Alive and Well in Pakistan

288 Pages·2004·0.95 MB·English

by  Ethan Casey

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ALIVE AND WELL
IN PAKISTAN
A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time
ETHAN CASEY
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First published in 2004by Vision,
a division of Satin Publications Ltd.
101Southwark Street
London SE10JF
UK
[email protected]
www.visionpaperbacks.co.uk
Publisher:Sheena Dewan
© Ethan Casey 2004
The right of Ethan Casey to be identified as the author of the work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright,Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission of the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN:1-904132-56-1
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Jacket photo:Sipa/Rex Features
Jacket and text design by ok?design
Printed and bound in the UK by Mackays of Chatham Ltd,Chatham,Kent.
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CONTENTS
Map of Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir State vii
Prologue: A Typical Flight to Lahore 1
PART ONE: BEFORE 7
Chapter 1: A Depiction of Something True 9
Chapter 2: Vestiges and Ruins 29
Chapter 3: Through the Looking-Glass 48
Chapter 4: Scenarios and Losses 69
Chapter 5: A Fantastic Time to be Alive 92
PART TWO: AFTER 105
Chapter 6: A Rediscovery 107
Chapter 7: Educating Myself in Public 139
Chapter 8: Rhythms of Ramzan 163
Chapter 9: What I Did During Eid 189
Chapter 10: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got him!’ 231
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Chatper 11: Man of Crisis 248
Chapter 12: The Hardest Road to Truth 265
Epilogue in England 275
Further Reading 276
Acknowledgements 278
About the Author 280
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PROLOGUE
A TYPICAL FLIGHT
TO LAHORE
It was as if I was already in Pakistan. Flight PK758 was still at the
gate at Heathrow, and I was in a bulkhead window seat. The aroma
of lamb curry wafted across the aisle. Then the fight broke out.
A couple of rows behind me a tall man with a moustache was
shouting,accusing another man of being drunk,while other passen-
gers and flight attendants admonished and tried to calm him.
‘Please, please!’ cried a clean-shaven, mild-countenanced smaller
man in elegant shalwar kameez and vest, spectacles and carefully
tended greying hair.
‘I am not going on this flight!’ shouted the tall man.
‘You’ve got a problem with him, deal with it in your own time,’
remonstrated another man,in a British accent.‘I have urgent busi-
ness. You are holding up four hundred people. You are now
holding my business up. You are on the same plane as him. If you
had any sense you’d realise that he’s on the same plane as you, and
you can deal with him when you get to Lahore. It’s none of my
fuckin’ business.’
‘Don’t touch me!’
‘There are two ways of dealing with this. Either you will sit
down or, I promise you, I will call security and get you both off
the fucking plane.’
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ALIVE AND WELL IN PAKISTAN
‘Call the fuckin’ s’curity! Call the fuckin’ s’curity!’
The benign-looking man leaned on the seat next to mine and
confided, with a grin: ‘This is a typical flight to Lahore.’
It seemed a good omen, somehow.
‘What’s it about?’
‘The other bloke was piss drunk, in the seat behind you. And he
was leaning over this fellow’s seat, playing with his hair.’
‘They didn’t know each other?’
‘They didn’t know each other.I thought they were friends.So this
guy punched the other guy. And then …’ He gestured in the direc-
tion of the scene we had just witnessed.
The tall man disappeared.
‘Where is he?’ someone asked.
‘In the toilet,’ replied someone else.
‘Good. Let’s lock him in there.’
It must have been resolved somehow,because suddenly a female
voice was giving safety instructions in English and Urdu, the crew
were bustling and demonstrating, and the plane was easing toward
the runway. Half an hour late, we were airborne.
I awoke to bright sunshine and a clear view of the brown, bare
mountains of Afghanistan.The abrupt transition between worlds that
air travel entails shocks the system. The air traveller cultivates non-
attachment,chronically standing apart from the disorienting variety of
people and places he encounters, at the same time craving inclusion
and connection with them. I had not been in Asia in two and a half
years, or in Pakistan in more than four. A great deal had happened in
the meantime.One fine morning two years ago tomorrow,everything
had seemed to change. Returning to Pakistan for a five-month stint
was for me a way of keeping faith with my own experience,comparing
notes with my younger self. Looking down on Afghanistan I felt
how far away I had been,and for how long,from Asia,where events
had real meaning and urgency and where I felt most alive.
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