Why I’m proud to be a Pakistani

On a recent visit to Chowk I saw the words ‘nuclear tests’ and ‘Pakistan’s finest hour’ in the same sentence . When I managed to push the bile back down my throat I studied my options. I could post a reply expressing my disgust, or I could write an article offering other options for the Pakistani in need of something to be proud of (assuming acquiring the ability to destroy all life within a certain radius doesn’t excite some others either). So let me share with you what makes me proud to be a Pakistani.

I’ll start with the people who make me proud to be Pakistani. Top honors would go to Asma Jehangir. Her courage in the face of relentless criticism and even threats to her life and those of people near and dear to her have done little to deter her from her quest to try and bring about reform. Perhaps I’m being mushy, but when I think of Asma Jehnagir I think of a new breed of Pakistani woman, a woman who uses her brain as her most deadly weapon, a woman who converts the negative energy of abuse into the positivity of motivation. A woman who, if she does ever fall prey to self-doubt or self-loathing (familiar obstacles on the Pakistani woman’s road to self-knowledge), does not let it change her in any way. I find in that simple refusal to bow down to the pressure exerted upon her a courage so refined and a grace so exquisite that it makes my toes curl and my spirit sing.

Her sister Hina Jillani joins her. The day after Samia Sarwar was shot dead the papers published a picture of her lying in a pool of blood, eyes open, haunted. I still dream of that image sometimes. It will not be submerged with all the other debris. If we had the technology to lift the last image from a human retina what might we find? Her mothers face next to that of the man who shot her. An image that would cause seismic upheavals in any heart, but in a corner of that image would be Hina Jillani, and I think if Samia Sarwar had any way of knowing what happened after her she might like the fact that other women, like her lawyer, would not let anyone forget. Hina Jillani balanced that particular frame for me so that now, when I dream about it, I also dream about a future where sensitivity will replace cruelty and we will purge guilt with tolerance.

There are lots of women who make me proud to be Pakistani, in fact there are too many to mention here, so I will focus simply on those who have impacted me personally (physical presence not required). There is Sheema Kermani, who I had the honor of working with on her directorial debut. Sheema is a classical dancer respected the world over. She, and her dance troupe, makes it a point to take a little bit of Pakistan with them wherever they go. It might be a movement in a recital that hints at the waves crashing against the shores of our sea, it might be the arms of a tree waltzing with the wind on a mountain slope in the Kaghan Valley, it might be Heer Ranjha lamented in Germany, it might be the anguish of woman alone transformed into strength and self-sufficiency. Sheema and her husband Khalid Ahmed have long been the target of ‘fundamentalist’ elements who rage against what they feel is ‘promoting obscenity’, this has not deterred them from continuing with their recitals, and their dramas, and their street theatre.

Khalid Ahmed has a PhD in nuclear physics but is more interested in playing the flute. When I first met him in the early nineties he was teaching Math and Physics at private schools to raise enough money for him to be able to pursue his interest in the performing arts. Khalid used to tutor me. We would sit at a round table in a room without a carpet or any ornamentation, except books. Arrayed on shelves against one wall was the largest collection of books I had ever seen. There were four of us, counting Khalid. The three students were united by our impotence in the face of anything mathematical. Physics was even harder (it required logic you see). We were months away from our O’Level exams. When things got dangerously close to chaotic (of the three students one grew up to be a pyromaniac, one is frighteningly normal as a result of constant denial of the self, and one was me) Khalid would rest his head on his hands for a second and then say, “Do you want to listen to my new piece?” We would retire, barefoot, to his room where we would sit on the floor and let his voice, caressing the words of Faiz or Iqbal or Khalil Gibran, resonate within the room. The paintings on the walls leaped out at us, and the walls were lined with books.

My father didn’t think Khalid was doing a very good job of teaching me math and physics. I agree, but see, I have something a lot more substantial to thank Khalid for. He showed me that there was a life after school that didn’t have to do with Math, or Economics, or Medicine, that there was a place (and a people) where I, in fact anyone, would be welcome. A dreamer’s utopia in Pakistan Itself. Or is that what Pakistan what meant to be in the first place?

When we sat at that round table in the room down the hall from Sheema’s practice room our equations were punctuated by the sound of ghungroos.

Earlier this year I stopped in Mirpurkhas while traveling into Tharparker. Our hosts were Florence and Josephine, the apparent leaders of a gang of giggling village girls who delighted us with their spontaneous singing. Turns out they were a ‘theater group’ that used the street model to discuss and resolve issues within their community. Florence in particular rendered ragas that left us speechless, especially considering the fact that we were speeding down a pot holed dirt track. When she finished I asked her where she had learnt to do that. She pointed to a figure slumped in the back seat, and said “Sir”. She went on to tell me she was going to Lahore the next week to audition for a recording deal. The Sir in the back seat, Khalid Ahmed, was looking out of the window with a satisfied smile on his face. I wonder if he realized what a wonderful day it was. A Karachi girl, and a Mirpurkhas girl, the magic of sound and words, and he the magician.

I see Khalid on and off, but I will never show him this. He’ll tell me I’m going soft. And somehow, I don’t think he’d want to know either. We are all weathervanes for the winds of destiny; no one of us can take credit for any particular squall.

Both Khalid and Sheema have now moved into the realm of production houses. Under the banner of ‘tehrik-I-niswan’ they are making TV dramas that frame development and women’s issues against the backdrop of our countries natural splendor.

Then there was Roohi Bano and Khalida Riyasat. One is no longer among us, she died alone in a hospital, or maybe others just couldn’t see the beings that were with her. The other is very sick, or so The News on Sunday tells me. But I remember watching them when I, and they, were young, and being moved and enchanted in a way no foreign actress has ever been able to duplicate in me.

Razia Bhatti was founding editor of Newsline. It was her spirit that helped create, and sustain, a magazine that told the truth. Ugly truths yes, and depressing reading, but made easier to swallow by the beauty of the thought behind it. Sometimes, in an avalanche of too much (negative) information it’s easy to forget that ‘the truth shall prevail’ is valued as an ideal not because the truth ‘must’ prevail but because only the truth will lead us on to better things. There is hope behind that avalanche of negativity, the hope lies in the fact that we criticize in the hopes of salvaging something we believe in.

In this month’s issue of Newsline there should be a piece on a woman called Hawa Bibi. A simple fisherwoman whose family had been fishing in the seventeen creeks that make up the Indus delta around Karachi. Feudal smugglers in the area brought in illegal immigrants and gave them boats to fish in. They kept the catch themselves of course. But this activity was endangering the livelihoods of the fishermen of that area. If they ventured into the 15 creeks the smugglers had taken for themselves their boats and nets were confiscated, they were savagely beaten, in some cases fatally. Hawa Bibi, a widow in her forties, decided enough was enough. So she started doing the rounds of the police and the local administration etc etc, but in vain, because most of the officials got a cut from the illegal fishing. She even went all the way to Islamabad to meet Nawaz Shariff when he was in power. As a last resort, Hawa Bibi announced that she would go see The General. Last month, while she was sitting with a colleague on the porch of her hut, five men burst into the compound and opened fire. Her colleague was shot in the leg but managed to escape. Hawa Bibi was shot once and fled into the house. Her assailants fired at her through the window. And she died.

“And she died”. Do I not think this is a terrible, terrible system? Yes I do. Will things get worse? Yes they will. Will they get better? Yes they will. And the certainty with which I say that derives it’s backbone not from a detonation under a mountain or a belief that I am a part of a special religion. It is in the courage of Hawa Bibi that I see the seeds of our regeneration. A simple, illiterate fisherwoman from a village battling feudal smugglers knows it is only a matter of time before she will be killed. But she persists. And while her death makes me hate what we are, it also makes me love what we have the potential to be. If we are producing people like Hawa Bibi, we must be doing something right.



Then there are sportsmen (one day women will be here too). Jahangir Khan was a model of sportsmanship and talent throughout his career; respect for him grew even more after a recent article in which he said that hard work was the basis of his success. Focus on your game and not on your self. There was Imran Khan (though his ‘I’ have won the world cup comment didn’t go down too well, but lets take it as the first signs of the illness that is currently embracing him), and even further back the Mohd brothers. And what about our hockey players? And our sailors? And the millions of children clambering up trees and running down streets with visions of greatness in their heads? It saddens me to see our children don’t have enough parks to play in and enough pitches to speed down, but it makes me proud to see them go ahead and do it nonetheless, on roads and in gardens and the sand on the beach. I see in them the spirit that will lift us up and take us out of our current squalor, a spirit that says rain might wash away the boundaries of this field but let my boundaries be the sea foam, the mountains my wickets, and my heart shall soar like a scavenger bird and clear it all.

But the movement of the human spirit has already been captured in the tones of some of our musicians. Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was just the tip of the iceberg. There are tabla players and sitar players and folk musicians and melody makers and singers that reach into a listener’s heart and play ping pong with its beats. They borrow their words from the legacy of our poets, translated into many languages and revered worldwide. The writing of Parveen Shakir or Manto or Chugtai might well have inspired original compositions. They perform in silks, and khaddar, ajraks and embroidery, in cuts and fabrics the global fashion scene is now beginning to use too.

Then there are the places that make me proud to be a Pakistani. There is the beauty of the desert at night when the open spaces and the naked sky conspire to make you a mote under a magnifying glass. There is the Kunhar River flowing through the Kaghan Valley, lapping against lush grass, nibbling at rocks felled by the tools of progress or simply the passage of time. All of it framed by mountains. And the Hunza Valley. And it is as if the people of the valleys see themselves as the bearers of a sacred trust, the promise that no ethnic or religious discord will taint the pristine beauty of their surroundings. I was just sitting by the side of the road looking at a glacier bubbling under it when two local women appeared out of nowhere and asked me home to tea. Others told us if anyone attempted to stir up violence he was taken up in a procession and thrown into the river. I’d never been up north before this year, but I can tell you, I returned with a renewed sense of exactly how much we, as a nation, have been blessed with.

There are beaches in Baluchistan and tree tunnels on the roads from Hyderabad to Thar and Karachi to Lahore that silence conversation with the simple fact of their beauty.

There is a male model from Lahore called Farooq Mannan who does the same to certain women I know.



And journey’s end finds me in Karachi. City, beast, giant reptile crawled out of the surf to sun itself, call it what you like. How can I drive down the streets of this city, this testament to human enterprise and endeavor, and not be proud? One answer is to get hit by a car driven by a lunatic with no civic sense. Even when that happened, and we returned after giving chase to pick up the pieces, two men came running up out of nowhere, asked if we were the ones who’d had the accident and then handed us a rubber strip. “Yeh aap ki gari say gir gaya tha”. Then they disappeared. There must have been easily a couple of thousand people along that road, some waiting for buses, others just enjoying the fresh air. But there were also two men who observed, and waited, did what they felt was right and left.

Sometimes it takes the kindness of strangers to renew a sense of belonging, and of pride.