There is no denying that the Sheikh Amer Hassan hit close to home. It hit very close to home, a bit too close actually. This is why there was a shocked silence when he died, broadcast journalists found few who were willing to comment on his life. It was as if everyone was in shock. After all most of us did know him, in the sense that we had seen him somewhere or the other, if not at a party than in the social pages attending one that happened recently. Sheikh Amer knew how to get around and he may have been flanked by Nirma, Ali Saleem and Gia Ali, but he has also been flanked by Imran and Jemima, Vaneeza Ahmed and Salman Taseer.

We all bumped into him at parties and we were all almost always invited to his house and most of us even went there at sometime or another, if not frequently. Some of us were adventurous enough to be with him, others chose to keep a distance but he was very much within our radar.

"Sheikh Amer Hassan was not a fashion designer," says Maheen Khan authoritatively. "I had met a couple of times over the years. He didn't have an outlet, he did not come out with collections and he did not even have a kaarkhana. How can he be called a fashion designer? I am appalled that he used fashion as a front for his nefarious activities."

But Maheen like everyone else had met Sheikh Amer Hassan and was familiar with him. Photographer Tapu Javeri recalls the shoot he did for Sheikh Amer Hassan's shirts with Herald when Fifi Haroon was fashion coordinator there. "he had come back from London and had gone to Fifi with these four men's shirts made from chiffon and some embellishment," recalls Tapu. "The shoot was done with Lulu Nana and Seemi Pasha. Nabila did the hair and make-up and after tat shoot came out one saw Sheikh Amer Hassan use exactly the same four shirts for shoots in Men's Club and various other publications."

That was when Tapu Javeri stopped taking him seriously. Fashion is very selective by nature and people automatically learn to keep a distance from those who don't have substance as fashion people. "He emerged some years later as a totally bizarre character. That was the beginning of Sheikh Villa. Everyone was invited every weekend and most people went there at some point or another."

And what about Tapu? "I knew Sheikh Amer Hassan, as did we all, but I chose to keep my distance, because I didn't think he was a very nice person."

Sheikh Amer Hassan was a source of amusement for many in the industry. His Anglicised ways, his quirkiness (guests have gone there for dinner and been amused when a dish called lentils ala rice was announced and they were served daal chawal), his tall claims, the character that was Boudicca Swanson, do make for an entertaining evening out and many people did decide to swing by to Sheikh Villa, mostly on a whim . It was mostly for comedic value, to marvel at the preposterous lifestyle of Sheikh Amer Hassan. And when they went there, even if it was once or twice, their pictures were taken and became part of the myth Sheikh Amer created around himself.

"He was a complete fake," says Frieha Altaf, "which is why I stayed away from him. I had a meeting with him. He showed me a rejection letter from Princess Diana and he had shots of Rizwan Beyg's clothes in his portfolio. I even told Rizwan about it later. He was amused, because he didn't take Sheikh Amer Hassan seriously. Rizwan was just amused by the character SAH was."
However, Frieha is one of those people who never went to Sheikh Villa. "I don't like the way this man operated. I refused to endorse him in any way. I never went to his house. I never worked with him. I never socialized with him."

Media types especially stayed far away from the man. Journalist Mohsin Sayeed was horrified more by the headlines after Sheikh Amer Hassan's death than by his brutal murder.

"I was horrified when I opened the papers the next day and there were all these papers calling him a top fashion designer; they got their facts all wrong," he says. "The man had no body of work he could speak of. Where is his shop? Where are his collections? In fact Sheikh Amer Hassan was famous for sourcing someone else's clothes and using them as his own at random shows that were few and far between.
In 1999 I remember he did a fashion show right before the Boney M concert in 1999; those clothes were made by the fashion students of PSFD. He presented them as his own and what could the school kids do? I don't like people who don't work and take credit for someone else's."

And this is what Sheikh Amer Hassan did. Using his media savvy, he became a part of the emerging social page culture. Indeed Tapu Javeri, who also has his Masters in Anthropology observes, "The modern culture of inviting people to your home and thrusting a camera in their face probably originated from Sheikh Villa. Sheikh Amer was the first one to do this, now everybody does it."

Fame without justification
In this celebrity obsessed culture, it is possible for someone to make themselves iconic without having anything to back them. Smooth talking gets you places and it certainly did that for Sheikh Amer Hassan. He went all over the place, got to rub shoulders with all the right people and even if they didn't want to get to know him any better, the pictures splashed of him regularly sent a message out to the outside world that he was a big shot in fashion. He was even interviewed by the BBC once as one of Pakistan's leading designers.

This image that is sent out becomes all the more worrying when Ameer Hamza Awan, the young man arrested for murdering him says that he followed all of Sheikh Amer Hassan's instructions because he was "crazy to become a model."

Hamza is from Khushab, a town in the Punjab and it hasn't been too long since he moved to Karachi. When he looks at the social pages and sees Sheikh Amer Hassan there and sees programs hosted by him on television, how is he to know that the man he is looking up to as a mentor is a non-entity in the fashion world? That there is no one that takes Sheikh Amer seriously. That there is no way that Sheikh Amer Hassan can ever make anyone a star.

There is Sheikh Amer Hassan's website, www.sah-london.com where one can apply to be a model, a singer or a dancer. If you ask around the industry, no one used Sheikh Amer Hassan's talent pool for anything. Leading photographers haven't worked with them. Leading choreographers never used his models. Considering that Sheikh Amer Hassan hardly did any shows of his own, what happened to the boys and girls who applied to SAH London? How many more Hamzas are there out there?

After the Instep expose was printed when he died, one got a lot of reactions from the fashion industry. One of the questions hurled was: "Sometimes, these boys and girls come up to us and say that they are willing to do us (sexual) favours to offer them a job, so what are we supposed to do?"

The answer is very simple: you say no. The casting couch is a reality in many industries. It is very easy to point fingers at fashion, film and television because they are high profile by nature, but sexual harassment and exploitation prevails in all walks of life. The Sheikh Amer Hassan murder has opened the Pandora's box of the casting couch in the fashion industry just because he called himself a 'fashion designer'.

"People ask me for favours everyday,' says Frieha Altaf, who runs possibly the most successful event management company Catwalk in the entertainment industry. "It is very simple. If I think you are talented I will promote you. If I don't think you are talented, I will tell you to your face."

People like Frieha Altaf, Nabila, Tariq Amin, Ather Shahzad and Khawar Riaz have the ability to make people and they have played godparents to many a fashion icon. The problem with Sheikh Amer Hassan was that while he may have promised many a person fame, fortune and success he couldn't have delivered. The man said he was a designer but had no body of work. He rarely did shows and neither were his TV shows acclaimed at any level and the programs petered out within months. His run as Fashion Director at Geo didn't last for too long either. If Sheikh Amer Hassan had any fashion spark, it was killed by his lack of consistency. Whatever Sheikh Villa was, it definitely wasn't a fashion operation. However, the power of celebrity was used to sell a mirage. For what purpose? One can only imagine...

Sheikh Villa revisited
Sheikh Villa was Sheikh Amer Hassan's boudoir. A person who visited it for Sheikh Amer Hassan's cat's birthday recalls that the first floor had a bed in it and big TV screens all around. She couldn't figure out what the bed was used for. A friend of hers had dragged her there and she decided to never go there again because the place gave her a 'weird vibe'. Another socialite invited there for lunch recalls "a huge circular dining table with a massive chandelier that seemed rather incongruous in the small Zamzama flat." Others who frequented Sheikh Villa sniggered about the cocktails that he served, which had the fancy names but were rather basic.

Yet, in the city of Karachi with an expanding social scene and people looking for entertainment, Sheikh Villa had a magnetic pull. No one can be held guilty for visiting the place. The urge to see what Sheikh Amer Hassan was all about was strong, so what if he was rather dicey? He had a label called SAH London, but he didn't go to London all that often. He claimed he had Dame Barbara Cartland as a god mother and his picture with her is displayed prominently on both his website and his facebook profile. We all know that Boudicca Swanson, Gloria Swanson's grand daughter, came to stay with him. Some of us met her in the flesh, always on his arm. The two were even interviewed for television together. Ali Saleem was one of his regular companions and Ali with his talent for mimicry and his ready wit is hugely entertaining. Gia Ali, one of Sheikh Amer's good friends has modeled for every designer under the sun. We all know these people somehow or another. which is why the Sheikh Amer Hassan case has touched such a raw nerve. Even if we chose to keep a distance, Sheikh Amer Hassan was a part of the scene as we know it. And when people get murdered by young men who say they have been sexually exploited, well, we would rather that they be people we don't know at all.

A disaster waiting to happen
Some fashion insiders have referred to the Sheikh Amer Hassan case as 'a disaster waiting to happen.' How long would it be before a model from the wrong sides of the tracks put a gun to his benefactor's head? We have all known of the casting couch. We are all aware of people who use their positions to exploit others. Our reaction as industry professionals is how Frieha Altaf or Tapu Javeri or Maheen or Mohsin Sayeed reacted… we choose to disassociate ourselves from the person.

There were rumours circulating about Sheikh Amer Hassan on the industry grapevine that made most people keep a distance. According to Mohsin Sayeed, he stayed away from Sheikh Amer Hasan ever since a friend of his told him that he personally saw Sheikh Amer Hassan indulging in illicit acts most people would find reprehensible.

"I don't know this first hand," says Mohsin, "but this friend of mine said he was with Sheikh Amer when it happened. He saw it and was disgusted by it and chose to cut away from him. I choose to believe my friend and after hearing that I shunned Sheikh Amer too. A channel sent a crew over to interview me about his murder and I agreed. When asked about how I felt about it, I said 'After Sheikh Amer's death, the young children on the streets of Karachi will be very happy and the little angels in heaven will be very worried. The man wasn't a designer, he was a pervert!'"

Mohsin chooses strong words but there are similar stories that did the rounds within the industry. These stories were the reason why most of us chose to stay away from the man. In retrospect one thinks how far can we blame Amer for what he did? We live in a society where 'londaybaazi'' is an innate part of our culture - how many times have you seen a truck driver with his arm around a pretty young boy? The fact that our street children are used by grown men for sex is no secret. We pass by such situations everyday, we know what's going on, but as a society, we are all party to a conspiracy of silence. Possibly because sex is such a taboo, we just don't talk about it, even when it's abusive. This is the way it's always been.

Another criticism of the Instep expose after Sheikh Amer Hassan's murder was that "if you knew all this, why couldn't you have exposed it in his lifetime?" It is a very good question, but then there was no proof. And as a journalist one refrains from writing stories that are likely to get someone shot in the head. In a country where the Tehreek e Taliban are a reality, that is very much possible. But now there is proof of exploitation, and it comes from Ameer Hamza Awan who is currently under trial for the murder of Sheikh Amer Hassan. His testimony gives one a chance to dig deeper. Sheikh Amer Hassan's murder has opened a Pandora's box of hypocrisy and double standards that are not very palatable. One feels that rather than whitewash the truth, one should let it remain open and deal with the demons that come out.
Talking about these issues would be in the best interests of everyone. And one is glad to note that Sheikh Amer Hassan's murder has led to that debate. I know for a fact that it is happening in drawing rooms even if most people prefer to remain tight lipped in print.