

She took a long sigh and started again in a tone we usually use to mourn the dead. "If I would have listened to his filthy jokes and laughed and had tea with him then I would be getting favours from him instead of such punishments. Is Robert blind? This man has such a control over Robert and this office. He does not even leave married women alone. Not even pregnant women."

We both cried. We knew that people can easily recognize physical violence from the wounds, but the scars of the mind and soul are difficult to see. At times, it is far worse. We also cried because we had given someone so much power that he could humiliate us any time he wanted. We were educated, working women, not girls who had no experience. Nevertheless, a manipulative man could build such a strong web of power that we were seemingly unable to help ourselves.

I continued talking to Tasneem and tried to switch her thinking towards our future steps. I started discussing the risks we might face if we decided to complain together.

After Tasneem left my office, I turned back to my computer, opened a new document file and started to write. I wanted to see if I could describe his behaviour on paper. The fear remained that no one would understand the depth of my disgust or my feelings of helplessness.

 I reassured myself by saying aloud, "I have to do this for my own human rights. This day is for me to focus on how my rights are being violated and what I am doing about it." Listening to myself, my own voice gave me energy. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was time for the big rally. I took the elevator to the ground floor. By chance, my three other colleagues, who had been attending the workshop joined me as I reached the ground floor. They told me that the workshop was about to finish.

The four of us came out on the front side of the building where many friends had gathered with banners and pickets. A friend of mine hugged me and put a big sign in my hand to carry. It said 'Women Have Human Rights, Too'. There were about 500 people gathered there. In the middle of that noisy rally I got a phone call from Rana, informing me that Tarik had created a fuss with Robert and Harumi about my absence from the Planning workshop. I did not want to think about Tarik's attacks just then, so I continued with our peaceful group that was now singing and marching along the main avenue leading to the Parliament House.

The rally ended in high spirits right in front of the Parliament. I was feeling energized and could sense in my gut what my next steps would be. I knew that I would go for a formal complaint. I went back to my office and worked more on what became the first draft of our complaint against Tarik Khan.

Robert had to give a talk in the evening at the United Nations Information Center in honor of the UN Human Rights Day. This was a modest programme, but the only one hosted by the UN agencies. All the local journalists and dignitaries came to attend. The most vibrant speaker was the famous Pakistani human rights activist, Asma Jahangir. She spoke well and hinted that the UN agencies needed to take stock of their own situation as far as the human rights issues were concerned. I was very happy to hear that comment and hoped that someone made a note of it. Organizations that give the agenda of human rights to the rest of the world should look within themselves also.

I hoped that I could talk to Robert after the Seminar and clarify why I was not there during the second half of the Workshop. I caught his attention when he came out of the hall into the garden, where there were refreshments for the participants. At my first hello, he jumped at me. He actually yelled at me asking me why I did not inform Harumi of my absence or any clash with my Human Rights Days activities before hand.

I said, without getting intimidated, that there was no clash of schedule. The peace march did not even start until four in the afternoon. I said I was just extremely upset about something and was not in a condition to attend. I reassured him that I was inside my office and was not attending any other programme. I explained that I was so upset that I could not have contributed anything in any case. I also quickly told him that my whole team had been there until the end.

He was not in a listening mood at all. Expecting him to make a human response by asking me what had upset me was way beyond what one could expect from Robert. He did not respond to anything I had said, but continued with his own attack. As he went on, he grew more aggravated because I kept looking straight in his eyes with confidence.

After the heated exchange, Robert and I parted. I had planned to go back to the office as I had a lot of work to finish and had not been able to do much during the day, but Robert's lack of empathy upset me, so I went straight home instead. In those days, I usually worked at the office until 10 pm, but that night I asked myself, 'Why should I work for an office that treats me so badly?'

My mother sensed I was upset so she came to my room and sat next to me on my bed. She held my hand as I sobbed through my story of frustration, skipping the humiliating details.

"These people in your office do not understand what you are trying to do in Pakistan. Most of them do it as a job with no compassion. They cannot even begin to understand the level of commitment you have with your work. Do not expect too much from them. They operate on a different plane."

I told her about my decision to report Tarik. She kissed my forehead and said, "Go for it. What is there to fear? Are you afraid you will lose your job? So be it. You will find other opportunities to work for your country. You already are working with too many organizations as it is." That last remark made me laugh.

I said, "Yes, I do want to report this man. I have to work for Pakistani women, but that includes me as well. I have to address my own issues. I need to work for my own rights as well."

Her support was a big relief. I knew it would be very difficult to live in this society after reporting such a case, but having my mother and my close family on my side would be a big help.

After a brief moment of reflection, I understood implicitly that my commitment was not to Robert or this office, but to the goals of the United Nations…and what those goals mean to the women of Pakistan. Suddenly I got up, put on my shoes and jacket and rushed outside with my car keys in my hand. My mother shook her head at my craziness.

The security guard on my floor was all smiles to see me. I got him to turn all the lights on. I started writing about my case from the point where I left it in the afternoon. I worked until midnight. The fear of not having enough tangible evidence to prove the case and the fear of being slandered, or worse, in the process, faded into the background. What I could see very clearly in front of me was that I had to be true to myself and I had to be honest to the working women of Pakistan.