In Rebel Optimist, documentary filmmaker Mahera Omar has pieced together the portrait of a singular champion of Karachi, Perween Rahman.
“You can’t even say she was one in a million; I feel she was one in a billion. There are very few people like her on earth,” Omar said of Rahman, whose efforts to better the lives of the people of Orangi were cut short by a target killing that claimed her life in March 2013.
Rahman served as Joint Director of the Orangi Pilot Project, and eventually became the director of OPP – Research and Training Institute (RTI) when the parent organization split into four units in 1988. She took it upon herself to counter the government's extreme neglect of the area by empowering its residents to build the systems they need with the resources they had.
Her work extended from sustainable sanitation projects to land and water supply mapping, low-cost housing to youth training programs – and took her all over Karachi, and later into parts of Sindh. In the process, she uncovered the secrets of the land and water mafia – and became a threat.
In a haunting moment of the documentary, Rahman’s sister, author Aquila Ismail, quotes her as downplaying the risks to her life thus: “Oh, nobody knows who I am.” Two days later, Rahman was shot while returning home from the OPP office.
One of Perween's friends recalls her saying: "I know I’ll be killed, but I’ll be killed happily.” Rahman was shot while returning home from the OPP office.
“She was aware of the danger she was in,” believes Omar when asked of her impression of Rahman. “Their office had been attacked before. After she did her water research, someone quotes her as saying 'If I publish it, I’ll be killed.'" At the screening at T2F yesterday, a close companion confirms this; on February 22, 2013, Perween said, “I know I’ll be killed, but I’ll be killed happily.”
So, in drawing her portrait, Rebel Optimist has in some ways tried to unravel the makings of this martyr – whose pro-poor bias stemmed from her own experience of eviction as a young girl in Dhaka during the 1971 war.