as much as her concern for women. She expresses this concern in her poem, Asin Burian We Loko, which is a touching focus on the plight of women in the present male-dominated society. Naheed has served major positions in various national institutions. She was Director General of Pakistan National Council of the Arts before her retirement. She also edited a prestigious literary magazine Mahe Naw and founded an organisation Hawwa (Eve) whose goal is to help women without an independent income become financially independent through cottage industries and selling handicrafts. Politics and Feminism Kishwar Naheed has been witness to the struggles and aspirations that Pakistan has gone through as a nation. Her written work, spanning for more than four decades, chronicles her experiences as a woman writer engaged in the creative and civic arenas, even as she has dealt with personal, social, and official backlashes. Months after the Partition of India – a little before her family moved to Lahore from Bulandshahr – Kishwar saw something which left a lasting impression on her mind and her heart. The pain and sadness she felt in those moments have stayed with her forever. Some Muslim girls who belonged to Bulandshahr were kidnapped during the Partition riots. Either they succeeded in running away from their captors or were rescued, they arrived back in Bulandshahr. Some were known to her family and she accompanied her mother and sisters to go see them. They looked haggard, exhausted and broken. Surrounded by other women who were trying to console them, they were all lying down on the floor or reclined against the walls in a large room. The feet of these women were badly bruised and soaked in blood. That was the moment when Kishwar Naheed says she stopped being just a child and became a girl child. She became a woman. She still remembers those blood soaked feet and says "women and girls anywhere have their feet soaked in blood. Very little has changed over the decades. This must end". Influenced by the Progressive Writers' Movement in South Asia and the ideals of socialism, Kishwar Naheed witnessed major international political upheavals; Pakistan was under martial law and new ideas and forms were being introduced and appreciated in Urdu literature. Kishwar and her friends got involved in everything. One day they would take a procession out in support of Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Egyptian right