Here's Why Sajal Aly's Character From “Behadd” Was Incredibly Misunderstood

By Sarah Babar | 1 Feb, 2018

“Behadd” has got to be one of the most famous telefilms to have come out of the Pakistani entertainment industry. The story revolves around a single mother, Masooma (Mo) who has lost her husband in a car accident and is raising her 15-year old daughter, Maha, on her own. Her sole purpose to live is her daughter and she literally does everything for her and is extremely protective of her.

 

 

Things in their family take a turn when Mo runs into Jamal, her best friend’s younger brother

Source: HUM Network

She calls him over for dinner and Maha surprisingly gets along with him really well. Over the course of time, Jo becomes such an integral part of their family. He’s always there for them when they need him, and even when Mo tries to set Jo up with another woman, he refuses. We see why he refuses in due time, where Jo asks Masooma to marry him. Mo rejects the proposal because she’s not only a single mother, she is also five years older than him. Masooma’s friend, Shafaq, convinces her to agree to Jo’s proposal. When Maha learns about this, she is taken aback but agrees, as well.

 

 

One day, Masooma asks Jo to pick Maha up from school, they chill around for a while but as soon as Mo returns home, Maha starts crying and accuses Jamal of sexually assaulting her

Source: HUM Network

Masooma immediately breaks everything off, with Jamal, and then sinks into depression. Six months later, she tries to send Maha to London but she refuses and confides into Shafaq about how she messed up and how she lied about everything that had happened and how she framed Jamal. She thought that Mo was getting too close to Jo and forgetting her first husband. Which is why she tried ending things between them, one way or the other. But ended up feeling really bad about what she’d done. Shafaq makes Maha realize the importance of  Jo in their lives and asked her to apologize for everything she’d done. Maha apologizes to Jo and the reason why she accused him. Jo tells her that it’s entirely her decision if she wants him to be a part of their lives or not. And that Masooma had seen the CCTV footage of that day just 2 weeks after the incident took place and knew Jo was innocent. Masooma overhears Maha apologizing to Jamal and get super emotional and the story ends with the three of them hugging.

 

 

The reason I say Maha was exceedingly misunderstood was because it’s not easy accepting a new man in the position of your father

Source: HUM Network

She wasn’t a bratty 15-year old who wanted everything to happen according to her. She was just this little girl who had her entire world shaken. First by the loss of her father, and then by this new man in their lives whom her mother wanted to marry. She was someone who’d lost her father and possibly never got any closure after the incident. While watching “Behadd’ my initial thoughts were that Maha’s character was a horrible person who couldn’t see her mother being happy. But then I realized that most people in her position would do the exact same thing. That if you saw that life as you know was about to change completely, you would do anything and everything in your power to stop that from happening.

 

 

There are things that children do that we can’t make sense out of

Source: HUM Network

 

Children have a whole different way of communicating their emotions. We need to understand that she did the one thing she knew would break the two apart. One thing that would actually taint Jamal’s character in front of her mother. To understand that she thought that her mother was forgetting the memory of her lost father, is also heartbreaking.

 

Source: HUM Network

 

I’m just saying that I understand where Maha is coming from. What she did was not ideal, but we need to look at why she did what she did.

 

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