Pakistan after Coming to America The Heart-Wrenching Seventies
I returned home to a country in shock. It was my first visit back to Pakistan in 1973, with an eleven-month-old Saqib in my arms. Pakistan had lost half its country to a war with India, East Pakistan was now Bangla Desh, and nearly everyone I knew had a family member or a friend taken prisoner-of-war by India. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a charismatic orator of socialist leanings, was prime minister, and those who revered him believed that only he could eradicate poverty, and those who hated his guts considered him a rogue. The nation was going through political convulsions. Morale was low, and people wondered if Pakistan would survive as a nation. Daddy, always believing that his little girl brought him good luck, said, “When you left, so did the nation’s good fortunes.”
My unmarried friends were beginning to wonder what was holding up Prince Charming. Much as I loved showing off baby Saqib, I felt a twinge of guilt sporting a handsome husband and a cute little toddler. My friends were in a holding pattern, waiting for the right marriage proposal to come. Starting a career was not an option, because if a good proposal came along, she would have to get married right away. “Your accent hasn’t changed,” one of them noticed. “Well, that’s because I am working hard at keeping it.” I didn’t get to meet my married friends—they had lives of their own, and their schedules were no longer theirs. Some had moved away, making a home in far-off places. It would be another forty years before we’d meet again.
Saqib was the first to fall sick. A change of drinking water and one’s intestinal flora is enough to cause diarrhea. Top that with family dinners, lunches, and breakfasts—not one-course meals, mind you. The two firstborns returning home for the first time as a couple, after two long years, with their firstborn is enough to be conferred with celebrity status, and my calendar got loaded with visits to family and the new in-laws of my in-laws. Turning down an invitation is disrespectful. Not taking second helpings is worse—doesn’t matter that you just had a five-course luncheon. If I said, “No, thank you,” it was taken as a sign of modesty, and food was poured onto my plate.
I loved all the love I couldn’t handle. It was September, Multan was hot, and this spoiled young lady was missing her A/C and airy blouse. Each morning, I got dressed up in finery and jewelry, just in case a visitor dropped by, which they did. I’d be at a dinner, dressed up in an unmanageable, ornate sari, when a pungent whiff of diarrhea from baby Saqib would send me scurrying to my hostess’s immaculate bedroom, struggling to change the diaper with baby tugging at my dangling earrings, with my sari falling off my shoulder onto his face; then I’d be looking for a bathroom to rinse out his cotton diaper before dropping it in a plastic bag and tucking it inside the travel bag as he wailed to fend off all the attention he was getting. Everyone wanted to hold Saqib, and my baby, so used to being with Mummy all day, would shriek each time he saw those outstretched arms.
“What have you done to yourself? You look sick,” was the greeting I received from almost everyone. “You have circles under your eyes…. Your face is so thin…. You used to be so pretty….” Used to. Someone went so far as to ask in hushed tones, “Are you happy?” Translated: Is your husband treating you well? “Of course, I am happy.” It’s OK. She means well.
One afternoon, Mummy took me shopping in the Baara Bazaar of Rawalpindi. As our car left the wide streets of Murree Road, the lanes got narrower, and at the red light, a beggar approached, her hand outstretched, cupping her palm. “May Allah grant your children a long life….”, she said to Mummy in Urdu. Then she turned to me and said, “Hello, please …” in English. How did she figure that I am to be addressed in English? I am wearing shalwar kameez. Does my bearing give it away? I opened my purse, took out a five-rupee bill and handed it to her. Within seconds, the car was engulfed with beggars with pleading faces, pushing one another to get close. I quickly rolled up the window. I was embarrassed to look away. Green light, hurry. The street got narrower, with pedestrians crossing whenever they found an opening between cars. Mummy pulled over and stepped out. I slid my purse under my dupatta and tucked my diamond pendant inside my shirt. “This is not New York,” Mummy said with a laugh, “look at all the women walking the streets laden with gold bangles and diamond rings.” Mummy related the story to Daddy. “Do you know what Bia did in the bazaar? She has been gone only two years and already she has forgotten what a safe place Pakistan is.”
I missed Khalid when he left. I stayed on for another two months. We wrote long letters, him telling me how much he missed me, and daily I waited for the postman. Who writes letters every day, but maybe I would be lucky, who knows? The excursion fare airline ticket was good for four months, so everyone was surprised when I told them that I was here for three months only. Why waste all that money, they would say. What’s the rush, stay another month. I’d try to explain that Khalid misses me, and they would say, “Well, what about your parents, won’t they miss you?” It came to a point that I dreaded being asked the question. Coming back was hard. I had carried only a dozen disposable diapers for airline travel—a major dent in our budget—and came home to an apartment where I had to start cooking again, cleaning, no one to serve me tea, no naps while someone watched baby, jet-lagged, in a quiet house, and no more chatter of family hovering over me.
Everyone cried when I left, Mummy most of all. She would start the countdown four weeks prior: “You will be gone in twenty-eight days … twenty-five days…. You were here for such a short time.” After I left, she didn’t have the heart to have the windows and furniture cleaned—baby Saqib’s handprints were smudged all over. “When are you coming back?” She would repeat this over the next forty years, leaving me with a heart laden with guilt. I would live with that for as long as she lived, more so after she died.
Pakistan: Today
By the time I visited two years later, most of my friends had gotten married and left town. The few who remained were getting worried. After all, they were now in their late twenties. I lost touch with most of them, a consequence of distance and getting swept away by life. Globalization and the age of Internet had not yet dawned.
Each time I visited Pakistan, the uncles and aunties had more gray in their hair, the cousins were a little more mature and the children a little taller. Each time, I found the country to be less safe, less stable. One day, upon reading about a sectarian riot in Karachi, I called my parents from New York. “Everything is fine,” Mummy said. “This is just propaganda by foreign countries.” Mummy, like the rest of the country, was in denial.
What didn’t change is the khaloos—the deep sincerity of family and friends. I’d see it in their eyes and feel it in their tight embrace. The welcoming feeling would warm me all over, make me teary-eyed, and I’d miss it each time I returned to the US. What didn’t change is the Pakistani woman’s love affair with style. She knows what defines elegance, and she looks ravishing. Always well groomed, hair styled in the latest fashion of the West, shalwar kameez in a new style on each visit, and with such impeccable taste. All custom-made, home designed. I have to groom myself each time I get onto the plane, lest I get a scolding for my beat-up looks. What didn’t change is the aaah! I felt when I inhaled the smell of raindrops on dust, when I squeezed the ice-cold mango between my palms, sucking in the sweet nectar; when I heard the cry of the pushcart vendor on the street selling his plums, “Aaloo bukhare lay lo.” In moments like these, I felt as if I had never left.
On one visit in the early 1980s, sitting in Daddy’s sunroom, I noticed the TV newscaster with a dupatta over her head. “Why is her hair covered?” I asked. “All women on TV now have to cover their hair,” Neena answered. “President Zia’s orders.” Zia-ul-Haq, the dictator, was rapidly imposing a conservative brand of Islam. The movie industry was dying, movie theaters were closing, compensated by home VCR movies. Music programs on TV were replaced by religious sermons. People of means still had access to culture and arts, hosting private poetry recitals and ghazal singing sessions
in their homes, but public places became devoid of art. The trajectory that Zia put the nation on would not be reversed, not by Benazir Bhutto, an Oxford and Harvard graduate, and not by General Pervez Musharraf. It was not for lack of trying. Oppression breeds activism, and women-led NGOs cropped up, fighting for women’s rights through media, legislation, awareness, film, street theaters, and education—and won’t stop pushing.
Women Leading
But there was a definite shift, despite the imposed conservatism. Women in the upper and middle classes were pursuing careers. No longer were the options limited to teaching and medicine. Banking, journalism, media, law, clerical work—it was across the spectrum. Walk into a bank, and the tellers and executives are women. Enter a shop, and a female cashier will check you out. Want your hair done? The beauty parlors are women-owned, women-operated businesses. Get on the Daewoo bus, and the woman conductor in a blue uniform will check you in. Turn on the TV, and watch the female reporter in the field and the female talk-show hosts. Open the daily newspaper, and read editorials penned by female journalists or read about female mountain climbers. Watch the parliament proceedings with female parliamentarians, one of them becoming speaker of the National Assembly. The human rights activist whom Asim worked with served as the president of the bar association of the Supreme Court. It didn’t stop there. Women were entering the armed forces in roles of commandos and fighter pilots, with one of them graduating the military academy with the Sword of Honor. Why should arts be left behind? A woman journalist and filmmaker has won two Academy Awards for her documentaries. Three women have held the most coveted position in the Foreign Services: ambassador to the US. Top it with Benazir Bhutto being elected prime minister by the masses, illiterate voters from remote villages who voted with their thumb print—they had never learned to read or write—and exercised their choice by selecting the insignia of the candidate, voters who were so conservative in their leanings they never sent their daughters to school. They elected Benazir not once, but twice. When the 126-day sit-in took place on the streets of Islamabad in 2014 protesting the election results, women were there alongside the men, day after day, night after night. Today, it is the norm for a middle-class woman to be on a career path.
On a parallel track, there was the Hudud law imposed by President Zia, where women who claimed to have been raped but could not produce four witnesses were flogged for having sex outside marriage. In rural areas, there is forced marriage, honor killings, and acid burning. That both cultures are part of one fabric is a contradiction I am unable to reconcile.
Matchmaking?
And what about arranged marriages? In my family, I was probably the last to allow myself to be blindfolded into marriage. Within a couple of years, the culture started to change. Arranged marriages are less arranged, and the divorce rate is up. To what degree the boundaries of tradition have relaxed depends on whom you talk to. After forty years of cultural upheavals, Pakistan is still redefining its cultural identity. Today, there is no cultural norm for marriage. Each family or clan defines its own rules based on their family values.
On the one hand: on my visit to Pakistan in 2015, I met a family. The mother, a woman in her late forties, in a headscarf, was telling me about her son’s recent engagement. “I had been looking for a suitable girl for my son, and my son had told me, ‘I will not see the girl. This is your department. You pick the girl.’” I was not shocked. Was it trust in his mother’s choice? Was it that he didn’t want a girl to feel rejected in case he didn’t approve? Or did he feel that it was inappropriate to be checking girls out? I didn’t ask her that. I didn’t want her to feel that I was being judgmental.
The center: we visited another family whose daughter had just gotten engaged to a young man in Khalid’s family. The parents of the young man visited the family, had taken notice of their daughter, and decided to conditionally propose to the young lady’s parents—the condition being that both children consent. Children! Getting a nod, the parents sent for their son, who was overseas, and the two intendeds met in the presence of both families in a chaperoned setting. He liked her, she liked him, and they got engaged. In another case, the two families—parents I mean—huddled, got the children to meet, and sent them out for dinner—an official date, with a “Get to know one another and let us know if it’s a go.” I can’t say for sure if this practice falls in the middle of the bell curve, but maybe for middle-class families it does, with some variables tweaked here and there. I call them the quasi-arranged.
On the other hand: I asked a young lady, a married woman in her late twenties, to tell me about dating and marriage in college campuses in Pakistan. In government-sponsored universities, men and women cannot be seen walking together. The extremist presence is potent. In private universities, it’s an open field—everything goes. You have women in headscarves, men who lower their gaze, and then you have men and women comingling, dating, and yes, some will, as they say, “go all the way.” Women have gotten pregnant, and friends have pitched in for them to get an abortion—illegal but practiced. On occasion, you can sniff marijuana in the air and notice vodka camouflaged in water bottles—illegal but practiced. “Their parents know nothing about this, or are in denial,” she told me. This time I was shocked.
Till Divorce Do Us Part
When I was growing up, divorce was unheard of, a taboo, and an outcome feared by married woman. To hear of a divorce was scandalous. Women, empowered by their careers, are now telling their husbands to take a walk. This is playing right into the hands of the ultraconservatives, validating their belief that girls should be kept out of school. See what happens, they say, when you educate the girls. It goes to their heads and they break up the family, destroying the lives of their children. Divorced women are remarrying, dispensing with the taboo that, once divorced, no man shall marry her. Divorced women with children are remarrying. That says something about men.
Facebook Did It
I had lost contact with most of my friends from Home-Ec. It took a visit from my college friend Fawzia from Atlanta to bring us all together. She and I were going through my college album, nostalgic over the black-and-white photos. “Where is Tallat?” she asked, pointing to the photo. I shot off an email to Tallat from my iPhone, and minutes later Tallat emailed us from Pakistan. Fawzia was ecstatic. Khalid, watching us from across the room, put down the newspaper, slid off his reading glasses, and tossed off one of his most enduring bright ideas: “Why don’t you start a Home-Ec Facebook page?” Within days the page blossomed, and we found friends we thought we had lost forever. We were Skyping, WhatsApp-ing, Viber-ing, posting photos, our life stories. And a few months later, delirious with newfound old love, we flew down to Houston for a reunion. Not to be left behind, the ladies in Pakistan organized a reunion, and when I went back to visit in April 2015, there were reunions galore. We had found one another, and the years melted away. We squealed like schoolgirls and shrieked every time someone walked through the door. We were in love with each other, and I felt like we had never parted. It was the newfound time in our lives that brought us together: our children are on their own, many of us have retired, and we now have the luxury of filling our hours with friends. Many are now widowed; some are divorced, some remarried; and almost every one of them has made a career for herself. And this was a Home-Ec education, non-career-oriented. Neena is an attorney at the Supreme Court. One runs a nation-wide school system. Another is an event planner, an artist, a diplomat, an educator, a policy maker. There are business owners, farm owners, CEOs of NGOs, start-ups, and online companies, activists, and, of course, homemakers. These were the friends of my early years, liberal, outgoing, sophisticated—now grandmothers, bringing beauty into the lives of Pakistanis. Watching them, listening to them, I felt that they had accomplished so much more in circumstances with so many constraints than I had in the land of the free. In college days, my teachers would tell me that one day I would move mountains, but I had been rolling pebbles while these women had scaled icy
peaks.
You Americans
I had put my evening outfit on the ironing board in Mummy’s sunroom, when Mummy called out, “Razia can iron your clothes for you.”
“It’s alright. I can do it myself.”
Over her protests to take it easy, I started ironing, taking in the sights of the flowers in the garden below. One side done, I placed the iron upright on the stand.
“You can put the iron face-down,” she said. “It’s asbestos.”
I jumped back. “Asbestos!”
She explained that asbestos is fireproof….
“I know it’s fireproof, but it causes lung cancer!”
“Oh, you Americans! You are afraid of everything.”
Whose War Is It?
In the 1980s, when Russia invaded Afghanistan and we enlisted Pakistan’s support, Afghan refugees poured into Pakistan. “We are fighting America’s war…. We have our hands full addressing our own poverty; now we have to deal with poverty of the refugees…. It has brought drugs and a gun culture…. It’s all America’s doing,” is what I heard.
Years later, sectarian feuds would erupt, and the port of Karachi would go up in flames. “America and India are behind it,” I would hear.
After 9/11, we invaded Afghanistan. I would hear: “We cooperated with America. We allowed them to fight their war from our land, and they are saying that we are not doing enough…. More lives have been lost by Pakistanis fighting the war on terror than the number of lives lost in 9/11, and still they tell us that we are not doing enough.”
A friend of my father came to visit, and when I asked him, “Uncle, how are you?” I was sorry I asked. “I will tell you how I am. My son lost his leg fighting the war on terror in Swat. He is now on crutches. A young man on crutches for the rest of his life. And your country tells us that we are not doing enough. That is how I am doing.”
Threading My Prayer Rug Page 30