My re-entry into Pakistan was predictable. After an exotic month away from the banal and tiresome schedule of social Lahore, I landed, you won’t be surprised to know, into a wedding. There are a brave few who choose to stand apart from the common herd of revelers here and not get married in December. No, I’m not talking about the psychotic few who marry in the summer; I mean those who marry in Spring. It’s a lovely idea to get married in the season of blooming flowers, aming crisp cool air, fragrant jasmine, clear skies, and the harmonic buzz of an ever-expanding army of mosquitoes that may or may not give you dengue. Don’t you just love Lahore in spring?
The risk is that it can go horribly wrong. The clouds can darken in seconds and suddenly pour down enough rain for the wedding tent to collapse, or for the guests to be swept away, or, in the case of one memorable evening from my family nuptial history, both. The first night I got back I went to the outskirts of Lahore for a party for the happy couple, thrown in one of those expansive country estates we politely call a “farm” here. I arrived at a small gate a little outside Lahore and knocked demurely. It opened to reveal large lawns and a twinkling house in the distance. This place had a driveway so long that you had to take a golf cart to get to the main house.
The party was a mix of the young, the old and the botoxed. I did the howvayouuuus’s and wherevubeeen’s with about six people before I realized no one was really interested in hearing about my trips at length, distracted as they were by two hundred other people, and were only asking out of politeness. I came up with a short thesis statement of my travels to help things along (“Yes, I was in India. Very different, but the same. Next!”). It was an early evening since the wedding was on the next day, and on my way out I stopped at the buffet when I heard a terrible scream. One of my friends had twisted her ankle on monstrously high-heeled shoes on the stairs and was presently writhing in agony in front of the guestlist, none of whom were moving a muscle. The embodiment of spontaneous chivalry, I put down my dessert and swept the girl up in my arms (she weighs something like 90lbs) and decided to carry her out of the house to much fanfare and doe-eyed admiration, until I realized I needed a golf-car to get back to the gate. My back has been out for two days but I feel very noble nonetheless.
[quote]Negotiating with these terrorists is like being in a therapy group run by your rapist[/quote]
On the way out a group of foreigners attending the wedding were being herded into a van, presumbably to take them back to their hotel (you never know). They saw me carrying my friend past them and snorted, “Had a fun night then, huh?” while giving me this look. A look that implied we were those people; you know, the obnoxious ones, the ones last to leave a party, the ones who run into roads late at night and sing Prince songs and how sad it was that we were invited in the first place.
I am never that person, and so I replied with a look that said “boo!” because it doesn’t take much to frighten white people who are visiting Pakistan.
But frights are a dime a dozen here. Just the next night I had entered the wedding party when I got a text message telling me that the journalist Raza Rumi had been attacked by “unknown assailants”. Surrounded by noise and music and people dressed in yellow, it took a while for me to process that the attack actually happened. Eventually the people I talked to confirmed that he had been targeted less than an hour ago; six men had pulled up next to his car as he left a television studio and opened fire. He survived but his 25 year-old driver did not.
I knew that Rumi traveled under “threat’, that vague term one now uses for anyone who has the audacity to spout logic and reason in public. Most of the time I delude myself into beliving such threats are abstract. That is, until they happen.
That night was a perfect microcosm of what Privileged Pakistan is like. One night you’re at a party, celebrating a young couple getting married as the entire guestlist is geared towards a happy acknowledgement of a future, and then an attack on a friend’s life reminds you that no one’s future here is guaranteed.
Rumi, as most of you know, has been associated with this paper for years, and initially I thought it was very close to home. But the thing is, all the attacks are now close to home. We used phrases like “wake-up call” and “final straw” when Salmaan Taseer was assassinated. We said it again when a Shia doctor and his son were murdered on the way to school in the morning; and we will say it again the next time a liberal-minded person is attacked simply for existing, as you know they will be. Like a spring wedding, you never know how quickly the dark clouds will emerge to wash away the pretense and leave behind a jagged truth.
What frightens me the most – much more than living in a country where these threats exist– is living in a country where we think that by negotiating with our attackers, the threats will cease. They won’t cease. Negotiating with these terrorists is like being in a therapy group run by your rapist, or trying to talk to a cancer that has overrun your body. You don’t talk to cancer. When its cells divide and multiply and kill off your brave and innocent, you do not talk as if to a misunderstood child. You act or you cease to exist.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com and follow @fkantawala on twitter
The risk is that it can go horribly wrong. The clouds can darken in seconds and suddenly pour down enough rain for the wedding tent to collapse, or for the guests to be swept away, or, in the case of one memorable evening from my family nuptial history, both. The first night I got back I went to the outskirts of Lahore for a party for the happy couple, thrown in one of those expansive country estates we politely call a “farm” here. I arrived at a small gate a little outside Lahore and knocked demurely. It opened to reveal large lawns and a twinkling house in the distance. This place had a driveway so long that you had to take a golf cart to get to the main house.
The party was a mix of the young, the old and the botoxed. I did the howvayouuuus’s and wherevubeeen’s with about six people before I realized no one was really interested in hearing about my trips at length, distracted as they were by two hundred other people, and were only asking out of politeness. I came up with a short thesis statement of my travels to help things along (“Yes, I was in India. Very different, but the same. Next!”). It was an early evening since the wedding was on the next day, and on my way out I stopped at the buffet when I heard a terrible scream. One of my friends had twisted her ankle on monstrously high-heeled shoes on the stairs and was presently writhing in agony in front of the guestlist, none of whom were moving a muscle. The embodiment of spontaneous chivalry, I put down my dessert and swept the girl up in my arms (she weighs something like 90lbs) and decided to carry her out of the house to much fanfare and doe-eyed admiration, until I realized I needed a golf-car to get back to the gate. My back has been out for two days but I feel very noble nonetheless.
[quote]Negotiating with these terrorists is like being in a therapy group run by your rapist[/quote]
On the way out a group of foreigners attending the wedding were being herded into a van, presumbably to take them back to their hotel (you never know). They saw me carrying my friend past them and snorted, “Had a fun night then, huh?” while giving me this look. A look that implied we were those people; you know, the obnoxious ones, the ones last to leave a party, the ones who run into roads late at night and sing Prince songs and how sad it was that we were invited in the first place.
I am never that person, and so I replied with a look that said “boo!” because it doesn’t take much to frighten white people who are visiting Pakistan.
But frights are a dime a dozen here. Just the next night I had entered the wedding party when I got a text message telling me that the journalist Raza Rumi had been attacked by “unknown assailants”. Surrounded by noise and music and people dressed in yellow, it took a while for me to process that the attack actually happened. Eventually the people I talked to confirmed that he had been targeted less than an hour ago; six men had pulled up next to his car as he left a television studio and opened fire. He survived but his 25 year-old driver did not.
I knew that Rumi traveled under “threat’, that vague term one now uses for anyone who has the audacity to spout logic and reason in public. Most of the time I delude myself into beliving such threats are abstract. That is, until they happen.
That night was a perfect microcosm of what Privileged Pakistan is like. One night you’re at a party, celebrating a young couple getting married as the entire guestlist is geared towards a happy acknowledgement of a future, and then an attack on a friend’s life reminds you that no one’s future here is guaranteed.
Rumi, as most of you know, has been associated with this paper for years, and initially I thought it was very close to home. But the thing is, all the attacks are now close to home. We used phrases like “wake-up call” and “final straw” when Salmaan Taseer was assassinated. We said it again when a Shia doctor and his son were murdered on the way to school in the morning; and we will say it again the next time a liberal-minded person is attacked simply for existing, as you know they will be. Like a spring wedding, you never know how quickly the dark clouds will emerge to wash away the pretense and leave behind a jagged truth.
What frightens me the most – much more than living in a country where these threats exist– is living in a country where we think that by negotiating with our attackers, the threats will cease. They won’t cease. Negotiating with these terrorists is like being in a therapy group run by your rapist, or trying to talk to a cancer that has overrun your body. You don’t talk to cancer. When its cells divide and multiply and kill off your brave and innocent, you do not talk as if to a misunderstood child. You act or you cease to exist.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com and follow @fkantawala on twitter