Brutal gang-rape of illiterate Pakistani woman inspires New York opera

Mukhtar Mai was attacked in 2002 on orders of a village council but survived

Mukhtar Mai was attacked in 2002 but survived to become a female rights activist (Getty Image)

A New York opera inspired by the brutal gang-rape of an illiterate Pakistani woman looks set to shock audiences expecting a more conventional, ‘sophisticated’ affair.

Entitled Thumbprint, the $150,000 production is currently running in a Manhattan basement theatre. A plain backcloth acts as a projection screen, with other set props consisting merely of a few chairs and woven beds.

The atmosphere of a Pakistani village is evoked by a simple stage while a blended score of South Asian and Western music attempts to bring the show to life. There are just six singers, accompanied by a small orchestra of six musicians.

The rape itself is not recreated on stage but smothered screams and the sound of a slashing knife can be heard.

Mukhtar Mai was attacked in 2002 after a village council ordered the sex crime to be carried out on her in revenge for her 12-year-old brother allegedly dishonouring a woman from a rival clan. Now in her forties, Mai became a human rights icon after surviving her ordeal.

What Thumbprint omits is the harrowing fact that although six men were sentenced to death for Mai's gang-rape, five of them were later acquitted with the main perpetrator's sentence reduce to life imprisonment.

After the fatal gang-rape of a student on a New Delhi bus horrified the world in 2012 and sparked outrage over violence against women in India, Mai’s tragic story has a disturbing contemporary resonance.

"It's often very easy for Americans to say 'Oh okay there's a different sept of morals or a different culture in South East Asia' but I think the politics of how rape is dealt with in this country are frighteningly similar," Rachel Dickstein told AFP.

Susan Yanokowitz, the playwright and novelist who wrote the libretto, described Thumbprint as a tribute to Mai’s "courage to be the first drop of rain (…) in a dry season" of universal female vulnerability.

What Mai herself makes of Thumbprint remains unknown, but since the attack, she has set up a school for girls and won acclaim for her outspoken stance on the oppression of women.