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| 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.
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| Pinky |
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| Pinky or Benazir as Pakistan's PM |
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| 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.
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| 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 7th 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.
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| 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;
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
