I'll never forget being a repressed teenager in Karachi in the 80s. I used to drive by the late Agha Hussein Abidi's house every day to and from school. One morning as I passed by the high walls of his mansion, I saw some graffiti that had appeared overnight: It's very hard to find a virgin in Pakistan.
I nearly fainted (it was still Zia's Pakistan) when I saw that. It's stuck with me to this day, but now instead of fainting, it evokes in me a wry smile.
In fact this could be the slogan of Pakistan's teenagers and 20 somethings, looking for something as real as a mirage.
But this graffiti made me really wonder what was going on in Karachi at the same time that I was raised as part of a generation to believe that sex before marriage was shaitain's doing.
Were people actually going out and having sex regardless?
Why was there a lack of virgins in my city? And who was stealing their virginity and then complaining that girls weren't virgins?
That phrase came to my mind again today after reading Zahra Haider's piece in Vice on Pakistan's sex culture.
In a blaze of honesty (and perhaps a bit of hyperbole), Haider has set Pakistan's social media on fire.
For a girl to admit that she had sex with so many guys before marriage is as socially acceptable as murdering your parents in public and then displaying their bodies on national television.
Actually I think it's less.
For me, another person's sexual life is none of my business. I'm not particularly interested in it, unless it breaks up a marriage or it causes physical harm to another person.
Yet Haider has decided to make her personal life public, and Twitter went into meltdown last night after the piece was run.
I'm not a fan of the confessional tell-all, but in Haider's case, I can see why she did it: to cut through the hypocrisy that runs through sexual culture in a certain section of the Pakistani youth.
Or perhaps it isn't hypocrisy but self-preservation.
Let's be honest: people are having sex, were having sex, will have sex, without being married in Pakistan.
In the 70s and 80s, people lived together without being married. Today people have arrangements of all sorts.
Sexual activity outside of marriage happens in all classes and strata of society. Nobody can generalise about how sex happens in this country, because it happens every which way.
The unspoken rule is not to talk about it. Haider has broken that rule.
It's a bit like Anna Karenina where she was allowed to have her lover as long as she didn't make it public. But she couldn't or wouldn't live with that dishonesty, and wanted the world to know about her happiness. The world reacted badly, and punished her for it.
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Haider can't be punished physically for her honesty, but she will be pilloried. By men and women.
By men who are afraid of her because she represents their biggest fantasy and biggest nightmare: a woman with experience who knows if a man is inadequate.
By women who won't be able to accept that there exists a woman who won't play by the rules they themselves play by.
By people of all ages who don't want the apple cart upset. By people who are jealous that she got away with it.
By people who don't think a woman should have sex outside of marriage, who should seek sexual satisfaction, and who should find Pakistani men inferior sexually.
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Was it a smart thing to do? Was it tactful or diplomatic? Was it brave? Was it daring or dumb?
I can't say.
All I can say is that I wouldn't write a piece like that, but there's a part of me that admires her chutzpah.