As of right now, I am a citizen of Pakistan and the United States and a resident of the U.A.E. While this means that I have spent an absurd amount of time on airports and up in the air, it also means that I've been lucky enough to have friends and family - to have a home - in all three countries.
I am a hardcore Karachiite, there's no denying that. It's in the way I talk ("Abay yaar!"), the way I dress, the way I dance (or so I've been told). The fresh, clean air of Kansas doesn't suit me; my body is used to the special variety of Karachi pollution that is a combination of smoking motorcycle and rickshaw engines, musical mini-bus horns, and a peculiar fish smell from the Arabian Sea. I have an unhealthy obsession with the ocean and with greasy food from Burns Road and Boat Basin. I thrive on tense, stressful situations. Sadly, that is the truth.
America, my adopted home, has welcomed me with open arms. How does a Karachi girl end up in Kansas is a question I'm still grappling with. When I first arrived in this country on a snowy winter afternoon in 2008, I wasn't quite sure about why I was here (could've just been the jet lag) - I just knew I was really far away from home. I didn't know how to dress for the winters; I was working as a cashier but didn't understand the currency ("Do you have a nickel?" "Do I have a WHAT?"). And God forbid if I had to explain anything geography related to an American. For Americans, America is the whole world; after all, it's called the World Series but is played between American teams.
My globetrotting ways confuse the hell out of people and give rise to questions/remarks like:
"So you didn't go to high school here but you're NOT an international student? How does that work?"
"You're not from here? But your English is very good!"
"If you're not A-rab, then WHAT ARE YOU?"
"You're Moslem...so you speak Arabic?"
"WOW! You're from Pack-is-tan? THAT IS SO COOL! I wish I was from somewhere!"
Any attempt at answering these questions just confuses people more. Although sometimes, I confuse them on purpose. It's just more fun that way.
But five years and a blue passport later, in these three countries are people that I love and places with memories I cherish. At this point of time, I have gone to school and/or worked in all three. That means that all these countries have a role in what I am today, in what I am going to be. They have, in some major or minor way, shaped the person that I am. It also means that my English is neither entirely Pakistani nor American, it is somewhere in the middle (together with almost four different accents I can pull depending on who I'm talking to). I've also quit using words like loo and queue because no one would understand them. Jet lag recovery, working out a time to Skype with people in three different time zones: no big deal.
While Karachi is the resilience in me, Kansas life has taught me things like doing my own laundry and cooking my own food along with other essential life-skills like mowing the lawn and shoveling snow. I will stay up all night when Pakistan plays India in a cricket match but also bite all my nails off during an intense KU basketball game. And then Abu Dhabi is the happy medium between the two where I just soak it all in and realize how incredibly blessed I am to find love and support scattered all over the globe. Here's to my international life!
Showing posts with label Karachi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karachi. Show all posts
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Come and see the blood in the streets
Nothing but the usual. A suicide attack. Broken windows. Shards of glass on the floor. Read it. Move on.
But it's different this time. The pictures I see catch me off guard. I recognize this place - the place I associate with my childhood. A childhood so sheltered and so unmarred, I look at the pictures and think, "How could it be?" It's our lab, our library. It's the place I associate with laughter, memories, best friends, goofiness. OII Science, the makayee wala, Sir Sami and his pink shirts, Shammo and her attempts at insulting the students, everyone harassing Laali, stories of Mogadishu. But it's different this time. I feel the heat in my face. Warm tears roll down. I'm too far to feel this.
I've written enough about my city's resilience. That it will come out stronger. That it will carry through. Like every other time. I like to write optimistic pieces possibly because of my love for this city. When you love a place so much you can't hope for anything else except for the fact that it'll eventually bounce back because it's too much to think of the consequences that will occur if it doesn't. But do I feel the same now that I see pictures of my school with the broken windows and the shards of glass on the floor? It was different then. We could see the ocean from our classroom and make jokes about the tsunami because we thought we were invincible. The tsunami couldn't reach us. The lala at the gate would keep the bad guys out. And that was all the security that we needed. That was how I grew up, that was the Karachi I grew up in. And thus, when I hear anything negative now, I tune it all out with memories of my safe, happy childhood.
It's not the same now, they say. I rant about my city's spirit, the people's strength. Come and see the blood in the streets, they say. There are beautiful things about this city, yes. Love for Karachi is love regardless of whatever happens. You come home to Karachi simply because it is home. I’m beginning to wonder whether this is good enough anymore. Is it enough to be blindly attached to a place as you watch it burn? Do the people whose children are being murdered and homes are being looted on an almost daily basis, feel this love? Or do they simply feel anguish and misery? Would I have felt this love for my city had I been in school that day? Or would I have been scared to go every time? And just waited to get the fuck out of there?
My emotions can only take me so far. I say this as someone who has always believed that the city will bounce back in spite of everything. No, it won’t - I reluctantly realize it now. It won’t bounce back because it has been raped and mutilated far too many times now. Most of the city has been affected by the violence. The unaffected have convinced themselves it is part and parcel of life in Karachi. People go about their businesses the day after a blast not because of their ferocious pride in their city - they go because they don't have a choice. They are proud because they feel defensive about a part of the country whose problems are too often treated like they don’t belong to the rest of Pakistan. They are aggressive because if you attack and assault someone long enough, s/he eventually fights back. Or learns to live with it.
Pablo Neruda writes this about the Spanish Civil War and it sounds too much like home:
I'M EXPLAINING A FEW THINGS
(tr. Nathaniel Tarn)
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.
I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.
From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with it's dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel?
Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with it's statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings-
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black frairs spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.
And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!
But it's different this time. The pictures I see catch me off guard. I recognize this place - the place I associate with my childhood. A childhood so sheltered and so unmarred, I look at the pictures and think, "How could it be?" It's our lab, our library. It's the place I associate with laughter, memories, best friends, goofiness. OII Science, the makayee wala, Sir Sami and his pink shirts, Shammo and her attempts at insulting the students, everyone harassing Laali, stories of Mogadishu. But it's different this time. I feel the heat in my face. Warm tears roll down. I'm too far to feel this.
I've written enough about my city's resilience. That it will come out stronger. That it will carry through. Like every other time. I like to write optimistic pieces possibly because of my love for this city. When you love a place so much you can't hope for anything else except for the fact that it'll eventually bounce back because it's too much to think of the consequences that will occur if it doesn't. But do I feel the same now that I see pictures of my school with the broken windows and the shards of glass on the floor? It was different then. We could see the ocean from our classroom and make jokes about the tsunami because we thought we were invincible. The tsunami couldn't reach us. The lala at the gate would keep the bad guys out. And that was all the security that we needed. That was how I grew up, that was the Karachi I grew up in. And thus, when I hear anything negative now, I tune it all out with memories of my safe, happy childhood.
It's not the same now, they say. I rant about my city's spirit, the people's strength. Come and see the blood in the streets, they say. There are beautiful things about this city, yes. Love for Karachi is love regardless of whatever happens. You come home to Karachi simply because it is home. I’m beginning to wonder whether this is good enough anymore. Is it enough to be blindly attached to a place as you watch it burn? Do the people whose children are being murdered and homes are being looted on an almost daily basis, feel this love? Or do they simply feel anguish and misery? Would I have felt this love for my city had I been in school that day? Or would I have been scared to go every time? And just waited to get the fuck out of there?
My emotions can only take me so far. I say this as someone who has always believed that the city will bounce back in spite of everything. No, it won’t - I reluctantly realize it now. It won’t bounce back because it has been raped and mutilated far too many times now. Most of the city has been affected by the violence. The unaffected have convinced themselves it is part and parcel of life in Karachi. People go about their businesses the day after a blast not because of their ferocious pride in their city - they go because they don't have a choice. They are proud because they feel defensive about a part of the country whose problems are too often treated like they don’t belong to the rest of Pakistan. They are aggressive because if you attack and assault someone long enough, s/he eventually fights back. Or learns to live with it.
Pablo Neruda writes this about the Spanish Civil War and it sounds too much like home:
I'M EXPLAINING A FEW THINGS
(tr. Nathaniel Tarn)
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.
I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.
From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with it's dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel?
Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with it's statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings-
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black frairs spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.
And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!
 |
| Photo credit: Nefer Sehgal/Express Tribune |
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Reasons to Celebrate
What better way to celebrate the Lahore Resolution of 1940 than our team reaching the semis of the Cricket World Cup. It was a great match and the team did us so proud. Other than that, the love of my life isn't giving me many reasons to celebrate these days. Pardon my pessimism but I can't really be happy when my country's civilians and soldiers die everyday fighting America's war at our northwestern border or when dozens are gunned down as political parties battle it out in my city.
The Pakistan I grew up in celebrated Pakistan Day with an impressive military parade at Constitution Avenue. And those of us who didn't live in the capital would wake up early morning to watch it on t.v. Thanks to the volatile law and order situation, we’ve been skipping the display of our military might for the past few years. Cricket meant walking to National Stadium in our green and white shalwar kameezes to watch our heroes in front of our eyes. And although it's great that the country can come together to celebrate the team's awesome performances on foreign soils, it's been years since Pakistan's cricket stadiums echoed with screams of "Jeetayga bhayee jeetayga, Pakistan jeetayga!" I grew up playing badminton on the streets with the boys, riding my bike in shorts. The scars on my knees are proof of the bruises that Karachi's roads gave me. Getting front seats to a Junoon concert was the biggest achievement. Sonu Nigam and Bryan Adams would perform to a sold-out crowd. Eight people would cram in one car to go have ice-cream in Bahadurabad. There was no moral brigade issuing fatwas every other day.
I wonder when, on March 23rd 1940, the Muslims of India proclaimed to the world their determination to make the Muslim Statehood the goal of their struggle, they had this Pakistan in mind. Needless to say, the present circumstances do not lessen my love for this amazing country. Where, when I visit after two years, the aunty on my street is going to cook me my favorite food and send it over. Where the neighborhood fruit vendor will say salam and ask about everyone. Where the press is free and vibrant - a very rare occurrence for an Islamic State. Where we can end Australia's unbeaten 34-match World Cup run.
I have no doubt the days of a packed National Stadium, concerts, and the parade on March 23rd will return. Happy Pakistan Day everyone!
The Pakistan I grew up in celebrated Pakistan Day with an impressive military parade at Constitution Avenue. And those of us who didn't live in the capital would wake up early morning to watch it on t.v. Thanks to the volatile law and order situation, we’ve been skipping the display of our military might for the past few years. Cricket meant walking to National Stadium in our green and white shalwar kameezes to watch our heroes in front of our eyes. And although it's great that the country can come together to celebrate the team's awesome performances on foreign soils, it's been years since Pakistan's cricket stadiums echoed with screams of "Jeetayga bhayee jeetayga, Pakistan jeetayga!" I grew up playing badminton on the streets with the boys, riding my bike in shorts. The scars on my knees are proof of the bruises that Karachi's roads gave me. Getting front seats to a Junoon concert was the biggest achievement. Sonu Nigam and Bryan Adams would perform to a sold-out crowd. Eight people would cram in one car to go have ice-cream in Bahadurabad. There was no moral brigade issuing fatwas every other day.
I wonder when, on March 23rd 1940, the Muslims of India proclaimed to the world their determination to make the Muslim Statehood the goal of their struggle, they had this Pakistan in mind. Needless to say, the present circumstances do not lessen my love for this amazing country. Where, when I visit after two years, the aunty on my street is going to cook me my favorite food and send it over. Where the neighborhood fruit vendor will say salam and ask about everyone. Where the press is free and vibrant - a very rare occurrence for an Islamic State. Where we can end Australia's unbeaten 34-match World Cup run.
I have no doubt the days of a packed National Stadium, concerts, and the parade on March 23rd will return. Happy Pakistan Day everyone!
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