And the World Changed

by Muneeza Shamsie

  He tooted the car’s shrill horn and Munna’s Hindu neighbor, Luxmi, rushed out with a pooja thali to ward off the evil eye. Other neighbors like the deaf Jewish musician and short-sighted Parsi uncle also stepped out of their stooped doorways to look at the novelty in their neighborhood. When Munna’s amma saw the motorcar she couldn’t stop gushing to anyone who’d listen, what a success her brother was. She would go on for hours and Munna’s poor father regularly bore the brunt of her praise for her brother and his motorcar. Especially when they had to travel by bus on the rare occasions that they left the neighborhood.

  The car was grand—to that everyone agreed. Nobody seemed to care that it never started. It coughed and groaned but never ran. The rides by the sea that Munna and his mother had been looking forward to would have turned into haunting complaints had it not been for the car’s sleek new radio. Every Saturday, Munna’s mother and other women from the neighborhood would get into the car and tune in to All India Radio. They would listen to the gossip about movie stars, and sing along with Indian film songs banned by the strict Islamic regime. A stranger to the neighborhood would find it very odd and perhaps a little spooky to see a car bulging at the seams, its windows covered with dupattas in respect of the veil, shaking from side to side with music drifting out. But while the women held a weekly gathering in the car, the men met up at night. At nine p.m. sharp, the neighborhood men would gather around the car and Bobby Uncle would tune the radio to the World Service.

  Beep. Beep. “This is BBC London,” the announcer’s voice would boom out, “You are listening to Muhammed Shafi with the latest news in Urdu.” A silence would descend on the mohalla as the men concentrated on happenings around the world.

  These were the days before television made its way to Karachi and radios were a luxury of the rich. But the dedication to the nightly news was due more to strict media control by the state. The country was under the grip of a Martial Law leader who edited the news himself. If it was a dry day and the President wanted it to be a wet one, you could be sure the announcer at Radio Pakistan would read out news of rain. With parched skin and dry throats people would curse the dictator and turn to other sources of information, like independent newspapers. But not everyone could read and this is where Bobby Uncle’s radio came in.

  He had a passion for gatherings, which he referred to as mehfils. Being an unmarried man with no family other than his sister, he would cling to company. These nightly gatherings with him in the driving seat made him feel very important.

  Dressed in starched white kurtas the men would bathe, change, and hurriedly eat their dinner in time to get a good listening spot around the radio. Luxmi’s husband would close his shop early and bring along his son who always dressed like heroes on the big screen, with slick hair and tight trousers. Parsi Uncle would also arrive early with his own chair as he didn’t like to stand. Parsi Uncle had a radio in his house but the women in the neighborhood said it was an excuse to get away from his bossy wife, Munizeh.

  Munna, too, would tag along with his father. Most of the children would be shooed off as they inevitably found some cause to make a noise. But Munna, being Bobby Uncle’s nephew, would park himself on his lap and listen to the entire bulletin until he fell asleep. Munna found the announcer’s voice very pleasant and soothing. He was too young to care about what Nixon said or how many people died in Gaza, but Mahpara, the female presenter’s voice, would make him dreamy and transport him on faraway journeys to strange lands. Of course, he knew there really was no America or Ireland, at least that’s what Munira had told him and Munira was older than him. Munira didn’t go to school because she was a girl and had two older brothers who needed education more than her. They would make it up to her by giving her a grand wedding some day, her mother said, when Munira protested. But even without a proper education Munira was smart—she knew the names of all the prophets and most of the holy words.

  Sometimes when her mother let her off kitchen duties before eight, she would sneak to the back wall and try to listen to the car radio. The next day she would show off her knowledge of the bulletin to Munna. “Do you know who stole the sewer lids off our alley?” Munna would shake his head and she would say wisely, “It was America. It comes in the dead of night and steals the lids of our sewers so disease and illness spreads and we drop off like flies.”

  “America is a country, not a person. Bobby Uncle told me so,” Munna would say.

  “Oh, you’re such a child!” Munira would tease him and run off.

  While Munira thought the West was behind all the evils in their neighborhood, thanks to the Ustani who taught her the Holy Book, the men at the nightly radio gathering seemed to think that India was behind all the trouble in their country. The Bulletin always had a few shift-the-blame stories, and most of the time the enemy next door was the root cause of evil.

  But lately the gatherings around the car radio had grown more somber. Conflict with India was escalating and there was tension in the air. Men would gather around the car at eight and stick around after the bulletin to discuss matters. Intolerance seemed to be on the rise. Luxmi no longer came to Munna’s house and her son Gopal did not attend the news sessions at night. There was a rumor that some overzealous religious fanatics had burned the temple by the sea.

  Most of the uncles who didn’t go to the mosque did not show up after that night. And the next day when the broadcaster with the sweet voice announced that Indian soldiers had killed Pakistani villagers along the border, Munna noticed that none of his Hindu and Christian friends came out to play.

  Munna was too young to understand all this but he knew that he missed his friends and neighbors. The car radio that had brought them together seemed to have created an immeasurable distance between them. Even Munira seemed withdrawn. She had stopped blaming “America” for all that went wrong. Instead she blamed it on the religious minorities in the country. “It’s all Luxmi’s fault,” she would say. “She could be an Indian spy, you know! She probably gets a commission to steal the sewer lids so there is disease and illness in the neighborhood and we all drop off like flies.”

  Munna listened with his head cocked to one side. He found it hard to believe that sweet, plump Luxmi who always gave him sweets when he passed by her door could be the enemy. But Munira was right. She did look different from the rest of the women in the mohalla. She wore a fiery red dot on her forehead and worshipped little dolls that Munna secretly longed to play with. She was different—so were the other people whom Abba and his friends referred to as “Minorities.”

  Still, Munna found it hard to hate them. It was easier to hate the men in parrot-green turbans who went around burning temples and churches and shouting slogans against white-skinned foreigners. But then Munna was only a little boy. He was too young to pick and choose whom to hate and whom to admire, but deep in his heart he knew one thing for sure—in the days to come when people had been divided into categories of Mohajirs, Masihs, and Sindhis by invisible lines and uncrossable borders, he would miss his old mohalla in the city by the sea, where difference did not mean distance.

  CLAY FISSURES

  Nayyara Rahman

  Nayyara Rahman (1984– ) is a freelance contributor to local magazines and online forums. She was born and brought up in Karachi and graduated from the Institute of Business Management. As a student, she received several creative-writing prizes, including first prize in a national essay competition held by National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Pakistan. Her short story, “Clay Fissures,” was one of five winning entries of a nationwide British Council contest and published in a collection called I Belong (British Council, 2004). Her work has also appeared in Neither Night nor Day (HarperCollins, 2007).

  “Clay Fissures” is another exploration of identity and belonging in Pakistan. The references to the singers Noor Jehan and Mehdi Hassan and the film star Waheed Murad reflect the admiration for popular performers and the role their art plays in defining a young country’s self image. The narrat
or, Pradeep, is marked as different primarily because he is an albino, but also because he is not Muslim. The story makes an interesting comment on color—whiteness—as identity, particularly when Pradeep migrates to the United States, where white skin is commonplace and yet he remains an outsider. The reference to Mr. Ruknuddin, who chose to remain in West Pakistan after the 1971 civil war in which East Pakistan became the independent Bangladesh, presents the concept of nationality as a choice and a commitment, rather than a birthright.

  • • •

  “Pradeep, go sit on the bench.”

  I sighed and trudged toward the shady end where Sir Gul Muhammad had placed the benches. Watching the shining faces of my classmates as they ran after the football, I wondered, “Will I ever be like them?”

  It wasn’t just the game that made me ask that. My eleven-year-old self was an outsider in many ways. It was 1953 and patriotism was still a young, strong spirit in Pakistan. People were proud of being Pakistani. They were proud of being Muslim. They were proud of their brown skin, which reflected wheat—the lifeblood of Pakistan. And here was I: Pradeep Sehgal, the adopted albino son of a Hindu merchant and a Eurasian seamstress.

  There was a long cheer. I looked wistfully at the field and then looked away again. Sir Gul meant well. But he didn’t seem to realize that a fiercer sun shone down on me than the one he meant to protect me against.

  I had never really known what it was like to be a part of anything; to belong anywhere. At seven, a quarrel with my brother had resulted in the discovery of my “adoption.” I was also accustomed to being excluded from every game that is woven into the tapestry of childhood because of what my parents called my “colorless skin.”

  Even at school, I was different. Arithmetic was a general favorite at Rossmoor Academy. I hated it, for I had no patience with something everyone loved to do. After all, bullying “Sunflower Pradeep” was also the most popular sport there.

  Thankfully, those were years when sport hadn’t overtaken the appreciation of culture. The Beatles may have swung the rest of the world into the 1960s, but Pakistan had its own way of biting into that delicious slice of time. Waheed Murad was a rage. Mehdi Hasan and Noor Jehan were moving the nation with their beautiful music. It was an insane, ecstatic time.

  For me, growing up was floating in the wind like a seed. It was fun, but it was fleeting. I needed solid ground to settle down and take root.

  Besides, I was still different, still “apart.” I still didn’t know who my real family was. My foster father’s marriage to a Christian had demoted his caste, which, in effect, confirmed my “outcaste” status. I resolved that I would never follow any belief that would make a man a stranger in his own land.

  Land! I still marvel at fate for igniting this passion within me. The smell of loam, the dance of the monsoon, the gift of rain coursed inside me and gave me reason to grow, despite myself. I literally dug in. All my drive poured into my work. In 1966, I graduated second in a class of 250 with a double major in geography and geology.

  I worked for the government after that. To my delight, my job made me tour the country frequently. To my dismay, I was treated as an outsider wherever I went. The partiality would have been unbearable if it hadn’t been for Mr. Ruknuddin.

  I always thought my boss was an intriguing fellow, partly because he truly enjoyed his work in the geology department. In a year when Bangladesh was lauding itself for its independence and Pakistan was mourning the loss of its “Eastern” bloc, Mr. Ruknuddin’s presence in a Pakistani government office stood out like a rock in a stream. It was ironic that he should have chosen to continue working in Karachi for his family lived in Dhaka. His younger brother had been killed in “the war,” fighting on Bangladesh’s side. No matter how I thought about this, I just couldn’t understand why Mr. Ruknuddin still worked in Pakistan. I ventured into this daunting territory during lunch when I asked Mr. Ruknuddin how he felt about Pakistan after his brother’s death.

  Mr. Ruknuddin looked up. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time he had been asked that. His half-empty biryani plate lay before him when he said the words I would remember in another age. “We all make our own identities. He was willing to die for his land and race. I choose to live for mine. This doesn’t make him a martyr or me a traitor. It simply makes us who we are.”

  Time, I imagine, abrades all. In 1972, destiny veered my life again. Mr. Ruknuddin summoned me into his office one morning and handed me an envelope. With hands that shook like autumn leaves, I ripped it open.

  It was an offer to join the American Geologists’ Council! My work in exploiting the Karez, or salt lake system in Pakistan, had apparently made quite an impression on observers abroad. My academic credentials were impressive, Mr. Ruknuddin had already sent a most glowing reference, and so the letter went on.

  For a moment I stared at Mr. Ruknuddin. Then I grabbed him in a bear hug. He returned it with a grandfatherly smile. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” I cheered, all thirty years of me jumping. “Allah bless you, sir!” At that moment, everything about the universe became insignificant. All that mattered was that I had received every Pakistani geologist’s dream job.

  Three months later I was working in the United States. My work centerd on environmental hazards. Earthquakes took me to Los Angeles; the oil crisis took me to Texas. It was an exciting life and a happy one, too. Any racism against me was squashed merely because nobody could be too sure of my “Asian-ness.” So, although my name and accent continued to raise eyebrows, I fitted in quite nicely in Every Man’s Land.

  A geologist will never say, “It’s a small world,” because for us the world grows more mysterious and challenging every day. I have seen more climatic disasters than any weather reporter can dream of. Indeed, there were so many that their horrors simply consigned themselves to a mental compartment labeled “Unfortunates” in my mind. Indeed, there was only one “horror file” that my thoughts consulted again and again.

  In 1988, a drought struck the West Coast and was making its way to the Great Plains. It had decided that its final whiplash would be in the Mississippi River Basin. I was assigned to go there.

  I regretted it.

  There was something about the faces of the drought victims, a tired, defeated vulnerability that reminded me of a past I was eager to forget. I sighed, muttered expletives, and made no secret of the fact that I couldn’t wait to escape. I regarded these people with a callous impatience I had never felt before. Yet, for some reason, I could not be resentful for long. Pity replaced contempt. I plunged into the rehabilitation work with a drive I didn’t know I had and worked hard to alleviate their suffering.

  Perhaps I was trying to make up for lost time. Perhaps I was trying to make up for lost loyalties.

  Whatever it might have been, it was then that I realized that sometimes you learn to value things too late, and by the time you do it’s best to just forget them.

  Time passed quickly. Color fever was high in the 1980s. The United States had seen a new rival in Japan, Americans discovered new villains in the “yellow people” and recognized old slaves in the “black” ones. They had just begun to realize what it felt like to have Mexicans in their land, and considering how many of those there were the Americans weren’t overly enthusiastic about the new brotherhood. Still, remembering their loyalty to their former “white” masters, brown people continued to take pride in subserving themselves in an alien land.

  I know the worth of race; after all it is something that has tried hard to make my life worthless. I had been through stilted friendships. I had seen promotions sneak past me to glib, rakish subordinates. Perhaps one reason why I never married was that I always thought a potential wife would look at me in the same way as everyone else. For many years I blamed myself. I did all I could to be like everyone else, but the more I did the more unfamiliar I became to myself.

  It took some time before I realized that people didn’t react to who I was. All they saw were the pink eyes and flaxen hair. They heard th
e singsong voice, heard the foreign-sounding name, and decided that I deserved to be treated like an outsider. I had spent years blaming myself for something that didn’t come close to being my fault. But the discrimination also taught me that the only place where color really matters is in a rainbow. Imagine those colors geometrically allotting themselves a square meter each of the sky, and you will know what I mean.

  Speaking of skies, my American stars shone down on me one evening—or so I thought. I was in San Francisco when I received an unexpected phone call. It was from Mr. Ruknuddin. After an exchange of pleasantries he congratulated me for receiving the National Explorer’s Award and a recent Fellowship Grant. Surprised at his acumen, I thanked him. He then mentioned that he’d kept abreast of my work and was wondering if I would be willing to offer my expertise to Pakistan.

  “I can’t tell you why right now, but we really need you here,” he said.

  “I’ll come.”

  It was only after I hung up that I realized what I had just done.

  The phenomenal stupidity of it! Was I supposed to leave my work and rush over to satisfy the whims of a former boss? Not everyone receives a Fellowship Grant—was I supposed to just forget it? What did Pakistan have for me, anyway? I hadn’t returned to the country in years! Why had I said yes?

  That was the problem: I knew why.

  As Mr. Ruknuddin had requested, I took the first available flight to Pakistan, landing in Balochistan, the country’s biggest and most wasted province. In my hotel suite, Mr. Ruknuddin explained: Foreign investors were interested in helping Pakistan establish a copper and gold refinery at Saindak. This was wonderful, except that the project had been stalled until it received security clearance.