Twilight of a Passionate Love Affair

A number of fronts......

- You and your father were lucky to have the patience to talk to each other. These days they both can`t understand each other.

- On Haroon Siddiqui being a good journalist......he sure is a Muslim but from India thus he is good at what he does..... (name a single Pakistani desi that has done well and is know by many?)
- Seems you have a leg fetish... the reason why i say that is because at 10 you were checking legs out.....
- See a lot of closeness between you and your father..... which is good, as you have the courage to accept the fact that you learnt thing from him.....
- As for desi and the way the acted after Sept. 11th....... what could they do.... they were terrified as they had never experienced this before... felt sorry for them but sometimes felt happy..... they now know how minorities feel in Pakistan.
- It`s nice to hear from someone who studied and lived in the US that Canada is the place where you would like to bring up your kids.

I can go on and on...... however, a nice way to present you thoughts....

Romair,
This is a lovely essay, laced with humor. Very engaging. I enjoyed reading it and may even reread it. Hope to read more from you.

Romair,

Your article reveals a subtle but unmistakable anger and resentment against the US. I understand that you don`t like US foreign policy especially in Iraq. While you admire the US society and its accomplishments, you also seem to wish that somehow it was brought down to its knees.

While I am no admirer of US Iraq policy, the fact remains that the entire chain of events was triggered by 9/11. The US did not start all this; in fact, they did not really care what was going on in Iraq or Afghanistan prior to 9/11. On 9/11, a war was declared on the US and it is doing its best to fight that war against an invisible enemy to the best of its abilities. The US definitely made a mistake with the Iraq war but, in general, the war on terror is a legitimate conflict between the forces of civilization and the destructive, loony jihadis, who are worse than animals in their behavior. Canada can take the high road because it was not attacked on 9/11. If it were, who knows how the Canadians would have behaved? If Pakistan was attacked like that, how would Pakistanis behave? I think in light of the grave provocation on 9/11, Americans in general have conducted themselves with admirable restraint.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

This was a very lively piece; haunting at times but conversational in affect. Thank you for sharing it with CHOWK readership. Please do come back.

Mohammed Amjed

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

doublec
(name a single Pakistani desi that has done well and is know by many?)
You guys do good to put other down? Is Performance criteria of intelligence measued by getting an editoril job in NEWSWEEK? Grow up dude!!
How about ONE BILION without an olympic gold medal?

Umair
Nice article. I enjoyed a great eal.

Umair - a very well written essay. you summed up all those small bits and pieces that occured in the eventful 2003 in Canada.

During my stay in Canada, I used to regularly watch CBC. After years of watching CNN, I had almost forgotten what true journalism looked like. As opposed to the rating driven news programs on CNN, such as Crossfire - where soundbites are more important than in-depth analysis, it was a welcome surprise when I saw the serious investigative journalism occuring on CBC. My ears were not used to hearing the taboo arguments being made on national TV. It was in Canada that I realized what a free media looked like. I particularly looked forward to watching this program called ``The Passionate Eye``. In this program they would show a documentary on a particular subject, lets say Palestine, and then they would have ordinary people from Canada in studio debating the subject.

A few words about Israel (Izzy) Asper`s media empire. This man, and his family, is on a mission to make Canadian media as docile and compliant as the US media. He does not hesitate to fire columnists who do not tow his line on Israel. In fact, he made this policy that the editorial of his various regional newspapers under his ownership would be written in Calgary - where he lived. This was an attempt to control the editorials. I salute the brave journalists (including Haroon Siddiqui) who protested and fought tooth and nail against these fascist acts.

One of Izzy`s flagship newspaper, National Post, did its best to push Canada into the fire of Iraq war, with sensational stories and editorials. This paper also had a bit of thuggish attitude. One of its reporter, Stewert Bell, wrote an article which essentially said that Muslims in Canada cannot be trusted. As one would expect, some muslims wrote him emails protesting his reporting. Unfortunately (and stupidly) some of these muslims used their company`s email account to do that. Stewart had his staff call up the companies` presidents/CEOs, telling them the name of their employees who had written emails, and asking whether the company endorsed their views, since they were expressed using company`s email account!!!!!

An interesting tid bit about Fareed Zakaria. At 28 he became the youngest Managing Director of the monthly Foreign Affairs magazine - a very conservative journal. His brother, Arshad Zakaria, who I met while working at Merrill Lynch, became one of the youngest Managing Director in Merrill Lynch`s history - also at 28.

Hello Umair, that was a good article, thanks.

Some day you should try to bring Australia and New Zealand into the comparative, too, as representatives of the various ``goraa`` new world experiments.

But why is your love affair reaching (a) twilight so soon?

cheers/veeresh

Malik99, nice comments. I too read Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek. I agree that his views are indeed very conservative and right wing. Anyways its good to have a desi journalist in Int`l media.

great article...really enjoyed it...didnt want it to end...and then I read the interacts...it was only then that I realized that you are Romair...huge difference in your interacts and articles...I like Umair Raja more than Romair

regards

Kabuli

P.S. I wanted to study in Vancouver...dad disagreed...makes me think what might have been if I had gone to UBC.

Hi umair, GR here. A nice look at your favourite country right? Stiill waiting for that
post card you promised. Must read your other noncanadian matter as well.

This is clearly one of the finest pieces of writing I have come across at chowk for past so many years. Thanks for sharing your feelings and experiences with us. I find them enlightening and motivating. A job well done.

I think America needs a complete overhaul in its outlook towards the rest of the world - a complete paradigm shift, if it wants to survive as a respected and law abiding citizen of this perpetually shrinking world. My personal assessment is that the down-ward spiral that US has caught itself into is irreversible - I do not see any DeGaul on the horizon who could save America now. Unfortunately, what goes up, must come down. This is the law of nature.

Romair:
This message from the Qura`an about having an ``aloof-attachment`` with the earthly-matters is perhaps what your father was giving. The english equivalent you have given does not do convey this sense. So what did he really say?

butaaN-e veh O gumaaN,....?
Faraib soo-O-ziaN...?

P.S: Good mental odyssey; mgar ``abhee ishque kay imtihaaN aur bhee haiN``

Umair
Simply brilliant article

Akbar ahmed was a professor at Cambridge, he made tv documentary about islam, was a regular writer for guardian newspaper before he shifted to America.

He wrote to the eternal shame of the Europeans the’ve virtually wiped out jews, never in the history of mankind have so few contributed so much.

BTW the gora’s don’t regard them as one of their own.
Regards
Your fellow kashmiri
aslam

I read an article in Dawn`s Magazine for last weekend; it was written by an extremely bitter immigrant who obviously wasn`t enjoying his life in Canada. The whole article gave a very negative vibe, and if that was not enough, the writer called Canada the ``frozen wasteland in the north or a parking lot``. I felt this angered sadness/sadened anger. With the kind of perspective the writer had, I won`t be surprised of he packs his bag and returns to Pakistan mumbling about the `insult` immigration had been.

But this article is great. I think all immigrants - probably especially us desis - should really get into the swing of things here. By that I mean, be a part of things Canadian so that we don`t have our elephant-egos trampled upon by being considered different. I find many desis/muslim folks engrossed too much in ensuring that August 14th/Eid comes across as a very important occassion for their kids - great! learning experience and such, right? - but what happens to us when it is Canada Day or something else (that protest, for example). It seems odd that one should live/work/study/play/sleep in Canada and at the end of the day, feel more (Put foreign origin nationality here) than anything .... I don`t think I got that across clearly. Back in highschool, this guy who was East European by origin was arguing over standing for O Canada - ``but I am not a Canadian!`` - I am not sure what he meant by that. The point is, it seemed that a lot of fellow desis had a similar point of view. They were mostly joshilay jawan with the kind of passion for their faith/country (of origin, ofcourse) that would send them flying into jihad or something silly like that. My question used to be, well, if you are so much in love with the place where you came from & that you ...like, get offended if some gora is nice enough to call you Canadian ... then why the hell not go back to where you came from? Yeah, go back to where you came from, your country must need all that love you got for it.

One gora friend said he looked forward to talking to me as a Canadian citizen when I become one but he also opposed the idea of having dual nationality. My brown/desi/whatever you wanna call it ego was deeply offended - I thought, abey goray, I will still be as brown and I will still talk the same way so why are you so excited about me becoming a Canadian.Canadian. I asked him the same question in a more civilized manner. He replied by saying that with dual nationality I would never really be very proud of just one place. I was still offended. It didn`t make sense. How can I not love both Canada and Pakistan and and how can I not be proud of my country and my country of origin? But I think now (having read this article and having reflected upon my 3 years in Canada) I understand what he meant ... I can`t decide if I am a Canadian, a Pakistani, a Canadian Pakistani, Asian, Canadian Muslim? I think I should work on being a Canadian.Canadian.

Cheers.