Zahida Kazmi has been hailed as Pakistan’s first female taxi driver. She has driven from the crowded markets of Islamabad to the remote tribal country in the north.
She was married at the age of 13 and moved from Abbottabad to Karachi in 1972, became a widow when she was only in her 20s.
To support her family — two sons and five daughters — Kazmi worked as a domestic helper and later took up a job at a cloth factory. But the wages were too meager to make ends meet, shares Kazmi. “All doors [of opportunity] seemed closed but I didn’t lose heart because I had to feed my children and I wanted to educate them so they could become responsible citizens,” she adds.
In the late 1980s, when Karachi’s law and order situation started rapidly deteriorating, she decided to shift to Rawalpindi. This is when Kazmi decided to get behind the wheel and steer her life back on course.
It was during Ziaul Haq’s increasingly conservative and religious regime that Kazmi started driving a taxi, becoming perhaps the country’s first female cab driver. Her late husband, who was himself a taxi driver, had taught her how to drive.
