Pakistani survivor attends opera written about her rape

CAIRO – 24 June 2017: “Thumbprint” is an opera about a young woman who survives a gang-rape in Pakistan, demands justice and lives to see her rapists escape it. The emotional story became even more sensitive when its real-life protagonist, Mukhtar Mai, attended a performance of the opera in Los Angeles on June 16.

In 2002, 22-year-old Mai was raped after her village council approved the act to punish her 12-year-old brother. Mai reported the case and while the court initially ruled with death sentence against her rapists, they later ended up free.

Mai, on the other hand, received financial compensation, which she used to start Mukhtar Mai Women’s Organization. Her organization has a variety of projects including a school and women’s shelter.

Still neighbors in the small rural Pakistani village, Mai comes across her rapists. In fact, some of their relatives have sought her organization for help.

“Even though some members of my own family were outraged, I told them I could not turn away the kids as the school is here to serve everyone in the community,” she told AFP.

She added that what really annoyed her was the injustice she was facing - being harassed by her rapists and receiving threats to this day.


“Thumbprint” was first released in 2014 but only last week was Mai able to attend it live. “I was very emotional when I first started watching it and began reliving the incident in my mind,” she told AFP.

The 90-minute opera is in modern English. However, the atmosphere and the music portray the air of the region where the story occurred.

To the pride of Mai, the team behind the operatic version of her story was female-dominated. The team also has an international presence: composer and lead performer Kamala Sankaram is also the frontwoman for the band Bombay Rickey and a voice actor, while librettist Susan Yankowitz’s works have been translated to 28 languages and been performed in many countries.

Sankaram, a composer of desi roots herself, received positive critique. As theatre critic Mark Swed wrote for the Los Angeles Times, she “engagingly merges the jazzier aspects of Indian music with the punchier ones of Puccini-esque and Adams-esque opera and Broadway. She is also a rousing double threat, a compelling singer who took the lead role of a wonder woman, Mukhtar.”

The name of the opera was inspired by the details of Mai’s case. Uneducated at the time when she filed her complaint, instead of signing papers she had to ink her thumbprint.

“Thumbprint” was performed at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in Los Angeles.