Annie Ali Khan

Sita under the Crescent Moon

In 2016, Roads & Kingdoms published Ali Khan's piece “A Hindu Pilgrimage in Pakistan,” where Ali Khan described following a pilgrimage to Hinglaj in Balochistan. The research done for the piece also kickstarted Ali Khan's three-year project to write about women who “would never be allowed to speak, never be heard if they scream, never be seen if they obstruct, never be understood as equals, as companions, as human beings.” Ali Khan lived among communities of women in Balochistan, Thatta in Sindh, and Lyari in Karachi, who revered Sati, their name for the Hindu goddess Sita. These communities and their pilgrimages form the basis of Ali Khan's book, Sita under the Crescent Moon, published by Simon and Schuster in 2019.

Personal life and death

Ali Khan was born in Karachi, Pakistan. Her maternal grandfather, Sheikh Abbas, was a Sindhi civil engineer, and her father, Masood, was a Muhajir, among the Muslim refugees who fled to Pakistan after Partition, who worked as an airplane pilot. Her aunts had worked as models before her. She moved to Islamabad for a year when she was nine, before returning to Karachi.

Ali Khan graduated from Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology and received a Master's in Journalism from the Columbia School of Journalism in New York. She was married to film director Sufyan Khan for seven years, during which time she lived in New York.

Ali Khan returned to Karachi in 2016. She was found dead in her apartment in Karachi on 21 July 2018, having suffocated from smoke inhalation from a fire in the apartment.