This 23-year-old woman rides all over Karachi on her Super Power Scooty

Don’t assume that a name like Suraiya Shakoor belongs to a genteel actress or singer.

Suraiya, 23, is a security guard, who supervises a team of security personnel deployed at a media house. She mostly has a stern look on her face which, along with her demeanour, belies her age. But when her face breaks into a smile, you see the young woman behind the created or unconscious no-nonsense exterior she possesses.

What you may also miss is seeing her zipping along the maddening city roads on her Super Power Scooty, cutting through choked traffic and (a confession she should not have made) even driving over footpaths when a main road is gridlocked. Regretfully, Shakoor is among the bikers who ascribe by the don’t-hold-me-back traffic law.

For work, she dresses in straight black pants and a black blazer worn over a crisply ironed blue button-down, and her long hair is pulled back into a sleek ponytail. After work, the day we met, she was to take her scooty to the service centre. “They advised me to bring it for service every month so I won’t have to pay as much for overall service if it’s maintained well.”

The bike she owns is easier to drive than other bikes, according to her. “I’ve driven several bikes, including the Honda 125, which is considered the heaviest,” she says. She bought the scooty not as a hobby but for her work commute.

After completing her intermediate, she looked for a job to support her family of four younger siblings and her parents. But job interviews were the first hurdle for her. They were daunting, possibly not because of lack of confidence but more because of appearing presentable at interviews.

“I said I don’t think I can wear shalwar kameez and dupatta as I had never worn women’s apparel in my life,” says Shakoor straightforwardly. When asked why, she had a simple answer: “Never felt like it.” Even in the government school she attended, the uniform required girls to take a sash and boys to wear a tie. And Shakoor opted for the tie.

The retired major who runs the security company (Vital) was to take her interview. He noticed that his young interviewee was out of sorts somehow. Are you wearing borrowed clothes? he asked her. “Main sameyt nahi pa rahi thi kapron ko [I wasn’t able to carry off the clothes],” she explains to Eos. She told the major that this was the first time she was wearing ladies’ clothes. I wear pants, she informed him.

She was selected for the job regardless of her discomfiture in traditional women’s garb. When the commute from her home in Gulshan to her office in Nursery became bothersome, she decided to get herself a bike.

She told her boss of her plan only to become the butt of jokes at first; “Bike chalayegi?” they scoffed at work. But later her employer also helped out by giving her 5,000 rupees. Then Surraiya thought why not buy it on instalments? She forked out 5,000 rupees from her own pocket and 5,000 rupees was contributed by her uncle who is in the army and whose bike she would ride when younger.

She got her 70cc motorcycle after paying an advance of 15,000 rupees. The rest of the instalments she paid with her entire monthly salaries for six months, the total amounting to 70,000 rupees.

But jokes about her riding a motorbike, most likely in good humour, stopped at the office. Neither has Surraiya faced any harassment on the roads. Once the helmet is on though, you can’t really tell if this is a woman or a thin man on the bike, so perhaps that works in her favour.

Once, though, she was waved down by a cop on Shahrah e Faisal. Not unlike a quick-tempered rebel youth, anger bubbled inside her; she felt the cop was rude in the way he asked her to pull over. “Do you hear me?” the cop aggressively asked, as she was parking her bike on the side of the road. When she took her helmet off, Surraiya retorted: “I can hear you just fine. But if you want to stop ladies then keep lady cops to work with you.” She was let go.

Instead of plans of buying another motorcycle later, she longs to drive a car. If she can’t get into the army — which her heart is stuck on — she plans to buy a Suzuki Every Van which the ladies-only cab hailing service Paxi uses.

This young security guard does not have time to consider whether she is toeing social norms or gender roles; she receives moral support from her family and does what she does to get the job done. She explains she has never once even spent the night outside her home, even at her best friend’s — her cousin’s — house.

She may be antisocial from the sound of it but, at the same time, being introverted does not hold her back from stepping out of her comfort zone. “I just had a drive that I must overcome every challenge thrown my way,” she admits. “Maybe if I can see myself through this difficulty I won’t find future challenges hard to tackle.”

The writer is a member of staff

Originally published in Dawn, EOS, May 6th, 2018