REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
by Maliha Masood, Matrix Contributor
























It was a whole other galaxy compared to Karachi, where we had to put up with tropical weather, unbearably hot, humid and sticky summers, monsoon downpours and clogged sewers, bathrooms infested by cockroaches, kitchens swarming with flies, mosquito nets and mouse traps and the routine power cuts and load shedding that prevented me from doing my homework under bright lights.

I was tired of using a candle to do my arithmetic time tables and my father was fed up with trying to get a phone line connected to our house, a relatively simple procedure for which you had to wait months or else resort to bribing the corrupt officials. We would be through with all these nuisances if we simply packed our bags and moved on to a better place. This was more or less my father’s rationale when he applied for our immigration visas at the US consulate on Abdullah Haroun Road. Upon finalizing all the paperwork, we were given the green light. It was time to go.

The year was 1982 and Pakistan was being ruled by yet another military man, General Zia ul Haq, who had imposed martial law. I was unaware of what this implied as I went about my daily routine, going to school in a chauffeured car, listening to 70’s disco music on weekend parties and building sand castles on the shores of the Arabian Sea. On Friday afternoons, I would study the Quran with an elderly religiously scholar with coke bottle lenses and a beard reaching down to his waist. My grandmother and I would pray outside in the garden and afterwards I would recite out loud all the kalmas I had memorized thus far. Some nights, the entire family would congregate in the old Fiat with the overheating radiator and drive down to an outdoor eatery known as Bundhu Khan to feast on shish kebabs made with lamb and ice cream known as kulfi that came in small clay pots that would be smashed to the ground when empty, a ritual that made me think that Pakistanis might be close cousins to the Greeks with a penchant of breaking dishes. Indeed, we were multicultural long before I even knew the meaning of the word.
My father’s friends were mostly Goans, many of whom were Catholics. Mine were a hodgepodge of Parsis or Zorastrians. We also knew Boris, Khojas, Ismailis, Shias, Bahais, Gujratis and Makranis. The language I spoke at home was mostly British style English, peppered with Urdu phrases. But we kept hearing rumors that the government was going to change the school curriculums from English medium back to Urdu. My father alluded to things not being so good in the country anymore. He had a good job as a station manager at Swissair airlines, working at Karachi International airport. He had been with Swissair for over twenty years and he knew that leaving Swissair, leaving Karachi would also leave him in a lurch. There was no job waiting for him in the States. No possibility of a transfer unless he had chosen a bigger city like Chicago or New York, instead of Seattle. But my father’s mind was made up. He wanted a change of scene. His friends told him that he had no future in America. It was a gold mine of opportunity if you were young and ambitious, but that was no longer the case with my dad. Still he figured there were more reasons to leave, than to stay.

I was twelve years old at the time. The realization of going away for good, from a Pakistan that was no longer desired, had not yet sunk in. It was not as if I had any say in the matter, and even if I did, it would have made no difference. Twelve year old girls don’t have had the authority to overrule parental decisions. As far as I was concerned, I was going on yet another holiday to America, only on a one way ticket. And things were getting a bit stale in Karachi, or perhaps I should say as stale as they can get when one is in the sixth grade. My classmates were rather envious of my move. Many of them had been abroad and there was always much bragging and boasting to see who among us was the best traveled. From Hong Kong to Nairobi, London, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Geneva, Toronto and Los Angeles, names of familiar places rattled off the list.

Seattle was a bit of a mystery. It was considered to be in Canada given the extreme northwest location. And just as Easterners clueless about the West coast, my Karachiite friends, with typical urban arrogance, imagined Seattle as a wilderness of forests and grizzly bears. Nobody really understood why I was moving to such a place. Only Sabahat seemed to care. She was my best friend since kindergarten and the news of my departure saddened us deeply. We vowed to write letters to each other every month. As a farewell gift, she gave me a collection of verses by William Blake, whose poetry I used to memorize in Elocution class.

For my favorite tiger, she had written in the inscription. Go get ‘em in America! Love, Sabahat

The opening stanza is still inscribed in my head.
Tiger Tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

And so we did it. From Karachi to Seattle in one clean move. In all these years, I have never really tried to justify the move or question its implications. But as I see images of Pakistan flashing across the nightly news, images of Karachi burning, of street protests and riots, of security forces and turbaned militia men, and all the grim angry faces fed up with the place and its leaders, just as my father was fed up over a quarter of a century ago, I cannot help but wonder what it means to exchange one homeland for another when you have stakes on both sides. No matter how hard you try, you can never really decide where it is that you really belong.

Even though the Pakistan of today in no shape or form resembles the Pakistan I once knew, there is still a Pakistan inside me. It is there when I get sad and angry and feel helpless at the state of this scarred nation from which I will never be completely alienated. I wish I could but I don’t know how. My father claims that the bond is no longer there. The attachment has been worn out and what is there to be attached to besides just memories? Quite so. Just memories. Indeed. My past. His past. Our past. If only it were so simple to forget. But just like remembering, forgetting is not easy. The trick may be to forget things in the same proportion to what we remember. Perhaps that is the only way to maintain a level of equilibrium, the means to getting on with our lives.

I don’t agree with my father. Unlike him, I need to be reminded of the past. Because the past is who we are. The past is our evidence, our truth that Pakistan was not always this way. If geography is destiny, then I am destined to be a daughter of fault lines. My dreams and my nightmares reside in between two hemispheres, separated by more than ten thousand miles and eleven time zones, and it is my duty, certainly a privilege as a writer to make sense of what it all means. Not to do so is to be sick with amnesia, and that would probably be the biggest tragedy of all.

Maliha Masood is a Karachi transplant living in Seattle, WA. She is the author of the award-winning travel memoir, Zaatar Days Henna Nights: Adventures, Dreams and Destinations across the Middle East. Her current project is a collection of essays and short stories of the Pakistani diaspora. She can be reached at masood.maliha@gmail.com

PIMP THIS |