Champion of Choice: The Life and Legacy of Women's Advocate Nafis Sadik

Introduction

xi INTRODUCTION The first time I ever saw Nafis Sadik, I had the same reaction countless others have probably had: who on earth is that woman? I was in Manhattan working on Desert Flower when I noticed this older Pakistani lady, around sixty; she stood at the front of the room at a United Nations reception wearing a colorful blue print sari, its fabric draped gracefully over one shoulder. Diamond pavé earrings the size of dimes peeked from beneath her dark pageboy. I watched her receiving guests, and she seemed to know everyone. When it was my turn to be introduced, I remember being transfixed by her eyes, the likes of which I’d never seen before—enormous black pupils surrounded by a pale blue ring—all the more outstanding for being set in her dark complexion. The eyes stared back at me with a type of unflinching scrutiny that made me squirm. Never did I dream that within a few years I would be writing about those eyes and scrutinizing every aspect of her. When Dr. Sadik retired from the United Nations, I took the opportunity to write her biography, the tale of how she became what the London Times calls “one of the most powerful women in the world.” The year I embarked on this journey was 2001, and little did I know that yoking myself to Nafis Sadik’s life was a bit like handcuffing myself to a racing fire engine. xii INTRODUCTION Throughout the book I have sought to fulfill what I believe are the innate desires of readers of biography: to learn about the lives of others so we may solve the problems of our own lives. By emulating the success of the subject, we hope to skip the painful trial-and-error lessons and jump to the head of the class where we can build on what we have learned from the hero or heroine’s path. In the case of Nafis I identified one powerful lesson as her upbringing, and one of the subtexts to this work is what I call “the primer on how to raise your daughter to be a world leader.” Also in recounting Nafis’s story I’ve taken special effort to transmit the “how-to,” just in case you yourself have aspirations to change history. Two challenges that emerged as I delved into the project were (1) by virtue of what Dr. Sadik does for a living, her colleagues are scattered throughout the galaxy; and (2) much of the work she and her colleagues do is abstract to most of us. Certainly in the United States we have a blissfully limited knowledge of problems like obstetric fistula. To kill both these birds with a single shotgun blast, I organized a trip around the world to interview Nafis’s family, friends and professional associates, an amazing experience that afforded me the opportunity to meet some of the great minds of our time. During this trip I also sought out women and girls who could speak firsthand about the issues on which Nafis has worked her entire life, and have included brief profiles of them. These accounts are the Vignettes that I have sandwiched between the chapters of Sadik’s life. In their design I chose to give the reader a peek into what goes on while getting these stories, to take you into the moment with me so you are able to visit with these women as I did. A word on some of the other stylistic elements I’ve used in the writing of this book. The information contained herein is predominantly from interviews I conducted with individuals; in many cases the sources have recounted tales that I have passed along for the reader. I have not created stories, but I have cleaned up the dialogue to make it more palatable for a literary work. The only artistic license INTRODUCTION xiii I’ve taken is in a few instances I have imagined what went on in an individual’s mind, and these portions I’ve rendered in italics. In a few cases I have indicated where I changed an individual’s name to protect her privacy. When I launched into this project, the United Nations was under attack for a variety of reasons: George Bush had just defunded the United Nations Population Fund (unfpa) for aiding coercive abortions in China, the un weapons inspectors were vilified...