"No one really knows how many thieves had their hands amputated, perhaps none; or how many people were flogged during those years—many, too many. Information was scarce. In the first years of Zia’s regime, floggings and hangings were a public affair in the village square or city stadiums, but within a couple of years, the national outcry forced the authorities to conduct this grim business out of the public view. One thing was certain and documented: women were the biggest losers under Zia. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Pakistan had adopted very progressive laws ensuring a woman’s right to divorce, restricting polygamy, and even prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex. National literacy rates were still low, even more so for women, but they were rising steadily for everyone. Enrollment of girls in schools and universities was skyrocketing in cities. Women were beginning to participate in politics, they were rising as judges. This is why, despite the long road ahead for a deeply conservative society, Mehtab had believed she was part of a forward-looking country, where the future of women looked brighter. Neither she nor her friends had been looking for Western-style women’s rights; they did not speak in the radical terms of American feminists. “We have to exist with men,” Mehtab would tell those around her—with men and within their own society and its conventions. The uncompromising attitudes of the “women’s libbers” she had met in America was “an extreme position, confrontation was no good.” Gradual change had paid off. Now Zia was threatening to yank women back into purdah."