Advent - Day 6

Our very first Christmas when we returned to Pakistan in 1970 was celebrated in our mother's village, Shantinagar. Shantinagar is a predominantly Christian village set up by the Salvation Army in the early 1900's. It was around that time that my Nana's (my maternal grandfather) family moved there, bought land and set up a home. That home has been there ever since - with changes, additions and improvements of course.

The closest city to it is Khanewal. When I was a child, and used to write letters to Nanaji, or Maamoo, or my cousins, I had to add "Via Khanewal, District Multan" while writing the address on the envelope. As of now, Khanewal is the district.

That Christmas is the only one I remember where all of us, Khalaji's family, Maamooji's family, and us gathered there. It was a truly overwhelming time. There was so much happening, and everything was still so new and strange to me that the memory of those days we spent filter through vivid flashes. The tanga ride from the Khanewal train station to the village on that dusty road bordering the canal. The increase of charpais in my grandparents' adobe house. Going to the chowk to get a dozen glass bangles fitted on my tiny, skinny wrists. I have a vague recollection of the inside of my grandparents' house. Group pictures on the wall of the various groups my youngest Maamoo was a part of, including the Student Christian Movement. A red plaque with the gold inscription, Christ is the head of this house. The unseen guest at every meal. The silent listener to every conversation. A picture of the European Jesus, sandy-haired, translucent eyes.

That year, Maamoo may still have been in the Salvation Army band. At any rate, watching the band play hymns and Christmas songs was a treat.

I do not remember Maamoo's house so well from that time, but images from his dukaan. The sky-blue/white packs of K-2 cigarettes with the peak that gave the brand its name. The old scales with the chains, and the heavy round black weights of one sair plus. The plates of the scales, was one larger than the other, on which I imagined sitting, to be weighed. No, I was told, those are not for humans. They are for food products. I saw the scales - which also look like the scales of justice you see at courts - more as a toy.

I do not think I was the only one I viewed them as such, then, or today.

***
I was still trying to keep track of my cousins at the time. Five from Khalaji. Five from BaRe Maamoo, Three from ChhoTay Maamoo ( who may not have been there that Christmas but definitely not later ones in my memory). And also the cousins from my father's side, which was somewhat easier because only BaRi phupi had children at the time, five.

I know I must have played with my cousins that Christmas. I also was still painfully shy, and quiet in the midst of so many people. Especially when I dressed up in anything other than play clothes.

On Christmas day, I wore a teal colored gharara suit. The kurti had silver piping around the half-moon neck. The gharara's folds gleamed as I walked. My long thick hair was in two plaits. We went to the Salvation Army church for services. Most of us sat on a white sheet spread on the ground, while our parents and grandparents sat on chairs. Nanaji in his turban with the stiff cloth, the achkan hugging his upper body and white shalwar. Naniji, as she dressed most of the time, in a white sari, wearing dark glasses that covered her cataract filled eyes.

I remember little to nothing of the sermon. I could not understand most of it at the time, anyway. There was a moment when I was left alone on the chadar. I looked around me, at the crowd of people in their Christmas best. I can still recall the sense of loneliness, of feeling completely out of place in my outfit, among these strangers.

***

Christmas, and even Easter, were those occasions for us where we had special outfits made. I do not know if it was every year that my siblings and I had new outfits, but that was part of our tradition. New clothes to celebrate a new day, a new beginning.

That tradition has all but disappeared for us, here in America.

***
We would spend two or more Christmases in Shantinagar after that. I used to love being around my Nana. I never spoke to him much but just to be in what I thought was a noble, kindly presence. And when we did speak, he always made me feel good about myself, which is not something I ever really remember feeling at any point in time.

And my Nani, forever quoting Psalms and bible verses in between conversations. The love of Nanaji's life. They were the glue that held so much together. Nanaji readily forgave things of his grandchildren that his children did not. They were incredibly conservative. But they were also filled with love. And I was very fortunate to have witnessed that, to have been blessed with it.

Ever since my mother lost her only surviving sibling, my BaRe Maamoo to emphysema two months ago, I see a change in her, something akin to a desolation. She speaks more often of the past. She did before, but now even more so. She is not alone in feeling that way. Every Christmas, I remember the Christmases we spent with our loved ones in Pakistan. And I miss that sense of family, of extended family. True, we did not agree on everything (who does?), and there were jealousies and clashes. But we still were together, and those few moments of love and peace are treasures.

No Christmas, or the looking forward to it can go without remembering those we have lost in terms of their physical presence, but whose spirit lives on within us and without us. The window on this day is dedicated to them. My grandparents, paternal and maternal. My aunts and uncles. My cousins. Thank you for your love, and all that you gave us in that love.

Drumbeats

If you read this blog every once in a red moon (I know it is blue, but humor me), then you know I am on Twitter now. I jokingly blamed a friend in Pakistan for my finally deciding to do this, but really, it is his fault. It is the best way to keep in touch with him and news from the old country, at this point. And more up to date . . . .

***
My mother repeats stories from her childhood. I am not certain what made her retell this particular one, but we were talking about Pakistan. She told me that she was born in India, and always has felt connected to it. I replied, "Yes, you were born in India, but we were born in Pakistan . . . well except for the youngest, who was born in the USA."

She began to tell me about her school days, and the songs they sang at assembly. Apparently she was picked to lead in song because her voice rose a few octaves (was it good? I did not ask), and two songs that she remembers singing: the one about lalkaoing from the choTis of Himalaya ke hindustan humara hai. And then the other song was also nationalistic, saare jahaan se achha. Hindustan humara."

She added, "We sang these songs to get the British out of India." I nod, "I know." My mind lingered on the second song. The poet Iqbal, whom we know as Allama Iqbal wrote that, and it did become an anthem of protest against British rule.

I thought about that Iqbal who wrote about Hindustan. I thought about the Iqbal who praised secularism, Nietzsche and Mussolini. I thought about the Iqbal who read a poem of his in honor of King George V's coronation, and I thought of the Iqbal that certain Islamists wish to reclaim as in this article, here

"Iqbal wrote that." I pointed out to her.

"I know." She replied, muttering things about him that were far from complimentary. We acknowledge that Iqbal was a very good poet. I am not certain how we, who have lived with Iqbal's great works like Bal-e-Jibreel and Bang-e-Dara, and read him in our Nawa-i-Waqt every day for years, have seen him in terms of his politics.

Like many men, and women, Iqbal was a heap of contradictions, and if the hard-core mullahs wish to misappropriate him, well then may they go with Allah, but no one can fully reclaim Iqbal, and no one should. What else can we take, distort and twist, and throw out there as the way to rebuilding a better nation, when all it does is get us stuck in the same damn Groundhog Day?

***
There's a reason I have been avoiding topics like this in previous blogs. And I just remembered what it was.

***
Twitter was all a-buzz today with the news that the Pakistani ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani has been recalled to Islamabad. There are murmurs that his job is on the line, and that he is the wrong Haqqani to go after.

Hussain Haqqani certainly has been one of the most articulate representatives Pakistan has had in a while. So I hope this gupshup is all it is, gupshup. The defections from the PPP, the braggadocio of the Tehrik-e-Insaaf party of Imran Khan. Dhol baj rahe haiN ji, Dhol!

From The News:

ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani Monday decided to call Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan’s Ambassador to Washington, to Islamabad to brief the country’s leadership on a host of issues impacting on Pak-US relations and recent developments.

The decision was taken during a core committee meeting, held at a time when Shah Mehmood Qureshi said goodbye to the PPP and resigned from National Assembly membership. The meeting was called to discuss the political impact on the party of Qureshi’s decision.

According to sources, the decision to call Haqqani was taken to defuse the situation arising from the memo allegedly written by President Asif Ali Zardari to Admiral Mike Mullen, and recently denied by the government as well as Mike Mullen. 

The PPP core committee on Monday decided to continue the path of the reconciliation politics and will respond to political opponents politically rather than through confrontation. A detailed discussion on the political situation in the country also came under discussion in the Monday meeting.

more, here

Paalitiks shmaalitiks

It is not that I really like following politics. It is that the alternative is unthinkable. When you are living in a world where the few have control over the many (trying not to digress into Mr. Spock's words to Captain Kirk in Khan), you have got to know something about what is happening to your choices, your livelihood, your future or the future of a beloved. You might wish to know how restrictive certain laws are, even if your own life is not directly impacted by it (and chances are it is). And if you want to live in a world where you feel everyone should have access to the same rights and or privileges, politics is inescapable.

So yeah, you could say fuck politics! But politics fucks you.

***
We are approaching an election year here in the United States. So is Pakistan. I still try to keep up with what is happening there. It is a little easier now with all the technologies available to us, but still, there is a sense that leaving Pakistan and its twisted politics and policies meant leaving all that behind.

Pakistan today is much better than it was thirty-two years ago in some respects. In others, it is not. Sixty-four years later, various factions are still raging about whether Pakistan was meant to be a secular nation or one based on religion and religious laws. And while they have yet to figure that out, there are those from various generations born in Pakistan, those who remember nothing about what it was like when General Zia ul-Haq turned things upside down and all around, who are questioning the remnants of his dictatorship.

And that is a bloody good thing. It indicates that there is still hope. But hope needs to be within the purview of all Pakistanis, which includes Ahmadis, Christians, Hindus, and all oppressed populations. Was it Albert Einstein who said You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. Well you cannot simultaneously prepare for a return to more democracy and prevent a small percentage of the population from being equal partners in said democracy.

It was therefore, incredibly disappointing, when the government itself said that it was no longer going to continue a dialogue re: blasphemy laws. It was too much of a security risk, after the murders of Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti. Meanwhile, shia mosques continue to be attacked in Pakistan, and Imran Khan who wants to be the next prime minister of Pakistan talks about how he will stop terror groups in Pakistan. How will he do it? What will have to be lost in order for terror to end not just in Pakistan, but beyond. The specifics are still vague, but promises are made, and as always Pakistanis want to believe that something good, better is right around the corner.

There is an episode of the series Law and Order where a former military man has killed a suspected terrorist. In his closing statement, Jack McCoy, the ADA and prosecutor, in reiterating what the respected, decorated man has done asks a question, something to the effect of how much of ourselves as a nation are we willing to succumb to terrorism?

It is a question that has not left me since I watched it.

***

The more I listen to some voices, the more I wish they would go beyond words, or beyond the simple yet really effective words of Aaloo AnDay. Before the Beyghairat Brigade, there was Junoon. Junoon, the pulsating "sufi" rock band who came out with songs like Talaash, Ghaflat, and Intesaab.

Now you have Ali Azmat, former Junoon rocker, in the darbar of Zaid Hamid who would rather blame Taliban bombings on a conspiracy between the CIA, Indian agents of RAW and *gasps* the Mossad. And no one is making this up. Not even the supposed beyghairatoN who are supposedly aligned with the West. And as one who was a fan of Junoon, I think, bloody hell! What has happened to zehni ghulaami se honge kab hum azaad? One might ask where is the ghulaami as far as Zaid Hamid is concerned. Another will question the azaadi that Hamid and his friends and followers, including Imran Khan want.

It makes me think of that scene from Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without A Cause, where James Dean so powerfully and emotively cries out to his parents, You're tearing me apart!

Pakistan has been torn apart enough over the years. There has got to be a way for the rang baranga fabric to be put together again. And it can be done by Pakistanis themselves, many who are still waiting for that dawn to arrive. Waiting and hoping involve greater action. I hope that it goes beyond a song, out into the streets, out for freedom, secularism and justice.

All some of us can do from the sidelines is watch, wait and hope. Those of us who don't have the loads of cash supporting their interests, that is.

The rain of stones is finished

From the Express Tribune:

He added that Nasir was born in 1928 to an aristocratic family of Hyderabad Deccan and became a communist while studying at the University of Cambridge. He became a member of the CPP soon after it was formed and banned after the 1951 Rawalpindi conspiracy. As a result, the government started a crack down on leftists. In 1954, he was in and out of jail and was also exiled for a year. “He went to Deccan when he was exiled but managed to return to Pakistan the day his sentence was over,” he said. “Nasir’s commitment to the cause was commendable.”

By 1957, he joined the National Awami Party where he flourished as a communist leader. He was last arrested on August 2, 1960 and killed in a cell at the Lahore Fort in November at the age of 32.

I knew nothing of Hasan Nasir before I read Faiz Ahmad Faiz. It was in Agha Shahid Ali's translation of Faiz' ghazals/poems in a collection The Rebel's Silhouette that I read khat'm hui barish-e-sang - the rain of stones is finished. There is an epigraph right before the poem in Urdu, and its translation:

(for Hassan Nasir, tortured to death in the Lahore Fort, 1959)

which conflicts with the date given in the above report. Memory plays tricks where time is concerned, as I know from listening to arguments about births and deaths in the family.

The image of someone being tortured in the Lahore Fort is a visceral one. Torture is that, as it is, but I had been to the Lahore Fort a number of times as a child, and wandering through the halls of the old Mughal edifice, it never occurred to me that this was a place where people were tortured in the twentieth century.

Reading the poem with the knowledge that it is about a man who was killed, makes it even more poignant. I can post it here in (roman) Urdu, but I am not finding an English translation.

Na gahan aaj meray taar e nazar se kaT gaye

TukRay TukRay huay aafaq pe khursheed o qamar

Ab kisi samt andhera na ujala hoga

Bujh gaye dil ki tarah raah e wafa meray baad

Dosto qaflai dard ka ab kya hoga

Ab koi aur kare parvarish e gulshan e gham

Dosto khat'm hui didai tar ki shabnam

tham gya shor e junoon khat'm hui barish e sang 

Khaak e reh aaj liye hai lab e dildar ka rang 

Koo e janan maiN khula mere lahoo ka parcham 

Dekhiye dete haiN kis kis ko sada mere baad 

Kaun hota hai hareef e mae mard afgan e ishq 

Hai muqarrar saqi pe sala mere baad 

It is a poem which describes nothingness. Everything in the heavens is scattered to bits. Nothing is in his vision any longer. There is neither light nor dark. Let someone else tend to the flowers. The noise of the crowds has gone, the rain of stones is finished . . . .

Reading this report here, I still feel I know so little about Hasan Nasir.

  

"Ooh that smell. Can't you smell that smell?"

I am not watching the Republican debates in their entirety. Even listening to a clip can be a torment at times, depending on who it is that is talking.

Ammi's house, last night, I have no clue why they were watching the Republican debates. I wander through the dark hallway to get to the kitchen, and the volume is cranked up. I hear Herman Cain saying something to the effect that waterboarding is not "torture" but rather "an enhanced interrogation technique", and that he would endorse that as president.

The applause to this remark was immense. I was sickened to my stomach. Then there was the whipping up of fear about Iran, Bachmann's delusions about Obama and the ACLU, all this in a span of less than five minutes.

It felt like those times when we were driving west on the highway, and passed by a town with a mill. From that mill, emanated such a putrid smell that lingered for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles.

***
Nadeem F. Paracha in Dawn:

Take for instance how many of them responded to the UK court’s verdict on the three Pakistani spot-fixing cricketers. Last year when the spot-fixing scandal broke, positive thinking dictated that the cricketers must be supported because both international and local negative forces that are always relentlessly conspiring to blacken the country’s name were most probably behind this event as well. And thanks to many of our positive media personnel it seemed that for a while, Salman Butt, Muhammad Amir and Muhammad Asif, were about to become the male equivalents of Aafia Siddiqui (remember her of the ‘I shot the sheriff’ fame?).

But, alas, a little more than a year later when the three were proven guilty in court and sent to prison, all hell broke loose. No, there were no rallies against the ruling or condemnation of the verdict like Ms Aafia’s (another convicted felon in the US).

Instead, people began burning the three stupid cricketers’ effigies, cursing them for blackening the country’s name.

So the negative old me decided to tweet a question: How come there are stones and curses for a spot-fixer but rallies and rose petals for a killer? By killer I meant you know who.

As the positives came rushing in (on Twitter) to condemn my negative question, I kept on wondering. Wondering how come so many Pakistanis and the media are ready to pour out and passionately demand that certain corrupt cricketers or politicians be lynched, but then the same people shower praises on self-appointed defenders of the faith who commit murder, or look the other way when some other self-appointees in this respect go about their business of blowing up mosques, shrines, schools and markets?

But, then, I understand. Why disturb one’s healthy positive aura and vibe with awkward questions. Why complicate things. I mean, all this might lead to negative thinking thus cynicism, unpatriotic thoughts and perhaps even atheism, no?

Read his opinion piece here

JiveN marzi paka lo roTi, o tavey toN rehndi ai chhoTi

A-ha! The Aalu Anday song/video has made it to the New York Times! I guess the Western media relishes the fact that there is criticism of the fundoos and right-wingers in Pakistan. Anything to fuel their push is good. Never mind that protest has been going on in Pakistan since . . . its inception?! This is just another generation's take on the absurdistan (apologies to Gary Shteyngart) that is Pakistan.

Not that BB (Beygairat Brigade) was any less relevant or popular before - but thanks NYT for the added plug!

You can read the article here. (there's a link to the video in the article) - but in case you can't access it from there:

"I don't like cricket, oh no, I love it" - Fire in Babylon (2010)

I do not know how many Americans, when they hear the word cricket, still think of the insect that chirps its heart out (mostly at night). But if you google the word cricket, the first results you will see are for the sport that is not widely known here. Except through immigrants who have come from countries where cricket is king. Or queen.

Cricket was unavoidable in Pakistan. Even if you were not a fan of the sport, you could not help but hear about it on the news, read about it in the papers. In the mid seventies, which is the period I remember the most, we had a great team, with Mushtaq Mohammad as the captain. There was Zaheer Abbas, Asif Iqbal, Sarfraz Nawaz, Wasim Raja, Wasim Bari, Majid Khan, Mushtaq's brother Sadiq, and of course the unforgettable Imran Khan, among others. Javed Miandad appeared on the scene as well, and was simply marvelous.

I know I watched a number of matches, but the one that really stands out for me is the series between Pakistan and India in 1978. I recall how this was more exciting that year than any of the other matches because it was the first time we were playing against India after seventeen years. Bishen Singh Bedi was the captain of the Indian team at the time. The great Gavaskar was there. And it was Kapil Dev's debut - damn good one too. And Pakistan won the series thanks to some awesome batting by Majid Khan and Miandad, among others, and the fast bowling of Imran Khan and his fellow bowlers! We were in school, and radios were forbidden but one of my classmates smuggled one in anyway. I think just as I did with the "rumble in the jungle" between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, I feigned illness during one day of the series.

When watching cricket, I did not focus on any other team but Pakistan. Names like Botham, Lillee, Richards, Boycott, I remember, peripherally, as opponents. And let me tell you, if I had known more about Vivian Richards between 1974 and 1979, which was the last time I would watch a cricket match on television, he would have toppled Imran Khan as my favorite cricketer!

***
This past weekend, I was switching channels, and was shocked at seeing cricket on ESPN classic. What is this? I thought. What my eyes continued to see was not only entertaining, but incredibly inspiring.

Fire in Babylon is a 2010 documentary about the West Indian cricket team of the seventies, captained by Clive Lloyd. This team is remarkable not only for overcoming the perception of "calypso cricketers" - cricketers who were entertaining, but not winners - but also for how Lloyd brought together a group of men from different countries in the Caribbean (Jamaica, Guyana, Antigua, Barbados . . .) to form what would become the longest winning cricket team in the history of the sport.

Horribly stung from their defeat by Australian fast bowlers in 1975-76, Clive Lloyd and his team are determined never to lose again. The West Indian bowlers develop their style of fast bowling as well. However, it seems that certain factors come into play when the Windies decide to practice fast bowling. The manner in which they do it is seen as brutal and intimidating, and they are criticized for it. As Andy Richards points out, nobody complained when the Australians did it. It is not difficult to understand why the West Indians would think they were being singled out, when there were other fast bowlers on other teams. And given the colonial history, and how West Indians had been perceived in years past, it is not unrealistic to think that race played a factor.

Another ignominy was on the part of the English captain in 1976: Tony Greig's remark that they were going to make the West Indians "grovel". This remark made at a time when racism was still very much a part of British society, and apartheid was in full force in South Africa.

Greig and his teammates paid dearly for that remark when the West Indians crushed them.

This is a team that not only played the game for the sake of the game, or their livelihood, but for a much bigger picture. They played to show that they were men who were no different than their white counterparts, they played to increase social awareness, and to give their compatriots all over the world a sense of pride. They would not grovel. They would not give legitimacy to state-sponsored racism.

But there were West Indian players who did agree to play in South Africa at the height of apartheid. One of those players was the fast bowler Colin Croft. These players were denounced by the cricket board, by their people. Colin Croft was one of the players who got a lifetime ban from the Windies team. He did not return home after the South African trip. The film shows the disgust and anger of some of his former teammates. Michael Holding asks, "What is wrong with the color of our skin?" upon hearing that the players would be given "honorary white" status.

Vivian Richards, the fearless batsman was the target though. Richards was given a "blank cheque". If he considered it even for a moment, he refused. He talks about how Desmond Tutu gives the team a message from Nelson Mandela thanking them for their part in the struggle against apartheid. What could be more affirming and just awe-inspiring than a message from the imprisoned Nelson Mandela?

***
One of the other interesting things about the documentary was the commentary from journalists and personalities from the Caribbean. I wish I knew who the one Rasta was who made remarks like Viv Richards was "rastarized", how he was the "real deal", and quoted Bob Marley from "Pass it on": "Live for yourself and you will live in vain. Live for others, you will live again." Had I seen the film from the very beginning, I would have known his name.

I have heard someone say that Bob Marley's songs/music were not protest songs/music. I do not know how one cannot see protest or affirmation in many of his songs. Bob Marley and the West Indian team of Clive Lloyd were traveling the same path.

I loved how history, culture, struggle, and sport were all tied together in this. There probably could have been more about some of the cricketers' lives, what brought them to the game, but this is great enough. This is still relevant, and important to remind those who are still playing that there is always more to the sport than just the match.

I loved the lyrical way in which some of the former players, some now commentators, like Michael Holding, spoke, and the patois that escaped understanding, but still you get a glimpse of the differences between the cricketers - and the things that held them together.

***
I have been away from cricket for decades. Every once in a while, if I went to the Bombay Cricket Club in Portland for a meal, there would be cricket on television. I remember trying to explain the rules to an American and feeling incredibly perturbed at having forgotten so much.

This was an excellent reminder of what I have missed for so long. If you have a chance to catch it on ESPN, again, or on Netflix - you don't have to know much about cricket to watch it!

Fragments

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. 

***

It seems to me that in this still very young century - the 21^st 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 21^st 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 19^th century, in the 15^th 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 . . . .