Khizar

*missed blog-post week 4

Khizar,the only male antagonist in the drama Humsafar (rife with females plotting against one another) is an interesting character. He is set up as a parallel to Khirad (their names sound eerily alike) and Sara, and acts as a competing figure to Asher.

Both Khizar and Khirad come from poorer backgrounds, and both in different ways try to find their footing in an upper class. While Khirad marries into money (this is acceptable to all but the villainous Fareeda) for Khizar to marry into money is unacceptable. He needs to work his way into it. This lack of entry into the upper class, especially for the male, is what leads him to make a pact with Fareeda and play the charade of being Khirad’s lover.

Khirad and Khizar also share the knowledge that having a pass into the upper class is not all there is required. They have an understanding that there is a notion of “standards” and to be assimilated into this society you have to reach them. Both seek to attain these standards through education in the hopes of attaining a metamorphosis that will make them indistinguishable from the others of this class. Interestingly for both the model to which they look is the patriarchal figure of Asher. Khirad wants to become everything Asher likes, while Khizar wants to become him. Thus there is a need for moulding oneself into the figure as desired by the patriarch.

Khizar’s love for Sara mirrors Sara’s love for Asher. Both obsess for the figure of their desire, and both take part in Fareeda’s scheme to ruin Khirad. However, Khizar’s and Sara’s obsession is very different from one another’s. Sara’s love for Asher borders on insanity, it is “hysterical” (as Asher himself calls her) while Khizar’s is more practical. In the four years after Khirad’s disgraced exit from the Hussain household, Khizar gets an education and manages to make a decent amount of money from himself, Sara on the other hand remains the same. She is unable to change her relationship status with Asher (terribly friend zoned) and has not seemed to make any progress where it concerns her job as well. Thus Sara’s love renders her immobile in that death is the only act of being she can commit, Khizar on the other hand, after Sara’s (a person whom he claimed is his life) death goes back to America. Khizar’s love, despite being problematic, has still given him the option of some kind of grace, which is not allowed to Sara. This I think is because the excess of emotion in the feminine form is deemed more destructive than that in the male one.