MOST ILLUMINATING PLACE IF YOU CARE TO UNDERSTAND

Tomb of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan

Going back in time, writing about a place I once lived, and the people I hold dear to my heart will chronologically give way to the maturity in which I find myself. 

The time was mid sixties, the place involved crisscrossing between PECHS Housing estate (my father’s residence) and Clifton Road, (my school) Karachi.   The political power then was Ayub Khan and the era was the Beatles mania combined with a Catholic Convent school, suffice to say my time there was stimulating to say the least. I am re-living a time in Karachi, Pakistan in the mid sixties.

Third culture kids like myself being tossed around and slung into essentially strange places either sink or swim.   Credit is due to my devout Buddhist father for teaching me to acclimatize myself into two things;  languages and religions.   A very  innovative and brave Dad considering that I could have swung heavily to another dimension not of his own.  So the Urdu language was my first introduction into the world of Islam.

A Mandela quote still haunts me:  

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

My first Beatles album, PLEASE PLEASE ME, arrived from England through friends in the diplomatic post.   Swooning over Paul McCartney, I was listening at the lowest volume possible during the India /Pakistan War in 1965, under blackouts and bombs.  Only two days before the start of war, the Sindh dessert-storm howled bringing in sand through tiny crevices of this beautiful old house.

Pinky

Pinky or Benazir as Pakistan's PM

The Bhutto family

My childhood friends ranged from diplomat families to political families and one of them stood out as bossy Pinky.   We knew her as bossy boots, utterly clever, she was born in the same year but yet she was in a couple of classes higher.   Articulate, intelligent and pretty, she was always delivered to school by car, her house being only 500 meters away at 70 Clifton Road.    She was non-other than Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zufikar Bhutto, the   political hero to many Pakistanis.  


Islamic fervor was evident on Fridays, when school closed at noon. Subjugating the heat by way of cool stone-walls, marble floors, the residence defeats in sound proof as prayers all over the city floats inside all afternoon to the disrespectful reverberation of Lennon & McCartney’s “She Loves You Yeah Yeah Yeah.”   Forgive me for I was all of a raging teenager trying to bring sanity into my world.   Buddhism at home, Catholic Catechism during the week, and Islamic prayers on Friday – so “Strawberry Fields Forever” was my “out.”

Living multi-culturally, Islamic Pakistan gave insight into yet another faith..  One civilized afternoon, partaking in the rituals of  colonial English  tea in the garden, fashioned with cucumber sandwiches with date & walnut cake, a shriek and a scream gurgling from a Memsahib’s throat as a human thumb and finger was rudely dropped from the sky onto her lap.   The Begums, quite used to such droppings nonchalantly waved at the butler to dispose of the matter.  Such was a Karachi Friday afternoon. 

Whilst the Begums and the Memsahibs were tea-partying, the daughters were grooving to the strains of Twist and Shout, and I saw her standing there, but Pinky felt all this was rather shallow and so started to teach me about the different religions.

Tower of Silence

Thus my education on the Zoroastrian faith, the Sunni’s and the Shia’s began that very afternoon.   The Parsee’s or Zoroastrians are from Persia.  The community disposes its dead by placing the bodies in a place known as the ‘Tower of Silence’. The tower is open to the sky as it has no roof. The corpse is subjected to the rays of the sun to decompose and vultures to eat it.   In the days when there was less population, disposing corpse in this manner was considered efficient and less harmful to diseases.  As the growth of inhabitants increased, the city has spread to the nether regions of the Tower of Silence, this particular one being called the Clifton Cantonment.  It was not far from the residence.

Pinky’s mother Begum Nusrat was from an Iranian business family, known as Nusrat Isfahan.   Nusrat Shia’s faith married Zulfikar’s Sunni faith.  The disagreements between the two faiths traces back to the 7^th century over the successor to the Prophet Muhammad arose.  The Sunni’s believed that the Muslim community should select the Prophet’s successor; The Shia’s believed that the Prophet already chose his son-in-law Ali to be the successor.  

A Navjote ceremony

Pinky was very much a practicing Shia up until her last days before her assassination.   Poking at our dancing school friend Tilat Qureshi, bossily demanding her to show me her sacred shirt, sudreh and the sacred cord kusti that all practicing Zoroastrian Parsi’s must wear at all times.

Between the ages of 7 to 11 all Parsees go through Navjote, the coming of age and acceptance to the faith.  Younger than the Jews going through Bar Mitzvah, Tilat was taught prayers in the ancient Avestan and Pahlavi languages and also how to tie and untie the sacred cord by a priest.

It was an afternoon fixated into my inner soul.  Some things stick and forever a powerful comeback when posed questions from non-believers;

President Ayub Khan & my father

“All actions are judged by motives, and each person will be rewarded according to their intention.”

National Day celebrated at our Embassy, President General Ayub Khan, a Sandhurst military graduate, very much an imposing tall figure, and a huge presence gave the party its mark of success.   Toasts were given to the Heads of States, although no alcohol in evidence, no disrespect was meant, it could have perhaps, been masked by coca-cola.  

Imran Khan  (famous cricketer)

The city has since moved to Islamabad, a move Ayub Khan made in 1964 and by  1975 became the Pakistani capital.  Karachi remains a city port.   So during that era, we travelled between Lahore and Rawalpindi on the way to Islamabad on a constant basis.  A 700 mile trek up to Islamabad without stopping would have been arduous. 

Ikramullah Khan Niazi, and his wife Shaukat Khanum, Imran’s parents, always welcomed my parents for  a night stopover in Lahore, the city of famous cricketing hero Imran Khan, my idol at the time.  

Islamabad, a city well planned was business for my father, but trekking to Srinagar was a spoilt haven for me and my mother.   A 300 mile trek through mountainous terrains, crossing dangerous borders – Srinagar was magical and closer to God if ever there was a word to describe such a moment.  During that time India and Pakistan were forever quarreling so the trip was made with trepidation on all sides, emotionally and diplomatically.  However my mother’s inherited adventurous nature, dominated by determination had apparently passed on to me, so together with some Nawabs we took on the journey.  

Houseboats on Dal lake, Srinagar

Imagine, with no way of communication, we were gone for 10 days,  anything could have happened from road accidents, gunfights, hi-jacking to a number of unmentionable things.  Either Allah or the Hindu Gods, managed to protect us from such human wickedness, we arrived at the spectacular Dal Lake in Srinagar, it was the Jewel in the Crown of Kashmir. 

Lots of North Indian food on the houseboat was followed by a visit of a distinguished Turkish gypsy coffee reader.  Supposedly I was to have twins.  Thank goodness the predictability of the coffee sediments got swallowed, had I not swallowed the remnants perhaps my future would have been more accurate.

As memory fades, I cannot escape the few phrases I said in moments of emotion  Mai aap se Mohabbat karta Hun   to  many a Pakistani - oops. 

And always 

Bahut Bahut Shukriya 

and lastly 

Mujhe aab ki bahut kami mehsoos huwi