Once I met a person who claimed to know about Pakistan not from the “biased” media or from the books but from the horse’s mouth - that is his pakistani friends have told him things about Pakistan…
I was totally dumbfounded to learn what he had to say about the implementation of religion, the impact of culture, the behaviour of a common Pakistani in pakistan… and things like that…
One thing that I found along the right lines was the food… He had first hand experience of eating out in Pakistani restaurants abroad so it was not much off the tangent …
My question is if given a chance, you were asked to present Pakistan in words to a stranger who has never been to Pakistan, how would you go about it? How do you tackle the tricky questions that have specially arose after the incident of 9/11 specially regarding the religion and some of cultural practices?
Very delicately. With all the suicide bombing , ethnic clashes, beheading of innocent journalists it becomes very hard to defend my beloved country but I do. First of all I tell them that the country has been hijacked by corrupt politicians, feudal lords, establishment and corrupt army officers.
The life of common man has been made hell by all these corrupt people. I tell them if they go to East LA , or South side of Chicago most of the people there are not drug dealers or gangsters but those areas are under siege by drug dealer and gangsters. Same is true with Pakistan everybody in Pakistan is not terrorist, racist , bigot or corrupt. The country is under siege by some of these kind of people.
Koi main jhoot bolya ?
Its a hard sell esp to those of the 1950's Republican-party types like my dad. But know what? After seeing and hearing of my trips, after meeting and knowing my husband, my "navy-guy" dad told me that he was so proud of me for finding such a wonderful husband. And so thankful that he need not worry about me and his grandchildren.
To those who have no idea of what the realities ARE and are NOT in Pakistan, they simply need to be educated and shown.
but is that all you say? I feel after saying all this, they must have followup questions? do they?
Its a hard sell esp to those of the 1950's Republican-party types like my dad. But know what? After seeing and hearing of my trips, after meeting and knowing my husband, my "navy-guy" dad told me that he was so proud of me for finding such a wonderful husband. And so thankful that he need not worry about me and his grandchildren.
To those who have no idea of what the realities ARE and are NOT in Pakistan, they simply need to be educated and shown.
Once I met a person who claimed to know about Pakistan not from the "biased" media or from the books but from the horse's mouth - that is his pakistani friends have told him things about Pakistan...
I was totally dumbfounded to learn what he had to say about the implementation of religion, the impact of culture, the behaviour of a common Pakistani in pakistan... and things like that...
One thing that I found along the right lines was the food... He had first hand experience of eating out in Pakistani restaurants abroad so it was not much off the tangent ...
My question is if given a chance, you were asked to present Pakistan in words to a stranger who has never been to Pakistan, how would you go about it? How do you tackle the tricky questions that have specially arose after the incident of 9/11 specially regarding the religion and some of cultural practices?
how would I handle it, ..
1) honestly
2) note that I have my own views so it may indicate my own biases, and I will try to be objective but its not always possible.
what wrong in teh country is wrong, and putting lipstick on a pig is not going to make a difference, but if you lose credibility by discounting the negatives and exagerating the positives, then your words will lose their impact.
The fact is that negatives are often exxagerated too.. So in such case, highlighting the positive while recognizing the negative is an honest representation of the country.. isn't it?
Its countering one polarized view with another.
it would not be an honest representation, it would still be an inaccurate representation.
if there are 2 docs I dont want one telling me that i have 6 months and another telling me I will live to be 100, all i want is honesty.
or aspects of it are highlighted.
point being if one is going to highlight certain aspects the listener needs to be told that, otherwise it will come off as a commercial.
An interesting thing about this, whatever I knew and thought about Pakistan is turning out to be completely wrong. Just hanging out on GS has educated me about so many things regarding Pakistan, that I realized that i was just suffering from tunnel vision. For example, I used to think women in Pakistan drive, go to work, school, shopping, etc.
Turns out, this only applies to major cities and majority of population does not live in these cities. Just going outside of Karachi, life just changes drastically. Women don't even leave their house, forget about driving or going to work and school.
Just a couple of weeks ago I found out on GS that it is not allowed in most Pakistani mosques to dress in pant shirt. People just don't let you come in. I was seriously surprised to hear that. Where I lived, people regularly wore that to mosque, it wasn't even something to point out. And i didn't even live in some elite neighborhood, I lived in Gulshan Iqbal which is a lower middle class area.
So if I were to ever tell someone about Pakistan, I would just tell them that what I am telling them only applies to middle class people who live in major cities. Life in every other part is completely different.