Cogito ergo [entries|friends|calendar] imthemad1 [ website | Political stuff I do ] [ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

[25 Sep 2006|02:16pm] Questions are never indiscreet: answers sometimes are   Imaduddin Ahmed         "Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim”; By Ziauddin Sardar; Granta Books (2004); Pp 356; Rs 445     Ziauddin Sardar     ‘“Do I look like a deranged dictator to you?” Zia ul-Haq demanded. The whole table was stunned and immediately everyone seemed to find their food fascinating. My instant reaction was to shout out: “YES!”’   Islam is all the rage. The charade Hudood laws debate continues in parliament as I write, taking prime media space. Scholars and politicos are discussing how Islamic the Hudood laws are. The Islamist politicos in favour of the Hudood laws say they are defending the Shariah. Yet how often do you hear ‘the Shariah’ being questioned as a valid basis for law?. . . I thought so. Want to see how it is questioned? In his book Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical, Ziauddin Sardar concludes, ‘“[T]he Shariah as understood by Muslims today, has nothing really to do with the truth of Islam. It is in fact largely fiqh, a body of historically frozen judicial thought and rulings,’” which lends itself to authoritarianism and stifles the development of Islamic ideology and law. Sardar notes that for almost 150 years after the Prophet (pbuh), the religious knowledge of Islam was not called the Shariah. This knowledge was largely personal and somewhat subjective. Sardar’s highly entertaining autobiography is replete with criticisms of Islamic thought as he narrates his experiences with several visions of Islam and of significant historical moments in the past 30 years. Desperately Seeking Paradise also serves as a useful primer to scholastic works on Islam and movements in Islamic history. Through the course of the book we find Sardar searching for a way for Islam to flourish in the modern world. In this book, Sardar does not explain ‘why Islam?’, but through his seeking, he presents questions and criticisms – through very readable dialogues – that aren’t getting the media attention they deserve. Born in Dipalpur, Punjab but in Hackney since childhood, Sardar is a professional writer – he has published over 40 books. He spent his student days in the late ’60s and early ’70s as an activist in FOSIS (Federation of Students Islamic Society in UK and Eire). Our adventure with our guide to Islam begins as he opens his door to two well-meaning Muslims – a recurring theme throughout his life – and finds himself on the road the same day to encourage others in northern England to join the Tablighi Jamaat. Inspired by Al-Ghazali to seek knowledge by travelling, Sardar continues his journey beyond Sheffield. Among other places, he takes us to and examines mystical Konya, pre- and post-revolutionary Tehran and pre-Saddam Baghdad, Zia’s Pakistan, Muslim villages near Beijing, modernising Wahhabi Mecca, secular Istanbul and pluralist Kuala Lumpur. Bradford is also visited, where youths are only exposed to the radical views of racist Islamophobes and Khomeini, but not of moderate Muslims. On the way we are introduced, sometimes a tad too briefly, to Malcolm X, Maududi, members of the Saudi royal family, Iran’s revolutionary guards, al-Faruqi, Zia ul-Haq and Osama Bin Laden. Sardar also managed to penetrate the inner circle of the Malaysian deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim. Of course we are also introduced to a whole host of intellectuals and his own eclectic mix of eccentric friends – one of whom, Beaconhouse National University students will be delighted to find out – is Dr Gulzar Haider. ‘If one were to ask him, “How are you?” he would reply, “Last night in my dreams I saw snow crystals of such beauty that they will haunt me for the rest of my life.”’ Gulzar Haider, like Sardar, found Zia ul-Haq’s antics in Pakistan disheartening. Sardar wrote as much in an earlier book: ‘[I]n Pakistan [. . .] a deranged dictator sits on the throne [. . .] His first actions are to introduce ‘Islamic punishments’ – as if Islam begins and ends with them [. . .] Can there be a better invitation to Islam than this?’ This narrative gets him into trouble as Sardar meets Zia ul-Haq for the first time: ‘“Do I look like a deranged dictator to you?” he demanded. The whole table was stunned and immediately everyone seemed to find their food fascinating. I was conscious of turmoil in my inner self. Diplomacy is not my strong suit; tact, caution and a prudential turn of phrase have long been strangers to my nature. My instant reaction was to shout out: “YES!” I wrestled spontaneity to a draw and merely sat still and quiet. There is a famous Latin epithet to the effect that silence is assent; this would have to do.’ Yet Sardar survives to tell his tales . . . and to return to Pakistan in the wake of the Sofia Bibi case. Through conversations with Parvez Manzoor and Asma Barlas, Sardar dares to deconstruct the Shariah. Barlas, who challenges the witness laws, explains that the Shariah was formulated by jurists during the misogynistic Abbasid period. Despite being a thought provoking read, Desperately Seeking Paradise is a primer at best, and an unapologetically subjective one at that. But it functions to mirror the narrator’s experience: it encourages the reader to start her own journey. I, for one, am excited that I’ll start reading Islamic law as this article is published. Imaduddin Ahmed is Features Editor at The Friday Times www.thefridaytimes.com 1 comment|Fix it

op-ed in the Boston Globe!! [03 Sep 2006|03:43pm] he point of publishing it in the US is to put pressure on Musharraf, although I should have reminded the Americans that they've been just as disinterested in Pakistani women's rights when it didn't suit them. (Zia's regime was their third largest recipient of foreign aid because he did their bidding in Afghanistan.) http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/09/03/pakistans_charade_debate/ The Boston Globe Op-ed Pakistan's charade debate By Imaduddin Ahmed | September 3, 2006 LAHORE, Pakistan THE BATTLE for basic women's rights -- including the right to have a rapist prosecuted -- is back on the agenda in Pakistan. Since 1979, laws known as the Hudood ordinances have placed a heavy burden on Pakistani women. Among other things, the ordinances criminalized extramarital sex. They also stipulated that if a complaining rape victim failed to produce four credible male witnesses to prove the rape, she had indulged in extramarital sex and thus committed a crime. In 1979, there were 79 women in jail; by March 2006, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, more than 6,000 were in custody. Three-quarters were awaiting trial for violating the Hudood ordinances. To Pakistan's shame, it has taken 27 years for a bill amending these misogynistic laws to appear in front of its legislature. Among other changes, rape would be added to the country's penal code. Four witnesses would no longer be required to prove the crime, and indirect and circumstantial evidence could be considered. Extramarital sex would become a bailable offense, so the accused at least would not languish in jail. Whether women will ultimately benefit from the debate remains to be seen. The country's president, General Pervez Musharraf, is supporting the amendments. But religious parties fiercely oppose any changes. Members have ripped up the bill in parliament, staged street protests, and declared that the amendments will promote vulgarity and obscenity in society. The whole battle began in 1979, with General Zia ul-Haq's so-called ``Islamization" of the law. Needing to legitimize his military dictatorship in the eyes of the populace, he introduced the Hudood ordinances, claiming that they reflected Islamic law. (They do not.) Zia died in 1988. Yet two democratically elected civilian prime ministers failed to repeal or change the oppressive ordinances. Benazir Bhutto wanted to change the law but her Cabinet, fearing the breakdown of her ruling coalition with Islamist parties, warned her not to. Nawaz Sharif and many members of his party had been nurtured by Zia and, in fact, wanted to further Islamize Pakistan's laws. Musharraf deposed Sharif's government in 1999. Like Zia, he brought his own radical changes -- this time to legitimize his rule to Western governments and the liberal citizenry, including women's rights groups. Musharraf introduced minimum quotas for women in the local, provincial, and national governments. He also deregulated and privatized the media. That step led to broader discussion of whether the Hudood ordinances were truly Islamic. At last, people could hear alternative views from qualified Islamic scholars, as opposed to the rigid opinions listened by many on Friday sermons. In a series broadcast this year on the channel Geo TV, Islamic scholars concerned with the misuse of religion have all but discredited the Hudood ordinances. Some have called for the ordinances' repeal. The government now has religious justification to repeal the ordinances. Nevertheless, the amendments offered by Musharraf's ruling party fall short of demands by jurists, Islamist scholars, and women activists for an outright repeal of the ordinances. Musharraf's party and its coalition partners hold about 60 percent of the legislature's seats. A simple majority would be enough to pass the amendments. Yet the ruling party has entered private negotiations with religious parties to come to a ``compromise." Why? Ultimately, women's fundamental rights are not the deciding issue. Musharraf is struggling to legitimize his rule. Amendments to the Hudood ordinance are a bargaining chip to use to keep the religious coalition from bringing up questions about his own authority. Who are the beneficiaries of this debate? Musharraf, for one, hopes to win plaudits from the Western and domestic press for his ``efforts" against the country's opportunistic Islamist politicos. With their recent antics, the religious parties are playing into Musharraf's hands, and playing to their own constituents. If they can water down the amendments significantly, they can boast that they preserved Pakistan's ``Islamic" law. Depending on how the negotiations go, women will be lucky to take anything positive from this charade. Imaduddin Ahmed is an editor at The Friday Times and a former employee of the Aurat Foundation, a women's rights organization. © Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company. © 20 The New York Times Company 2 comments|Fix it

Making it happen [19 Dec 2005|12:25pm] so this article i wrote goes part way to explaining why i quit working for NGOs. The key to mobilising civil society is faith in the power of Pakistan’s citizenry “I thought this was a dead nation, but the earthquake seems to have had a silver lining. The nation has woken up and everybody is doing what they can: you’ve noticed the collection points for supplies on every chowk. Even children are conducting door-to-door canvassing drives and contributing pocket-money,” commented my dentist, a few days after the earthquake. On the other hand, the executive director of a prominent NGO introduced a panel discussion reviewing earthquake relief efforts with a different perspective: “People have been surprised at the activism of ordinary Pakistanis in the wake of the earthquake. But we have known this for a long time; indeed, we’ve relied on the activism of civil society. Our paid staff can only do so much; we wouldn’t be able to run national grassroots campaigns without our volunteers.” It is clear that the October 8th earthquake galvanised Pakistanis and moved many citizens to varying degrees of action. All around us are tales of faceless heroes; perhaps only those who have devoted their lives to the task can document the story of every individual or group. No society can be generalised as a homogenous entity. Nevertheless, the varying degrees of dynamism and the efforts of some groups and individuals can be viewed as indicative, if not representative, of traits of Pakistan’s urban civil society. Little has appeared in the press regarding the volunteer activism of people in Pakistan’s urban centres who were not directly affected by the earthquake. In part, this media silence is due to the reticence of the workers themselves. “If we get coverage, the danger is that the work becomes secondary to the workers,” responded the founder to the Survivors Support Group (SSG), one of Lahore’s post-quake civil society groups as the management committee debated the pros and cons of media coverage. Eventually, the group agreed to talk to The Friday Times under the condition of withholding their names. The founder of the SSG, a practicing doctor at Lahore’s Defence National Hospital and Fatima Memorial Hospital, was moved to action the morning after she met her first patient from Kashmir, less than a week after the earthquake. “She was a pretty 15-year old girl, studying for her matriculation,” recalled the doctor. “She was lying in bed and was extremely cheerful. All she said was, ‘I’m fine. I’m here for surgery and I’m going to be alright. I’m worried about my bruised eye.’ My heart sank when I checked her MRI and learnt that she would never walk again.” This girl is now at the GOR Behbud Complex, one of the spinal-injury rehabilitation centres set up by the SSG in collaboration with other groups. “That night, I listened to my son’s quiet breathing as he slept, and I was filled with gratitude,” the doctor told me. “The following morning, I messaged people and while at work, quickly made a 12-point agenda. I was surprised at the number of people who attended the meeting that evening. I’d included rehabilitation in the agenda and the people who came to that first meeting thought it too ambitious. But we have managed to achieve more than the original goals.” Through the perusal of newspaper reports, the doctor realised that injured and traumatised patients and their families ‑ then arriving at Lahore’s hospitals ‑ would need an emotional and psychological support programme. Sharing her vision with close friends and colleagues, she tapped into the latent and dynamic energy of well-endowed ladies of Lahore. The result was a motivated collective of doctors, educationists, lawyers and citizens, and the group quickly organised workshops for those willing to counsel patients and their families. Within a month, the SSG had trained nearly 450 volunteers. Approximately 80 per cent of these volunteers were women, representing widely diverging socioeconomic backgrounds and ranging in age from 17 to 55. People had heard about the group by word of mouth, text messages or had been recruited from educational institutions. 70 volunteers, including students and faculty members, attended the training session at LUMS and an SSG hospital coordinator who had addressed a psychology class of 32 MAO Government College students recalled that, “We were expecting maybe half of them to turn up for the training later, but 34 people showed up on the dot at 10am on a Sunday morning!” The SSG identified and profiled over 900 patients and 2000 of their relatives in Lahore’s private and government hospitals, including the National, Doctors’, Services, Ganga Ram, Jinnah, General, Mayo and Sheikh Zayed Hospitals. Meanwhile, students from the University of the Punjab’s Sociology Department had embarked on a similar endeavour. Having learned from the newspapers that earthquake survivors arriving at Lahore’s hospitals had no iftari or sehri, the students started preparing meal packets funded by their own pockets, the Department’s “Golden Jubilee Celebration Fund,” and donations from individuals and the SSG. “We would distribute and fill our surveys during the day and then work on new data methodologies to assess the patients’ needs, sometimes until sehri,” reported a 23-year old Sociology BSc student from Gujranwala, the group leader of 22 volunteers from the University of the Punjab and the Oriental College of Arts. “I gave my mobile phone number to the patients so I was on call for their needs 24 hours a day.” Meanwhile, the ever-expanding number of SSG volunteers visited the hospitals with varying regularity, providing patients and their families their empathy and private offerings ‑ food, toiletries, clothing, bed linen and donated stoves. An SSG helpline number was provided to most patients and their relatives. To date, the SSG has provided 1200 ‘relief bundles’ (bedding and toiletry materials, warm clothes, dry food and a tent) to individuals who have left Lahore and arranged transportation for 50 of them. The rent of 12 families has been taken care of until March, the money having been paid directly to the landlords. For 42 earthquake survivors, some of whom travelled from the north to join their families in Lahore, free housing has been arranged at hostels in Johar Town and Thokar Niaz Beg. In Meratanoliyan near Muzaffarabad, the SSG has established a clinic and a school for 1065 registered people in a tent village set up by its sister organisation, Ehsaas. At the same time, sewing machines have been provided to women who have been commissioned to stitch school uniforms for 391 registered students. In Abbottabad, the SSG has set up a physiotherapy department at the DHQ Hospital in collaboration with the Fatima Memorial Hospital, which is now serving patients in Abbottabad and outlying areas in Mansehra. Said the founder of the SSG, “I want to clarify that all the Lahore hospitals did great work in housing the patients and providing them free treatment for the length of the stay; many doctors and hospital administrators have done a lot of relief work in the north.” The work didn’t end here. The intensity of the earthquake left large numbers of paraplegic and amputee patients and in this regard, the SSG has raised Rs 1.5 million from private donations. These are being channelled through the Saeeda Zubaida Memorial Foundation and none of the funds are being spent on administrative costs. The SSG is now establishing contact with international donor agencies, facilities and medical specialists ‑ including the physician who took care of Christopher Reeve ‑ and groups providing prosthetic limbs. Three facilities with rehabilitation programmes have been established for paraplegics: at the Behbud Complex, in collaboration with Fatima Jinnah Old Graduates, the Bali Memorial Helpline and the consultative units of the hospitals where the patients were originally looked after; at the Mumtaz Bakhtawar Hospital in collaboration with Mumtaz Bakhtawar Trustees and the Sheikh Zayed Hospital; and at the Ganj Baksh Spinal Research and Rehabilitation Centre. The SSG has also facilitated the transfer of patients into Hijaz Hospital and Gulberg Lions Hospital, which are working independently. So far, there are only 56 spinal injury patients and 6 amputation patients in these Lahore facilities, so offers from other private hospitals have not yet been availed. Two rehabilitation specialists from the US have committed their participation in January, while the SSG also envisions facilitating vocational training for the patients, micro-financing and schooling for the able-bodied. Declining offers of employment in NGOs in the wake of their volunteer work, some students from the University of the Punjab are working on establishing their own NGO: Abyari is currently looking for donors that will allow it to help rebuild the lives of the earthquake survivors. Abyari’s group leader is planning to pursue a Masters degree in Public Administration, contrary to the wishes of his family who want him to return to the family’s oven factory. “We [the students] kept each other motivated,” he commented. “Obviously, our grades suffered; but seeing the patients every day and being asked for help meant we couldn’t stop. My father supported me greatly but the family demanded that I come and visit. Of course, the initial urge was inspired by what the Quran taught me as a child, but a lot of it was simply humanity.” The founder of the SSG, however, cited humanity as an implicit and faith as an explicit motivation. “We may have our own little cribs at the end of the day, but these people have lost everything – forget their homes: their family, their limbs, their ability to live independent lives,” she mused. “I don’t know why this happened, but I firmly believe that we will not be forgiven if we do not get involved.” A similarity that draws these two civil society leaders ‑ the founder of the SSG and the University of the Punjab’s student heading Abyari – together is that their post-quake activism was not their first taste of volunteerism. Aside from other activities, the founder of the SSG volunteered her time at government hospitals and free clinics. The student leader used the social capital of his family name to help community members address their problems with WAPDA, and learnt data collection techniques under the aegis of the NGO Bargad, which focuses on youth empowerment. A deeper look reveals that the two civil society leaders’ self-confidence may also stem from family backgrounds: one is the daughter of a retired general, the other is the nephew of the nazim of UC 38 in Gujranwala. The activism in the hospitals of Lahore may not have gone far had the SSG not enjoyed the appropriate connections. As administrations wearied of unidentified people walking in and out of their hospitals in the early weeks following the earthquake, it became necessary to establish credibility. The SSG approached the Governor of the Punjab, as a result of which the group’s relations with the Punjab Secretary of Health and government hospital administrations were facilitated. “The offices of the Governor of the Punjab, the Secretary of Health and the Federal Relief Commission were very helpful,” I was told by the SSG doctor. “We didn’t want to criticise them, so we weren’t a threat. We didn’t want to become part of their machinery, and we didn’t want publicity, otherwise we’d have become prisoners of that publicity.” Subsequently, offers of help in interfacing with government departments have been made to the SSG by the Chief minister, the Punjab Relief Commissioner, the Secretary of Social Welfare and the District Nazim. The founding SSG members’ confidence that they had the government connections necessary for smooth relations may, in part, explain why certain sections of the civil society outshone salaried NGO activists in the earthquake relief efforts. Relatively few NGO employees enjoy direct links with government officials and, to an extent, are trained by their supervisors to wait for orders instead of taking spontaneous action. Indeed, one of the SSG’s hospital coordinators wonders how active most of the less-connected students and NGO workers would have been, had he not approached them, “Of course they wanted to do something, and that’s why they joined the effort,” he commented, “but I don’t think that they had the direction or confidence to take the initiative and start something themselves.” What is needed is increasing initiative and civic participation from people of all socioeconomic backgrounds; that would entail bolstering the confidence of those who do not come from families with power. It is easy to bemoan the real and perceived lack of justice in Pakistan, corruption, insufficiencies of infrastructure and the lack of work ethic, all of which combine to hinder activism. On the other hand, one could try and take charge of one’s own actions: “Yes, there is a lack of confidence, a lack of trust, a lack of coordination,” agreed the founder of the SSG. “But I believe in the goodness of people. There is little point in being needlessly cynical or critical; there is good in everybody, you just have to tap into it. The national volunteer programme might give citizens the required direction and confidence. The volunteers of the SSG believe in self-accountability, not just the self-righteous accountability of others.” More information is available at www.survivorssupportgroup.com and www.ehsaas.com.pk 1 comment|Fix it

I Want to Promote Young Writers with Pakistan's The Friday Times [25 Nov 2005|02:10pm] so today i hosted my office-mates a tea-party, thanking them for their friendships, sharing themselves with me and giving me their khidmat, dosthi and pyaar. aurat foundation is an organization which does have real output in seeing social change in pakistan, and i've been proud to serve with them. i'm thankful to my colleagues and the organisation for introducing me to Pakistan and my people. i'll be moving on to learn more about my country and people with The Friday Times, who'll hook me up with Lahore Press Association membership, teach me the ropes of beat-journalism, critical reading, thinking and writing and give me the  title and work experience of the "Features Editor". TFT isn't a weekly newsmagazine with a grassroots appeal in Pakistan because it's written in English; it's target is the Pakistani elite (from students to housewifes to professionals to  policy makers), international think-tanks and ex-patriots. I'll be wanting my writer  friends and xanga contacts to contribute with - issues features (social issues - like living in an orphanage in the Czech Republic or rehabilitation centre for dispossessed youths in Tajikistan, how ethnic minorities are treated in your part of the world) - travel features (eg can be photographic with creative writing style, can be about trends in society you've noticed on your visit or the natural environment etc, can be humourous and teasing the lines of political correctness. can be of anywhere in the world.) - cultural features (either art/music/dance/theatre events or cultural movements) - encounters and profile features (of a famous personality or a person who should be better known, or an encounter with an Ustad) - insights features (eg can be about your experience of  living and working as a medic in Afghanistan, living in a conservative Bible-belt of the USA, observing capitalist commodification of females as acceptable but protesting with boobs as criminal in California) - book reviews (of books published post 2004 or books published a long time ago but which have a new relevance to today) features should be be 1000-2500 words long, and it would be nice to get pictures as well. we also have a "my week" column which is about 800-1200 words long and should be light hearted / humourous. pay is Rs 2000 (c. $40) for articles published on two pages, and Rs 1500 for articles published on one page, but cheques take a long time to process. consequently, sending in articles should be done with the primary intention of wanting to be published by a prestigious Pakistani English newsweekly (the nation's first).  there's no limit to what your subject topics are, but articles relating to Islam/Judaism/Christianity/Hinduism/Buddhism, immigrants and ethnic minorities (from anywhere, based anywhere, like the Czech Republic, for example), bonded labour, child labour and labour rights, women's rights, human rights, globalisation, the aftermath of the tsunami / earthquake, life in Pakistan's neighbourhood (Afghanistan, Iran, India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China, Nepal etc) and observations from Pakistan's most thought about countries (UK, USA, Canada) are of particular interest to Friday Times readers. we have Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan, so we won't publish religiously controversial statements or articles, things that offend Pakistani sensitivities (there are ways of being bold if you're clever, but don't write graphic descriptions of the Folsom Street Festish Festival in San Francisco) or material that will hold TFT libel for personal slander. TFT is a little random in what it publishes at the moment. but the nice thing about being a part of a country of emigrants is that people appreciate news stories from different parts of the world. to send your articles, email tftpklhr@gmail.com and carbon copy to my personal email address imaduddin@gmail.com 2 comments|Fix it

Personal Appeal for Earthquake Relief Aid in North Pakistan [13 Oct 2005|02:56pm] I can personally assure you that your money will be spent well. I am supervising the purchasing and organization of supplies. Imad Tens of thousands of people have lost their lives and an estimated 2.5 million people have been left homeless by the devastating 7.6-magnitude earthquake in Northern Pakistan. Thousands more will die if they don't receive warm clothing, tents, blankets, matches, medical supplies, clean food and water. To assist with the earthquake relief in Northern Pakistan, Aurat Foundation has also set up an account in the Union Bank. Cheques should be made payable to the “Aurat Foundation Earthquake Relief Fund”, Account Number: 6214-028806-050, Bank Code: UNBLPKKAXXX, Union Bank Ltd., LDA Plaza, Edgerton Road, Lahore, Pakistan. The money will be used to buy items most needed and the fuel for transporting them. All the aid received in kind would be distributed by Aurat Foundation's Islamabad and Peshawar Offices. Our staff will themselves take the goods to the districts and deliver them to our very responsible and committed voluntary citizens' networks at the local level. The Peshawar Office has chosen to focus on three districts for the moment, because from all accounts, despite the extensive damage, Shangla, Kohistan, and Battagram have received much less relief than some of the other badly hit districts. For the same reason, the Islamabad Office has selected Bagh and Rawala Kot in Azad Kashmir. A note about Aurat Foundation Aurat Publication and Information Service Foundation (Aurat Foundation/AF) was registered in 1986 as a non-profit society under the Societies’ Registration Act 1860. Aurat Foundation has its Head Office in Lahore, and five regional offices in the federal and the provincial capitals (Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta). Further, AF has a countrywide network of voluntary citizens’ groups and individual activists. These groups include Citizens Action Committees (CACs), District Coordination Committees (DCCs), Resource Groups and Aurat Foundation Resource Centres (AF-RCs) and Information Network Centres (INCs). With its local partners in all the 110 districts of Pakistan, AF is a national organisation with the largest district level network in the country. AF is a civil society organisation working for women’s empowerment and citizens’ rights with the collaboration of citizens’ groups and organisations to provide information, build capacity and undertake advocacy for women’s issues and for transparent and good governance in Pakistan. Although Aurat Foundation concentrates its efforts on advocacy, the disaster demands that AF use the strength of its network to distribute necessary supplies to those who need them. 7 comments|Fix it

Ending Violence Against Women in Pakistan through Political Participation [30 Aug 2005|04:24am] I've experienced living as an "other" growing up, first in England, and later in some parts of the USA - I would feel the dehumanizing stares walking down the street, in restaurants, hotels or in the pub while with friends. To me, England's St George's cross symbolized skin-head racism and football hooliganism, and the Union Jack and Stars and Stripes (post 11th September) supremacist jingoism. But the Pakistani "jhanda" didn't mean that to me, except perhaps at cricket matches, where ex-pat desis are all about showing off their "Paki-pride". The flag symbolized hope and optimism; of people being able to envision a national community that they could identify with. The white stripe in the flag serves to remind us about our responsibility of maintaining a brother and sisterhood to our non-Muslim minority population and to acknowledge their claim to OUR nationhood. My first Pakistan Day since my move to the motherland in December was a day that I wanted to feel hope in envisioning a Pakistan I could be proud to be a part of. On the night of the 14th August, the streets of Lahore were filled with young men riding their motorcycles with reckless abandon and breaking a multitude of traffic laws waving flags and wearing Pakistani colours, with the traffic police about as effective as if they were given the holiday. Although the men were dressed in western clothes, it would have been an inspiring sight for me had I seen it the night before. However, the eve of Pakistan's 58th birthday served to teach me that just as waving St. George's Crosses, Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes incited a certain fear and loathing in the other, Pakistan celebrations incited terror in Pakistan's "other" - the woman. Naively, I took a couple of foreign friends, both women, to enjoy the Pakistan celebrations with the people of Pakistan, and listen to the successful Pakistani pop-industry in the non-elitist environment of the Race Course Park of Lahore. The result was at groping, a pile-on, ripped kameez and tears. My friend wrote later, " I thought I would find humanity and spirituality in the East, but here I am in Pak-istan, in a “Muslim” society where attacking two women in the middle of hundreds of people is considered normal and unpreventable. And I refuse to understand the logic that prisons women indoors, just because men have uncontrollable animal instincts… One needs to do something. We need to do something…" Hers is a political call for the women of Pakistan to reclaim the public space and redefine what it means to be a Pakistani woman - from the meat that the man on the street sees and gropes, the object of honour that stays obediently and submissively at home, the land-losing nuisance, to the human being with a will of her own that a man will be forced to respect as an equal in public spaces. ==== In response to an interview where NWFP's provincial cabinet deputy leader, Siraj ul-Haq told The Telegraph, "We give respect to our women and we know their rights very well. It is in the best interest of women to remain inside the home," Shad Begum, mentee of murdered woman councilor Zubaida Begum of Dir, shared sentiments similar to my friends, "Women of our area have been facing a lot of problems. They don't have access to education, nor do they have basic health facilities. What have our politicians done to improve their lot? Nothing - except confining them to the four walls of their houses." What do women politicians do to improve women's lot? I had the chance to talk with women councilors in workshops across the country. Rana Siddiqi, district councilor for Hyderabad told me about her initiative in building a family park, a women's library and building a computer skills training vocational centre. Khadija Bibi, an illiterate woman married to her vegetable shop-owner husband at the age of 13 because her family had murdered his brother, comes from a village in Union Council 22, district Pakpattan. She described the situation, “Our people looked at women like cattle. Women would be dragged away at night and there were threats of them being kidnapped. I couldn’t bear the cruelty women faced… Even though my family locked me indoors for three days to stop me from contesting, I knew that God wanted me to run. I wanted to end the cruelty and torture.” Although Khadija Bibi hadn’t to date set up any institutional mechanisms to maintain better law and order in her village, the new respect and authority she had in her community allowed her to intervene in an incident where men were going to beat the husband of a raped woman to death. She felt that her presence as a councilor in the village had reduced public incidences of violence against women. She initiated and made sure that a telephone exchange was brought to her community, and approved a Rs 3 lakh budget for drainage and sewage and Rs 4 lakh for the development of a girls’ school. The exposure I've had to women councilors with Aurat Foundation changed my perception that Asma and Hina were the lone crusaders in a battle for women’s reclamation of their rights as humans in Pakistan. They are the well known faces of women who are doing something as they refuse to understand the logic that imprisons women indoors - but in 2001, a number of women decided to join their ranks as a record 60,590 women contested women's newly reserved seats in the local government elections. This year, 56 753 women contested for reserved seats (6.3% less contestants compared to 32% less reserved seats for women), with an overall 9% decrease in the number of seats won unopposed (to 16.7% of all women’s reserved seats) and 8% decrease in the number of seats left vacant (to 3% of all women’s reserved seats). Faisalabad has witnessed a full panel of women candidates contest the reserved and unreserved councilor, Naib Nazim and Nazim seats, and encouragingly, they represent a broad strata of society – one is a traditional birth assistant, another a business woman, one a principal of a private school, another a medical doctor, a couple of senior politicians, a couple of domestic worker and a tailor. As I toured the Gujranwala election polls for the first phase, I was inspired to see the commitment of women candidates and voters, especially from the lesser privileged backgrounds. The very high voter turn out (over 60%) I saw at polling stations in UCs 38, 61, 25 and 46 was indicative that the ordinary citizen felt like they had a stake in the political process, and particularly for women, that they had now had a space to see change. I did witness crowds of men erupting into rioting mobs and breaking through the gates guarded by armed police men at UCs 61, 25, 40 and 4, I did witness an abandoned polling station surrounded by an angry mob of shouting men in Noshera Verkan. I even probably witnessed election rigging at UC 38, polling station 3, District Council Complex and witnessed Chief Secretary of Punjab Karman Rasul, DCO of Gujranwala Chaudhry Masud and Regional Investigation Officer Tariq Hanif Goya, escorted by their 18 armed police elite men and women wearing “Anti-Terror No Fear” t-shirts, deal with situation incompetently. According to candidates of opposing groups, the Presiding Officer had introduced a fifth ballot box without showing the public that it was empty. She explained that the other four ballot boxes had become full and so she had to introduce the fifth box, but her story didn’t hold as the other four boxes were still being used to cast votes. Instead of telling the PO to immediately isolate the fifth box, our government officials told the PO that the box would be challenged after the voting day was over, and allowed votes to go into that box. The Election Commission’s duty to educate voters about the Joint Electorate system had failed as Muslims didn’t know that they had six votes and were obliged to cast a vote for the non-Muslim reserved seat. a crowd outside a women's polling station in UC 65/25, Gujranwala, that was to erupt into a mob the mob breaks into the women's polling station the mob shout protests at what they think is election poll rigging the armed police guide the mob out of the polling station In my tour of Lahore in the second phase of the elections, the story of the day was that NADRA and the Election Commission had botched up the democratic process by providing voter lists that didn’t list voters’ names, and inadequately trained Presiding Officers who didn’t know that matching NIC number and registration serial number were enough proof to verify that a citizen could cast their vote. Some polling stations were using 2001 election lists, which meant that the young voters under the age of 22 would have to go back home in disappointment. It was a sad story that none of my monitoring team, all residents of Lahore, were able to cast their votes because of precisely these reasons. (I wasn’t because I live in a military cantonment). Combined with voter apathy (reasons given by privileged Lahoris as, “Bus yaar, I wanted to enjoy my holiday and stay cool with the AC”, to “What difference does my vote make anyway?”, to “All the contestants are thieves and are corrupt. I’m not going to vote,”), the Lahore polling stations had disastrous voter turn outs, like an estimated turn-out of 20% by noon in UC 81. An empty polling station in Gulberg Town, Lahore waiting to vote Baat manliya. The local government elections were far from fair and free – watch your words, Mr Prime Minister, if you want the public and businesses to keep believing you. But even in apathetic Lahore, there were those inspiring voters, committed to the cause of active citizenry. An 80 year old woman, lieing her head on a table at Government High School Islamia in UC 3, Lahore, was ready to faint after waiting two hours in the heat to vote. She wasn’t leaving until her name was found on one of the lists in one of the polling stations. I think that I still have good reason to be hopeful for a Pakistan I can be proud of. Women participated in this election in many areas, though not all, as both voters and contestants – the other was serious about acknowledging her self and making her self part of the system of power. women voting 1 comment|Fix it

[09 Jul 2005|12:09pm] i die a little more with every day that passes that she's made no effort to respond to me. it's been so many days, she's been doing so many things and i've sent her so many emails. i'm trying to be my own hero. i think it's the same thing as the misguided (my value judgment) "Muslim" youth ideologues or the misguided (my value judgment) American youth who join the "Jihad" or the US army. maybe the difference is that i'm the one defining my parameters of what it means to be a hero, and i'm not buying into someone else's idea. education for the masses is my idol, so that they can decide AFTER they've developed the skills to be economically stable, developed their minds and developed their spirituality. when i was 5 and went to the mosque with my father, my father would tell me that i could pray after Salah for anything that i wanted. i would pray that i wanted to become a prophet, like Muhammed (pbuh), or Superman. i would continue that prayer outside that mosque as well. did anyone else reading this lj want to grow up to be a hero? 5 comments|Fix it

>:( since non of my lj friends looked at my xanga... [12 Jun 2005|11:54am] "if we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is to keep on walking." - ancient buddhist expression tariq uncle (dr tariq siddiqi) said i should keep a diary if i was going to be serious about my profession. i asked what profession that would be, and he replied, "You'll be a writer and a thinker, of course." not all my entries will be entries that a lot of people can relate to, and some entries where i've been taken into confidence will have to remain private, but tariq uncle said i need material, no matter whether some of it is bad or not. wajih nana (wajihuddin ahmed) liked my feature editorials a lot and jugnu mohsin said she knew i'd write a book one day, so with those words of encouragement, i'll write. my most productive, satisfying and amongst the two most amazing relationships ended today. i don't have qualms writing about it because i'm talking about my own experience, and lisa hasn't a claim to that. for me, her intellect and organized spirituality was a very special and unique combination that i fell deeply in love with. the fact that we shared the same visions of justice and romance for the work that we saw ourselves in was what brought us together in the grassroots campaign to defeat Bush, but ironically is what makes it difficult to envision a future with the two of us together. the love between us seemed to transcend the differences in our birth - that she was born american into a jewish lineage and i was born in pakistan, into a sunni muslim lineage - they seemed so irrelevant, but whenever we thought of it, it added a flavour of sass and spice to the relationship: people of two cultures that had many that hated the other culture were so deeply in love. indeed, we both have a vision to work towards ending the inhumane societal attitudes within our communities, but therein lies the obstacle to our consummate partnership. we identify and affiliate ourselves with communities, that we want to patriotically work for, on different sides of the globe.we admit to ourselves that we will be more productive working in changing the minds of people who were born like us. an american jewish woman would have difficulties advocating for women's rights in a nation (rightfully) suspicious of american neo-conservative ploys to convert their communities into consumerist societies ready to be exploited by the wheels of american capitalism and a society deeply suspicious (perhaps also rightfully) of anything related to israel; just as an immigrant muslim man would be rendered not as productive as a jewish american woman in the united states working for a just american policy in israel. we're practical idealists, and that's why we fell in love with each other. the tragedy is that we're having to part because we think the same way and we're working on the same side. lisa will always have my fullest love and respect. 4 comments|Fix it

birthday morning conversation [14 Apr 2005|09:38pm] Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye Leonard Cohen I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm, yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but now it's come to distances and both of us must try, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye. I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time, walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme you know my love goes with you as your love stays with me, it's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea, but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye. I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm, yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye. since it's along the same lines, i thought i'd make an addendum to the previous post. i was sixteen years old when i got an acute attack of an severely inflamed appendix, on holiday in pakistan of all places to be. the pain was excruciating. i felt like i was being stabbed by a sharp knife in the same place over and over again for over a day. the doctors weren't sure if it was appendicitis from my white blood cell tests and were in two minds about operating, given that it may have been unnecessary. i was hoping that it wasn't appendicitis and i wouldn't have to be operated on; i had never been operated on before and i was very anxious about breaking that trend. i can't remember how much decision power was given to me exactly, but i think i had some. i am grateful for having read Franklin Delano Roosevelt's statement, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" in my history class. i was very afraid of being afraid of the further pain, but in the end, i overcame that fear and consented to the operation. it worked out for me, the operation actually was a lot less painful than the appendicitis, and after having seen my appendix and insides, my surgeon told me that had i waited a day longer, i might have died. fear had been the real danger of the day. we have a limited time on earth, and we can do our part to see how we can change it in the way we would like to see it. if we're optimistic about being optimistic, we can enjoy the way we live in this world. i'm afraid of losing my optimism. ===== april 2 i need to be surrounded by thinking idealists and optimists. there's too many pragmatists and pessimists in the world, but what happiness do pessimism and pragmatism give you apart from filling your belly? fuck pragmatism. fuck pessimism. come to pakistan and get naturally high off its mystic music. let yourself enter a trance to the drum beats of Sufi Pappu Saein worshipping G-d, find your heart and soul wanting to jump out of your body as you enter an unparalleled plane of ecstasy when you watch Ahsan Nadeem breath his vivacious energy with his beautiful smile into the ancient Kathak dance with its earthy and intricate beats, absorb Ustad Rustam Fateh Ali Khan's powerful voice pray Qawaali songs and let your mind enter a dream and flashback world, feel the power of a thousands of souls whip into frenzy as shiahs mourn Muharram in the Lahori Gate and as sunnis descend on Data Sahib's shrine for the 961st annual Urs. you chose your beliefs - you either have optimistic beliefs for your spirit and the wider human spirit, or you have pessimistic beliefs for your own spirit and the wider human spirit. my name is imaduddin, pillar of faith, and i believe in optimism and i believe in my spirit. i believe in music, i believe in dreaming, i believe in hope. 1 comment|Fix it

third article to be published :) [14 Apr 2005|12:01am] i feel like a citizen! the organization i work for has been in the front pages of all the newspapers for several days, the press release i wrote was printed verbatim, my colleagues are on TV, radio and in the newspapers, when i switch on the TV, several dramas are my cousin's products and my editorials are getting published. this one may get the centre page treatment; apparently it's the photographs that decide that. i related to dr. siddiqi how i feel these sudden spurts of excitement. "beautiful drops in an ocean that hasn't changed in two thousand years," was his dry reply. HOMEBASED WORKERS OF SOUTH ASIA UNITE!   "Mera Mela" At first glance it could have been mistaken for just another commercial fair; over 30 stalls, four nations and Pakistan's four provinces and northern areas represented, people coming in and enjoying the atmosphere. The unsuspecting visitor had been lured into the pleasant family-friendly environment of the Alhamra Arts Council Burney Gardens in Lahore with promises of beautiful handmade crafts from around South Asia One also suspects the uncontested lure of buying saris from Pakistan's overly-exoticized neighbour. But what the estimated near fifteen thousand casual visitors quickly became aware of was that the Mela had been set up with motives ulterior to commercial ones. The Mela had the products, it had the organizations selling those products and it had the women who made those products, giving them direct exposure to their clientele, according to Aamir Rana, National Coordinator of the Mela. "I think it achieved an objective of not being a big commercial bazaar. It was about the presence of the women workers themselves. The plight of the home-based workers was so vividly portrayed by the theatre groups [Rasti, Chanan, Aan and Ajoka] that it brought the message back to the casual visitor that it's not about the product but about the worker who made it; making invisible hands visible," said beautiful former actress Shameem Hilaly who sat on Aurat Foundation's Mela Management Committee. Perhaps the most aesthetically powerful moment of the Mela was the inauguration. The chief guests of the Mela, the home-based workers of South Asia, collected in a line of solidarity to tie up separate ribbons to symbolize a unified network, singing a song of their determination to adorn a world of their choice. The spectrum of colours and designs of their clothes and of their faces spoke bounds of the rich diversity of race and culture throughout Pakistan and South Asia. As the song ended, there was a trade unionist chant of "Hum Saab Eik Hai!" followed by "Pakistan Zindabad!" and "Aurat Foundation Zindabad!" An awkward pause followed as the host organizers felt a tinge of embarrassment and amusement at how the universal message had been hijacked. With a warm, calm and disarming smile, Renana Jhabvala, National Coordinator of India's SEWA trade union, brought the international event back into the realms of political correctness as she led the chants "Poora HomeNet South Asia Zindabad!" and "UNIFEM Zindabad!" The home-based workers of South Asia were finally center-stage. These women are not the beggars on the streets who sacrifice their dignity and self-respect for pittance money. These women work between 5 am and 10 pm, tending to domestic work and the livestock in villages, as well as carrying on piece-rate work or small businesses to make ends meet. This, while many of their husbands were “kharab”; they chose not to work. Though they may keep chickens and cows, few are able to eat meat, except on special occasions like Eid and at weddings. These women are not appropriately recognized for their significant contribution to South Asia’s economy, as many of them receive no benefits from their country’s development.   One of the objectives of the Mela was to gain popular support and hence form a platform to lobby the Pakistan government into ratifying the International Labour Organizations' Convention 177. The Convention, ratified so far only by Ireland and Finland, would mean that the Pakistan government would agree to form a national policy on home work aimed at improving the workers' situation and make social security protection statutory, set minimum wages and regulations for health and safety at the work place. According to Khan Fasahat Rahman, a retired official of the Punjab Labour Welfare Department, such laws are lofty and there will be difficulties in monitoring their implementation. Nonetheless, setting practices of decency into the law can over time determine what society accepts as moral and can raise workers' expectations for their working conditions and compensation. One of the objectives of the Mela was to gain popular support and hence form a platform to lobby the Pakistan government into ratifying the International Labour Organizations' Convention 177. The Convention, ratified so far only by Ireland and Finland, would mean that the Pakistan government would agree to form a national policy on home work aimed at improving the workers' situation and make social security protection statutory, set minimum wages and regulations for health and safety at the work place. According to Khan Fasahat Rahman, a retired official of the Punjab Labour Welfare Department, such laws are lofty and there will be difficulties in monitoring their implementation. Nonetheless, setting practices of decency into the law can over time determine what society accepts as moral and can raise workers' expectations for their working conditions and compensation. SEWA of India (a trade union of 700 000 women), Al Falah of Karachi and Behbud Association do provide the home-based workers in their employment with social security and health care, and a number of organizations, such as the Sungi Development Foundation of Abbotabad and Bint-e-Malakand of NWFP provide both health care and education. So while the convention may set lofty targets for the government, they are achievable and a must if the government believes in the protection of its citizens. With the purchase of F-16s from the USA and 4 warships from China, it seemingly does. The organizers had high praise for several Punjab and Lahore government agencies' collaborative efforts, whose sympathy for the cause greatly facilitated the event, including, among other things, securing the venue for free. If the number of legislators, bureaucrats and army officers that attended with their families is anything to go by, we have cause for optimism that the plight of home-based workers may come to the notice of our government. Not all government agencies, however, were so supportive; the Pakistan embassy in Bangladesh failed to issue the absent Bangladeshi home-based workers visas on time. Ironic that there should be trouble with Bangladesh, of all nations.  The event, however, was not only an eye opener into the way of life of the home-based workers for the public and the government, but for the organizers as well. Aurat Foundation’s Misbah Tahir, whose brain-child the Mela was, recalls, “We discovered that all the four participants from Tharparkar had tuberculosis and a married couple had a very sick child. We sent for a doctor, but the father refused to have him treated. We sent five people to persuade him to let the child be treated but he always replied, “So what if he dies? We’ll have another child next year.” So dire is the condition of medical facilities in the Sindh and Balochistan that people will have fourteen children, expecting only about six of them to survive and become desensitized to the death of even their own children.”   Public awareness raising and government lobbying aside, the most exciting aspect of the Mela was how it was empowering those who it was intended for and how unified they felt in their struggle. Zahida Parveen from Lahore came and chased me down a day after I interviewed her to chat, “It feels like we’re all one community [within this collection of stalls], and we’re all like one family. I made parathas with the Indians yesterday.” Organizers requested the HomeNet India stall to raise their prices so they wouldn't under-cut the rest of stalls on price and force a price race to the bottom, where the biggest losers would be the home-based workers. It worked out for the Indian stall as well, as the Lahoris rushed to buy hand woven garments for fair prices.   Puran Rai from Nepal expressed how impressed she was with the Lahori customer, "We've been to so many melas, but this is unique because it looks like a "para likha" educated mela. Here good people are coming to us and speaking decently. We are sitting here with respect and dignity. They are not bargaining down the prices we have set." Many rural and small-town Pakistani women admitted to being scared about coming to a big city like Lahore and were anxious about how they would interact with the people. They were expecting hooting young men. A number of Balochistani husbands from Quetta stayed in the offices of the organizations that had taken their wives to Lahore, not wanting their communities to know that their wives had left for Lahore unaccompanied by their husbands.   In a debriefing session, the women lauded the atmosphere created, "The respect and honour and security we got, the way we were looked after and pampered, we've never been given such importance in our lives," said 35 year old Jugni who came with her 12 year old daughter worker from Got Lashari Sheikh Burkhiyo, District Hyderabad in Sindh. Shumail Khatoon of Panjpai, District Sibbi in Balochistan looked to the future,"If Aurat Foundation does this sort of Mela and gives us this much security, and confidence, a time will come when when we will need no one's [organizations'] support and come independently to sell our goods." Women independently selling their goods directly to their markets would be a huge leap forward for women becoming independent, and we can look towards one of the Mela's most prosperous home-based worker participant as an example.Gul Jabeen of Abbotabad earns anything from Rs 6 000 a month to beyondRs 14 000 in an excellent month with her two daughters. She has built herself her house and married her daughter and provided her with all her household goods. She has also married off her son and given her daughter-in-law a dowry of Rs 180 000 in jewelry. When asked who had the decision making power at home, she said that when she was not earning much, her husband did, but her financial independence gave her all the authority.   Asked what they had lost and what they had gained from the experience of selling their products directly in the big city, Sayeeda of Dera Shubqadar Kunoozae, District Charsadda in the NWFP stood up and said, "I lost my fear, I lost my lack of confidence." If confidence is the first step in challenging oppression, we've witnessed the first sparks of a mini-revolution. What some of the Pakistan Dailies had to say: The Dawn The Nation The Daily Times 6 comments|Fix it

CALM the FUCK DOWN hormone raged peoples [11 Apr 2005|12:50am] CALM the FUCK DOWN hormone raged peoples the harrowing experiences of being a pretty boy it's one thing to have left a charmed impression on a gaggle of young social workers, but i very much don't appreciate being harassed with ten phone calls on my cell for three running days and a stream of ridiculous questions asking why i'm not being more forward from the same person who doesn't get the hint. you can say that a few pakistani girls become over-excited because of their background of repression - they're coming for the first time from their parents' homes where they face sex segregated environments and wear purdah, and when they come to the big city they want to fulfill their romantic legend as depicted in stupid bollywood movies, but to then pick on them alone would be unfair. scenaro 1: it's my freshman year and i'm coming to the end of my most rewarding month of fasting in Ramadhan: i'm feeling very mellow and i'm walking to moffit library on campus back from the bank. a red flashy sports car pulls up and the window winds down. i obligingly approach. "hey, do you know where i can find porno movies?" asks a middle-aged south american man. "no, i'm afraid not. maybe you can find some at Blockbusters." *proceeds to give directions to the Blockbuster on Durant* "do you know where i can find porno magazines?" "sorry, i don't." "you're a good looking kid," says the man, "thanks," i reply, thinking that perhaps he's an eccentric talent spotter. "is that cop coming for me?" he asks, as he peers behind at a woman cop approaching. "no, i don't think so," i say, wondering why he'd think that. "are you a student?" he asks. "yeah," i reply, "are you faculty?" "no" trying to avoid awkwardness, i proceed, "are you here on holiday?" "yeah, actually, i'm looking for a good looking kid like you to give me a blow-job." "right then. good luck, have a good holiday," i finish off and then walk away. i would've kicked his car in had i not been so mellow from fasting. instead i emailed 30 high school friends and all my freshmen floormates. scenario 2: it's summer school time right after my freshman year has ended. i'm lying outside the VLSB library, reading a book in the sun and a young african american woman approaches me and tells she's lost her wallet, and could i spare a dollar for the BART. i oblige, and she asks me, "do you have a girlfriend?" "no, i don't," "do you have sex a lot?" "no, i don't." "what? why not?" "i'm a muslim. i don't want to have sex until i'm married or found the one i love." "people actually do that?"she asks astounded, gets up from her kneeling position with cleavage showing and walks away in a huff. *(note - i was a different person at that time) scenario 3: i'm sitting on a bench reading another book on Dupont Circle in Washington DC, where i'm doing my internship during the summer after the end of my sophomore year. i have hair that curls at its ends reaching down my back a couple of inches below my shoulders. a guy in his thirties introduces himself as a pakistani, "mohammed ahmed" and asks me where i'm from and where my parents are. we talk for a while and then he asks to swap numbers. i mention that i have a girlfriend, and he finds out that she's back in berkeley. he spends the next half hour trying to persuade me that she's not close by and that i should be open to experimenting. i had a similar experience with my lebanese barbar who also tried to convince me that i should be open to experimenting and poured out his sex-history on me and told me how he was having sex with a rich old, unattractive woman with chaffeur and several wings in her house and a butler and maid who would rip off his tardy jeans, but he was only having sex with her because she could take care of him, but he was thinking of leaving her and i should really think about experimenting and wasn't i enjoying my very special head massage which he doesn't give just to any customer? pretty boys need rings that say "i'm taken" as well as girls. else maybe we should start donning the purdah 6 comments|Fix it

regarding the pakistani press (mel, take note ;) ) [24 Mar 2005|01:29am] my first professional piece appeared in the friday times today. it wasn't easy to write with four bosses wanting different things, but my AF colleagues were pleased with it and have been congratulating me, but i'm not due all credit (or discredit for the couple of inaccuracies) - the media giant himself edited it. it's kind of sad that my first professionally published piece came with the death of a great human being and activist, but maybe in some way it's a poetic start of something that was never meant to end. "What does it mean when the US Secretary of State says that Pakistan is a 'role model' for the Islamic wolrd? Surely, she does not suggest that since we are a nuclear power, other Muslim states too should follow our example... Does she suggest that our brand of democracy with a General holding the reins of government is an ideal, which should be emulated in the Middle East and other Muslim states? She goes on to promise a bright future for us in the year 2007 when hopefully Pakistan will be blessed with free and fair elections. Till then accept the existing regime and make the best of it. So much for the new era of "freedom" and "democracy" heralded by President Bush earlier this year. In the joint press conference, our eloquent foreign minister was quick to add to Condoleezza's comments, the words: "I think we have a working democracy. It cannot be perfect"..." "Rice recipes and Resolution Day" by Inayatullah in, The [Pakistan] Nation</a> p.6 Safar 13, 1426 Thursday March 24, 2005 the pakistani press articles and editorials do their job when it comes to reporting and critiquing government institutions, political parties and foreign policy, but when it comes to raising questions about addressing pakistan's inequality (interestingly, a survey of my International Economics and Trade class at Berkeley showed that half of the students didn't think that inequality was a problem) and improving the lot of the average impoverished pakistani, there's a lot left to be desired. the press will ask questions that are on the minds of the bourgeois middle-classes - questions asked in their own self-interests: how they can gain more political power (through "democracy"), how they can benefit from pakistan's (opening) growing economy. women's rights are given attention because the elites are affected and the elite lead the battle. editorials are never short on their criticism of the lower-class phenomenon of religious intolerance and fundamentalism - a pretty useful tool of keeping the elite classes fearful of the lower classes. from time to time editorials will denounce the most deplorable "human rights" violations by exploitive industrialists or landlords, but little attention is ever given to the country's unclean water sources, let alone pakistan's "human rights" inadequacies that are thought of as luxury "social justice" issues, such as fair wages and workers' rights. critique of the status quo ends at the questions that the bourgeois middle-classes are interested in. there's minimal attention paid to how pakistan's potential 7% growing economy is going to benefit the bottom 95% of the population, if help them at all - the growing inequality increasingly reduces any of their economic and political say in the way the country should be run (to benefit ALL of its citizens). to change the topic, has anyone else been vommiting and having diarrhoea? i have, six people in my office have and i know a couple of people in oakland and in boston have. maybe it's an international virus going around... 3 comments|Fix it

[09 Mar 2005|11:41pm] I think that in these last three months I've lived in Pakistan, I've heard of more second-connection deaths than I have in my whole lifetime in England and in America. Dr Miriam's and Dr Annie's mothers, Kalsoom's 14 year old nephew, three of Sahar's in laws or cousins in their early forties and one aged 18 in the past two days, a family domestic worker's brother aged 43. Shela Zia, a family friend, the joint founder of the Aurat Foundation, the Women's Action Forum and the AGHS law firm, famous for its human rights advocacy, passed away in her late fifties just a few hours ago. We were eating matae in the office just a couple of weeks ago to celebrate what we were told was a successful operation. Today most of the office has traveled up to Islamabad for her funeral. Cancer and heart attacks took all of them away - probably indicative of Pakistan's terrible environmental conditions. I was looking up some of the work that Shela had accomplished in her lifetime, and found one of the Erin Brokavichesque cases she fought was against the government's Water And Power Development Authority (WAPDA) building a high voltage (harmful electromagnetic radiation emitting) grid station near a residential area in Islamabad. She made case history when the Supreme Court ruled that "the rights to a clean environment and unpolluted water is one of the fundamental rights of the Pakistani citizens enshrined in the Constitution." Had she not contracted cancer in her kidney herself, she might have been able to continue the fight for a clean environment and water and prevented more deaths like her own. Today Pakistan lost a gigantic fighter for social justice. Fix it

[04 Mar 2005|02:28pm] Friday, March 04, 2005 Dr Safia (PhD of Anthropology from the University of Hamburg) now teaches me intermediate / advanced German / German philosophy and basic / intermediate Urdu and Punjabi at the outdoor canteen by the office from 7:30-9am six days a week after what I hope to make a daily habit of running in the mornings in the polo ground five feet from my nano’s house. We sit under the shelter of a canvass tied to the surrounding trees. The canteen’s other morning patrons are policemen, army non-commissioned officers, custodians, a few old bearded men with prayer hats, sometimes young working boys and occasionally the odd professional or two. The people sitting closest to us always listen in wonderment to the elderly short lady and tall young man who communicate in tongues. When she thinks she has something important to tell me she pays no heed to the flies that settle on her nose or her shoulders. Her nostrils flare wide-open, her pupils thin and the blue threads of her old eyes become pronounced, her hands rise and her whole face explodes as the fire catches on to the straggly strands of hair, and then she ends her sentence, “It’s like this, you see. It’s no joke, you know,” with a defiant earnest look in her eyes. People think she is senile, but they don’t understand that her mind just operates in a different plane. We found out, after our first lesson, when she was visiting the Aurat Foundation library, that we didn’t actually know each others’ names. When something amuses her, she mischievously cackles. After I'd repeated the same inane question several times this morning, she asked me if I'd drunk red wine or champagne. I told her I hadn’t, but I had come back home at 3am last night from seeing the Sufi Puppoo Saingh and had been exposed to plenty of passive marijuana smoke. Though it’s free of charge, Sufi Pupoo Saingh’s music and dance prayer rituals at (the saint) Shah Jamal’s shrine on Thursday nights have (apparently) become commercialized. Known around the world and having performed at the Royal Albert Hall, he’s also developed something of an ego. He refused to play to the predominantly 1100 working-class hedonists and bourgeois yuppies teeming the stair-cases and square to the entrance of the shrine and the roar of motorbikes outside until an hour and a half after midnight. The audience itself had become the spectacle for the three hours that we waited. Upon entering, Ahmed and I were greeted by a far-gone-stoned middle-aged short lightly-bearded man with fat lower lip who spoke a deeply colourful Punjabi (little of which I understood) with a deep, resonant voice. I think he was preaching to us about spiritual enlightenment and then about buying marijuana from him. I don't think he would have been a misfit in Trench Town. A few of those present (perhaps 20-30%) had come for spiritual reasons, spontaneously shouting out collective prayers and raising their heads and hands to the sky, but from the line of men who shamelessly and disgustingly came to light a cigarette and coldly stare and gape at the handful of covered-women in their allocated cage, it was obvious that spiritual elevation wasn’t on the agenda of most people there. (Not that it was on mine either). I was sceptical as the legendary Sufi began to beat his dhol to his protege, but half-an-hour into it, it became apparent that if he had started out to oblige his patient audience, he was now playing to communicate with G_d. I let myself lose myself in his beat and shut the outside world out. I had to hold back the tears as he triumphantly declared, “LOOK HERE, GOD! HERE IS MY FACE!” I opened my eyes again to find his long-haired, long-bearded disciples dancing in possessed trance clockwise in the middle of the cleared square. One man spun himself around at a speed I would have never imagined humanly possible, and then dived as the beat stopped. Others would complete the circle and thud their feet alternately with their arms flailing in time as the collected in front of Pupoo’s drum, and then complete another cycle of earthly-rhythmic dancing. One disciple stood out from all others in the crowd. A tall, slender man, with the skin-tone and intensity of Wesley Snipes’ piercing black eyes and the long hair and features of Johnny Depp: he was, without a doubt, the most beautiful man I, Ahmed, Sahar and Meher had ever seen. Perhaps he shared the same relationship with Puppoo as Glaucon did with Socrates. ============================================== This Greek dude from 2600 years ago makes some great predictions for modern U.S. democracy… “… an excessive desire for liberty at the expense of everything else is what undermines democracy and leads to the demand for tyranny… A democratic society in its thirst for liberty may fall under the influence of bad leaders, who intoxicate it with the neat spirit… In such a society the principle of liberty is bound to go to extremes – it will permeate private life …. So from an extreme of liberty one is likely to get, in the individual and in society, a reaction to an extreme of subjection. And if that is so, we should expect tyranny to result from democracy, the most savage subjection from an excess of liberty.” ===================== In other news, I’m going to be interviewing for Feature Writer at the house of the Editor of The Friday Times, a leading national newsmagazine, after work today. This could be a huge stepping-stone. Wish me luck. EDIT: Jugnu Mohsin liked my work a lot. I am skipping around the house! Currently Reading The Republic (Penguin Classics) By Plato, Desmond Lee, Henry Desmond Pritchard Lee see related 12:52 PM - 22 eprops - 11 comments - email it Fix it

[28 Feb 2005|02:32pm] "Here's an Ideology for you, Lost Boy" So after tutoring a young Aitchisonian student on the virtues of free-market economics (for a hefty capitalist's pay), I exposed a thirteen year old son of family friends, who's lost in the American consumerist short-attention-span ideology propagated by TV and the internet, to another ideology at a forum / rally of the first communist meeting of the Pakistanis and Indians. The HRCP hall was packed with 300 sitting and 100 squatting proletariat, a few intellectuals, some farmers, only five women, many men old enough to die, a few students and some young workers with red bandanas carrying red hammer and sickle flags. Every now and again there was an angry shout from a different strand of communist who wanted their opinion heard, or a spontaneous chant from the crowd. It was something you would have thought only happened until the 1930s, but "Marxism" isn't a dirty word in the subcontinent - 30 million Indians voted for the Comminists in the last general election.After a while I felt the atmosphere was enough of a liability for me to take this kid wearing his "Nike" shoes, "USA" socks and "Adidas" shirt out. We'd come in when only a handful of people were sitting in the hall, but with the aisles filled with squatting young workers, it would only take one over-zealous idiot to incite mob trouble. I asked Ali to put his socks in his pockets and took his shoes under my chadr (cloak). The night before, I'd gone to a dinner with the communists with Bilal. I exchanged a few words with Salima Hashmi (an artist and College Dean, also from an academic and political family) from the Shakir Ali seminar on Women's Rights and Art and recognized Ahmed Rashid (author of "Taliban" and "Jihad"). My other cousin, Muneeza Jahangir was there as well. My cousin, Bilal, returned from Canada as the coach of the bronze-winning Pakistan team in the world high schools debate competition. :) Bilal and I had spent the weekend getting properly acquainted for the first time. He'll be jetting off to Oxford and then D.C. on thursday to work for some economic think tank. He's currently deferring his final year of Rhodes Scholarship for his PhD. I'm sad that he'll be leaving so soon after we'd just started our friendship; we could tell we were long-lost cousins. We found that we were in similar places in our thoughts on a number of issues and that he shared my struggle with being born into the family legacy we were born into and our what we want to do with ourselves. Last week at Salman Rashid's (a self made entertaining travel-writer) birthday do, Tehseen (CEO of another women's rights NGO after he left the Aurat Foundation, also with a very active communist political family - met his older brother today) caught wind of a couple of my relations and then lamented that he couldn't joke in Punjabi with the relative of Salahuddin Ahmed (my great grandfather!), the New Delhi Punjabi who did so much for Urdu literature. He then listed off a few granduncles, aunts, my parents and a cousin. Someone overheard and wailed at how my family had been manoeuvering itself into power throughout Pakistan and India through the civil service bureaucracy, as ambassadors, the army, political office, as film producers or directors, the UN (Under-Secretary General), Bretton Woods institutions, law and judiciary, academia, journalism or even as heads of civil societies (read: NGOs, socialist, human rights and women's movements) to maintain their family power. I reflected on my own short history and thought how predictable I've been in the context of my family legacy inspite of being separated by thousands of miles. I took economics; economics is the most common undergrad degree in my family after medicine, four members of the family are PhDs in Economics. I have leftist politics; my granduncle quit as Nehru's Minister of Economics as soon as India was formed and became the longest serving Member of Parliament as a Communist politician for U.P. until he died five years ago, let alone all the other family communist activists or sympathizers. I'm an activist for women's rights; three of my aunts are South Asia's leading figures in the movement. My desire to emancipate others from their restricted aspirations is the complete antithesis of how I myself have been moulded by the legacy of my family. To continue predictable family trends, both my brother and I will be talking to the National newspapers tomorrow in our respective countries of residence about writing for them. ==== "Peace and The New Corporate Liberation Theology" - Lecture given by Arundhati Roy full version attention deficit disorder version Currently Reading Between two burrs on the map By Salman Rashid see related 12:21 AM - 16 eprops - 7 comments - email it Fix it

[28 Feb 2005|02:30pm] Monday, February 28, 2005 Idealogues are those who let their minds go on cruise control and allow others to think for them and others to dictate that it they BELIEVE in such and such a value, they must believe in such and such a value, without giving more than superficial thought to other sides of an argument or all consequences of an action. Idealogues are those who hold onto their beliefs (or the words of others) dogmatically. Belief is a huge commitment of the soul and the mind. It is a statement to oneself that proclaims, "This is the truth". This morning one of my colleagues told me how he had to wake up several times during the late night to attend to his flu-ridden paraplegic wife. His wife has been crippled 20 years ago in a car accident, but Iftikhar made it his full-time job to role her covers, to turn her and to attend to her bed sores and to pay for three physiotherapists a day to see her. He's not a rich man, just a struggling, heavily in-debt middle-class media man, but his commitment and perseverance have been amazing. His wife was originally not able to move anything under her lower lip. After ten years of attentive care she was able to use her arms again. Many other men of Pakistan would have just abadoned and forgotten their wives as if they were broken commodities and remarried. Ideology in the hands of those who think superficially and dogmatically, of those who become idealogues, is a dangerous thing, but idealogy is also the construct that good things come out of. Love, dignity and respect are ideologies, are beliefs, are statements that proclaim, "This is the truth" and humanity, Iftikhar Rasul, is able to achieve beautiful (beautiful according to my ideology) things out of love, dignity and respect. === An idealogue is one extreme, a hypocrite the other. Shame on the society and politicians who preach "Support Our Troops", but will see 500 000 veterans go homeless this year. 10:19 PM - 16 eprops - 8 comments - email it Fix it

[20 Feb 2005|02:31pm] Sunday, February 20, 2005 "Shangarsesh hi Jeevan hai" is Hindi saying which translates as "Life is about struggle" - a concept along the same lines as the Buddhist aspirations to struggle for peace for oneself or for peace in the world, or the Islamic concept of Jihad. I was asked why my first relationship ended today. To use a pretty accurate analogy, she was Dominique Francon and I was Peter Keating. She'd ask me why I believed in the things that I did, with an individualist bent, and, having become somewhat spiritually and mentally complacent, I wasn't able to satisfactorily answer her questions. Divorce rates in America aren't high just because women are empowered and the law will support them, but because people have become spiritually lazy. Getting lazy about challenging their beliefs, people face mid-life crises, and having forgotten how to ask the critical questions, or being afraid of how they could honestly assess themselves, they instead ask the questions they're trained to ask by a materialistic consumerist society: what more do I need? Of course buying and consuming more doesn't help one achieve peace, and how can one sustain a partnership with an other when one can't define and achieve some peace with oneself? There is no growth in the individuals and the relationship that once was a dynamic one of growth becomes stagnant. Sometimes one partner will stumble across the right questions and the other won't understand what growth their partner is going through. To bring that Hindi saying and the concept of Jihad into a modern political context, we can learn that a functioning democracy, like a functioning individual (in the sense that the individual is truly an individual), is one which rigorously keeps itself in check by constantly questioning itself. Lisa's (an American Jew) thoughts on Jihad ============================================== Pictures!!!! Cultural tourism: observing 50 000 Shiahs on Muharram 10 in the cobbled streets, mosques, marques and houses of the Moghuls' walled-Lahore shrines and effigies A picture of Hussain and his white horse in their glory "Ya Ali" eating together every street was littered with men doling out hot milk, sweets and inviting you to come to their houses or under their marques to share some hot milk and delicious food. reflection haha. people beating themselves up every now and again, men would burst into a deeply rhythmic chant of "Huss-ain, Hussain!, Huss-ain, Hussain!" and swing their arms to the beat and beat their chests with their fists. if anyone, even a child, shouted out in a crowd, "A thousand curses on Yassid (Hussain's murderer)", everyone else would shout back "Baisharum!", and if anyone started the first phrase of blessings on Muhammed and Abraham and their descendents, everyone else in the crowd would complete the prayer. everywhere we went there were speakers emitting prayers all to the same beat of chests being beaten and to the same tune. maria kharpoukina once told me that the africans were the only human beings of the earth - the rest of us are aliens - you can tell because of the way they have beat and they dance. i'm not sure that she saw all of this. as we left the walled city at 2am, we also saw men's bare backs with whip marks. knives being sharpened until dawn for the next day of muharram - the men will bleed themselves out of sorrow for the murder of Hussian and his family over a thousand years ago. the streets and the mosques one of the few nights when the sight of policemen is a welcome one. there were security checks as we entered streets and mosques, making sure that sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiahs didn't break out. also present to control the crushes on the narrow streets. an armed police man on the roof of a mosque. you can see women and children, and a few men, on the rooftops of buildings and mosques. the only break-outs of violence i witnessed were two occassions where black-clad burka-wearing women started shouting and slapping at each other in true, colourful, rustic Punjabi style. some friends made at the end of the night there were thousands of faces so different from one another. some with beautiful green eyes, some so white that i thougt they were european; ethnically iranians, pathans, sindhis, sheikh punjabis, central asians etc. each face carried with it a story of its own. i saw noone that looked like me. atta with a kid that wouldn't stop looking at me as we headed back, we bumped into several people that atta knew. we were invited for some yet more food and chai into a simple room with plain lime walls, an adjacent small toilet, a few cushion stools, a fan and a bed without mattress. this was someone's home, part of an extended havali mansion. a photographer for The Dawn daily newspaper whose face would become an explosion of teeth every time he laughed a photographer for The News daily newspaper, atta's photography idol the don of the streets (notice his gun) alltough's experiences of Pakistani art and views on mob religion at muharram (an Indian Muslim) 5:25 PM - 28 eprops - 18 comments - email it Fix it

[18 Feb 2005|02:33pm] Friday, February 18, 2005 Women's Rights, Men's Wrongs i've been given yet another responsibility at work, which i'm very excited about; i've been charged with putting out the "Aurat" ("Woman") Publication - the Aurat Foundation's Quarterly English newsmagazine, published for our donors, international groups, other NGOs and universities. i'm very happy. :) the main source of oppression for women in pakistan is men and the patriarchal cultures that exist. the source of so many men's insecurities, not just in pakistan, is women. we can work towards improving the lot of women in several ways; secular advocacy for women's rights, as the Aurat Foundation does, is one of those, but there's also a space for targeting men, and not just from a secular perspective, but targeting the source of so much of their culture: their religion and the Qu'raan. Jihad is a concept that has been misused and corrupted by people like Bin Laden. Liberal interpretations of Jihad, like those expressed by Global Exchange, are: 1) That it is first of all an internal struggle to realize one's spirituality and achieve peace with one's self. It's also interpreted as one's struggle against one's own selfish tendencies so that one becomes more "moral". It's kind of Buddhist. 2) That it is secondly a struggle on the level of one's community (activism), for goals such as social justice and human rights, also kind of Buddhist. 3) That it is thirdly, an armed struggle in the name of "Islam", either for self-defense, to establish justice, or to deter an aggressor. it's important to note the order: you struggle with yourself first, then struggle for your immediate community, and then take the struggle onto the global stage. thinking within that framework, one would want to deter more militant al-Qaedaesque "Islamic" Jihadis from developing, especially in the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan, where the Muslim world sends its young men to get indoctrinated at mudrassas. you could, as Bush and Musharraf are, clamp down on grassroots mudrassas. you could also solve several problems with another solution: establishing a religious-based organization that reclaims the liberal meaning of Jihad (and other Islamic teachings) and in the process i) help those young men discover their spirituality and help them rid themselves of their gender-based insecurities, ii) thus pave the path for women's liberation iii) and reclaim peace and beauty back into their indigenous cultures iv)) then tap into these young idealistic youths brimming with energy by providing them social projects to vent out their Jihad on, such as planting bushes and shrubs to prevent soil erosion v) and prevent them from misguidedly killing innocent people. in their different approaches, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X appealed to different audiences in the civil rights movement of the 1960s in America, but they had the common objective of equal civil rights for Americans of all races. indeed, one played the "good cop" role, while the other played the "bad cop", and they knew it. Pakistan's movement for equal rights for women could do with more than just a secular advocacy approach for women. i have a sexy back. ======================================================= i've got a lot of very interesting, thought-provokng and personal comments and emails in response to the last few entries. here's a few i'll share; how xanga makes the world smaller: hey/salam..hope ur settling into your new job and lahore i spent a lot of time at Aurat Foundation's Resource cetre this summer going through newspaper clippings of couple of decades regarding rape/adultery in Pakistan..haha..was actually rather interesting because i found a lot of useful material. Btw i was doing this 4 an extended essay thati had to write on the role of women in Pakistan before and after Islamization -oreom0nster ohmygosh. i just realized that I met Asma Jahangir, she talked at my school for Pakistan day. I'll never forget her, she was mindblowing not only in the work she does but her presence and her voice and the strength of conviction that emenates from her face. - Bahama_Mama (and shadi's (bahama_mama) father went to berkeley too) met a pakistani man here in dubai who lives in a village (thatta ghulamka dhiroka in okara nearish to lahore) and works with the (largely women's) NGO thatta kedona- they do village development with livelihood projects like embroidery and crafts which they sell through this german website. they have a showroom in cantt. lahore (11/7 allahuddin rd.) just in case you are interested. i know so many of those sorts of things exist... good to hear from pakistan anyways.- moshdeh ... I happen to be reading Amitava Kumar's Husband of a Fanatic - I found something very interesting in there. I think you both are cousins by marriage. Since he says his wife's aunt is Asma Jahangir. And your aunt is also the same person. Which means A = C Now, is that true and if it is possible for you to get me his email address. He is an English professor at Berkeley, if I am not mistaken. I have read all his books and I am a great admirer of his writing... - allthough wow. it's such a small world. by the way, the aunt i wrote about in the previous entry wasn't asma khala. i have A LOT of aunts. my mum, her sisters, my dad's female cousins and my mum's female cousins are such big inspirations to me. societal comments on bourgeois housewives (and i encourage you to keep them coming): Housewife's are amazing even without degrees. The extraodinary is often found in the most ordinary. And if it isn't are lives are all pretty useless, wouldn't you say. -A. Rust - mckrlshrk Never assume anything about anyone! We all so easily apply labels as a convenient means of packaging human beings. Yet I wonder...what if she'd just been a housewife? Would she have had less value? Or been unworthy of note? Interesting blog! - Beloved_Spear thanks for commenting and trying to keep me honest. as i said, these were assumptions i made as a child. in pakistan, there are a lot of bourgeois housewives who are dulled by the society that they are brought up in because they lack any challenges: mental, to provide for their families or to even bring up their kids by themselves. with little expected of them, but for them to pour their mother-in-law's tea and be docile in their elder's and men's presence, their constructive creativeness is stunted and their hobby becomes intrigue (in family politics) and match-making. one of the many touching stories that shadi shares on my comments boxes: In Tajikistan the kids at the drop in center would get so excited to see me too, and they too would come and shake my hands furiously with big grins and they'd call out: Shadi's here!! It was the best. The last day when I was leaving, I said goodbye to everyone and I was walking to the UNICEF car waiting in the street, and before I knew it a group of them began to run up and walk with me. And they kept asking: you'll come back next summer right? And when I got in the car and was driving off, I looked back and one of the boys who I loved was actually running behind the car, chasing it and waving at me. THen he disappeared and I saw him infront of us in the corner of a new street we had just turned on. He was sitting waiting for the car to come by so he could wave at me. the kids I taught in Tajikistan loved that I had my camera with me. I think it made them feel worthy....and wanted..and important.... that this girl wanted to take pictures of them and pictures with them. It was also a big ice breaker in my relationship with them. The first day, alot of them were quite shy and distant and I would say even suspicious of me in a way, they couldn't make up their minds if they wanted to like me or keep away from me. thank god for that digital camera. I started taking pictures of them and every time I took one I would turn the camera around and show the picture to them, and they would get really excited to see themselves, and we would laugh about it together. that's how we became friends. Everyday I would develop the pictures I had taken on that day and I'd bring it and show it to them, and they would pass them around and laugh. They really wanted to have copies for themselves. So I promised to mail every kid a copy of the pictures they were in. Some of them didn't believe I would live up to my word and send it from Canada. I think they thought I would forget them maybe. But I made a gazillian copies, and send them. I also made copies for the centre itself, and I heard they put them all up on the walls. They're here: " target=_new>http://members28.clubphoto.com/shadi843994/2594086/guest.phtml - Bahama_Mama self-indulgence ...How did you get to where you are in life? -shay France164 which of ayn rand's books have you read?... roark and dominique kind of "break-up" as they patiently for dominique to find her belief in her own individualism. my girlfriend (who interestingly is an American Jew, but not Zionist) encouraged me to leave california. she always told me that she didn't want to get in the way of my dreams. i've had a burning feeling to come back to pakistan and work for change ever since i was 14 - a lot of that was to do with seeing that my human rights lawyer aunts weren't after power, wealth or fame - although those all came with their careers - but were fighting for justice against injustice - that they represented hope. everything that has become me has been affected by something around me. an affection towards pakistan came when my parents would tell me that that was my homeland and would teach me pakistani songs. ambition (perhaps to an extent) came when my father showed me a picture of all his uncles and went through what they all had achieved and then asked me, "what will you do?" faith and confidence in myself (came) because my parents believed in me, and the fact that i was the oldest child and had a lot of their attention. as the oldest sibling, i was a leader from an early age, which my primary school teacher also noticed. my parents indulged me in my dreams and encouraged me to apply not just in the UK, like my peers, but also to the USA for college. even my name has affected who i am. in arabic, "Imaduddin" translates as "Pillar of Faith", and "Ahmed" translates as "Blessed One" - perhaps one of privilege. since i was a chlid, i'd feel uncomfortable being in a position of comfort when i saw another in discomfort. i'd want to get up and share that discomfort. i don't know how much of that "gut" feeling was innate and how much of it was learned from the upbringing my well-mannered Muslim parents gave me... 11:21 PM - 14 eprops - 9 comments - email it Fix it

[17 Feb 2005|02:34pm] Thursday, February 17, 2005 i love lahore. it's such a beautiful old city of rich culture still alive and vibrant. a city that only sleeps during the day and sings and chants through the night. my eyes are always so wide when i walk through the bustling old part of the city (these days it's the shiahs who are chanting songs of woe on the streets of the old city late in the night), or through the fairs or i meet another amazing person, whether family, through work or peculiar chance. the american state department guy kind of annoyed me today, but otherwise i'm enjoying myself. it's funny feeling like a berkeleyan and a lahori at the same time. such different places, such different ways to love. --- you take all these faces for granted when growing up only to find what remarkable people they were and are. my jaw drops everytime i talk to this aunt (sarwat phuppo - have a lot of aunts who impress me) of mine who i always just assumed was a (bourgeois) housewife as a child on my annual visits here. it turns out that she's not only never been a wife, she's a lawyer, she studied at berkeley for a year in '85, she studied at Peking University in Maoist China for 5 years in the '70s and worked in the farm villages to develop her now fluent Mandarin skills, lived in Hong Kong and does regular legal consultancies in London. she's not an exception; she's just an example. i came into pakistan (condescendingly) expecting an unremarkable people only to find myself surrounded with some of the most socially conscious people and a lot of extremely well travelled people who have lived in all corners of the world and have prestigious British, American, Canadian, Chinese or Russian educations. anyway, i'm going to have her over for dinner. 12:04 AM - 22 eprops - 17 comments - email it Fix it

i do write [16 Feb 2005|11:50pm] in xanga though. :P www.xanga.com/imthemad1 i love lahore. it's such a beautiful city of rich culture. my eyes are always so wide when i walk in the old city or i meet another amazing person, whether family, through work or random chance. the american state department guy kind of annoys me, but otherwise i'm enjoying myself. it's funny being a berkeleyan and a lahori at the same time. such different places, such different ways to love. 1 comment|Fix it

navigation [ viewing | most recent entries ] [ go | earlier ]