Pakistan Book - Academy of the Punjab in North America PDF
Preview Pakistan Book - Academy of the Punjab in North America
Pakistan Book 21/7/04 5:52 pm Page ii Pakistan Book 21/7/04 5:52 pm Page iii ALIVE AND WELL IN PAKISTAN A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time ETHAN CASEY Pakistan Book 21/7/04 5:52 pm Page iv 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. Pakistan Book 21/7/04 5:52 pm Page v 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 Pakistan Book 21/7/04 5:52 pm Page vi 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 Pakistan Book 21/7/04 5:52 pm Page vii Pakistan Book 21/7/04 5:52 pm Page viii Pakistan Book 21/7/04 5:52 pm Page 1 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.’ 1 Pakistan Book 21/7/04 5:52 pm Page 2 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. 2
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