Rafia Zakaria

Writer, Everywhere

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney, political philosopher and writer whose work has been published in Al Jazeera America,Dissent and Guernica, among others. She is the author of The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan (2015).

Written by Rafia Zakaria

A soldier using binoculars, overlooking a mountainous landscape with terraced fields and villages. An Afghan flag is visible.

essay

History

What Mortimer did

A diplomat in British India blundered a border. The consequences continue to shape world politics

Rafia Zakaria

Photograph of a person in a blue burqa standing before a colourful patchwork wall made up of red, yellow, white, green, and blue squares.

essay

Gender

Clothes and daggers

British missionaries hated the sari; US feminists would ban the burqa. Why do empires care so much about women’s clothes?

Rafia Zakaria