Pakistan goes gaga over legendary Imran Khan’s marriage to Reham Khan as the country finds something to cheer about after last month’s school tragedy, writes Kamran Rehmat

The cat is finally out of the bag, and it’s official.
Imran Khan began a second innings when he tied the knot with Reham Khan, a TV presenter, in his picturesque farmhouse in Bani Gala on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital Islamabad yesterday.
Easily the wedding of the year, not just on national but international scale, it turned the national mood celebratory despite the Khans wanting to keep the affair low profile following the school tragedy last month when Taliban murdered 142 people, including 132 students, in Peshawar, the capital of the terror-hit Pakhtunkhwa province ruled by Mr Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI).
Reports about the remarriage — both the Khans have married before; Imran to British heiress Jemima Goldsmith and Reham to British-Pakistani psychiatrist Dr Ijaz Rehman — had been in circulation for a while with Imran didn’t helping matters with a ‘clarifying’ tweet last week that only served to spice up the uncertainty like the Carolina Reaper.
“The reports of my marriage are greatly exaggerated!” is how Imran, 62-year-old father of two, responded to the alleged wedding to Reham, the presentable 41-year-old mother of three, who anchors a political talk show — In Focus with Reham Khan — at Dawn News, a private TV channel.
The tweet was deciphered to mean several things to several people with some predictably, suggesting it was derived from adventurer Mark Twain’s famous quote surrounding his fate: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”.
In this case, it was deemed Imran may have contrived a clever spin to possibly explain it later as having contracted a simple marriage, but one that had been greatly exaggerated!
But the biggest give-away was the PTI chairman flying out to England to meet his sons and take them into confidence. This followed a reported statement attributed to Khan in which he was quoted as suggesting that second marriages required careful consideration “because children are involved”.
It is not clear yet how Imran managed win over his sons, Suleiman and Qasim, after seeking his first wife Jemima’s blessings. Khan and Jemima have shared a close relationship despite their divorce in 2004.
Arguably the greatest all-rounder in the game at his peak, Imran, who led Pakistan to its only World Cup trophy in 1992, largely blamed himself for the end to a fairytale marriage, saying leading a full public life made it difficult for him to be at home long enough, and which coupled with Jemima’s inability to cope with a “lonely” life in Pakistan, took its toll on their nine-year-old marriage.
The PTI chairman caused much mirth when during the initial phase of a protest demonstration outside the parliament in Islamabad that lasted 126 days over allegations that the 2013 general elections were heavily rigged, he told his supporters that he was in a hurry to create “Naya Pakistan” (New Pakistan) so that he could remarry.
He later played down the remark as a joke, saying he could not even conceive of the idea at what was a crucial juncture for his party.
Jemima reportedly, helped Imran’s cause by publicly declaring she was reverting to her old surname — Goldsmith — over reports Khan was ready to settle down again as a way to sound out — and make it easier for — their sons to accept the inevitable.
In a sign of how difficult the terrain is despite Jemima publicly congratulating and wishing her former husband well as well as thanking legions of Pakistanis for their messages of support and even calling herself an “honorary Pakistani”, Imran’s own nuclear family remains aloof.
Sister Aleema Khan appeared to put a lot on the line — in the bargain, doing little to save face — by stating last week that the family had confronted her brother on the move and that he had denied it. Poignantly, she had said even though the family was confused over whether or not Imran was in a relationship with Reham, they hoped the story was not true and he would settle down with a “good person”!
They were not present at nikah (marriage contract) ceremony, and later Aleema expressed her shock at the development.
Uncomfortable and embarrassing as it is for Imran, he is known for his ability to tide over greater odds than the dilemma presented right in his own backyard, and which, is reminiscent of soaps broadcast across a plethora of Pakistani TV channels every night.
At a time when Pakistan is poised to develop an institutionalised mechanism to counter terrorism, any analytical dip into Imran’s second marriage would seem trite. But then again, maybe not because it has the potential to create its own ripple effect on the political landscape, and therefore is worthy of a look-into.
A confidante or two had been swearing that Imran had indeed tied the knot, but had to cover bases because of the entire national focus on taking the fight to the militants with a calibrated strategy centred around setting up — and giving legal cover to — military courts.
However, on the lighter side, PTI supporters and some enterprising members of the press were keen to see the PTI chief break the news either way. There is a general impression that Khan needs to have stability in his personal life, the lack of which, it is assumed is impacting his public life, where he suddenly takes extreme positions that are often untenable.
As the country’s most popular politician with the potential to win power down the road — the PTI is the third biggest political force in terms of seats in the National Assembly and second in number of votes won in the 2013 general elections — peace at home is seen as a ‘political need’, too.
With Reham’s own glam quotient added to politics that Imran has helped make sexier for millions of mostly young Pakistanis, the country’s most celebrated couple is sure to keep the media agog. Not a bad deal for a country dying to break the bad news cycle.