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‘The Queen of Balochistan’

The Tarbert woman elected to the Pakistani parliament

‘The Queen of Balochistan’, Bridie Wren (Jehan Zeba), pictured in Pakistan in 1993 (Catherine Kelter).

Quite a number of Kerry’s sons and daughters have left Ireland and made significant marks on their adopted countries, but few have had as transformative an experience as that of a young nurse from Tarbert who met and became smitten by the son of a chieftain from India. Jennifer Wren, later Jehan Zeba, went on to represent her adopted people in government, ran successful companies and earned the love and respect of her adopted people. Born Bridget (Bridie) Wren in Ballinoe, Tarmons, Tarbert, during the First World War, Bridie went to England to study to become a nurse and adopted the name Jennifer in what may have been an expression of her independence. But it was not long before she left Britain and adopted a lifestyle, a culture and a religion that were far removed from what she had been used to as the child of a family of small farmers, with four sisters and two brothers.

In 1939 she met Qazi Mohammad Musa, the son of the Khan (leader) of the Qalat District in Balochistan in what would later become Pakistan when the country won its independence. Qazi Musa was studying philosophy in Oxford at the time. His brother, Qazi Mohammad Essa was a prominent member of the Pakistani Movement and the All-India Muslims. The man regarded as the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah stayed with the family from time to time. ‘We met at his college, at a party – you know what students are like,’ she recalled later, ‘I was a Catholic, he was a Muslim. I think I became Islamic at the time. There is no difference in any of these religions except some people believe in one god, some in another and some in lots of gods.’1

Qazi Musa had been matched with a wife in Pakistan when he was fourteen and his family was anxious about the new woman in his life, but they married in 1940 and Jennifer became Jehan Zeba. There were five children in the earlier marriage, but relations between the new union and Qazi Musa’s previous wife remained cordial and she continued to live nearby. There had been worries that those opposed to the new marriage – and the unconventional nature of it – might lead to someone poisoning one or both of them. This concern passed in time, however. Jennifer was respectful of the ways of life and the religion of the people and they responded with admiration for her.

Qazi and Jennifer settled in Balochistan in 1947, the year after Pakistan had achieved its independence. They had one son, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi. Despite being the country’s largest province, Balochistan had the highest poverty rate and the lowest literacy rate of the four provinces up until the 1970s. Its arid conditions were described by the Daily Telegraph: ‘The area, which is hemmed in by russet mountains and tormented by dust devils and temperatures in excess of 50 degrees Celsius, was retained within the borders of British India after the Second Afghan War in 1881.’2 Having been brought up near the banks of the Shannon, Balochistan’s hot conditions must have been an enormous change for Jennifer. The couple’s home was described as a ‘thick, mud-walled, colonial-era home that was festooned with daggers, tigers’ heads and photographs of her extravagantly whiskered in-laws’.3

Tragically, Qazi Musa lost his life in a road traffic accident in 1956. Jennifer remained in her husband’s home town, Pishin. Having initially considered returning to Ireland with her son, aged fourteen when Qazi Musa died, she decided to remain in Pakistan. She paid a visit home to Ireland in the 1960s, but found no reason to leave the country in which she had made her home and which had warmly embraced her as a citizen. She had also been away for a considerable period of time. However, people who spoke English with her were still able to detect the remnants of her Irish accent.

She joined the National Awami (Freedom) Party and won a seat in Pakistan’s first parliament (National Assembly) in 1970. She proudly signed the new Pakistan Constitution in 1973, but she continued to agitate for ‘her’ people and contended that there were insufficient safeguards for the community of Balochistan. She also clashed with the government due to her refusal to cover her head with a veil or wear the burqa. It was a defiant position to take in a time of political turmoil. She also aggravated sections of the country by espousing education, particularly for women. She demonstrated her courage when she acted as a go-between for the groups that had taken up arms in resurrection and the government. She was never afraid of taking risks if she thought that they were the best course of action. The imposition of martial law ended her seven-year term in the National Assembly, but she remained the tribal head in her region and continued to irritate the government through her promotion of education and her setting-up of both the first women’s association and the first family-planning clinic in the region. ‘You can’t liberate women until you liberate men,’ she remarked.4 For the tribesmen, she always remained ‘Mummy Jennifer’, and was christened the ‘Queen of Balochistan’.

Jennifer ran an ice plant for a time and also provided assistance to Afghan refugees who had fled the Soviet invasion. In her later years, ‘visiting foreign journalists mused about how the wild, tribal frontier, where women are in purdah and even goatherds carry Kalashnikovs, was an unlikely place to find an elderly Irish widow serving afternoon tea’.5 The area later became a stronghold for the Taliban and since then has been generally out of bounds to foreigners. Jennifer (Jehan) Zeba died at the age of ninety on 12 January 2008. Her funeral through Pishin was attended by thousands and the doors and windows of the town were shuttered up. She was laid to rest in the traditional Qazi burial ground and President Pervez Musharraf telephoned her and Qasi Musa’s son, Ashraf, to convey his condolences. Ashraf became a senior diplomat and served as ambassador to the United States for a period.