Arthur's Seat is a 251 metre high extinct volcano that towers over the city of Edinburgh. Visitors and locals alike ascend and descend it to take in commanding views of the Scottish capital and its environs. On the 2nd September 2021, the married couple Fawziyah Javed and Kashif Anwar walked to the top of Arthur's Seat so they could, ostensibly, enjoy the sunset.
That, however, is not what happened. When they reached the top the sun had gone down and it would prove to be the last sunset Fawziyah ever saw. Because Kashif pushed her off the edge of Arthur's Seat and she fell to her death. She was thirty-one years old and she was pregnant with Kashif's unborn, and never to be born, child.
That's all covered in the first ninety seconds of Channel 4's The Push:Murder On The Cliff. The following two hours are spent primarily in court nineteen months later (with, what seemed to me, an unprecedented level of access) when Kashif's case comes up as well as piecing together Kashif and Fawziyah's relationship and his behaviour in that relationship.
All of this is interspersed with dramatic and scenic shots of Arthur's Seat and interviews with members of both Fawziyah's family (particularly her incredibly brave mother Yasmin), friends, and colleagues, Kashif's father and one of his friends, and the prosecution (Alex Prentice KC) and defence lawyer (Ian Duguid KC) on the case. Prentice's job is to prove that Anwar pushed Fawziyah deliberately, Duguid is in the position of having to argue Anwar's defence that he accidentally fell into Fawziyah and sent her falling involuntarily.
With no eye witnesses (except the accused) it's not an easy case. Police were called after hearing first a woman, and then a man, screaming on Arthur's Seat. Anwar reported that Fawziyah had fallen. Some witnesses (not eye witnesses) reported that Anwar was acting panicked, others said he was acting calm. He ws arrested and asked how long he will spend in prison and if the case will receive much publicity!
We cut to Fawziyah's mum, Yasmin, looking at photos of her daughter. There are, unsurprisingly, tears and not for the first or the last time. Fawziyah was an only child, an extrovert, a solicitor in employment law who loved bubble tea and volunteered to help orphans. We see her uncle, Shahid, wander the back streets of a Leeds housing estate where Fawziyah would play as a child.
When she first met Kashif Anwar he came across as caring, genuine, and confident and they seemed happy together. Later he showed signs of possessiveness and was unable to conceal his fiery temper. They moved in with Anwar's parents and it wasn't long before he insisted she deactived her Facebook account so she could focus on the marriage. He'd already blocked her male family members from being able to contact her and soon he was stealing £12,000 from her bank account in the middle of the night.
An all too common picture of emotional abuse and coercive behaviour - and worse - is built up. We hear audio tapes of Anwar saying horrific and misogynistic things to Fawziyah about her and her mother (including wishing Fawziyah death during childbirth) and we see Anwar squirm in the court room as he, too, listens back to, and is confronted with, his own bile.
Fawziyah intended to leave Anwar but she was waiting for the right moment. They'd planned a Scottish holiday and her plan was to exit the toxic marriage after that. Anwar, it seems, wanted to use the trip to Scotland to patch things up and move forward. That, quite clearly, did not happen.
While it is never in doubt that Anwar was controlling and abusive, the court case does not rest on his temper or whether or not he was a nice guy. That's not what the jury are being asked to consider. They're being asked if he murdered her or not.
In getting to that we get to explore issues of honour based abuse and Islamic divorce (something I had ignorantly, and incorrectly, imagined was forbidden) before sifting through the evidence and hearing the testimonies of multiple witnesses and coming to the verdict we all knew was coming - what with there being a spoiler in the title of the programme and all that.
But that's not the point. The Push is an emotionally involving look at how these men are brought to justice as well as how these men manage to get away with their behaviour for so long. Perhaps they could have spent more time pondering the latter but I felt it was important that Fawziyah wasn't portrayed merely as a victim but as a strong woman with an independent mind. If this can happen to her it can happen to anyone. In the UK last year it has believed that over one hundred women were killed by their partners. Programmes like this hopefully can help educate men and should continue to be aired until that number falls to zero. How brave of Fawziyah's family to participate in this.
No comments:
Post a Comment