The thought of penning my feelings down first came to me as I laid in the labour room almost six years ago looking at the most beautiful baby a nurse had just put beside me thinking, literally, how absolutely perfect she was. After the 30 second tug of war between the over zealous heart of a new mother and the ever so pragmatic brain of a 26 yr old woman, the two reached a tie and declared, without bias, that my daughter Zahra, whose name I had chosen before her birth after the beloved daughter of the most honorable man the world will ever come know (PBUH), was perfect. In one moment I came to know myself as the luckiest person in the world and made a commitment to myself to record for memory sake, for the new love of my life, how her arrival was a reminder of the infinite blessings in my world. Ofcourse it didn’t take long for me to step back into the ‘real’ world. In face of the challenges I perceived and could not remedy, the pendulum of my perceptions swung between the glass, yes the infamous glass, being half empty or half full. But as we all know and have experienced, Allah SWT, in His infinite Wisdom and Grace, likes to bestow more blessings upon one than their worth. So He did so for me as well in the following few year in countless ways.. two of the most notable ones being the birth of my other two kids. I felt the same realm of emotions at their arrivals as well albeit with more perplexity. I felt humble and thankful ofcourse yet I felt absolutely humiliated when my son was born. As Muslims we believe we will all face God on the judgement day. I feel that moment, the first sight of my son, was a teeny tiny glimpse of coming face to face with Allah SWT, every fiber of my being humble and bowed in humility over years of ingratitude and His judgement on my countless sins – a wonderful baby boy. “Then which of the Blessings of your Lord will you deny” ayah rang in my ears and I hugged my baby certain that he and his sisters were fruits of some miniscule act performed years ago He liked. Whatever the reason, I take great comfort in feeling my Rehmaan and Raheem is on my side as I continue my journey in this life and prepare for the next. A journey that remains ever so dialectic – with solidarity my thesis, intervention my antithesis and wisdom as my synthesis.
I start my first official blog today on, what else, Pakistan:
My dear husband Khalil and I have been married over 8 years now MA. Surely as one can imagine, we have gone though our share of patchy roads and roadblocks. I remember one of our first arguments ending in him telling me to just choose a side — and no I don’t mean broccoli or french fries with the roast chicken dinner — but either be canadian or pakistani as he proclaimed ‘na tum desi ho aur na he canadian’ (u’re neither Pakistani nor Canadian). Ofcourse in the fit of anger I was feeling at that time, my instinct to swing all his shots back at him took the better of me and I gave him some muddleheaded response to that. As a force of habit, or my womanly nature I suppose, I played back each line of the whole argument in my head once the dust settled and found his statement really amusing. The fact that I moved to Canada before my teen years and became a half desi-half wilaayiti anda as most ppl in my situation do is cause for great celebration in my opinion. I do not feel obligated to follow either culture blindly and take pride in cherry picking the greats of the two worlds to create my own perfect hybrid culture — if there is such a thing. The migration befuddled the emotions of my ambition as I grew older especially when I started university- the desire to rebel and the temptation to cling, the sense of allegiance and the need to repudiate, the alluring dream of escaping into the impossible unknown and the counterdream of holding fast to the comfortably familiar. For as long as I could hold the dichotomy, it felt like I was the better Pakistani. As my kids continue to grow and I start telling them about their/our heritage, I am not sure how to describe the land I was brought up to love and respect.
I have been working in the financial sector for the last few years. Finance is easy (I like to keep chanting that every weekend when I’m studying for my CFA exam on the verge of tears). It’s all about cycles. But then again isn’t everything in life — one of the more popular ones amongst desi women being ‘saas bhi kabhi bahu thee’. Be it the investment cycle, the business cycle, the consumer cycle, or the life cycle itself… things have a habit of mirroring events from the past. I like Mark Twain’s saying on the subject the best “History does not repeat itself but it does rhyme”. I do not know enough about Pakistan or its history to comment on the shifts and cycles it has experienced in its 65+ years being. If anything, I’ve actually just recently come to realize how I too, along with the rest of the world, was the innocent victim of the political ideological dogma of writers of my grade 3 ‘national studies’ books based on what I can only refer to as ‘selective amnesia’.
I remember parts of the two years I lived in Pakistan quite well, the stories I heard, the debates I witnessed. Did I get the whole story? What is the whole story anyways? The story of USA – Muslims’ nemesis; the story of Jews – wrath of God; the story of Palestine – armed resolution; the story of Israel – eventual destruction; the story of India – our atom bomb; the story of Nehru – a racist jerk. The moral of the stories? Not sure. The result of the stories? Current affairs.
Someone my husband and I know recently moved to Pakistan from the west. We felt shocked at this person’s decision to move to a country that unfortunately has little to offer its people esp compared to the one this individual had resided in the past few years. At the same time I felt an inkling of hope that with more ‘courageous’ people like him ready to try to make a difference in their homeland it will go a long way for the education and social system there. I was truly shocked when I came to know this person’s first big goal for his country, the same one that’s mentioned in major international newspapers every week for all the wrong reasons, the one that unfortunately has brought more shame to people like me living in a foreign land than pride- was to build a mosque. I have nothing against mosques. I proudly sponsor my local one to the best of my means and encourage everyone to do so. What I don’t understand is, how people like him fail to see one mosque after another, Alhumdulillah, on every other street in Pakistan. There are separate mosques for shites, sunnis, wahabis, xyz’s and more coming for every new fraction of the community that does not like the lectures the imam of the local mosque gives. Was the majority of the Pakistanis absent the day “Islamic Studies” class covered haqooq-al-ibad? Have the countless hadiths on being a true momin fallen on deaf ears?
I don’t know about the locals but from an outsider’s perspective, I think this is the time to consolidate our mosques instead of building new ones. I think it is time to use our resources to add one more water tap somewhere there’s the utmost need for it. Maybe it’s time to build a little institution for disabled kids. Perhaps initiate another micro-finance scheme in our community. My family in Pakistan relentlessly tells me about the endless problems there. Their yesterday’s exhaustion and today’s suffering obscure any notion of tomorrow. With solidarity as the last refuge for their impulses to intervene, they protest on social media. I think this is the time to invest some resources into a better education system, not necessarily the one that get our youth to top all international curriculum tests (though that would be fabulous) but the one that teaches kids to associate more practical and hopeful lessons from the words that currently boils their blood for reasons perhaps justified but results that remain worthless. Call me naive but maybe “USA” could get people to start talking about the heroics of the civil war when they get together at the next family potluck instead of 9/11 conspiracies. Maybe “Jews” can get a discussion going on their respect for Sultan Mohammed V even to this date for protecting them during the holocaust. I know if we started taking pointers from them on their PRACTICAL collective bond as a community, 90% of the Muslim world’s issues will be gone.
“India” should, for the pakistanis atleast, get a more heated debate going on success of their railway line, or agricultural techniques, or their competitive students. Heck you wanna talk about Nehru talk about the vast differences between Nehru and Gandhi and how they found a reconciliation ground on the back of their utmost patriotism. I personally would love to see Pakistanis discuss how Brazil improved its corruption rating (even though it continues to cost it billions of dollars a year). More than anything, it would be nice to see Pakistanis learn the Koran for a change, not only how to recite it in Arabic or memorize it but also to understand the essence of the wisest guide for us all. Perhaps then they can pay a little more attention to the wider community. Perhaps then they can break away from this cycle of cursing first at the politicians, then their boss, then their neighbour and finally all of the country having concluded – drum roll – ‘yeh qaum issi kaabil hay’. I grew up watching this episode. I’d like to think my kids won’t bear witness to the same soap opera. The unspoken but palpable story I find in Pakistan today is the same I felt 20 years ago as a kid – the story in all places, always: the human condition and the ever going issue of individualism. If that is overblown I do not apologize. History does rhyme. Sometimes you need a better gauge to see it – my Canadian background definitely helps.
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