Textbook Conversations

Shuttling between Kabul, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Attock, Karachi, Abu Dhabi and Manchester over a period of four days is pretty hectic. Several flights, taxi rides, meetings, dinners and family formalities later, I take the opportunity to reflect on conversations that I've had with people. Briefly I want to consider Pakistan - damaged by internal strife, poor international press and yet still trying to build an image for itself.

I'm always willing to learn in order to understand more, but that does not mean I passively accept everything that is said. I had an interesting dinner in Islamabad, where the host accepted that Pakistan had a poor public image but his view was that Pakistan survived despite aggressive policies by greater enemies because of Allah's protection and that the neighbours - India and Afghanistan could not be trusted. I heard a similar view in Karachi - that India was ready to 'attack' Pakistan. Rather than contemplate the failings within, the commonality was one of finger-pointing and feeling sorry that Pakistan had failed to live up to its founder's ideals. In short the view was that the country was misrepresented and misunderstood and that the leaders were little more than stooges for the UK and the US. 

I have a family connection to Pakistan, but I have always been a little ambivalent about what the country stands for - and whilst I always want it to be better for the common people, I don't claim to be automatically forgiving. As much as I try to understand the passions of the country, I see significant failures and widespread alienation. What emerged from the conversations I had with people is how commonly held values (myths?) about Pakistan are not questioned or challenged. These opinions form what may be considered the "textbook" view within Pakistan.  There are voices from beyond that ask legitimate questions, but these seem to be filtered out of the media within because they criticise the basis on which the country stands. I think that this fundamentally comes down to an education system that has operated much like the state's propaganda machine where critical thinking is not encouraged.

Most people in Pakistan think of survival, so I can forgive some of the apathetic acceptance of the way things are, but if an educational culture of critical thinking were to exist, then there could be serious questions asked about the status quo. A kind of enlightenment, no less.

Malla Kalyan

Casualties of War

The human cost of war is the thing that most stirs me. Forget the political wranglings. Sure, I have deep seated beliefs and opinions about cause and responsibility, but the politics is neither here nor there when we consider the human fallout. People still need to live, they need to eat and they still need to provide for their families. My question is simple, who is responsibe to these peope?

"Who would ever want to leave their home willingly?" asks Wilayat Khan. "In the end we had two choices - flee or die."

We are sitting in the cramped three-room house he shares with his brother's family in the Pashtun-dominated neighbourhood of Sohrab Goth, on the outskirts of Karachi.

Mr Khan and his brother rented it after they fled their native South Waziristan. So far, it is thought nearly 15,000 people have fled to Karachi to escape fighting in South Waziristan.

Most settle on the outskirts and many find work as labourers, watchmen or in Karachi's Pashtun-dominated transport industry.

"For the time being, most of the families fleeing the conflict in the tribal regions cannot return home," says Ismail Mehsud, a young Pashtun politician in Pakistan's financial capital. "It's a vicious cycle - and the state appears unwilling to play its part," he says. "Just handing out blankets is not going to help. Increasingly, Pashtuns are being made to feel like second-class citizens."

Wilayat Khan agrees: "I thought all of Pakistan was our home. But more and more, I feel like a stranger in my own homeland."

Edited from this BBC report.

The picture is taken from a similar report from IRIN Asia and shows how IDPs like Alam and Farooq Khan are struggling to find work.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Alternatively:
Rickshaws, Motorbikes, Taxis, Buses and Trucks

Public transport is very much a private enterprise thing in Karachi. Chugging around town in rickshaws is a fun, if noisy and often cramped way to get around.

Alternatives modes of transport in Karachi include taxis (think Datsuns from 1966) and buses and motorbikes with entire families.

Shireen Jinnah is home to the city's Pashtoon truck drivers. The trucks, buses and even rickshaws come made up in all colours, painted slogans and tin dressings - beadwork, hangings and ribbons to ward off evil. Nothing less than a contemporary form of art. Way cooler than anything you see in other places. That said road discipline is not a high priority, comfort doesn't come into it and safety is something that has not yet been thought about.

My regular commutes from Shireen Jinnah to Gulshan-e-Iqbal meant that I was regularly stuck in the constant fight-for-a-space traffic for an hour or more. The pictures here show some glimpses of how people get around.

Karachi Kops

World levels of corruption should well and truly make us stand up and voice protest, but here in Karachi, people just take it in their stride. Just the other day, a police official stopped our car and asked for 50 rupees to allow us to proceed along a shabby road that he was "monitoring". How does the ordinary person stop corruption when we are held to ransom like this?

*Karachi Kops, incidently was a programme on British television some years ago, based on the goings on of the Gulshan-e-Iqbal police force - Gulshan-e-Iqbal is right where I am right now.

Poverty: Roots/Causes

Karachi is a city of many people who have fallen through the cracks. In an industry closely tied in with human exploitation begging exists as a symptom and in many cases a cause itself of many other forms of abuse. I don't give that easily to the beggar on the street, but after being surrounded by so much poverty, I'm not sure. What is the correct response when abject desperation looks you right in the eye?

Somebody must do something. Are you listening, politicians of Pakistan?

The photo is actually of a beggar from Udaipur, but it serves the purpose of illustrating the kind of approach that is made daily on my regular commutes around Karachi.

Faith, Unity, Discipline

Teen Talwar = Three Swords symbolising Faith, Unity and Discipline.

Monsoon

I've never seen anything like the past 24 hours. The dying drainage system in Karachi is unable to cope with the monsoon rains that we're experiencing. Then of course, the power goes out, plunging the entire city into an existence that existed pre-electricity - the lights and the fans go out and you begin to feel the oppressive heat rise. Some cope with UPS temporary systems. Others run their own mini generators, but the majority of this city of 18 million live with darkness and wait it out hoping that their domestic water supply doesn't run out.

Last night we needed a taxi to get to the airport to pick up my brother. At 3am, the city was completely dark and knee high in water. There were people - mostly the homelesss who don't even qualify for a cramped room in the slums - sleeping out under makeshift canopies. I tried to navigate by virtue of a pen torch and kept close to the crumbling walls and steps of nearby buildings, but at one point I found myself having to wade through a flooded road when I lost footing after a wrong step. This water, which killed at least 30 people, is the mix of rain and sewerage that laps gently along what people in Karachi would probably called side-walks. Of course in the dark, you're completely unsure where the pot holes are and what other foul things are in the water. There's the stench, litter and rotting food, even before you get to the more grim things like vermin, snakes, effluence and disease. Should the electricity suddenly come on, then the fallen electric cables add to the death-traps. My skin was itching when I got home and I felt like I needed a full sterilisation. In the end there was no running transport and I barely slept because there was no way that I could get to the airport to pick up my brother. The contacts at the airport did not answer our calls and then the phone networks began to come down.

I don't know how the people of Karachi continue to live with this. This is a country with a chronic illiteracy rate and a health system that is running on empty. The basics, such as clean piped water are missing and yet billions have been spent by unstable governments on a nuclear bomb. My family here question every aspect of this country's governance - from the war on terror, corruption and failure to meet basic needs. Add to that a complete sense of paranoia about the country's legitimacy and purpose and the continuing border issues with Afghanistan and India. The conflicts in the Pashtoon and Baloch heartlands are the symptoms that stem from a sense of neglect and exclusion. Pakistan's short history is one of a catalogue of wide-scale corruption, political disasters and bouts of military dictatorships, loot and further loot. It currently ranks as 138 on the world peace index and there's a common belief that Pakistan relies on disasters and conflicts surrounding it so that aid continues to pour in.

During the day, when your eyes begin to adjust, despite having accepted it earlier, the reality that Karachi is one of the world's most filthiest places, really begins to dawn on you.

At least I have the option to fly out.

Karachi Konnection - خوش آمدید

I am in Karachi.

My Grandfathers – both of them – left their villages to make new lives with their families in Karachi. It's a story as much tied in with the Partition of India as it is with a common migration destination for many Pashtoon menfolk seeking work in the then-capital of a newly formed country. My maternal Grandfather spent time in Bombay, eventually settling in Karachi where he was a career coolie, my paternal Grandfather spent his time in the commercial navy in Calcutta and later Karachi.

I generally look back a generation or two – my better times in Pakistan as a child arriving for the first time were in the rural (mostly mountainous north) - Hazara and Swat where my immediate ancestory lies. I would later return to Swat as an adult to the very house where my maternal Grandfather was born and raised - the beauty of the valley is entrenched in my mind forever. I don't know if we will get an opportunity to travel this summer, but without doubt, it is this stronger sense of Pashto language and Pashtoon identity that defines me, and not the human soup identity that is increasingly prevalent in Karachi.

My father has often romanticised about the village, Malla Kalyan in Attock where his forefathers had their holding, but in truth, over the years, he has tended to go back less and less. He has invested more time in Karachi and tends to introduce himself as a Karachiite, firming up what I call our Karachi Konnection.

Slumdog Hundredaire

Karachi is the Sindh equivalent of Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay of course and under the British was administered under an arrangement called the Bombay Presidency. Like Bombay/Mumbai, it is a city that has drawn in many layers of migrants – and is now a multiple layered society where communities jostle alongside one another, and occasionally break in rioting, turf wars and looting. Karachi is very complex – it remains a city that simmers with tension – on the ride home, I could almost sense it en route to my father's place in Shireen Jinnah Colony (named after the founder of Pakistan's sister). My wife pointed out the places in Clifton where she and our children were trapped during rioting that broke out a couple of years ago following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. There is something about the city that the residents here just accept as normal – from my eyes looking in from afar, there are obvious wrongs. The erratic electricity supply is one, but the thing that strikes is the slum-living conditions of many of the people here. Whilst very used to my middle-class trappings, it's humbling – I also have family in the more run down parts of town – and I have to be mindful. On the first night in town, I find myself sleeping on the floor in a corner of a room with no windows. This, dear readers, technically speaking, is home.

Khush Amdeed خوش آمدید

Kuch Dil Ne Kaha

I'm not a real Bollywood boffin and with exception, I have tended to avoid the newer, more western-orientated batch of popular films. I'm a family person, so the movies must generally fit that "viewing for all" criteria. There was a time, (think circa 1980) when my father would hire a video player from a place on Morley Street, Bradford, and a bunch of films that had been copied onto VHS. I distinctly remember seeing Gunga Jumna that way and maybe even Amar, Akbar, Anthony.

My father and my Mama* are compediums of knowledge when it comes to back and white Bombay Cinema - mixed in with recollections of their tales of growing up in Karachi - and can easily tell you all-you-need-to-know about the films of the time. Between them, they have a classic collection of films - mostly VHS (and some VCD/DVD), but one that would be a fine digital library if anyone took the time to convert. Anyway, the better impression of Bollywood that I have is of that classic era, so here's a clip. Lata Mangeshkar sings for Sharmila Tagore in the film Anupama (Unparalled), 1966. This song, Kuch Dil Ne Kaha (The Heart Said Something) is a personal favourite.

*Mama = Maternal Uncle

Crossroads

I'm at a crossroads - I ponder, quite often, where I will be next. I don't mean where I will travel to, although that does come into it. But what I mean is where in the world, does someone like me consider home? I'm really drawn to do something positive for my people - so I would like to make a positive impact in the Pashtoon heartlands. But I'm a British oddity and I think of things like career and schooling for the children. I'm also very affected by the security situation and the availability of basics such as electricity and clean water. Where exactly, can I find my bit of spiritually - to whence do I belong?

The places that I wanted to travel to this summer - Swat and Afghanistan - I am now being warned against going to. With the war, I am affected again. I had hoped to spend time in the villages in Lower Swat, to take in the environment, to give my children the opportunity to keep up with their Pashto and to look, interact and learn. Of course, the same can happen elsewhere, but this was going to be different.

This summer is something of an open-book. The Swat refugee crisis created something of an emergency so the wedding that we had intended to attend in the valley was brought forward and took place in Karachi last week. My wife and daughter flew there for a couple of days - it was her brother's wedding after all. I still intend to travel to Pakistan, and our initial plan is to stay in the family home in Karachi. I'm still keen on going to Afghanistan, but will need to judge the mood. In any case, very shortly we will be travelling to Toronto, Canada where I intend to "land" as an immigrant.


... InshAllah, a whole new chapter awaits to be written ...

Exodus

"This is war", President Asif Ali Zardari, Washington, May 2009

I have family who have never been outside Swat their entire lives, I can't imagine the difficulty that they must be going through. Last night I heard that the situation in Swat has descended into panic. Family homes have been destroyed by military shelling, making even shelter in houses unsafe. During non-curfew reprieves, they have begun to leave - by car, bus, pick-up; even walking.

Refugees

Latest report - most are headed to seek refuge in Peshawar, Swabi or are en route to Karachi. People arriving in camps are being held there - they need to be issued IDs because of escaping Taliban. The displacement has split up families, and the stories of Taliban atrocities are still seeping out of the valley. Again I cannot imagine the misery of what it must be like to abandon your home and flee for safety - but this is about individuals trying to hang on to their lives, and their families. I have never been in that situation, but that I have uncles, aunts and cousins who are on the move and that I get to hear this and their stories, makes me feel all the more responsible. My father called me up last night advising me not to travel this summer. The plans for a big family gathering in Swat are now in a state of confusion.

I am distraught. My wife was talking to family yesterday and there is a strong feeling that the situation was allowed to deteriorate - the common citation, as I've mentioned before, is that there has always been covert support directed towards the Taliban by government agencies and that a more sinister political game is being played out to the detriment of the Pashtoons.

Pashtoons have suffered so much, whether it has been the continuing war in Afghanistan, poverty, illiteracy, lack of adequate housing and health care and massive displacements of people. Ultimately the Swati Pashtoons are not the beneficiaries. Please pray for us and pray for peace in our Watan at this difficult time.

Tor_Khan تور خان