Yesterday, there was a suicide bombing in Karachi, Pakistan in which a someone blew himself up at a Shia mosque on the day of Ashura. This is just one of many suicide bombings that have occurred in Pakistan as of late.

I can’t understand this. Not only the killing, attempted or otherwise, of innocent people, but the act of suicide to accomplish such an act. Every Muslim knows that killing oneself is a sin in Islam.

In Dying to Win, author Robert Pape writes about the origin of suicide bombing and its use as mostly political (foreign policy, etc). Basically, it was never used as a religious form of terror. And yet here, it is. All of a sudden, some Muslims believe that it is totally OK to kill themselves for religious purposes. I really, truly wonder what is said to them that convinces them that performing this act is not a violation of the core of their own religion.

I haven’t been to Pakistan in a couple of years, but I’m wondering if there’s some sort of movement to help re-educate the brainwashed few and make them stop killing themselves and their own people. A massive undertaking, no doubt, but I’m sure it would be well worth it for the country to invest in a project like this. I know it’s easy for me to say that sitting here in the States but I worry about Pakistan and I really do want it to be a better place, InshAllah.

Last year, I wrote my first ever Am I Ready to Back to Pakistan entry so I thought I would continue the trend with another blog post.

It has now been two years since I went on a trip to Pakistan with my family. I discussed the issues I had in the entry I referenced above and so once again, I’ll ask myself the question:

Am I ready to go back to Pakistan?

Not yet.

Please note this is different from the resounding “Nope” I gave in my last post.

While I still can’t bring myself to think about the next time I’ll go to Pakistan, I do find myself warming to the idea that I may make a trip there sooner than I thought I would (although considering that I thought ‘never’ was going to be the next time I go anything would be considered sooner).

Yes, I did have issues while there but in the end, Pakistan is part of my heritage and I don’t want to deny any of that.

I would do things different though. I don’t want to experience Pakistan stuck in my relatives’ houses. I want to get out and see the country. Better yet, I would want to make the trip about both Pakistan and India to visit the area in India where my family used to live before partition. I really want to explore my background and I figure wandering around Pakistan and visiting Uttar Pardesh in India is one of the best ways to do it.

However, before I make any kind of trip, it would be awesome if someone who actually cares about the welfare of the country came into power in Pakistan. The citizens of Pakistan deserve that at the very least.

So…. watch this space next year for another round of ‘Am I Ready to Go Back to Pakistan?’

For those of you who don’t know, Dish Network offers a variety of international channels that many Pakistani and Indians in the West salivate over. We have about 3 or 4 of those channels ourselves, as my mom watches a lot of Pakistani dramas. The siblings and I don’t really care for these dramas because they seem to be about the same thing all the time, family and relationships, and portray those in a manner that have all of us shaking our heads in disbelief as my mom says “Hota hai, hota hai.” (It happens, it happens).

I happened to be downstairs one morning when my mom was watching a Pakistani drama so I ended up watching a bit of it as I was eating my breakfast. The scene that was playing out before me depicted a woman in a hospital bed with her brother by her side. Apparently, this woman’s parents had forced her to marry this one guy who turned out to be abusive, which was why she was in the hospital. Her brother told her everything was going to be ok and in the next scene, he was with a lawyer to discuss getting her sister out of the marriage. Here’s what the lawyer said:

“Well, as the girl, she can’t initiate a divorce, but we’ll try to figure something out.”

HUH?

Horrified, I said to my mom: “What?! That’s not right!”

And it’s true. Islam specifically provides women’s rights in this area, granting them the ability to ask for a divorce. AND Pakistan is a Muslim country.

My mom said, speaking of the girl in the drama: “When they performed the nikah [marriage] and signed the papers, they crossed out the line that said she could initiate a divorce.”

I was a bit dumbfounded at that statement. My mom then told me something crazier - that’s what it was like on her nikah papers as well. For some reason my mom had only seen that it was crossed off recently, when she happened to be looking at these papers. She had no idea that the line had been crossed off on the papers when she had signed.

Unbelievable. I had no idea this kind of practice was being perpetuated in Pakistan, a so-called Muslim country. Islam gave women many rights which, even in this day and age, the country is refusing to recognize.

I’m really disappointed in Pakistani dramas.They have an opportunity to teach and to inform the masses that things could be different, that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. They’re modern in every other sense, their clothes, actions, etc. (I’m pretty shocked sometimes), and yet they can’t recognize that taking away this fundamental right negates all their other methods to be modern and sets them back instead. I’m still horrified.

For some reason, I was randomly thinking about my flight home from Pakistan back in 2007. I’m not quite sure why, but my thoughts turned to the people I talked to while making my way back to the States, my single-serving friends. On the flight from Karachi to San Francisco, I made 3 single-serving friends and I thought I would talk about them a bit here (since the day is almost over and I have yet to update):

SSF #1: Pakistani businessman who I met him while flying from Karachi to Lahore. He was just coming from Singapore, where he was doing some business. When I told him I was on my way to the United States, he said “Don’t tell me that!” He had lived in the U.S. for a while when he went to school and really missed it. He told me one particular story about when he had a job in which he had to sweep up the floor of a convenience store and he was wondering what it was he was doing there since he had a better life in Lahore. However, he realized that he was getting a richer experience and he really appreciated his time there. He didn’t have too many good things to say about Pakistan. When I told him that I was only in Karachi for two weeks he said that it was enough, that I probably wasn’t able to do more than watch a lot of TV. He was right.

SSF #2: Pakistani housewife/mom I met while on the flight from Lahore to Singapore. While the plane was backing out of its space on the tarmac in Lahore, she was still on her cell phone. I got very paranoid about the effects of talking on a cell phone while the plane was moving but I didn’t want to say anything to her myself. So, I covertly beckoned for a steward from my aisle seat and when he came, I leaned towards him and pointed over to the lady sitting next to me. He immediately asked her to hang up, which she did, and he then thanked me. I don’t even remember the last time I told on someone but fortunately for me, she didn’t notice I ratted her out.

Later, we talked. She was going to catch a connecting flight from Singapore to a place I can’t remember to be on a cruise with her daughter. Her daughter was in computer engineering, married with a kid, I believe. She thought I was from Dubai judging from my western clothes (I left Karachi in jeans and a black hoodie). She told me a bit about her family and I talked a bit about mine. She seemed really nice and I really am glad she didn’t notice I told on her. That would have made for an awkward flight.

SSF #3 British businessman who I met on the flight from Singapore to San Francisco. He had relocated to Singapore and was on his way to San Francisco for business. We sat in silence all the way from Singapore to Seoul but then started talking after Seoul when I exclaimed how it took way too long to go through security in Korea just to get back on our flight. We talked mostly of my trip to Pakistan and I talked about the conditions, relatives, even the fact that my aunt and uncle never turned on the hot water i.e. we had to take cold showers. We talked about the difference between Pakistani mentality versus Western mentality as well. “So,” he eventually asked. “You didn’t go to Pakistan to get married then.” I shook my head and said “No.” When we were getting closer to San Francisco, he asked me what was the first thing I was going to do when I got home. “Take a hot shower,” I replied. I was pretty excited about that. Out of the three, I probably talked to him the most.

The flight from Karachi to San Francisco was really the only time that I had meaningful conversations with the people I was sitting next to. I think it helped that I was by myself and none of these people were flying with anyone either. I’ll try to make more of a habit to get to know different people when I get a chance to fly in the future. Flights are a lot more interesting that way.

Beginning now, I will introduce a new feature in this blog, a once a year entry in which I ponder about whether or not I am ready to back to Pakistan.

This time last year, my family and I were in Pakistan. I spent more than $1,500 and 2.5 weeks of my life to go there. And for what? To be largely ignored by cousins or used as pawns in family issues. I had never in my life been so homesick and I couldn’t wait to get back home and hang with friends that actually like me and will willingly hang out with me. I even missed work! Before I left Pakistan, a couple of my aunts had told me to not take too much time to come back to Pakistan, as it had been 9 years since our last trip. I just smiled noncommittally.

So… Am I Ready To Go Back To Pakistan??

*drumroll*

Nope.

Thanks for playing folks!

Watch this space next year for another round of ‘Am I Ready to Go Back to Pakistan?’

The end of a wild night in Pakistan

So Flickr just added the ability for pro users to upload videos up to 90 seconds. This works for me as I don’t really want to use YouTube for the things I’ve taped using my digital camera and I can’t bring myself to upload them to Facebook. Most of videos are of my nephew but here’s the first thing I uploaded - an 18 second Karachi street scene taken by me from a car. We spent most of those precious seconds talking about salad:

I have more footage of Pakistan on my camcorder but I wanted to try this Flickr video thing out sooner rather than later.

EDIT: Here’s another video - this time one of my cousins explaining Pakistani water to my sister and another cousin. The conversation started because my sister mentioned that we couldn’t drink tap water. There is a lot of background noise so, yeah.