Pakistan - a personal reflection

The sky is nearly black and thunder echoes overhead. I sip orange juice as I gaze out the back door, watching fat droplets crash into vividly yellow flowers, sharper in colour because of the charcoal grey sky.

But though it's what everyone else would see, I'm not looking out at an English back garden. My eyes - and heart - are elsewhere. Somewhere where the sharp smells of woodsmoke and duputtas being dyed mingle in the summer air.

Somewhere I haven't talked about in a while, though everyone else is.

Hazel was first, followed by a slew of friends. "I've heard about the floods in Pakistan, do you have any relatives there? Do you know if they're ok?" I made vague answers; said what little I knew. Trying not to face the fact that I DON'T know how the people I really love are.

I'm not one for avoidance. In fact, my friends would probably tell you I'm relentless about seeing the worst possible option as a reality: someone I've trusted for years might be a sociopath and I could be totally wrong (almost always false); if a guy seems interested, he's either a player or gay (ok, yeah, he's staring at my chest, but he's faking it); a pillar of society is a liar/sociopath (that one is far too often true).

My favourite word? Look. Look at what's real. Look towards, don't look away. Look at the shadow. Look into the darkness.

When it comes to my world, it's one of my few unbreakable rules: things AREN'T what you hope they are. DON'T pretend. Look. Look. LOOK.

But every single one of us lacks integrity in at least one aspect of our life. Welcome to one of mine.

I should have known. Should have known when my answers were short; should have known when I felt defensive; should have known when I couldn't speak. I'm the one who always modifies the triage rule by saying that what one refuses to speak about is where one is most traumatised, that which most needs to be expressed. I, who turn my face towards everything, force myself to watch programmes on some of the darkest parts of human history, have turned my face away from Pakistan.

I have refused to look. Refused to watch its descent into anarchy. Refused to know about the daily bombings in Lahore. Refused to look at the natural disasters.

I can't look.

Why? Pakistan is...not this. Not this failed state, not this horrible mess, not this mass of suffering nor this inevitable descent into chaos. Not this, please. Not this.

Pakistan is...being greeted at Lahore by as many of my mother's brothers and sisters who could make it. Being wrapped up in big uncle bear hugs. Laughing till I'm sick at my mother's cheeky, smartass younger brother who probably had far more to do with forming my love map than my father did.

It is being surrounded by a gaggle of cousins; playing 'Pitu garam' barefoot on a hot brick backyard; time on the train; whispered conversations under the razai; cricket on the television. Sudden torrential rain; trips to Shalimar Gardens and Anarkali; blinking sleepily, then rolling over and snuggling further under the razai as the Azan cuts through the dawn sky.

7UP cubes; Enid Blyton; crap Punjabi pop music; trying on Aunty Razia's burqa. Grandpa's twinkling green eyes and white beard and sheer gentle presence. Laughter, parathas, Mom and Aunty Razia in the kitchen making chapatis. Pakistan was a trip to the Kaghan Valley, the breathtaking gateway to the Khyber and Hindu-Kush Himalayan subrange, with one room housing ten of us snuggled under razais as Uncle Javed regaled us with stories that kept us in stitches till well after midnight...and waking to the same uncle being shaved with a straight razor.

Bright sun, bare feet on dusty roads, golguppes from street vendors, the smell of Imperial Leather and sandalwood on men, the scent of food mingling with...

...woodsmoke and duputtas being dyed.

Pakistan was family. Pakistan was love. And its rawness, its place on the edge of life, clicked with its counterpart in my personality, changing me forever - meaning that I ever seek people and places that resonate with that.

That's where I want to freeze it - in that time, in that place - where aunts and uncles were young, strong adults who could carry us easily and hold us safe; where cousins were carefree and dreaming of the life they might live. Where one knew what the political reality was from day to day. Where the kids could walk down to the market without fear. Where international arrivals at Lahore airport was full of young faces shining with love and expectancy.

Don't make me look.

Don't make me face an international arrivals area at LHE that's far too empty, with far too many of those I love gone too early. With uncles and aunts who need my assistance to walk; with cousins careworn from unhappy marriages, infertility, or babies who died too early and a land falling apart around them. Please, don't ask me to look at cousins who are now strangers - in part, because of family choices I've made; in part, because of thousands of miles.

Don't make me look at the fact that the choice I've made with my immediate family means that I have no idea how people I love are doing in this time of bombs and floods.

Because if I look, my heart will break. Break for those I love; break for a people suffering and dying by inches and by the millions; break for a land birthed in so much pain. And I'm not sure it'll ever be whole again.

Yet look I must, and break it must- frozen may be beautiful, but it denies life: the life I've lived and the lives they've lived. To love them truly, to heal, means I must look. And eventually, I must go, hold them and know them again - as they are now, not as I've kept them imprisoned in my heart. Eventually, perhaps I can even take the trip that might symbolise healing for all of us - a trip from Lahore, Pakistan to Jalandar, India - the reverse of the trip they made during Partition.

But I must remember the line from Contact I quote to my friends when they're working things through: small moves, Sparks. Small moves.

First, open your eyes, turn your head - and look.

Dispatches - Pakistan's Taliban generation

I'll never forget the time my father came back from Pakistan, having spent some time in Sawat in the Northwest Frontier Province. It was the only time I saw him genuinely excited by anything, face lit up with genuine pleasure. He swore that next time, we would go.

For some reason, we couldn't manage Sawat, so we ended up going to Kaghan instead. I had no problems with the switch. As I stood there, looking out at the Himalayas, breathing the air, I felt something I have rarely felt before or since - home. For a moment, this endlessly wandering pilgrim was at rest. It was worth the sun poisoning Rabia and I suffered that night.

And the people, blessed Lady. Beautiful, vibrant, friendly. I loved the kids who clustered round us asking us who we were, talking to us, laughing. The girls wore heavy shawls over their clothes to keep off the cold; the boys ran about without coats.

The first morning, I uncurled myself from under the razai (the most GORGEOUS, THICK, WARM, USUALLY SATINY-VELVETY duvets you will EVER find), washed up, and walked outside into the most glorious sunshine, to find my uncle getting shaved with a straight razor - the first time I'd ever seen it, and I was mesmerised.

The trip was magical - the natural beauty, the people, a heartstopping horse ride to Sahful Malook (pic below) - and the last night was full of magical, hysterical laughter as my mother's youngest brother kept us all gasping for breath - he's always been the family card.

Those are my NWFP memories.

Saiful Malook, gorgeous glacial lake in the Kaghan Valley.

So, to see it last night, savaged, scared, broken, oppressed by Taliban rule I didn't know existed in Pakistan, made my heart break. The emptiness, the pain, the breaking of the people's spirit vied with the stupidity spewing out of boys' mouths - "Al Qaeda did this, so I'm going to join the Taliban" - to make me alternately cry and scream.

The injuries, the deaths, the Taliban member who made me post a violent status yesterday after he called children 'tools to achieve the will of God', the brainwashed boy who said that 'God wants women to stay home, so what the hell are they doing out and about?' left me in horrified shock and rage.

One lad offered a moment of gallows humour when asked, "Do you want to be a suicide bomber?"
He replied, "I'd love to be, if I can get permission from my father."

The girls made me cry. The one who wanted to stay where she was and become a doctor, but will have to go back to her Taliban controlled village. The two girls who could have been my daughters who stood in a ruined school, whilst one said, "Education is a ray of light, I want some of that light."

The other...the other said she'd have to start wearing the burqa her father bought her. When asked whether she liked it, she said, "No. I trip on it all the time." Listen to hearts break everywhere.

Her brave father was the one man who made any sense on the programme; the rest sounded like Borg clones.

But what made my blood run cold was the young boy's voice singing a song at the beginning and end for which I had no need of the subtitles:

"If you try to find me after I have died/you won't find my body whole/you will only find little pieces/and if God approves/He will put the body back together again"

Pakistan, my Pakistan, what will become of you?

I'm not sure I dare hope.

Benazir Bhutto

Years from now, when asked where I was when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, I will respond, "I was at lunch with a Pakistani friend who was flying out to Pakistan that evening. If the question is where was I when I heard, I was at home, it was 16.20, and I went to the BBC website ON A WHIM. There it was."

I remember the execution of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, just months before we were due to visit Pakistan for the summer. I wasn't really affected - my parents weren't Bhutto supporters, and my father read news of Bhutto's death with grim satisfaction. I didn't really understand what was going on: as long as my relatives were ok, I was fine.

My late teens and twenties were a time of separating from my Pakistani identity. Even so, I cheered Benazir Bhutto as a western-educated woman who wanted to rule in an Islamic country. No matter how much my father cut her down, I always secretly hoped she'd get into power - a western-educated woman as Pakistani Prime Minister! HA! Take that you pompous, Muslim, South Asian male jerks!

Then she went for an arranged marriage. I, and many other girls of Pakistani heritage trying to straddle East and West, felt betrayed. So I didn't pay much attention when she was elected Prime Minister. I carried on my merry way, turning my back on my Pakistani identity.

Let's be clear here: Benazir Bhutto was no saint. She promised advances for women during her tenure as Prime Minister and didn't deliver. She saw the Taliban as a 'stabilising force'. She might have been guilty of corruption. Hero worship has no place here.

She was as complex as the country from which she came - an extremely privileged woman who spoke out for the poor (though actions are harder to find); a proponent of democracy who ran her government and party like a dictator. Full of contradictions, ever tough - but those were necessary qualities in an area with the worst gender rights record and the most corrupt political system in the world.

Whether one supported her wholeheartedly, felt that she betrayed her education in Western democracy, or felt she found it impossible to resist becoming part of a corrupt system, one cannot deny that she loved her country and gave her life for it. Her fate and that of Pakistan's were inextricably entwined; she lived and breathed Pakistan, even when she was thousands of miles away.

That sense makes the news of her assassination even more frightening.

I didn't expect to be hit by it the way I was; when I saw it on the BBC website banner, I just stared, unable to absorb it. Benazir Bhutto. Assassinated. I immediately turned on BBC News 24 and stared at it for 2.5 hours before I realised we weren't actually going to hear Pervez Musharraf's speech in full, nor was there going to be anything new for a while.

Mind-numbing, someone called it. Yes. But so much more. Shock, grief, horror, anger. Fear. And a sense of something being ripped away. An awareness that whether this was a master stroke designed to destabilise Pakistan and drop it into the hands of Taliban clones or whether this was a horrible miscalculation by one of her opponents, possibly even Musharraf- today, evil won a battle in the long war. And I'm feeling so much more I can't even begin to verbalise now.

But what I can verbalise is this: I don't want to read any more crap like the stuff on the BBC "Have your say", where the most recommended comment is the offensive "That's the way politics works with The Religion of Peace," and another is "Pakistan - what a wonderful place it must be." HOW DARE YOU. YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE PEOPLE AND THE COUNTRY, YOU XENOPHOBIC JERK. SHOW SOME RESPECT. The people I want nearest me, the people I want to talk to about what I'm thinking and feeling are the ones who know Pakistan and love it, who can understand what I can say, but more importantly, what I can't. That's one friend flying to Lahore as I type, and another who had the nerve to tell me I was more Pakistani than I wanted to admit to.

Oh God. This can't be true.

We all thought she was indestructible, that she'd always be there. Her narrow escape in October, when 140 of her supporters were killed and 400 wounded, reinforced that belief. We couldn't imagine Pakistan without her.

Now, we have to.

Rest in peace, Baji.

State of emergency

At midnight on Sunday, 4 November (Pakistan time, so GMT +5), Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan. Opposition politicians, including cricketer Imran Khan, were placed under arrest, as were many other Pakistani citizens. The Supreme Court was disbanded just days before they were to rule on the legality of Musharraf's election.

Predictably, the UK and US howled in outrage. Condoleeza Rice, a woman who betrayed her gender and race by becoming part of an administration that hates both, has done what a true Republican does - threatened to pull Pakistan's aid package.

Hmmm. Let's see what happened in the weeks preceding the state of emergency, shall we? Islamic fundamentalists taking hostages in the Laal Masjid; 130 people killed in a single suicide bombing; more people killed as various outbursts of violence occur. We all know Al-Qaeda wants to isolate Pakistan from the West and turn it into a draconian Islamic state. They're punishing Pakistan for being close enough to the West to receive American aid.

And so, when Pervez Musharraf reacts the only way a Pakistani president knows how to react when the country is falling apart, Ms Rice, who doesn't know a damn thing about the culture or history of the place - and doesn't have the sense to ask anyone who does - threatens to isolate the country even further, destabilising it and driving it right into Osama's hands.

Not too surprising, since she actually believes that George W. Bush sees non-whites as equals.

Do I agree with what President Musharraf has done? Absolutely NOT. Do I understand in light of the culture and the way Pakistan works? YES. And the way to get Pakistan out from under this is NOT to push Musharraf further into the corner he's already in, but to talk to him and help him find a way out.

And let's be honest. Does either the US or the UK have a leg to stand on? The US instituted the Patriot Act; tortured prisoners in Abu Ghraib; locks people in Guantanamo Bay indefinitely. When I went back for a wedding four years ago, despite the fact I carried a US passport and had a US accent, I was asked rather aggressively, "Why are you here?"

I very nearly responded, "I was born and raised here, and carry an American passport, you c**t. Tell me, what are *you* doing here?"

I thought better of it and said I was going to a wedding, but I filed it away. Along with every time I got patted down by a man on my way to the plane, not because of the way I acted, but because of how I looked.

The UK doesn't fare much better - no pics of them abusing prisoners of war, but their Prevention of Terrorism 2005 Act, allowing the imposition of 'control orders' on those suspected of terrorism, doesn't give them the moral high ground. You know you're in trouble when one of your own judges calls your law 'an affront to justice' because it violates the European code of human rights.

To quote a favourite youtube video (see below):

"I AM afraid of the dark. I'm afraid of other things, too. I'm afraid that Western government is using terrorism as a Trojan horse to limit civil liberties..."

That is exactly what Western government is doing - it is using the fear generated by terrorism to exert greater control over a people who trust it less and less.

So if I were you, Condoleeza and Jacqui, I'd keep my mouth shut about human rights. You don't want to be looked at too closely - with centuries of constitutional liberties behind you and peaceful lands, you don't have the excuses that Musharraf does.

Amnesty International is watching you.

If you'd had any sense, you'd have brought the children of immigrants, like myself, on board. No one can hate Muslim extremists more than those who have grown up fighting the repression of Islamic culture so they can be free to be themselves - especially the women.

In my darkest revenge fantasies, I'm standing on a football pitch surrounded by pyres, on which burn the bodies of every single Taliban and Al-Qaeda member, along with every male of his line - each one shot, execution style, by a Muslim woman he abused.

No one can hate them more deeply than we can. No one wants to see them ripped out, root and branch, more than we do.

If you'd done your homework, you'd have known that. Instead, you assumed a Muslim monolith. You've paid for it in time, resources and goodwill lost.

Why are you here, indeed.

Sorry, Condo, you were saying, about Pervez Musharraf and the state of emergency...

no? What's the matter, cat got your tongue?

Or did you think you might want to take the plank out of your own eye before you remove the splinter from his?

A child of Partition on the 60th anniversary

Partition - "a division of property among joint owners or tenants in common or a sale of such property followed by a division of the proceeds." Antonyms: unity, unite.

One word. Not often used in English, and then without emotional charge.

Unless you're from the Indian subcontinent, where the word packs as much power as nuclear fission.

Partition. Always with a capital "P".

"There can be no question of coercing any large areas in which one community has a majority to live against their will under a government in which another community has a majority. And the only alternative to coercion is partition." --Louis Mountbatten

With those words, and with a stroke of the pen from Cyril Radcliffe (a man who had never lived in India, and was thus seen to be 'neutral') the Indian subcontinent was granted its freedom on 14 August 1947 as two separate nations - India and Pakistan, divided along religious lines.

"This concept of a divided India was based on the fantastic concept that nationality was based on religion. That made no sense to me." --Nyantara Sanghal, Jahawarlal Nehru's niece

Lines on a map cut right through the middle of people's lives. And nowhere was this truer than in the state of the Punjab, which was split in half, where Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus lived peacefully in integrated communities. Fifteen million people had to move; at least one million died. The Punjab went from a state of tightly knit communities to five rivers running red with blood, all with the stroke of a fountain pen.

Only once has anyone in my large [5 sibs on dad's side, 8 on mum's] family EVER talked about Partition except to celebrate 14 August, or to say briefly that they left Jalandhar for Lahore/Sahiwal/Hujra etc.

So the first time I really understood what had actually happened was whilst watching a 2005 programme on the series 'Dispatches' called 'Young, Angry and Muslim' about the Pakistani Muslim community here. It was well-done, narrated by a Pakistani Muslim [Navid Akhtar], unsettling, for all the reasons one would expect - radicalisation, the anger of the communities, and so on.

Then I looked up to see the trains.

Never, ever had I seen any footage of Partition, of the resettling over the border - until that day, when they showed three minutes of footage. The fear on the faces, the sick children, the elderly on the backs of wagons packed with people, or on trains that looked eerily like ones that had left Germany not 10 years before.

But this time, *I* was the one looking for familiar faces. My grandparents, in their 40s. My parents at 10. My uncles, aunts...they all looked like family...

And I heard my father's voice, at a family gathering a few weeks before I left the States to come here, speaking for the first time about Partition in my hearing, about a cousin who had promised to get them out, but took his girlfriend's family instead...and pushed them off as they tried to get on the truck. The fury and bitterness in his voice frightened me even as it made me want to put my arms around him. But our family has never been a close one, and my arms remained by my side.

My father's is only one story amongst millions. There were the trains that crossed the borders full of corpses; the houses that were burned; women who were raped or killed so that they wouldn't be raped; the refugee camps and children dying of disease; neighbours turned to enemies.

"I miss my friends. I didn't understand why they had to go. They didn't want to go. They were pushed away. And I thought "Why?" Sixty years later, I still think, "Why?" What did anyone get out of it?" --A Sikh reflecting on his childhood friendships with his Muslim neighbours

"The girls in the Muslim school [in Amritsar, on the Indian side] were stripped, marched out and systematically raped. I looked in the faces of those watching on to see if there was any compassion. I found none." --a Sikh in Amritsar

Muslim gangs destroying the Hindu quarter in the stunning, cosmopolitan city of Lahore, described by those who lived there then as tolerant, vibrant and the height of fashion; Sikhs attacking Muslim villages; Muslims and Hindus at eachother in the Punjab and Bengal all stand as proof that religion doesn't restrain our animal urges; when used by politicians to create fear, nothing is so effective as religion at unleashing them.

"Lahore used to be such a beautiful city, a tolerant city...there was a saying in the Punjab, 'You haven't lived until you have been to Lahore.' We [Lahore] have become more intolerant, more backward, more pseudo-Islamic." -a Muslim now living in Pakistan

One 80-year-old asked Shobna Gulati, a British Asian star who had gone back to India to trace her roots, "They had one language, one land. How could they do this to eachother?"

One land. Muslim, Hindu and Sikh it may be, but the Punjab is one land. One is Punjabi first, then their religion, and only THEN are they Indian or Pakistani. We farm. We are people of the land.

And so, even amongst this horror, there were stories of hope - Hindus hiding Muslims in their homes when the mobs came; Muslims knocking on their neighbours' doors to tell them the mobs were coming and they needed to leave.

This summer, the BBC has put together an "India-Pakistan 07" series, and the archives, including radio programmes from the past, can be found here. It has provided me with much food for thought, and surprisingly, a great deal of healing.

I've watched stories about schoolchildren in Kalkotta teaching street children how to read and write; I've grinned at the joy of people throwing coloured powder at strangers on the street during the festival of Holi; I've listened as British Asians traced their families' paths through Partition and seen them choke up when they arrived at their parents' childhood homes. I wept when people who had been through unimaginable violence said that they didn't blame those who perpetrated it; that they were only troubled when the memories returned. Watching people who could be my aunts, uncles and grandparents in dusty towns like the ones I used to visit as a child; feeling my shoulders drop the moment someone spoke Punjabi felt like coming home. Something dislocated snapped back into place.

Finally, I understand. I understand why my parents, who left Jalandhar with only the clothes on their back, were so desperate to hoard things and buy a bigger house AFTER I moved out. Why they wanted us to become doctors so we'd always be financially secure, whatever happened. I understand why I could never turn away from the subcontinent and be completely Western, even though I was born and raised in the States. What 'white boy' means when he gives me that half-smile and a twinkle when he says, "You are so Pakistani." And why I could never feel at home in Roman Catholicism.

I am Punjabi. Not Pakistani; Punjabi. And one day, I will make that pilgrimage to Lahore, Hujra, Sahiwal to visit those I love, then cross the 'border' by foot and go to Jalandhar to see the home my ancestors knew.

Partition marked our parents, and it has marked us. We are Midnight's children.

I should have grown up visiting relatives in a Punjab where travel between Lahore and Amritsar was commonplace; where the neighbours I called "auntie" and "uncle" and the children I played with could just as easily have gone to a gurdwara or a Hindu temple to worship. A world in which 14 August 1947 was a cause for unmitigated celebration of freedom and the word partition meant nothing more than a divider between two rooms, or a division into portions and shares.

And was always spelled with a lowercase 'p'.