Farah Usmani was born in Pakistan, a country where women, on average, are paid 16% what men are. It’s a country where poverty, political and religious violence, and an extremely patriarchal culture contribute to a system where only 13% of girls attend school past the ninth grade. Women make up less than a quarter of the workforce. And rates of domestic violence are among the highest in the world—as much as 90% for married women, according to one survey of women in the Punjab region.
Today, Usmani lives near Ballantyne. She’s a full-time communications service specialist for Novant Health and a part-time real estate agent alongside her husband, Najam. She also has a “passion project,” born of her background: selling handmade scarves from her native country and using the money to help people break away from abusive partners. Ombre Hijab Supplier
We meet at Café Monte, near her home. Usmani is petite and unassuming, wearing little makeup and with her dark hair pulled back in a messy bun. “Would you like to go sit in the back?” she asks. “It’s a little more private.” She speaks quickly, but her voice is steady and soothing. We’ve hardly settled at our table before she’s talking about domestic violence: how it can be physical, emotional, or mental; how it can happen to anyone; how difficult it can be for others to spot.
Usmani orders lunch—a burger, because she’s hungry—and passes me a black cardboard box. Inside is a delicate, blush-colored chiffon scarf embellished with hundreds of dime-sized flowers and leaves in pink and green. It took a woman in Pakistan, she says, more than three months to stitch it by hand.
She’s been selling one-of-a-kind scarves like this through her business, Farah Usmani Scarves, since 2019. She buys them from women in Pakistan, which gives them some financial self-sufficiency. Then she resells them in Charlotte and uses the profits to help local victims of domestic violence.
Women in Pakistan often wear scarves for religious and cultural reasons. But Usmani knew women in Charlotte would appreciate the craftsmanship of Pakistani scarves as heirloom fashion accessories.
Farah's Scarves - an accessory to freedom
Usmani was born in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, in the late ’60s. She, her mother, and her two younger sisters moved often with her father, Akhtar, a structural engineer, for his jobs in Pakistan, the U.S., and Saudi Arabia. The family moved to Chicago at the start of Usmani’s senior year of high school so she could attend an American university.
After graduation, Usmani helped a friend of her mother’s launch a nonprofit and domestic violence shelter in Chicago called the Hamdard Center. “We were trying to spread the consciousness about domestic violence in the Asian, Indian, and Pakistani communities,” Usmani says. “In those communities, domestic violence is almost a rite of passage.” She worked with the center for a decade.
In 2005, Usmani, Najam, and their three kids moved to Charlotte so Najam could take over a group of tax franchises. But over the years, Usmani couldn’t stop thinking about the women she met in Chicago—and in her native country. “That image of those women and experiences,” she says, “that never leaves you.”
Around 2018, she joined the board of the Jamie Kimble Foundation for Courage in Charlotte, though she’s since left. “They’re doing great work, but their goal is prevention,” she says. “But I couldn’t stop thinking, What about the people who are already in it?”
Women in Pakistan often wear scarves for religious and cultural reasons. But Usmani knew women in Charlotte would appreciate the craftsmanship of Pakistani scarves as heirloom fashion accessories. Through a broker in Multan, she began to purchase scarves women in her home country had made.
She buys the scarves for about $45 each, then sells them at Charlotte trunk shows and to word-of-mouth buyers for $200 to $300, depending on their intricacy and material—chiffon, velvet, or silk. The one-of-a-kind scarves come in a variety of colors and styles, each hand-embroidered with intricate designs, often florals. Occasionally, a customer requests a special order—a particular combination of fabric, color, and pattern—and Usmani works with her broker to have it made. She donates a portion of the proceeds from her sales to domestic violence nonprofits, then uses the rest to help strangers who call her.
Usmani has garnered a reputation in Charlotte for her willingness to show up for people abused by their partners. She doesn’t know how most of her callers find her number—though she’s not shy about sharing it—but always rushes to meet them wherever they are: hotels, roadsides, the kids’ shoe department at Target. She says she does whatever she can to help them on their road to escape, from feeding them to buying them plane tickets.
At Café Monte, Usmani tears up once as she talks about the people she’s met but gathers herself quickly—“I don’t want to cry”—and shifts right back to her message.
“I don’t want to be melodramatic, but I want to do this because of God—because if someone’s watching me, someone who’s not a human being, and one day they say, ‘What did you do with your life? When someone called you, did you turn on Breaking Bad and think, whatever, or did you show up?’” Usmani says. “I want to show up.”
Eagle Shawl Scarf Factory Tess Allen is the associate editor.