Note: I have written of these things before, I am sure. But by way of apology, while the content of this looks familiar, the telling of it is never the same.
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It seems to me that in this still very young century - the 21st that is, with all its technological advances and the behemoth we know as the internet – so many of us as humans remain at a certain level of evolution (a certain politesse prevents me from substituting evolution with a less kinder, gentler word). It apparently does not matter whether we live in the 21st century or beyond, if we make it there. The way in some of us treat one another or react to one another is still as some would do in the 19th century, in the 15th century, perhaps even earlier. And when we look back to those times and think, ah! We are so much better, there is still considerable cause for concern. We are still hurting, killing each other, even, over religion, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.
In Fiddler On The Roof, Tevye says something to the effect that an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth would leave everyone blind and toothless.
Is this truly the kind of world in which we want to live, grow, create? A blind and toothless world where decisions for many of us are made by people who are so disconnected from us?
I spent the first six years of my life in America, in Minnesota. At a time when so much was happening in the country, I was ignorant of the horror that was Vietnam, the murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. My mother would tell me years later that my parents had seen the latter shot on television. I cannot imagine the shock they must have felt, they both admired Robert Kennedy.
I did not know what was happening outside of the apartment building in which we lived. Perhaps my preoccupation(s) consisted more of being able to walk, and be in the open air. Until I was three years old, my parents carried me much of the time, and when my youngest brother was born, it was my father, when we were out. There is a photograph of us standing outside, perhaps in a parking lot, and my father helping me to stay on my feet, my little arms stretched upward as he held those tiny hands. Why could I not walk until I was three? Spina bifida contributed to that
I knew very little, if anything of Pakistan when we returned in 1970. And for a while, we had a tiny enclave of America: an American family living to the left of us, another one living to the right of us. One of my allies, playmates until her family left as well, was American. So there was always this connection, this exposure to more than one culture. Growing up around Fisher-Price toys and dollhouses, Nancy Drew mysteries as well as desi dolls made out of cloth or some other material and dressed up in bridal red. We left America, but America never really left us as my older brother and sister continued their education in an American school located in the beautiful hills of Murree, around 1973 or '74.
In 1971, after what had been a long period of time during which the people of what was then East Pakistan were fighting for their rights, and their independence, war broke out between West Pakistan and India. I was seven. It was December, but I had no real recollection in later years of what the month was, or the days. All I really remembered was taking shelter in the hospital. The first day when we were all preparing for what was to come, some of us kids were in Central Supply, folding gauze into neat large squares for bandages and watching them being sterilized in the autoclave. I thought that in some way I was contributing to the war effort, but not many if any war casualties arrived in our hospital. Even the one that I thought for years was a casualty, was not.
My brothers had told me that they had seen a dead body. I wanted to see it too, because I always wanted to do EVERYTHING my brothers did. So I begged my very reluctant aunt, and cousin, both nurses, to take me where it was. In supposed stealth, we went to this dimly lit room that had a gurney in the center of it. For a few moments we gazed at the figure, covered in white from head to toe, until one of them began to unfurl the sheet. Before I could even see the man's forehead, my father and what may have been a group of interns entered the room and we were in big trouble.
A while later, he explained why he reacted as violently as he did. I took that as an apology and forgave him, but what happened in that room would never be separated from the fear and violence of the war.
Before the war, and after the war, India was viewed by many in Pakistan as the enemy. I have to say that I could never see one of our neighbors in that light. We were not raised to view anyone, let alone Indians, as us and them. The fact that certain prejudices were still held, that certain boundaries were still kept was another matter, but we were not raised to think negatively of Muslims, or of Indians. My parents were born in India in the 1930's, and became Pakistanis overnight in August of 1947 by virtue of their families remaining where they were. It is not that they rejected the fact that they had this new nationality thrust upon them. It is that they do remember what it was like to be Indian for a short while. They also knew of the danger, the violence that was happening if not in their own villages, then in neighboring ones, or cities, the border and elsewhere.
As a small child in Rochester, Minnesota, I had no concept of what racism was. Or discrimination. It was not until many years later that I learned that one of the patients my father was going to tend to there did not want to be treated by a “nigger”. That did not stop my father from talking to him, and ultimately being able to tend to his care.
In Lahore, Pakistan, the city where I was born, and to which I returned, I was beginning to learn how differences between people could cause divisions, and bad feelings. At home, I was around wonderful Muslims who treated us as if we were one of theirs. At school, it was a different story. I do not know if some of the animosity towards me was because I was Christian, I was langRi, or I was just an insufferable person. But in that school, I heard the word issayee flung as a slur for the first time. And later on, when an argument ensued between two girls, afghani was used in that same vein, to diminish the girl who embraced that identity. Those were telling moments in learning how ignorance does more than other a person. It dehumanizes them.
I have great memories of Lahore, and I have bad memories of Lahore. The same can be said of any city by anyone, I suppose. But for those of us who have seen our countries change drastically as a result of revolutions or coup d'etats, countries where secular or somewhat secular societies were overrun by religion, memory takes on a different meaning.
Lahore is still home. It is perhaps much less of one, given that I have not been there in a very long time and it is far from the city that I remember. But it is still home.
I have gotten into arguments with certain people, Indians in particular, who think it is utterly ridiculous that I, a Christian, a minority in Pakistan, a group that never has reached anything beyond second-class status even with the advancements a number of Christians have made there, should still have any love left for the country of my birth.
I do love the Pakistan of my childhood, the Lahore of my parents' younger years that is described to me, the home of my maternal grandparents. I saw in all those much more hope for the country. Until 1977. And it is difficult to separate that vision, romantic at times, realistic at others, from Pakistan as it exists today. Some in America hear the progressive voices in Pakistan, unfortunately somewhat less than the extremist ones, but they do exist. I try to be more hopeful that the progressive secularists will prevail. I try to be hopeful that what is done in Pakistan is more for the betterment of all Pakistanis regardless of creed or ethnicity and not always in reaction to India. In this case, I tell Master Yoda, trying is all I can do . . . .
