'Mummy Jennifer' Musa:Hundreds of turbaned and bearded Pathans, many of whom supported the Taliban, mourned at the funeral of "Mummy Jennifer" Musa, who has died aged 90 at her home in Pishin, Baluchistan. This is the most remote province of Pakistan which borders south Afghanistan.
But on the small farm in Tarmons, Co Kerry, where she was born, Mummy Jennifer was plain Bridget Wren. She and her sisters were known for being tall, good looking and "fierce hard workers". Going to England, she trained as a nurse. While there she was nicknamed Jenny and from then on she called herself Jennifer. Nursing in Oxford, she met her future husband, Qazi Mohammed Musa, at a May Day ball at Exeter College where he was reading philosophy.
They were married in 1940, in spite of Qazi Musa already having a wife in Baluchistan to whom he had been married since the age of 14, and with whom he had four sons and one daughter. Later, Jennifer and the first wife became friends.
In 1948, Jennifer and her husband came to live in Pishin, a small town set on a dusty, arid plateau under the Khwaja Amran Mountains. The Qazi family were Pathan aristocrats, descendants of the Qazi who had been expelled from Khandahar for leading a charge of the Afghan cavalry against the British guns at the Battle of Maiwand.
Their house was a century-old, sprawling mud building, the interior walls decorated with the heads of big game, sepia photographs and ancient weapons.
The family were progressive and though Jennifer wore the shalwar kameez, she was never asked to wear the headscarf or burqa.
After her husband was killed in a car crash in 1956, she was persuaded by her husband's family and her teenage son not to return to Ireland but to make her life in Baluchistan.
In 1970, in Pakistan's first general election, she was elected unopposed to a seat in the national assembly for the National Awami Party. She said she joined "thinking that she could do something for Baluchistan and something for women, but", she added, "you can't liberate women until you liberate men. They expected a woman in a burqa and they were a bit surprised when I arrived."
During her time in politics she came into conflict with the prime minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. In spite of pressures and threats that her son's career would be jeopardised, she refused to sign the 1973 constitution as she said it did not contain enough safeguards for provincial autonomy.
Exasperated by her stubbornness, Bhutto is reputed to have said: "She just wants to be Queen of Baluchistan", and told her brother-in-law to "work on her and get her vote".
"He thought," Jennifer Musa said, "the weakest link is a woman. He had never been to Ireland!" In the end Bhutto gave in. "He never forgave me," she said.
In 1977, with the imposition of martial law, her political career was finished so she turned to social work in her own region. It was a very impoverished and backward district, so the plight of young girls could be appalling. Among her achievements was the establishment of a family planning clinic; beginning an organisation similar to the Girl Guides; and founding a women's association which included women's literacy among its aims. She also mediated in the feuds that erupted among the local tribes. In the 1980s she set up a factory to manufacture ice, a much needed commodity in an area where the temperature can reach 50 degrees and where electricity is available for only a few hours a day.
In later years, as she grew older, she cultivated her garden, growing roses and pomegranates among the pine trees. Though Jennifer Masu lived in Baluchistan for 60 years, she never mastered Pashto - the local language - but spoke it with a mixture of Urdu. Her English still had traces of a Kerry brogue though she had not visited Ireland for 35 years. In the country of her adoption she became known affectionately as Mummy Jennifer.
She is survived by her only son Asraf Quazi, a career diplomat who was Pakistan's high commissioner to India, ambassador to China, to Russia and to the US. From 2004 -2007 he was the special representative of the UN secretary general in Iraq.
Jennifer Musa: born November 11th, 1917; died January 12th, 2008
