Quantcast
Channel: The Dawn News - Blogs
Viewing all 15293 articles
Browse latest View live

'Witnessing' urban utopias: A critical appraisal of the Karachi Biennale 2017

0
0

I

In the mini blue booklet distributed to visitors as a guide to the first-ever Karachi Biennale (KB17), the chief curator Amin Gulgee quotes the mystic poet Kahlil Gibran:

“Now, I feel, is the time for us to join together as artists and as human beings to bear witness to our shared salt.”

We think it is time to remind ourselves that there is no shared salt here.

It was the Sindhi feminist poet, Attiya Dawood, who first convinced us of the fallacy of shared salts. We were talking poetry at her sunny apartment on a Sunday morning, and we remember being ecstatic at the prospect of venturing into Bhittai, hailing it as a universal text.

At this point, Dawood smiled coyly and shared a small anecdote: She was once interviewing a group of Sindhi women in the interiors of the province whose husbands had migrated to Gulf countries in search for jobs.

Eulogising their suffering, Dawood told them: “Seeing you here, I am reminded of poem by the Shah of Bhittai, a poem that mourns the lives of Sindhi women on the banks of the river Sindhu, who, separated from their lovers, are heartbroken.”

At this, the Sindhi women burst into giggles, and asked: “Kaunsi poetry? Kaunsa love? Hamare shohar bohat badmaash the. Pura din ghar ka kaam karvate the. Acha hua chale gaye.”

(What poetry? What love? Our husbands were quite notorious. Making us do housework all the time. Thank goodness they’ve left!)

Dawood burst into laughter as she finished her anecdote, but that day, we learnt a vital lesson about the fallacy of the universal and the importance of the particular.

Explore: Dialogue: Laurent Gayer and Omar Shahid Hamid on Karachi

Driving to the 160-year-old building on the M.A Jinnah Road that houses the NJV School, we, too, are moved to ask: “Kaunsi madness?” (What madness?)

We, of course, are not responding to any poem, but words from the chief curator’s statement, the contents of which are aimed at poeticising something that is hardly poetic: The disorder of Karachi.

“Of course, the city is by the sea,” Gulgee tells us in a KB17 promotional video. “And of course, you can go there, look at the waves and feel open and clean and fly like a seagull."

"You have the energy of the city, the city buses, the rickshaws, taxis, it’s polluted, it’s crowded, and it has this tremendous energy… I call this maddening, inspiring city home.”

The taxi driver taking us to the NJV does not think there is anything inspiring about the traffic or the fumes. For him, on the contrary, Saddar represents a site of claustrophobia and frustration.

Upon reaching the NJV, when we ask him if he knows what is happening inside the building, the opening of Pakistan’s largest contemporary art event that is “an occasion to participate in an aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional survey of the city,” his response is a mix of indifference and dismissiveness: “yar kitna traffic hai.” (God damn this traffic!)

He reminds us of the laughing women from Dawood’s story, who have already made clear to us the difference between the imagined and the lived: The disorder of the city that is mad and inspiring for some is conversely nerve-wracking for others.

At the KB17, the two-week long, public exhibit spanning 12 venues, the politics of conflating the city as a site of lived space with the city as an imagined space – a concept of spatial politics on par with Benedict Anderson’s notion of imagined communities – was quite apparent.

The city imagined by the KB17 was a far outcry from the city as it is experienced by those who bear the brunt of its material degradation.

Imagined geographies, to borrow Edward Said’s term, refer to the perception of space created through certain images, texts, or discourses – and in our case, the exhibit of the KB17 itself – that is radically different, and in fact, establishes a distance, from the lived nature of the spaces in question.

Yet Said has the French geographer Henri Lefebvre to thank for this very critical distinction between the city as imagined and the city as lived; Lefebvre, who had aimed to liberate space from both its status as a pre-existing given and its passive role as a mere backdrop for social activities.

Who can forget his polemic statement that “Space has now become a theatre [emphasis added], a stage or a setting of action, than action itself.”

As we walk into the NJV, the voice of the exasperated taxi driver fading into the background… yar kitna traffic hai … we realise that we, too, have entered a theatre that holds little semblance with the world right outside the NJV’s gates. Welcome to the Karachi Biennale 2017.

We are greeted by two security guards with metal detectors, who ask us if we have invitations to the private opening ceremony – an affair kept entirely separate from the ‘public’ for whom the exhibits open on Day 2 – a contradiction in itself.

Discover: Operation overkill: How not to improve law and order in Karachi

After being cleared, we proceed to the reception area where a couple of volunteers are handing out the Biennale booklets, the first few pages of which lay out the project’s philosophy, describing it as a strategy to “strengthen a global art exchange” by proposing that “a bruised city like Karachi enter into an international discussion on art.”

That this is a statement so symptomatic of what Federica and Vittoria Martini, in their book Just Another Exhibition: Histories and Politics of Biennials, call “the globalisation of the art system”, is hardly contentious.

The KB17 curatorial team has no qualms about confessing this themselves, when they say that they “are part of the global network of the International Biennale Foundation [previously named the Venice Biennale] and have a strong partnership with cultural institutions abroad.”

To understand the socio-economic ramifications of the ways in which the KB17 posits an imagined geography of the city to embody a global aesthetic, we must first trace the spatial politics of its source inspiration – the archetype of the Biennale itself – which will allow us to understand the pitfalls of globalising cities, common to this popular exhibition model.

II

While first popularised in 1895 by the Venice Biennale, cultural theorists Peter Sloterdijk, Marion Roces, and Donal Preziosi, amidst others, trace the genealogy of this exhibitionary model in those notorious world exhibitions which began with the Grand Exhibition of 1851 in London and were epitomised by the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris.

These exhibitions, according to theorists, were “the first human attempts to condense the representation of the world in a unitary exhibition space, where the main exhibit became the world itself, a museum – an ahistorical thing [emphasis added].”

In his seminal 1989 essay Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order, British political theorist Timothy Mitchell brilliantly documents the curatorial strategies used during the world exhibitions. A world exhibition, he tells us, spanned across the public spaces of the city hosting it.

Each site chosen for the exhibition would house large-scale structures that served as replicas of cities from around the world, so that for the person navigating through the city, “the world itself was ordered up as an endless exhibition,” or to echo a phrase from Martin Heidegger, the “age of the world as exhibition.”

Mimicry, spectacle, and performance were incorporated into the exhibition’s 'theatrical machinery' to accentuate what Mitchell calls 'the effect of the real.'

Such was the obsession with maintaining this effect, according to one Arab writer visiting the exhibition, that “even the paint on the replica building was made dirty to represent ancient Cairo.”

Also read: The lament of a heritage manager in Pakistan

Parisian visitors who had never been to Cairo themselves were convinced in the honesty of these reductive representations.

Things only went bizarre when a group of Egyptians entered the replica of a mosque, only to find themselves in an Oriental-themed cafe that served real coffee.


Disoriented, resentful and angry, they brought the ‘effect of the real’ into serious question: Had their lived experiences been reduced to mere objects?

Where exactly lay the fine line between the artificial and the real, the representation and reality?

The organisers maintained their cool, asserting that turning the world into an exhibition only functioned as a larger metaphor: Of the globalisation of cities.

Or to use the rather ritualistic expression, “the meeting of cultures” and “breaking down of cultural barriers” – in this case quite literally, within the space of the world exhibition itself.

38 years earlier, the curatorial team at the Grand Exhibition of 1851 in London had responded with the same rhetoric to similar objections raised in Paris.

Of all people, Karl Marx happened to be in the British capital at the time. Persuaded by Engels to visit the Exhibition’s opening, they had flocked together to the grounds of Hyde Park where the world exhibition was taking place.

Furious at what they saw, they wrote a scathing critique in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Revue shortly afterwards, describing the “spectacle” as “the most impressive cold-bloodedness” they had ever witnessed.

They referred to it “as a striking proof of the concentrated power with which modern large-scale industry is everywhere demolishing national barriers and increasingly blurring local peculiarities [emphasis added] of production and society…”

This politics of globalising cities at the world exhibitions has now largely been documented by historians and urban theorists alike, finding its way to Pakistani artists too, one of whom, Julius John Alam, writes:

“The oldest arts festivals, including The Great Exhibition (1851) can be seen as the first attempt by a world power to affirm its spectacular wealth and high taste."

"The world fairs held in the 19th century provided a prototype for the modern art fair. While the overt desire was to provide a venue for a proliferation of arts and crafts, a covert goal was the affirmation of the hosting country as the hub of power and culture."

"This is the common agenda of capitalism and consumer culture, that is to dissipate itself through spectacle.”

Read more: SMOKERS’ CORNER: KARACHI: A HISTORICAL MESS

One is then led to ask: Whether their illusion was broken or not? The answer lies in the experiences of those Europeans who left the exhibition and encountered the real beyond the exhibit.

“So here we are in Egypt,” wrote one of them, a certain Gustave Flaubert, in a letter from Cairo.

“What can I say about it all? What can I write you? As yet I am scarcely over the initial bedazzlement … each detail pinches you; and the more you concentrate on it the less you grasp the whole…. it is such a bewildering chaos…”

In this encounter with the real that Mitchell brings up too, Flaubert experiences Cairo as a material chaos. And what can he say about this material experience? That “it is a chaos that refuses to compose itself as a picture… it is an absence of pictorial order [emphases added].”

Subsequently, dissociating oneself from the city’s material reality is also expressed in pictorial terms.

“The more distance you assume, [the city] becomes harmonious and the pieces fall into place of themselves, in accordance with the laws of perspective,” writes Flaubert. “The world arranges itself into a picture and achieves a visual order.”

“Every year that passes,” one disappointed Egyptian wrote criticising Flaubert, “you see thousands of Europeans traveling all over the world, and everything they come across they make a picture of that tells nothing about our lives. [emphases added]”

Flaubert’s account exposes the contradictions of world exhibitions, or their modern-day successors, the art biennales of the world.

Curators reorder the real as a picture, a spectacle, a theatre, a museum, a mimicry, a performance. In doing so, a great deal of distance is established (“the more distance you assume”) from the materiality of the lived space.

In establishing distance from that materiality, art biennales’ claim that they “are here to represent cities” and “to witness what the city stands for” simply drops dead.

As we climb the stairs to the NJV, Mitchell’s words hit us too, “As visitors to the world exhibit, you imagine yourself caught up in a hall of mirrors from which you cannot find a way out."

"You cannot find the door that leads back to the real world outside; you have lost touch with reality. [emphasis added]”

We enter the NJV, establishing distance. The regurgitating sound of the traffic outside drops dead.

III

If imposing an exhibitionary order onto lived spaces had such serious social and political ramifications at the world exhibitions in the 19th Century, it is unfortunate to hear Nilofur Farrukh, the CEO of the KB17, describe her project precisely along these lines:

“I’m looking at it [the city] as a museum.” It is equally unfortunate to hear Asma Ibrahim, a Trustee of the KB17, describe the event as “a museum outside of the building.”

Reducing lived realities of a city space to a museum can only offer us a myopic understanding of the nature of city spaces.

Biennials, or city-as-exhibits, participate in the construction of this myopia, where audiences, following the romantic attitudes of Phileas Fogg, the fictional character invented by Jules Verne, navigate the city in an “ambition to represent the complexity of the world in a compressed journey.”

To evoke the words of the father of modern anthropology Claude Lévi-Strauss, compressed journeys “do not involve, as we like to believe, in discovering facts after long and thorough study, but in covering a considerable number of kilometres, while collecting fixed and animated images.”

Read next: Karachi diagnostic

It is important, then, to ask ourselves: Underneath this ambitious palimpsest of animated images, what are the plain facts about Karachi in general and Saddar in particular?

From Arif Hasan to Perween Rahman to Noman Ahmed to Nausheen Anwar, responsible and engaged intellectuals and citizens alike have written about the problems that have plagued Karachi.

According to the report The Rise of Karachi as a Mega City, give us frightening statistics of urban poverty: 50% of the total population in Karachi is living below the poverty line, a large ratio of which occupies the peripheries of katchi abadis. Out of this ratio, 54% are chronically poor.

Karachi struggles to cater to rising urban demands and finds itself in the face of a staggering 90,000 unmet units of housing this year.


The traffic fumes in the city, especially on M.A Jinnah road right outside the NJV building, are good enough to choke you.

The National Environmental Quality Control estimates that 86% of the city air pollution is high sulphur in disguise, emitted from fuel-inefficient motor vehicles such as the W11 buses and the rickety rickshaws that symbolise “a tremendous energy” for the chief curator of the Karachi Biennale.

The city generates an unbelievable 475 million gallons of sewage per day. Open sewers and overflowing manholes abound throughout the city, carrying an artery of untreated waste that is discharged into nallas winding their way into an Arabian Sea that the chief curator of the Karachi Biennale finds “open and clean.”

Saddar itself is emblematic of Karachi’s historical material problems and their transformations.

Part of British modernisation that divided the city into Old Town and New Town, Saddar was part of the latter, along with Civil Lines and the Cantonnement – centres of social and political power where the British (and some indigenous elites) resided in luxury.

Separated they were from the Old Town where the natives lived in a “maze of densely populated mohallas roughly organised in ethnic and religious lines, without any access to water, electricity and sewage lines,” according to researcher Laurent Gayer in his impeccable book, Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City.

Further read: Karachi needs revenues of the size of a country, not of a municipality

The spatial segregation along class lines continued after the creation of Pakistan, when the “wealthier muhajirin, including public servants, were allocated prime housing in downtown localities around Saddar,” notes Gayer.

“Karachi’s turbulent plebs,” on the other hand, were settled on the outskirts in Baldia, Malir, and Korangi during Ayub Khan’s regime.

Some were “forcibly settled” in New Karachi under Ayub’s Greater Karachi Resettlement Plan – a “disciplinary project which aimed to sanitise and secure the city centre [emphasis added] by sending away the poorer, working-class segments of the refugee population to the periphery of the city,” writes Gayer.

This class-based urban engineering of the city resulted in consequences that Karachi still lives with, one of which is most apparent on the M.A Jinnah Road.

As all other major arteries, it became a “transit channel” for the working classes to move between the city centre and their residences, leading to “clogging and environmental degradation” of Saddar, destroying any potential it had to be a “socially integrative” place.

It is here, in Saddar, on the M.A Jinnah Road, that the KB17 purports to “disrupt the limits of our spatial imagination… [and be] an occasion to revisit our histories, rethink our present, and reimagine our future with greater optimism.”

The irony lies in undertaking a project whose curatorial paradigm reproduces precisely what it claims to disrupt: A distance from the material realities of the space it has entered.

IV

The politics of establishing distance from the material realities of Saddar, and thus de-limit, rather than disrupt, our spatial imagination of it, manifested itself in many ways at the KB17.

Simply placing artwork in a public space does not make it public art, especially if distance is at work.

In her monumental book Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics, Rosalyn Deutsche formulates a clear-cut working definition of what public art means – and one that is as inclusionary as it gets.

“The most radical promise embodied in the public art”, writes Deutsche, “is to decrease this distance by “dislodging public art from its ghettoisation within the parameters of conventional art discourse, and resituate it, at least partially, within critical urban discourse.”

Borrowing from Eric Gibson’s Public Art and the Public Realm, Deutsche establishes the "criterion" for public art: “What distinguishes public art in the eyes of its proponents, and, further, what renders it more socially accountable than the old, is precisely its 'usefulness.'"

"Definitions [of usefulness] will differ from artist to artist, but they are held together by a single thread: it is art plus function [emphasis original], whether the function is to provide a place to sit for lunch, to provide water drainage, or to enhance and direct a viewer's perceptions.”

"Utility", to quote Gibson himself, “is the principal yardstick for measuring the value of public art.”

Public art, as such, has a functional basis and involves a dedication to extra-aesthetic concerns of the community it is claiming to represent.

Radical public art, then, is promoted as useful in the reductive sense of fulfilling essential human and social needs.

Building on this foundation, radical public art claims to unify successively a whole sequence of divided spheres, offering itself in the end as a model of integration.

Initially setting up a polarisation between the concerns of art and those of utility, it then transcends the division by making works that are both artworks and usable objects at the same time.

Further, it claims to reconcile art, through its usefulness, to the public.

Related: KARACHI: The partitioning of Clifton Beach

If the supreme act of unification with which the intelligent public art is credited is its interdisciplinary cooperation with the public and their lived realities, the KB17 seems to have disappointed.

Nowhere is their promise of “cross-disciplinary approach that reflects collaboration among communities” and “discursive interventions that aim to cross pollinate idea across contexts" realised.

These exhibits of the KB17 belie the impression of bringing “art out of the galleries and to the public,” but their imagination of what constitutes public, to use the Lefebvrian analysis, is limited to seeing “space as a mere backdrop for social activities…”

It is not a coincidence to discover the word backdrop in the official statement of the international partner of the KB17, The International Biennale Foundation (formerly known as the Venice Biennale):

“The goal of Karachi Biennale is to bring visual art into public spaces to invite, encourage, and sometimes impose [emphasis added] public engagement on the viewing audience."

"Using the metropolis of the host city as a backdrop [emphasis added], the Karachi Biennale 2017 will present artistic content that addresses topics and initiates discussion under a conceptual framework titled Witness."

"Projects will be created that interact with the viewing public to create a platform that is democratic and accessible.”

The word backdrop exposes KB17’s theatrical connotations, implying distance from the lived, reminiscent of a canvas on which paint applied, or a Cartesian grid on which everything is an empty, white space waiting to be conquered.


As such,space is rendered as passive and the artist/geographer an active agent of negotiation. Space and the public living in it are already reduced to non-agents.

But perhaps comparing the city to a canvas might be overlooked, given the KB17’s lack of cross-disciplinary ethic. More appalling is the use of the word impose in the same paragraph as the word democratic, a coupling rather unfortunately to come across.

As the organisers of the world exhibitions asserted that imploding the cities of the world into an exhibition only functioned as a metaphor of “the meeting of cultures”, now the KB17 curatorial team insists on “strengthening a global art exchange showcasing Pakistan to the world.”

On the same topic: Cities, climate change and Pakistan’s extended urbanisation

Mimicry, spectacle, and performance are now part and parcel of the KB17’s 'theatrical machinery,' as they once were of the world exhibition, and they manifest both, in the KB17’s overall philosophy, but also in its curatorial strategy that manifests in individual exhibits that are the positioned in the city space.

In their books, The Society of the Spectacle and The Revolution of Everyday Life, Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem warn us against the cultures of mimicry, spectacle, and performance marketed as “public representations.”

At the heart of their discourse is the idea that spectacles degrade human life, because those creating are detached from those experiencing it, and whether to create poetry out of someone’s dispossession is to degrade their struggles.

As such, with the degradation of human struggle, also comes the hindering of critical thought.

“The whole life of societies,” writes Debord, “presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles [emphasis original]. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation."

"The phenomena of maintain distance is part and parcel of a global social praxis that has split up into reality on the one hand and image on the other.”

At the KB17, this splitting is exercised at many exhibits.

Let us take, for example, Huma Mulji’s installation, titled An Ode to a Lamppost That Got Accidentally Destroyed in the enthusiastic Widening of Canal Bank Road, which she had drilled into the walls of the Pioneer Book House, engendering the historical bookshop in the process.

Mulji writes of her site-specific work for KB17: “The installation shifts from buoyant absurdity to a paradoxical and monumental decline… The site of Pioneer Book House, equally worn, gives sanctuary but also illuminates the enormity of the moment, the slow passing of time. The site and the installation within collaborate…”

Of what Mulji promises in technical terms, she, in fact, delivers: As we walk into the Pioneer Book House, we do not even notice the exhibit until we are on the second floor, to behold the distressed face of Maniza Naqvi, who describes herself as the “voluntary caretaker” of the book house.

It is only until Naqvi points it out, jammed between the floors, that we can discern it, that we are almost forced to negotiate its visibility from the materiality of the space it inhabits.


Looking at the exhibit, we are immediately reminded of a quote by Samuel Beckett that he reserved for the works of James Joyce: “It not about something; it is the thing itself.”

Such is the obsession with maintaining the ‘effect of the real’ that, as the owner of the book house Zafar Hussain bitterly reveals:

"When the artist was leaving, she asked me to spit my paan onto the installation. When I refused, she asked if I could get someone to do it, to make it look like it fit in."

It reminded us of the perplexed Arab writer’s account of the world exhibition, that “even the paint on the replica building was made dirty to represent the real Cairo.”

Consider the performance piece, Any Last Words by Kanwal Tariq, who had a few human beings stuffed into sacks to mimic the movements of those who are kidnapped in the infamous band boris of Karachi.

The sacks were placed in between the feet of visitors. We, for one, accidentally walked over a sack, mistaking it for an object, until it resumed its movement, making contorted sounds, to show us that it was alive.

During the opening of the show, people took to the social media to document the performance. Videos showed up on people’s instagram, with hashtags like #ExperienceTheBody #ContemporaryMovement, one going to the extent of using the hashtag #UrbanRomance.

Later onwards, the editor of ArtNow Pakistan described the performance as “a notable performance” that “brought a certain richness and excitement” to her.

Another depressing example is Hurmat ul Ain and Rabbya Naseer’s tragedy of epic proportions, Dropping Tears Together II. In what was dubbed as performance art around the theme of tears, the two artists came together to chop a dozen kilos of onion.

The sweeper woman we spoke to later, who had to clean the onion peels in the aftermath of the KB17, did not witness any poetry in this installation.

She only stood at a distance, obscured by the weight of the urban visitors and foreigners, the chopping of the dozen of onions only symbolising one thing to her: Waste and humiliation.

The number of activists that the country has known, for whom the memory of suffocation in a sack lives with them every day, to watch a crowd of consumers ‘witness’ their memory by hash-tagging it #UrbanRomance is a very unfortunate affair.

To stereotype and dehumanise Zafar Hussain’s paan-eating habit and turn it into an aesthetic of the working-class as an object of art is questionable behaviour by every standards.

Related: Pakistan’s urban policy: Turning cities into slums

“The spectacle”, Debord tells us, “asserts that all human life, which is to say all social life, is mere representation."

"Any critique capable of apprehending the spectacle's essential character must expose that representation is a visible negation of life — and as a negation of life that has invented a visual form for itself. [emphasis original]”

“The actor supposed to play a condemned man in a realist play is at perfect liberty to remain himself,” continues Vaneigem.

“Herein lies, in fact, the paradox. This freedom that he enjoys is contingent upon the fact that this "condemned man" is in no danger of feeling a real hangman's noose about his neck."

"The roles we play in everyday life, on the other hand, soak into the individual, preventing him from being what he really is and what he really wants to be."

"They are nuclei of alienation embedded in the flesh of direct experience”

If such alienating experiences are created by local artists, who embody considerable detachment from the materiality of the spaces of the exhibits, we need not imagine the alienation carried out by the foreign artists, 40 of them, who have all flown into the city to engage with the public.

Yet, they have brought art “geared toward showcasing New Media, [and] video installation” that relies heavily on technology, intertextuality, and transnational cultural contexts.

This creates a knowledge gap, which according to the journalist Hamna Zubair, has furthered alienated “a public that still conceives of ‘art’ being a product of traditional forms of expression — portraiture, painting and calligraphy, for example."

According to a poll by Dawn, international exhibits have created “an attitude of apprehension” amidst the local public, many of them “admitting that they ‘didn’t understand’ the art” and even “lack the words to explain why.”

These semantic contexts remained unbridged throughout the KB17; and on the contrary, the curators let them exist in this schizophrenic way, without a single inquiry into the desires of the public.

In the news: Tackling Lahore's smog will have to include the curbing of elite consumption patterns

We still navigate through the exhibits, hoping to find something that would make KB17 worthwhile endorsing. But we are proven wrong – all optimism is thwarted when we chance upon the fact that KB17 has announced a tour of Karachi for the international artists through the Super Savari Express.

In a very problematic feature article written for The Guardian in 2015, journalist Maryam Omidi described this bus service as “an armed tour bus for crime-ridden Karachi.”

The bus comes “secured by six armed guards close by at all times, serving to protect the tourists from the city’s day to day reality.”

One passenger finds the merits of travelling on this bus in the following:

“You have the opportunity to explore the city in a typical Pakistani bus [that are otherwise] fast, with passengers jumping onto the bus; others sitting on the roof if there is no room inside.”

The Super Savari markets itself as a local tour bus promising a local experience of the city while conveniently also facilitating a complete disengagement from the material conflicts of the everyday commuter of the “typical Pakistani bus” that it is modelled after: The W11.

A fuel-inefficient motor, the W11 is no great romance: It contributes to pollution, it is here that working-class women are harassed, and owing to a history of urban rupture, inefficiency and failure, it is part of the city’s transport system now on the verge of collapse.

At Rs2,000 per ticket, against the staggering Rs10 which its local counterpart affords, the Super Savari attracts only the wealthy clientele of posh areas, offering them mediated experiences of the city that cannot be classified as the experiences of the public by any standards.

While the Super Savari tour was open to everyone at the KB17 , international artists were given complimentary trips, while locals were asked to pay the regular fee to avail the same tour.

If the desires of the international artists are really about connecting with the city and its people, why did the KB17 not take them on a local W11 bus?

Here, the KB17’s own contradictions are exposed: They subconsciously devise a separation of the public and the international visitors.


White People want to explore the buildings of Saddar, without having to deal with the locals of Saddar, who are stereotyped into disparate categories because of their class.

Only a panoptic ‘tourist gaze’ is maintained, whereby native bodies and native settlements are reduced to static objects, only to be observed at a distance.

“By absorbing dominant ideology about the city,” writes Deutsche, “Proponents of the public art respond to urban questions by constructing images of well-managed and beautiful cities for a global audience. Theirs is a false vision.”

Further read: Who are the winners and losers of Karachi’s mega development projects?

Arif Hasan, the authority on urban planning in Karachi, traces this dominant ideology to the “the World Class city agenda” which comprises of four key desires:

The World Class city should have iconic architecture; it should be branded for a particular cultural, industrial or other produce or happening; and it should cater to international tourism, which has promoted massive gentrification of public space.”

For Hasan, the above agenda is already in operation, fueling projects spanning from social to cultural to political ones through which global social, economic, and cultural capital (often a combination of these) flows into the city space, at the cost of local modes of life and culture being sidelined.

“Insofar as it discerns a real problem”, writes Deutsche, “the loss of people's attachment to the city – global capital, whether cultural or social, reacts by offering solutions that can only perpetuate alienation: a belief that needs and pleasures can be gratified by expertly produced, "world class" environments: by turning the city itself into a global urban utopia.”

V

“Why should Karachi be Dubai?” asked the late Perween Rahman. “Karachi should be Karachi.”

When looking at what will make Karachi a Karachi for its citizens, how the citizens will reclaim the right to their city, the Karachi Biennale Foundation, as a public art project that purports to “bring art to the public,” needs to ask itself a very pressing question:

When public art itself takes on an insular character and seems more and more divorced from the quotidian issues of the denizens of its city, does Karachi even need an internationally-inspired biennale that fails to create art that can call itself public?

If the aim of the next KB is to consider the issue of public space at all, to forge a lasting discourse on public art, they will have to bring what Gayatri Spivak calls “a shift in their own desires,” towards the local, and acknowledge that first, space is political, and second, so is any intervention in that space.

The purpose of this critical appraisal is solely to suggest an alternative, possibly transformative, practice of public art that understands the political nature of space. This is the struggle for responsible curation.


Does a city like Karachi even need a Biennale?

0
0
I


In the mini blue booklet distributed to visitors as a guide to the first-ever Karachi Biennale (KB17), the chief curator Amin Gulgee quotes the mystic poet Kahlil Gibran:

“Now, I feel, is the time for us to join together as artists and as human beings to bear witness to our shared salt.”

We think it is time to remind ourselves that there is no shared salt here.

It was the Sindhi feminist poet, Attiya Dawood, who first convinced us of the fallacy of shared salts. We were talking poetry at her sunny apartment on a Sunday morning, and we remember being ecstatic at the prospect of venturing into Bhittai, hailing it as a universal text.

At this point, Dawood smiled coyly and shared a small anecdote: She was once interviewing a group of Sindhi women in the interiors of the province whose husbands had migrated to Gulf countries in search for jobs.

Eulogising their suffering, Dawood told them: “Seeing you here, I am reminded of poem by the Shah of Bhittai, a poem that mourns the lives of Sindhi women on the banks of the river Sindhu, who, separated from their lovers, are heartbroken.”

At this, the Sindhi women burst into giggles, and asked: “Kaunsi poetry? Kaunsa love? Hamare shohar bohat badmaash the. Pura din ghar ka kaam karvate the. Acha hua chale gaye.”

(What poetry? What love? Our husbands were quite notorious. Making us do housework all the time. Thank goodness they’ve left!)

Dawood burst into laughter as she finished her anecdote, but that day, we learnt a vital lesson about the fallacy of the universal and the importance of the particular.

Explore: Dialogue: Laurent Gayer and Omar Shahid Hamid on Karachi

Driving to the 160-year-old building on the M.A Jinnah Road that houses the NJV School, we, too, are moved to ask: “Kaunsi madness?” (What madness?)

We, of course, are not responding to any poem, but words from the chief curator’s statement, the contents of which are aimed at poeticising something that is hardly poetic: The disorder of Karachi.

“Of course, the city is by the sea,” Gulgee tells us in a KB17 promotional video. “And of course, you can go there, look at the waves and feel open and clean and fly like a seagull."

"You have the energy of the city, the city buses, the rickshaws, taxis, it’s polluted, it’s crowded, and it has this tremendous energy… I call this maddening, inspiring city home.”

The taxi driver taking us to the NJV does not think there is anything inspiring about the traffic or the fumes. For him, on the contrary, Saddar represents a site of claustrophobia and frustration.

Upon reaching the NJV, when we ask him if he knows what is happening inside the building, the opening of Pakistan’s largest contemporary art event that is “an occasion to participate in an aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional survey of the city,” his response is a mix of indifference and dismissiveness: “yar kitna traffic hai.” (God damn this traffic!)

He reminds us of the laughing women from Dawood’s story, who have already made clear to us the difference between the imagined and the lived: The disorder of the city that is mad and inspiring for some is conversely nerve-wracking for others.

At the KB17, the two-week long, public exhibit spanning 12 venues, the politics of conflating the city as a site of lived space with the city as an imagined space – a concept of spatial politics on par with Benedict Anderson’s notion of imagined communities – was quite apparent.


The city imagined by the KB17 was a far cry from the city as it is experienced by those who bear the brunt of its material degradation.

Imagined geographies, to borrow Edward Said’s term, refer to the perception of space created through certain images, texts, or discourses – and in our case, the exhibit of the KB17 itself – that is radically different, and in fact, establishes a distance, from the lived nature of the spaces in question.

Yet Said has the French geographer Henri Lefebvre to thank for this very critical distinction between the city as imagined and the city as lived; Lefebvre, who had aimed to liberate space from both its status as a pre-existing given and its passive role as a mere backdrop for social activities.

Who can forget his polemic statement that “Space has now become a theatre [emphasis added], a stage or a setting of action, than action itself.”

As we walk into the NJV, the voice of the exasperated taxi driver fading into the background… yar kitna traffic hai … we realise that we, too, have entered a theatre that holds little semblance with the world right outside the NJV’s gates. Welcome to the Karachi Biennale 2017.

We are greeted by two security guards with metal detectors, who ask us if we have invitations to the private opening ceremony – an affair kept entirely separate from the ‘public’ for whom the exhibits open on Day 2 – a contradiction in itself.

Discover: Operation overkill: How not to improve law and order in Karachi

After being cleared, we proceed to the reception area where a couple of volunteers are handing out the Biennale booklets, the first few pages of which lay out the project’s philosophy, describing it as a strategy to “strengthen a global art exchange” by proposing that “a bruised city like Karachi enter into an international discussion on art.”

That this is a statement so symptomatic of what Federica and Vittoria Martini, in their book Just Another Exhibition: Histories and Politics of Biennials, call “the globalisation of the art system”, is hardly contentious.

The KB17 curatorial team has no qualms about confessing this themselves, when they say that they “are part of the global network of the International Biennale Foundation [previously named the Venice Biennale] and have a strong partnership with cultural institutions abroad.”

To understand the socio-economic ramifications of the ways in which the KB17 posits an imagined geography of the city to embody a global aesthetic, we must first trace the spatial politics of its source inspiration – the archetype of the Biennale itself – which will allow us to understand the pitfalls of globalising cities, common to this popular exhibition model.

II


While first popularised in 1895 by the Venice Biennale, cultural theorists Peter Sloterdijk, Marion Roces, and Donal Preziosi, amidst others, trace the genealogy of this exhibitionary model in those notorious world exhibitions which began with the Grand Exhibition of 1851 in London and were epitomised by the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris.

These exhibitions, according to theorists, were “the first human attempts to condense the representation of the world in a unitary exhibition space, where the main exhibit became the world itself, a museum – an ahistorical thing [emphasis added].”

In his seminal 1989 essay Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order, British political theorist Timothy Mitchell brilliantly documents the curatorial strategies used during the world exhibitions. A world exhibition, he tells us, spanned across the public spaces of the city hosting it.

Each site chosen for the exhibition would house large-scale structures that served as replicas of cities from around the world, so that for the person navigating through the city, “the world itself was ordered up as an endless exhibition,” or to echo a phrase from Martin Heidegger, the “age of the world as exhibition.”

Mimicry, spectacle, and performance were incorporated into the exhibition’s 'theatrical machinery' to accentuate what Mitchell calls 'the effect of the real.'

Such was the obsession with maintaining this effect, according to one Arab writer visiting the exhibition, that “even the paint on the replica building was made dirty to represent ancient Cairo.”

Also read: The lament of a heritage manager in Pakistan

Parisian visitors who had never been to Cairo themselves were convinced in the honesty of these reductive representations.

Things only went bizarre when a group of Egyptians entered the replica of a mosque, only to find themselves in an Oriental-themed cafe that served real coffee.


Disoriented, resentful and angry, they brought the ‘effect of the real’ into serious question: Had their lived experiences been reduced to mere objects?

Where exactly lay the fine line between the artificial and the real, the representation and reality?

The organisers maintained their cool, asserting that turning the world into an exhibition only functioned as a larger metaphor: Of the globalisation of cities.

Or to use the rather ritualistic expression, “the meeting of cultures” and “breaking down of cultural barriers” – in this case quite literally, within the space of the world exhibition itself.

38 years earlier, the curatorial team at the Grand Exhibition of 1851 in London had responded with the same rhetoric to similar objections raised in Paris.

Of all people, Karl Marx happened to be in the British capital at the time. Persuaded by Engels to visit the Exhibition’s opening, they had flocked together to the grounds of Hyde Park where the world exhibition was taking place.

Furious at what they saw, they wrote a scathing critique in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Revue shortly afterwards, describing the “spectacle” as “the most impressive cold-bloodedness” they had ever witnessed.

They referred to it “as a striking proof of the concentrated power with which modern large-scale industry is everywhere demolishing national barriers and increasingly blurring local peculiarities [emphasis added] of production and society…”

This politics of globalising cities at the world exhibitions has now largely been documented by historians and urban theorists alike, finding its way to Pakistani artists too, one of whom, Julius John Alam, writes:

“The oldest arts festivals, including The Great Exhibition (1851) can be seen as the first attempt by a world power to affirm its spectacular wealth and high taste."

"The world fairs held in the 19th century provided a prototype for the modern art fair. While the overt desire was to provide a venue for a proliferation of arts and crafts, a covert goal was the affirmation of the hosting country as the hub of power and culture."

"This is the common agenda of capitalism and consumer culture, that is to dissipate itself through spectacle.”

Read more: SMOKERS’ CORNER: KARACHI: A HISTORICAL MESS

One is then led to ask: Whether their illusion was broken or not? The answer lies in the experiences of those Europeans who left the exhibition and encountered the real beyond the exhibit.

“So here we are in Egypt,” wrote one of them, a certain Gustave Flaubert, in a letter from Cairo.

“What can I say about it all? What can I write you? As yet I am scarcely over the initial bedazzlement … each detail pinches you; and the more you concentrate on it the less you grasp the whole…. it is such a bewildering chaos…”

In this encounter with the real that Mitchell brings up too, Flaubert experiences Cairo as a material chaos. And what can he say about this material experience? That “it is a chaos that refuses to compose itself as a picture… it is an absence of pictorial order [emphases added].”

Subsequently, dissociating oneself from the city’s material reality is also expressed in pictorial terms.

“The more distance you assume, [the city] becomes harmonious and the pieces fall into place of themselves, in accordance with the laws of perspective,” writes Flaubert. “The world arranges itself into a picture and achieves a visual order.”

“Every year that passes,” one disappointed Egyptian wrote criticising Flaubert, “you see thousands of Europeans traveling all over the world, and everything they come across they make a picture of that tells nothing about our lives. [emphases added]”


Flaubert’s account exposes the contradictions of world exhibitions, or their modern-day successors, the art biennales of the world.

Curators reorder the real as a picture, a spectacle, a theatre, a museum, a mimicry, a performance. In doing so, a great deal of distance is established (“the more distance you assume”) from the materiality of the lived space.

In establishing distance from that materiality, art biennales’ claim that they “are here to represent cities” and “to witness what the city stands for” simply drops dead.

As we climb the stairs to the NJV, Mitchell’s words hit us too, “As visitors to the world exhibit, you imagine yourself caught up in a hall of mirrors from which you cannot find a way out."

"You cannot find the door that leads back to the real world outside; you have lost touch with reality. [emphasis added]”

We enter the NJV, establishing distance. The regurgitating sound of the traffic outside drops dead.

III


If imposing an exhibitionary order onto lived spaces had such serious social and political ramifications at the world exhibitions in the 19th Century, it is unfortunate to hear Nilofur Farrukh, the CEO of the KB17, describe her project precisely along these lines:

“I’m looking at it [the city] as a museum.” It is equally unfortunate to hear Asma Ibrahim, a Trustee of the KB17, describe the event as “a museum outside of the building.”

Reducing lived realities of a city space to a museum can only offer us a myopic understanding of the nature of city spaces.

Biennials, or city-as-exhibits, participate in the construction of this myopia, where audiences, following the romantic attitudes of Phileas Fogg, the fictional character invented by Jules Verne, navigate the city in an “ambition to represent the complexity of the world in a compressed journey.”

To evoke the words of the father of modern anthropology Claude Lévi-Strauss, compressed journeys “do not involve, as we like to believe, in discovering facts after long and thorough study, but in covering a considerable number of kilometres, while collecting fixed and animated images.”

Read next: Karachi diagnostic

It is important, then, to ask ourselves: Underneath this ambitious palimpsest of animated images, what are the plain facts about Karachi in general and Saddar in particular?

From Arif Hasan to Perween Rahman to Noman Ahmed to Nausheen Anwar, responsible and engaged intellectuals and citizens alike have written about the problems that have plagued Karachi.

According to the report The Rise of Karachi as a Mega City, give us frightening statistics of urban poverty: 50% of the total population in Karachi is living below the poverty line, a large ratio of which occupies the peripheries of katchi abadis. Out of this ratio, 54% are chronically poor.

Karachi struggles to cater to rising urban demands and finds itself in the face of a staggering 90,000 unmet units of housing this year.


The traffic fumes in the city, especially on M.A Jinnah road right outside the NJV building, are good enough to choke you.

The National Environmental Quality Control estimates that 86% of the city air pollution is high sulphur in disguise, emitted from fuel-inefficient motor vehicles such as the W11 buses and the rickety rickshaws that symbolise “a tremendous energy” for the chief curator of the Karachi Biennale.

The city generates an unbelievable 475 million gallons of sewage per day. Open sewers and overflowing manholes abound throughout the city, carrying an artery of untreated waste that is discharged into nallas winding their way into an Arabian Sea that the chief curator of the Karachi Biennale finds “open and clean.”

Saddar itself is emblematic of Karachi’s historical material problems and their transformations.

Part of British modernisation that divided the city into Old Town and New Town, Saddar was part of the latter, along with Civil Lines and the Cantonnement – centres of social and political power where the British (and some indigenous elites) resided in luxury.

Separated they were from the Old Town where the natives lived in a “maze of densely populated mohallas roughly organised in ethnic and religious lines, without any access to water, electricity and sewage lines,” according to researcher Laurent Gayer in his impeccable book, Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City.

Further read: Karachi needs revenues of the size of a country, not of a municipality

The spatial segregation along class lines continued after the creation of Pakistan, when the “wealthier muhajirin, including public servants, were allocated prime housing in downtown localities around Saddar,” notes Gayer.

“Karachi’s turbulent plebs,” on the other hand, were settled on the outskirts in Baldia, Malir, and Korangi during Ayub Khan’s regime.

Some were “forcibly settled” in New Karachi under Ayub’s Greater Karachi Resettlement Plan – a “disciplinary project which aimed to sanitise and secure the city centre [emphasis added] by sending away the poorer, working-class segments of the refugee population to the periphery of the city,” writes Gayer.

This class-based urban engineering of the city resulted in consequences that Karachi still lives with, one of which is most apparent on the M.A Jinnah Road.

As all other major arteries, it became a “transit channel” for the working classes to move between the city centre and their residences, leading to “clogging and environmental degradation” of Saddar, destroying any potential it had to be a “socially integrative” place.

It is here, in Saddar, on the M.A Jinnah Road, that the KB17 purports to “disrupt the limits of our spatial imagination… [and be] an occasion to revisit our histories, rethink our present, and reimagine our future with greater optimism.”

The irony lies in undertaking a project whose curatorial paradigm reproduces precisely what it claims to disrupt: A distance from the material realities of the space it has entered.

IV


The politics of establishing distance from the material realities of Saddar, and thus de-limit, rather than disrupt, our spatial imagination of it, manifested itself in many ways at the KB17.

Simply placing artwork in a public space does not make it public art, especially if distance is at work.

In her monumental book Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics, Rosalyn Deutsche formulates a clear-cut working definition of what public art means – and one that is as inclusionary as it gets.

“The most radical promise embodied in the public art”, writes Deutsche, “is to decrease this distance by “dislodging public art from its ghettoisation within the parameters of conventional art discourse, and resituate it, at least partially, within critical urban discourse.”

Borrowing from Eric Gibson’s Public Art and the Public Realm, Deutsche establishes the "criterion" for public art: “What distinguishes public art in the eyes of its proponents, and, further, what renders it more socially accountable than the old, is precisely its 'usefulness.'"

"Definitions [of usefulness] will differ from artist to artist, but they are held together by a single thread: it is art plus function [emphasis original], whether the function is to provide a place to sit for lunch, to provide water drainage, or to enhance and direct a viewer's perceptions.”

"Utility", to quote Gibson himself, “is the principal yardstick for measuring the value of public art.”

Public art, as such, has a functional basis and involves a dedication to extra-aesthetic concerns of the community it is claiming to represent.

Radical public art, then, is promoted as useful in the reductive sense of fulfilling essential human and social needs.

Building on this foundation, radical public art claims to unify successively a whole sequence of divided spheres, offering itself in the end as a model of integration.

Initially setting up a polarisation between the concerns of art and those of utility, it then transcends the division by making works that are both artworks and usable objects at the same time.

Further, it claims to reconcile art, through its usefulness, to the public.

Related: KARACHI: The partitioning of Clifton Beach

If the supreme act of unification with which the intelligent public art is credited is its interdisciplinary cooperation with the public and their lived realities, the KB17 seems to have disappointed.

Nowhere is their promise of “cross-disciplinary approach that reflects collaboration among communities” and “discursive interventions that aim to cross pollinate idea across contexts" realised.

These exhibits of the KB17 belie the impression of bringing “art out of the galleries and to the public,” but their imagination of what constitutes public, to use the Lefebvrian analysis, is limited to seeing “space as a mere backdrop for social activities…”

It is not a coincidence to discover the word backdrop in the official statement of the international partner of the KB17, The International Biennale Foundation (formerly known as the Venice Biennale):

“The goal of Karachi Biennale is to bring visual art into public spaces to invite, encourage, and sometimes impose [emphasis added] public engagement on the viewing audience."

"Using the metropolis of the host city as a backdrop [emphasis added], the Karachi Biennale 2017 will present artistic content that addresses topics and initiates discussion under a conceptual framework titled Witness."

"Projects will be created that interact with the viewing public to create a platform that is democratic and accessible.”

The word backdrop exposes KB17’s theatrical connotations, implying distance from the lived, reminiscent of a canvas on which paint applied, or a Cartesian grid on which everything is an empty, white space waiting to be conquered.


As such,space is rendered as passive and the artist/geographer an active agent of negotiation. Space and the public living in it are already reduced to non-agents.

But perhaps comparing the city to a canvas might be overlooked, given the KB17’s lack of cross-disciplinary ethic. More appalling is the use of the word impose in the same paragraph as the word democratic, a coupling rather unfortunately to come across.

As the organisers of the world exhibitions asserted that imploding the cities of the world into an exhibition only functioned as a metaphor of “the meeting of cultures”, now the KB17 curatorial team insists on “strengthening a global art exchange showcasing Pakistan to the world.”

On the same topic: Cities, climate change and Pakistan’s extended urbanisation

Mimicry, spectacle, and performance are now part and parcel of the KB17’s 'theatrical machinery,' as they once were of the world exhibition, and they manifest both, in the KB17’s overall philosophy, but also in its curatorial strategy that manifests in individual exhibits that are the positioned in the city space.

In their books, The Society of the Spectacle and The Revolution of Everyday Life, Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem warn us against the cultures of mimicry, spectacle, and performance marketed as “public representations.”

At the heart of their discourse is the idea that spectacles degrade human life, because those creating are detached from those experiencing it, and whether to create poetry out of someone’s dispossession is to degrade their struggles.

As such, with the degradation of human struggle, also comes the hindering of critical thought.

“The whole life of societies,” writes Debord, “presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles [emphasis original]. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation."

"The phenomena of maintain distance is part and parcel of a global social praxis that has split up into reality on the one hand and image on the other.”

At the KB17, this splitting is exercised at many exhibits.

Let us take, for example, Huma Mulji’s installation, titled An Ode to a Lamppost That Got Accidentally Destroyed in the enthusiastic Widening of Canal Bank Road, which she had drilled into the walls of the Pioneer Book House, engendering the historical bookshop in the process.

Mulji writes of her site-specific work for KB17: “The installation shifts from buoyant absurdity to a paradoxical and monumental decline… The site of Pioneer Book House, equally worn, gives sanctuary but also illuminates the enormity of the moment, the slow passing of time. The site and the installation within collaborate…”

Of what Mulji promises in technical terms, she, in fact, delivers: As we walk into the Pioneer Book House, we do not even notice the exhibit until we are on the second floor, to behold the distressed face of Maniza Naqvi, who describes herself as the “voluntary caretaker” of the book house.

It is only until Naqvi points it out, jammed between the floors, that we can discern it, that we are almost forced to negotiate its visibility from the materiality of the space it inhabits.


Looking at the exhibit, we are immediately reminded of a quote by Samuel Beckett that he reserved for the works of James Joyce: “It not about something; it is the thing itself.”

Such is the obsession with maintaining the ‘effect of the real’ that, as the owner of the book house Zafar Hussain bitterly reveals:

"When the artist was leaving, she asked me to spit my paan onto the installation. When I refused, she asked if I could get someone to do it, to make it look like it fit in."

It reminded us of the perplexed Arab writer’s account of the world exhibition, that “even the paint on the replica building was made dirty to represent the real Cairo.”

Consider the performance piece, Any Last Words by Kanwal Tariq, who had a few human beings stuffed into sacks to mimic the movements of those who are kidnapped in the infamous band boris of Karachi.

The sacks were placed in between the feet of visitors. We, for one, accidentally walked over a sack, mistaking it for an object, until it resumed its movement, making contorted sounds, to show us that it was alive.

During the opening of the show, people took to the social media to document the performance. Videos showed up on people’s instagram, with hashtags like #ExperienceTheBody #ContemporaryMovement, one going to the extent of using the hashtag #UrbanRomance.

Later onwards, the editor of ArtNow Pakistan described the performance as “a notable performance” that “brought a certain richness and excitement” to her.

Another depressing example is Hurmat ul Ain and Rabbya Naseer’s tragedy of epic proportions, Dropping Tears Together II. In what was dubbed as performance art around the theme of tears, the two artists came together to chop a dozen kilos of onion.

The sweeper woman we spoke to later, who had to clean the onion peels in the aftermath of the KB17, did not witness any poetry in this installation.

She only stood at a distance, obscured by the weight of the urban visitors and foreigners, the chopping of the dozen of onions only symbolising one thing to her: Waste and humiliation.

The number of activists that the country has known, for whom the memory of suffocation in a sack lives with them every day, to watch a crowd of consumers ‘witness’ their memory by hash-tagging it #UrbanRomance is a very unfortunate affair.

To stereotype and dehumanise Zafar Hussain’s paan-eating habit and turn it into an aesthetic of the working-class as an object of art is questionable behaviour by every standards.

Related: Pakistan’s urban policy: Turning cities into slums

“The spectacle”, Debord tells us, “asserts that all human life, which is to say all social life, is mere representation."

"Any critique capable of apprehending the spectacle's essential character must expose that representation is a visible negation of life — and as a negation of life that has invented a visual form for itself. [emphasis original]”

“The actor supposed to play a condemned man in a realist play is at perfect liberty to remain himself,” continues Vaneigem.

“Herein lies, in fact, the paradox. This freedom that he enjoys is contingent upon the fact that this "condemned man" is in no danger of feeling a real hangman's noose about his neck."

"The roles we play in everyday life, on the other hand, soak into the individual, preventing him from being what he really is and what he really wants to be."

"They are nuclei of alienation embedded in the flesh of direct experience”

If such alienating experiences are created by local artists, who embody considerable detachment from the materiality of the spaces of the exhibits, we need not imagine the alienation carried out by the foreign artists, 40 of them, who have all flown into the city to engage with the public.

Yet, they have brought art “geared toward showcasing New Media, [and] video installation” that relies heavily on technology, intertextuality, and transnational cultural contexts.

This creates a knowledge gap, which according to the journalist Hamna Zubair, has furthered alienated “a public that still conceives of ‘art’ being a product of traditional forms of expression — portraiture, painting and calligraphy, for example."

According to a poll by Dawn, international exhibits have created “an attitude of apprehension” amidst the local public, many of them “admitting that they ‘didn’t understand’ the art” and even “lack the words to explain why.”

These semantic contexts remained unbridged throughout the KB17; and on the contrary, the curators let them exist in this schizophrenic way, without a single inquiry into the desires of the public.

In the news: Tackling Lahore's smog will have to include the curbing of elite consumption patterns

We still navigate through the exhibits, hoping to find something that would make KB17 worthwhile endorsing. But we are proven wrong – all optimism is thwarted when we chance upon the fact that KB17 has announced a tour of Karachi for the international artists through the Super Savari Express.

In a very problematic feature article written for The Guardian in 2015, journalist Maryam Omidi described this bus service as “an armed tour bus for crime-ridden Karachi.”

The bus comes “secured by six armed guards close by at all times, serving to protect the tourists from the city’s day to day reality.”

One passenger finds the merits of travelling on this bus in the following:

“You have the opportunity to explore the city in a typical Pakistani bus [that are otherwise] fast, with passengers jumping onto the bus; others sitting on the roof if there is no room inside.”

The Super Savari markets itself as a local tour bus promising a local experience of the city while conveniently also facilitating a complete disengagement from the material conflicts of the everyday commuter of the “typical Pakistani bus” that it is modelled after: The W11.

A fuel-inefficient motor, the W11 is no great romance: It contributes to pollution, it is here that working-class women are harassed, and owing to a history of urban rupture, inefficiency and failure, it is part of the city’s transport system now on the verge of collapse.

At Rs2,000 per ticket, against the staggering Rs10 which its local counterpart affords, the Super Savari attracts only the wealthy clientele of posh areas, offering them mediated experiences of the city that cannot be classified as the experiences of the public by any standards.

While the Super Savari tour was open to everyone at the KB17 , international artists were given complimentary trips, while locals were asked to pay the regular fee to avail the same tour.

If the desires of the international artists are really about connecting with the city and its people, why did the KB17 not take them on a local W11 bus?

Here, the KB17’s own contradictions are exposed: They subconsciously devise a separation of the public and the international visitors.


White People want to explore the buildings of Saddar, without having to deal with the locals of Saddar, who are stereotyped into disparate categories because of their class.

Only a panoptic ‘tourist gaze’ is maintained, whereby native bodies and native settlements are reduced to static objects, only to be observed at a distance.

“By absorbing dominant ideology about the city,” writes Deutsche, “Proponents of the public art respond to urban questions by constructing images of well-managed and beautiful cities for a global audience. Theirs is a false vision.”

Further read: Who are the winners and losers of Karachi’s mega development projects?

Arif Hasan, the authority on urban planning in Karachi, traces this dominant ideology to the “the World Class city agenda” which comprises of four key desires:

The World Class city should have iconic architecture; it should be branded for a particular cultural, industrial or other produce or happening; and it should cater to international tourism, which has promoted massive gentrification of public space.”

For Hasan, the above agenda is already in operation, fueling projects spanning from social to cultural to political ones through which global social, economic, and cultural capital (often a combination of these) flows into the city space, at the cost of local modes of life and culture being sidelined.

“Insofar as it discerns a real problem”, writes Deutsche, “the loss of people's attachment to the city – global capital, whether cultural or social, reacts by offering solutions that can only perpetuate alienation: a belief that needs and pleasures can be gratified by expertly produced, "world class" environments: by turning the city itself into a global urban utopia.”

V


“Why should Karachi be Dubai?” asked the late Perween Rahman. “Karachi should be Karachi.”

When looking at what will make Karachi a Karachi for its citizens, how the citizens will reclaim the right to their city, the Karachi Biennale Foundation, as a public art project that purports to “bring art to the public,” needs to ask itself a very pressing question:

When public art itself takes on an insular character and seems more and more divorced from the quotidian issues of the denizens of its city, does Karachi even need an internationally-inspired biennale that fails to create art that can call itself public?

If the aim of the next KB is to consider the issue of public space at all, to forge a lasting discourse on public art, they will have to bring what Gayatri Spivak calls “a shift in their own desires,” towards the local, and acknowledge that first, space is political, and second, so is any intervention in that space.

The purpose of this critical appraisal is solely to suggest an alternative, possibly transformative, practice of public art that understands the political nature of space. This is the struggle for responsible curation.

'My father’s killer was sentenced to death at the age of 17; I forgive him and don't want him hanged'

0
0

I was 17-years-old when my father was killed. The boy who was arrested for his murder was the same age as me. He went to jail and was sentenced to death.

It was easy to be angry. It was easier still to hate him. After all, Muhammad Iqbal had no reason to do what he did to my family. But it happened anyway and we were powerless to stop it.

Suddenly, our household was in trouble. My father was our only source of income who had always taken care of everything, and with his death everyone turned to me – his eldest.

Explore: The sun has set on Pakistan's military courts — here's why it should never rise again

I had to find the means to support my four siblings and mother. Anger, sorrow and vengeance had to be put aside. There was no time for it. And with hard work, I realised, there was no use for it either.

I used to console my mother, and tell her that God was with us. That He would protect us. And He did.

With time, honesty, and hard work we were able to bring our lives back on track. We now have a small dairy business and I run a general store.

Things have been better. I now have school-going children of my own.

But Iqbal’s future may as well not exist.

Iqbal went to jail and has been there since 1999. He has spent more time in his life inside prison than outside it. He has, quite literally, grown up on death row.

Iqbal’s brother, Abbas, found his way to me a few years ago. He was a man weighed down – bent over by the terrible weight of knowing the magnitude of his request, almost broken by the knowledge of what his younger brother was going through.

At first, I was livid and turned him away.

But he came, again and again. He begged us again and again. People will do everything they can to save a loved one. And killing his brother will not bring back my father.

Stats by: Justice Project Pakistan
Stats by: Justice Project Pakistan

For all intents and purposes, and as far as my family is concerned, we believe Iqbal has been punished for what he did. He has learnt his lesson. And we forgive him, everyone including my mother. If not for his sake, then for the sake of his family that has already suffered enough.

But our wish to not see him hang may ultimately mean nothing. Iqbal was convicted by an Anti-Terrorism Court, which does not allow his sentence to be commuted.

We appealed to the Supreme Court on his behalf but this was denied. There is no room for forgiveness in the Anti-Terrorism Act, even if there is in our hearts.

Take a look: A flawed anti-terrorism law

I used to tell my siblings that my father’s death was in God’s plans. My father was sitting at the back of the van, and there were other people who were in the van right next to him.

The bullet that ricocheted off of the steering wheel could have hit any of them. But it did not. A small, unthinking decision about where to sit in the car decided my father’s fate.

Hanging Iqbal is detrimental for society. He was a boy, and he made a mistake and we are always more than the worst thing we have done.

Whether it was for our own peace, or to bring some to Iqbal’s family – we forgive him. God tells us to forgive our enemies, and that is what we’ve done.

We cannot force the government to save him from the gallows. It is their prerogative.

But if they are going to hang him for us, we say don't hang him. He can salvage what remains of his life, and move on so that we can all be relieved of that terrible night.

Muhammad Iqbal deserves to live.

This entire episode has already punished enough children.


Waheed Ahmed narrated this story to Rimmel Mohydin, who put it in form of an article.


Justice Project Pakistan has released a report that underscores the need for reform in the country’s primary counterterrorism legislation, particularly with regard to the lack of safeguards for juvenile offenders like Iqbal.

Visiting a Rohingya refugee camp was the most heart-wrenching medical mission I've undertaken

0
0

I have visited many poverty-stricken, underserved areas of the world on medical missions. However, my most recent trip to the Rohingya refugee camp in Ukhiya, Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, marked the first time that I have ever cried during fieldwork.

Stories of suffering usually affect me after the adrenaline has worn off and the fatigue has set in – most often on my long plane ride back home or during jet-lagged nights as I lie awake, remembering the patients I have left behind.

Children play by the water pump at the base of the refugee camp. -All photos by author unless stated otherwise
Children play by the water pump at the base of the refugee camp. -All photos by author unless stated otherwise

This time, however, things were different and the emotional toll my work at the Rohingya camp took on me was greater than ever before.

I had come to Bangladesh as part of the MedGlobal assessment team — a group of doctors, nurses and public health professionals tasked by the NGO with the huge responsibility of determining the needs of the population and initiating a primary health care clinic in the middle of the camp.

One of the pathways leading to the crowded tents of the camp.
One of the pathways leading to the crowded tents of the camp.

One day in the camp, after listening to an elderly lady's breathing to diagnose pneumonia, I went to find water so that she could take her first dose of antibiotics. Upon my return, I found tears in the eyes of my Bengali/Urdu-speaking male interpreter.

After many childhood summers in Karachi, I knew well enough that for a man to show his vulnerability like this in a public place, especially around relative strangers, is not typical in this part of the world. So something must have been very disturbing.

The campsite overlooking the roofs of the tents.
The campsite overlooking the roofs of the tents.

When I asked him what happened, he just shook his head and told me that our patient was describing how she and her frail husband had witnessed their three adult sons being killed by the Myanmar army. They also saw one of their young grandchildren being thrown into a fire.

Despite the unimaginable horrors they had experienced, somehow, the couple managed to travel for days to reach Bangladesh with their granddaughter. The young girl had accompanied her grandmother to the clinic and could not have been older than eight or nine.

MedGlobal Needs Assessment Team along with local staff in the clinic.
MedGlobal Needs Assessment Team along with local staff in the clinic.

The child would get daily rations of food and water for her elderly grandparents. Seeing how this little one was bravely shouldering the responsibility for the care of her aging grandparents not only brought tears to my eyes, but also made me worry about her future. What would happen to her after they are gone?

Maybe she would become like the three children we met as we explored the makeshift refugee camps in the Kutupalong and Balukhali areas of Ukhiya. The site consisted of about 800,000 people and was comprised of tents made from flimsy tarps and bamboo poles pitched on dirt ground, which turned into slippery mud during the monsoon rains.

The MedGlobal/Hope Foundation Clinic
The MedGlobal/Hope Foundation Clinic

These children were brought across the border because their parents were killed in Myanmar. They are being raised by distant relatives.

Their story was told to us by a man who spoke both Rohingya and Bengali. He was standing outside of his small tent, in which he lived with his four children, wife and two other family members.

These children just crossed the Naf River to Bangladesh a few hours prior to this picture being taken. Myanmar can be seen in the background.
These children just crossed the Naf River to Bangladesh a few hours prior to this picture being taken. Myanmar can be seen in the background.

As he stood outside his makeshift home, he told us another story of the lady in the neighbouring tent, who walked nine days over mountains, at eight months pregnant, with her three other children, to reach safety. Her husband was back in Myanmar, and she was unsure of his fate.

Editorial: Rape in Myanmar

So many women had made this difficult journey by foot or boat while pregnant. These women brought their tiny babies to the clinic to be checked by a doctor; tiny likely due to premature births and lack of hydration/nutrition of the mother, which leads to decreased breast milk production.

Refugees carrying bags of food and supplies in the monsoon floods. Photocredit: Maren Wolf
Refugees carrying bags of food and supplies in the monsoon floods. Photocredit: Maren Wolf

One baby sticks out in my memory. She was extremely small and had a sickly appearance. I took her temperature and found out she was flush with fever.

Normally, a baby in her condition would be rushed to the emergency room for blood work, a lumbar puncture, and IV antibiotics. As I tried to keep calm and decide what to do, I asked the interpreter to ask the mother how old the baby was. He replied, “Twenty something days.”

I asked again, saying that I needed a more precise answer. The mother replied and again my interpreter shook his head in sadness: “She says that the baby was born on her journey here, which she had made on foot. She walked for so long that the days and nights blended together, so she does not know how old the baby is.”

Dr. Minal Ahson examining a very small newborn.
Dr. Minal Ahson examining a very small newborn.

In the doctor’s room next door, my colleague was dealing with a similar situation – a malnourished, tiny baby with a fever.

After writing our assessments and findings on a referral form, we spoke to the local staff and arranged a tom tom (rickshaw) to take both babies to the nearest hospital. We returned to the queues of patients waiting for us, busy again with physical exams and dispersing medications.

A few hours later, I asked the clinic manager if the babies reached the hospital safely. He stated, “One of them did. The other one went home with the mother. She said she needed to ask her husband permission to take the baby to the hospital.”

A mother holds her sick child at the clinic. Photocredit: Farida Ahmad
A mother holds her sick child at the clinic. Photocredit: Farida Ahmad

My heart stopped. Did the mother not realise how sick the baby was? That the baby could die? Why did the staff let that happen?

I had a long discussion with the clinic manager about the seriousness of the situation. I asked him to inform us the next time this happens so that we can educate not only the mother, but also the father. This particular scenario really opened my eyes to navigating cultural boundaries and norms.

MedGlobal Needs Assessment Team exploring the camp. Photocredit: Farida Ahmad
MedGlobal Needs Assessment Team exploring the camp. Photocredit: Farida Ahmad

Many of these patients had never seen a doctor before due to their socioeconomic status in Myanmar. Most of them had acute complaints – respiratory infections, gastroenteritis, dehydration.

There were descriptions by many women of post-traumatic stress disorder, with symptoms of insomnia due to anxiety and flashbacks. But occasionally, I found a case that made me wonder if we were even equipped to provide appropriate treatment in such a resource-limited setting:

The eight-year-old with huge lymph nodes sticking out of his neck, pointing to systemic tuberculosis or cancer; the man with one-sided weakness likely due to a stroke; or the child with a neuromuscular disorder who stopped walking.

Children stand outside what is now their home.
Children stand outside what is now their home.

In a proper medical facility, these conditions would easily be worked up with biopsies and MRIs. However due to our lack of resources, all I could do was offer a smile, encouragement, and offer a prayer.

These are just a few of the many horrific stories I heard during my time at the refugee camp. Each of the hundreds of thousands who have fled Myanmar, now and over the years, have a tale equally heart-wrenching.

Since returning home, I have had multiple people tell me that the first time they had heard of the conflict was through me. This has reinforced my motivation to stand up and speak out for this neglected group of people.


Are you an international aid worker? Have you assisted in providing relief amidst humanitarian crises? Share your stories with us at blog@dawn.com

Guru Nanak, Wali Qandhari and other stories about how Hasan Abdal got water

0
0

Overshadowing the vast complex gurdwara of Panja Sahib, one of the most popular Sikh shrines, associated with Guru Nanak and located in the city of Hasan Abdal in Pakistan, is the tallest mound in the region, rising high above its other shorter cousins.

The entire city of Hasan Abdal is this interaction between mounds and planes, the narrow alleys with their wooden jharokas, abandoned Hindu temples, tall minarets of mosques and some recently constructed plazas, rising and falling as the earth beneath them breathes in and out.

However, there is something spectacular about this mountain. The scatter of the city, its ancientness, pales in comparison with the permanence of this mound.

The focal point of this historical city is the shrine of Guru Nanak, a vast complex protected by tall walls. Every year, hundreds of pilgrims descend upon this gurdwara from all over the world to celebrate different religious festivals including Baisakhi and Guru Nanak Gurpurab, the birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism.

This year as well, when Sikh and other devotees of Nanak come to Pakistan to participate in his birthday celebrations, Gurdwara Panja Sahib will be one of the places pilgrims will be allowed to visit by the Pakistani state. No Muslim, besides representatives of the state, will be allowed within the premise of the gurdwara.

The legend

Right next to the main entrance of the gurdwara manned by police officials, a tiny stream flows into the shrine.

The legend goes that the stream once flowed from a spring on top of the hill, near which lived a local religious figure named Wali Qandhari.

This spring was the only source of water for the inhabitants of Hasan Abdal.

But once Nanak arrived and started gathering a congregation around him, Qandhari felt jealous and angry as his popularity declined. It is believed that Qandhari stopped the flow of water downstream.

Needing water, the people appealed to Qandhari to let the water flow as before. “Go to your Guru, the one you visit everyday now and ask him for water,” he is supposed to have responded angrily.

The inhabitants of Hasan Abdal went to Nanak, who sent Bhai Mardana, his disciple and companion, to plead with Qandhari, who in turn is said to have refused angrily and turned him away with the same response.

Nanak sent him again, and then again, but to each time come back with the same response. Eventually, Guru Nanak is said to have removed a stone from the ground under his feet, making a stream of water gush out of the earth.

Qandhari’s spring, as per the legend, is said to have dried up because all of its water had come gushing out from under Nanak’s feet. In his wrath, Qandhari is supposed to have hurled a boulder towards Nanak, which he is said to have stopped with his right hand, leaving a permanent mark on the rock, thus lending this gurdwara its name – Panja Sahib.

It now rests in the sacred pond created from this stream of water, facing the main shrine, as pilgrims form a long queue to place their hand where once Nanak is said to have rested his fingers.

Many festivals

The climb up the mountain, which Bhai Mardana is believed to have undertaken thrice to plead with Qandhari, is arduous.

On a barren mountain interspersed with a few trees, the authorities have in the past few years constructed a pathway. Many Sikh and Hindu devotees who come to visit the shrine of Nanak also sometimes travel up this mountain.

At the time of Baisakhi when the courtyard of Nanak’s gurdwara is swarming with pilgrims, there is a festival arranged here as well. There is a separate date for another festival at the shrine which is unique to it.

Graffiti on some of the rocks on this mound present another form of religiosity. “Allah O Akbar”, it says. On a cool morning a few years ago when I undertook this trek, there were several people whom I saw on their way to the lone shrine at the top of the mound. T

hese were young students in school and college uniforms, families with picnic baskets, a few devotional pilgrims carrying their slippers in their hands, intentionally attempting to make this spiritual journey more difficult for themselves.

Midway, there was a small bazaar, while there was another one right outside the shrine, selling not only religious paraphernalia but also refreshments.

In an empty ground behind the shrine, there were a few dervish preparing a hashish cigarette, with the panorama of the world with its people engaged in their daily grind at their feet.

Standing at the edge of the cliff, the gurdwara seemed far away, beautiful with its white dome and a green pool.

Many stories

In the Sikh tradition, Wali Qandhari is an arrogant saint who refused Mardana water and then hurled a rock towards Nanak, for his Muslim devotees he is Baba Hasan Abdal, who lends this city its name.

There are several stories associated with the saint. Some suggest that he prayed on the top of this mountain and then mysteriously disappeared, which is why he is also referred to as the Zinda Pir.

There is no grave inside the shrine, but a green box has been put up by the authorities to collect donations made by the pilgrims.

Another narrative suggests that the saint was responsible for extracting two streams from these mountains that now flow through the city.

In this version, he was not the jealous or arrogant saint who refused Mardana water, but rather the benefactor who gave the city the gift of water.

There is yet another story associated with the pond at Hasan Abdal which recalls its reverence in the Buddhist tradition. H

asan Abdal happens to be approximately 20km from Taxila and the Chinese Buddhist traveller Hiuen Tsang, who travelled to India in the 7th century CE provides a detailed description of his trip to a place about the same distance from Taxila, with an ancient tank covered with lotus flowers, where devotees would come to pray for fine weather and rain.

The pond, according to Hiuen Tsang, had become sacred because of a boon bestowed on a Buddhist king, Elapatra, by the gods.

With relics of ancient Buddhist cities and stupas in all directions around the town, Hassan Abdal in ancient India fell within the geographical location of the famed Gandharan civilisation.

While there are three stories that describe the origin of this pond, there is only one thing common in all of them – its sacredness.


This article was originally published on Scroll and has been reproduced with permission.

These banyan trees are proof of Pakistan’s roots in inter-religious peace

0
0

The shrine stands atop an ancient mound. The structure has been recently constructed – perhaps built upon an older shrine – crowned by a white dome. The dome is intricately decorated on the inside, with glass patterns and floral designs.

The grave of the patron saint, Shah Bahlol Daryai, is right in the middle. There is a huge tiara above the plaque bearing his name, while turbans of the kind worn by grooms are scattered across the shrine. In Sufi symbolism, the saint is often imagined as the groom, sought by his lover and bride, the devotee.

There are several graves around this shrine located near the Chenab river in Pakistan’s Punjab province, near the city of Pindi Bhattiyan. An ancient civilisation once thrived here. After it disappeared, all it left behind was a mound.

For residents of the area, the ancient mound possibly symbolised death and they decided to build a graveyard on its remains – there was no contradiction in burying the dead on the top of the mound of dead.

As the mound gave way to the graveyard, its secrets seem to have disappeared with it. No one can say for certain how old this mound is.

Perhaps it was as old as time, merging with the antiquity of the Indus valley civilisation.

Perhaps it was part of a larger network of towns or cities that contained the key to understanding the ancient civilisation.

Standing for eternity

While death loomed on this ancient mound, right next to it, on an empty plain, stood symbols of eternity – three banyan trees, each one older and grander than the other. It’s hard to think of a better metaphor for permanence and immortality.

With its thick trunk sinking deep into the soil, its magnificent height, and its boughs hanging from its branches that sink into the earth, in time forming new additional trunks, the tree only seems to grow older and stronger with time. Does it come as a surprise, then, that Lord Krishna recited the Bhagavad Gita under the banyan tree?

Among the several magical properties ascribed to are the beliefs that the tree can bestow a couple with a child, cure leprosy and remove bad omens.

According to the Atharva Veda, the banyan tree is the abode of spirits. Other ancient myths suggest that the good-natured Yakhsa spirits reside here. If the tree or even its branch is cut off, it is believed that the spirits find the house of the one who destroyed their home.

There are several other myths about why the banyan should never be cut and hence several of these ancient trees are scattered across rural Punjab in Pakistan even today.

One of the most popular figures associated with the banyan tree (or by various accounts, its close cousin, the peepal) is the reluctant prince who fled his kingdom and abandoned wealth and power to search for truth.

It is under the shade of a banyan tree that he found this truth – where Siddhārtha Gautama became the Buddha or the enlightened one. In the process, he lent the tree its new name – Bodh, the tree of enlightenment, a name by which it is popularly referred to in Punjab.

Deep in his meditation, when the demon Devaputra Mara came to distract him, it is the guardian spirit of the tree that descended for his protection.

Last symbols

Just as death and immortality come together in this area, so too do different religions and traditions. Shah Bahlol Daryai, to whom this shrine is dedicated, was the spiritual master of one of the most unique Sufi poets of Punjab, Shah Hussain.

It is said that once, while he was leading a special prayer during one of the holy nights of Ramzan, Shah Hussain abandoned his position at the head of the congregation, entered the walled city of Lahore, cut off his beard and bought a set of ghungroos. Then, with a pitcher of wine in his hand, he danced in the streets of the city.

In his defiance of religious puritanical movements, Shah Hussain is the ultimate symbol of the Sufi Malmati tradition of Punjab, adherents of which do not follow any conventional religious doctrine and custom, instead believing in forging a personal relationship with the divinity, usually by flaunting conventions.

The Malmati tradition borrowed heavily from the Bhakti movement and the ascetic tradition developed around Shaivism. It is, in its essence, the ultimate expression of syncretic religious tradition of South Asia.

During his lifetime, Shah Bahlol found solace in the company of the dead atop of the mound. Several of his devotees, and companions, including Muslims, jogis, bhaktis and even Buddhist bhikshu, would have come here to pay homage to him or visit him. The ancient banyan trees must have stood witness to those times.

Banyan trees are worshiped and revered in various Sufi shrines all over the country. The boughs of these banyan trees tie together the diverse religious traditions of this ancient land. They are the last standing witness to a world that is slowly fading away.


This article was originally published on Scroll and has been reproduced with permission.

When doctors should admit they don’t know

0
0

After graduation from medical school, as the news broke out among family and friends that I have started a house job at ‘the most prestigious’ hospital in town, I started receiving curbside consultation requests.

First it was one of my mother’s friend, asking for my opinion if she should go for knee replacement surgery or not. With an inflated ego, I was ready to give her free advice based on my ‘vast experience’ of knee surgeries, which of course was limited to seeing a couple of postoperative patients during an orthopedic clerkship in my final year of medical school.  

Also read: How a medical exam at a top notch Karachi hospital ended in sexual harassment

Then an uncle showed up at our house, ready to unload his whole medical history from 20 years ago when he had once fallen, till recently when he pressed the car brakes a bit hard. He thought he also might have whiplash. Playing the role of a spine specialist, I was eager and ready to give my two cents.

Then there was a friend of mine who was struggling with infertility and had been to various medical centres in town. It did not take me much time to find a ‘solution’ for him once he asked for help.

At other occasions, I acted like a cardiologist, a psychiatrist, a nephrologist, a neurologist, an oncologist and what not. I was a free advice expert.


I stood, at the front of everyone’s problems, with a swollen ego, as I was being looked upon for solutions to everyone’s medical quandaries.

However, in all of that, it did not occur to me that my good-willed but half-baked advice may be doing more harm than good. It never crossed my mind to tell them that their medical problems were beyond my expertise of being an intern.

I was a fresh graduate from a system where I learnt about public toilets in great details, but not a single lecture on medical ethics.

I had earned a degree, but not the responsibility that comes with it. So I did not know how and when to admit ‘I don’t know’. Giving free advice was a noble act and not something to feel accountable for. I thought I was paying back to the society by this noble act.  

I am pretty sure I was not the only one in this quagmire. It’s prevalent in our society that people openly share every detail of their medical history with family, friends and especially if there is a doctor in the neighbourhood.

Doctors on the other hand, are ready to generously and sincerely share their advice, sometimes not really knowing the full extent of patient’s problem.

This culture is not specific to new graduates; unfortunately it has plagued the entire medical community at multiple levels.

When should a doctor tell his patients 'I don’t know' is a tough question. Physicians during their training and education are primed to answer questions. Not answering is not an option and 'I don’t know' never gets rewarded.

Medical practitioners are pressured to make a clear diagnosis and a straightforward treatment plan. Patients come with high hopes and expect black and white answers, often to some very complicated questions.

What most people don’t realise is that medicine is an ocean of uncertainty and doctors are the navigators of this ocean. Doctors read text books, but diseases don’t. Doctors make algorithms, but diseases may not follow them. Doctors follow medical guidelines, but these guidelines often change.

Years of practicing at high complexity tertiary care centres has humbled me. Not a day passes by without making me realise how much I don’t know. On top of this, an increasing pile of medical journals and research articles on my table keeps increasing my sense of ignorance.

Should this sense of ignorance be shared with patients? Will they deem their physicians as incompetent? Will the doctors lose their patients' trust? All of these are barriers for a doctor in admitting ‘I don’t know’ to their patients, when they really don’t.


Contrary to what most physicians might think, evidence in medical literature is clear that patients trust their doctors more when they are honest with them.

This may entail admitting a mistake, not knowing a diagnosis, being unaware of a treatment plan, or not been able to perform a procedure.   

If doctors take time to educate their patients about the complexity of a disease, the work needed to reach a definitive diagnosis, pitt-falls in the treatment plans, and any limitation of treatment options, it will increase trust in their doctors as well as in the medical profession.

Read next: Those who can’t afford to live are left to die – my experiences as a doctor in Karachi

When patients realise their doctors are working hard to sort out the problem, they bond with them more and tend to develop trust quickly. After all, a right diagnosis is more important.

Learning medicine is a science, practicing it is an art. In my first feedback meeting, my residency programme director and mentor, Dr Todd Gress, taught me a sentence that never let me down in 20 years of practicing medicine: “I don’t know, but I’ll find out”.


Are you a medical practitioner involved in community issues and building? Share your insights with us at blog@dawn.com

My life as a little brown girl growing up in Scarborough, UK

0
0

Let me take you on a trip down memory lane, to a place far, far away from Pakistan, to an island, cold as it is damp, that was once the bastion of colonial rule, with its pomp and circumstance and Queen Victoria ruling the waves.

Now home in further away from its sprawling capital, and venture north, following the eastern coastline along the North Sea, passing Hull, Grimsby and Bridlington and Filey, until you reach the small town of Scarborough.

The Scarborough embodied in the lyrical and haunting folksong, Scarborough Fayre, made famous by Messers Simon and Garfunkel.

Scarborough. The quintessential Victorian spa town, and in its heyday, the equivalent of Cannes or St. Tropez, where the wealthy once flocked to take the waters, flushing out poisons from the industrial cities.

Resplendent buildings like the Spa and the Grand Hotel were the town’s crown jewels. The beach was for taking walks, for visitors to feel the briny air kiss their skin.

Fast forward to the present and you’ll find the Grand and the Spa have long lost their sheen. They’re tired and tarnished, relics of a bygone era now gone to seed.

Arcades with their flashing lights and electric white noise line South Bay. The smell of fish and chips soaks the air.

A rundown shopping mall dominates the town centre. Pawnbrokers and Pound shops litter the main high street. Marks & Spencer and Debenhams are the flagship stores, but wander through them and you’ll find they’re bereft of shoppers. So too, is the bookstore, Waterstones.

But the elderly populating the town gaze at Scarborough through rose-tinted glasses. For them, it’s a beautiful place, the pride of Britain. They’ll remember it untainted and unpeppered with immigrants.

Being part of the EU, they will say, has diminished what is great about Britain. We are an island for the English. Everyone out.

Related: I am a Pakistani-American and Trump's rise threatens me

We were one of those few immigrant families landed in Scarborough. My parents didn’t necessarily pick out the town as the place where they would eventually settle. Instead, they may say that Scarborough chose them.

For many years they lived the lives of nomad, completing hospital placement after hospital placement as they completed their medical training.

Perhaps it was the prospect of living by the sea which drew them there. Or its accompanying undulating countryside, the green and pleasant land feted by Robert Blake. A life far away from the dour-grey cities they had inhabited before. They’ve never really said.

Scarborough. This is the place my parents and I call home. The place where I was born, where I went to school. Scarborough: The place where I stood out from the crowd but was desperate to blend in.

It wasn’t that I hated the shade of my skin or the colour of my hair. I was more focused on doing what others did which would somehow diminish how I looked relative to others. Less of a square peg in a round hole, so to speak. So, I played sport – tennis, netball, hockey. I ran cross-country for my school.

And central to all of this was my father. He encouraged us to play sport. To him, gender didn’t matter. If I liked sport, if I was good at it, then that was a great thing indeed. He happily came to watch me play tennis and netball, trigger-happy with his camera.

His philosophy carried through to music. All of us played the piano – my sister, my brother and even my mother. Although my father loved all music, he lamented that when it came to playing, he didn’t have a musical bone in his body.

Instead, he channelled his ambition through his children, me in particular, taking me to my weekly piano lesson, to music competitions (where my mother nodded off to sleep). When I gave up playing, his disappointment was all too evident.

I spoke English all the time, even to my parents who’d talk to me in Urdu and frown when I replied in English. Back then, I understood Urdu very well. I even dreamed in in the language; I just couldn’t speak it.

This posed a problem whenever I went back to Pakistan. For each two or three week period I was there, I turned into a mute. Nodding, shaking my head. I mastered the art of sign language. I also came across as rude and unhappy.

So much so, that after one visit, my grandmother remarked to my mother that I needed to shake up my act. Though the word didn’t feature in my grandmother’s vocabulary, I suppose in her eyes I was the archetypal coconut.

My inability/refusal to speak in my mother tongue posed further problems. When we visited relatives in London or Birmingham. I stuck out like a sore thumb, wearing western clothes and unable to speak Urdu.

Moreover, I had little knowledge of the world of Bollywood; I barely knew the words to the songs my cousins sang at weddings. My shalwar kameez were woefully out of fashion simply because (a) there weren’t any shops in Scarborough where my mother could buy one, and (b) the ones I had were hand-me-downs or tailored from old sari material belonging to my mother.

All that aside, I hated wearing them because a girl who lived around the corner from me, someone I feared and revered, (in other words, she was cool) spotted me in one such outfit and asked why I was wearing pyjamas.

Read next: How South Asian music helped my identity formation as a British-Pakistani

In the Bihari community we were deemed to be a part of, we were different for other reasons too. Living in Scarborough, I was very much the country bumpkin. My city cousins seemed far more polished and grown up, painted in the smooth veneer of our culture and traditions which I very much lacked.

In my eyes they had a sophistication that I woefully lacked. A certain nous and confidence way before my years. While their weekends would be whiled away at each other’s houses sharing meals, my family and I would go out for long walks – an alien activity if ever there was one.

But there was also one other, very large difference. The elephant in the room. For much of my childhood, my father was a Communist and a staunch atheist (the two can be mutually exclusive).

He wouldn’t pray with all the others and would sit on his own, waiting for everyone to return from their conversations with God.

I hated that my father was different in that regard too. It made me uncomfortable, accentuating my differences within this community where everyone gossiped.

Sometimes I would plead with him to go and pray with all the others, just for the sake of it, and to his credit, he would gently say that he’d prefer not to. Only now I see how unbothered he was by who he was. If only earlier on, I had taken note.

Perhaps my desire to blend in was inextricably linked to the innate eagerness as a child to please and be compliant. Ask my older sister, my mother, and they would tell you I was pretty much a well-behaved girl. I did as I was told, I happily ate the cakes my sister baked.

I could see how doing well made my parents happy. It made my teachers happy too, and that was a key thing. I don’t know how I knew, but I sensed that if I did well, I’d also be singled out less.

Being the youngest out of three helped too. You watch, you learn, particularly from your siblings’ mistakes. And at school, I had a quicksilver grasp of everything I was taught, lapping it up like a sponge. School, it seemed, would be a breeze.

And yet, it wasn’t. My colour was an issue. One girl told me I didn’t need to join the Brownies because I was already brown. I was called Paki and Blackie on and off by different people.

One teacher asked me if I was Jewish and whether that was the reason why I didn’t celebrate Christmas. I wanted to sink into a hole, never to come out again.

Such was my desire to fit in, to seek approval, that shamefully, I picked on the only other Asian girl in my year, hoping I’d win kudos from my peers, and to some extent I did.

All my friends were white. I was ebony to my best friend’s ivory and in the style of Wonder and McCartney we played duets on the piano.

Also read: It's time we stopped using 'kala' as an insult and respected the African-American community

As I morphed from child to teenager, the colour of my skin mattered more. I became an untouchable. Both a square (a swot) and brown, wearing NHS glasses coupled with bad skin.

My parents didn’t allow me to go out in the evenings, applying a different set of rules to me and my older brother who had the relative freedom to come and go. Cocooned in a home with only my studies to focus on, added to my naivety.

But to some extent I knew doing well was a way out. To gain independence, to live a life more free. I also had my mother’s example. She was a doctor.

Amongst my peers, I was the only one with a mother who worked full-time. Every day she’d go off to work, wearing a fitted jacket over a sari, a picture of elegance.

She was smart, she earned, she had financial independence, and I wanted that too. Never mind the fact that she was older than all the other mothers, that her salary exceeded that of my father’s.

If she didn’t have a career, I don’t think I would have been as ambitious or hungry for academic success. So even though I was labelled a swot, I was happy to remain one. In that regard I was content to stand out from the crowd.

And then it all unravelled after my GCSEs. I went off to sixth-form college. The glasses went, the skin improved. In short, people started to notice. Ensconced in a new environment, I was no longer the swot skulking in the shadows. I was almost an adult; it was time to rebel.

I won’t go into details, but you can imagine the rest: A straight A student going off the rails and her parents were none the wiser.

Until they found out.

And then it was off to boarding school in York, a city famed for its Roman and Viking history. I was 17, thrown into the Lower Sixth halfway through the academic year.

It was here where I understood what it really meant to be an outsider, catapulted into the realm of teenage girls with raging hormones and rampant angst. Most had eating disorders. Everyone was wary of me.

At the time I was a practising Muslim, my blind faith in Islam, I believed, kept me anchored to the ground. It was a superstitious approach to religion.

If I continued with my faith, I reasoned, nothing bad would happen to me. If I strayed – and yes, in my mind I used those very words – my world would collapse around me and I’d be imprisoned in a desolate pit of hell.

I was the only Muslim in the school and never felt more alien. Yes I was awkward, overly friendly. Once again, desperate to please, desperate to show I was normal and one of them, really, really.

Most people ignored me. There was another Asian girl there. Her father was Pakistani, her mother was English. She was beautiful and the queen of our year group. Truly exotic. A boy magnet too. From the beginning she gave me the cold shoulder.

The school star tennis player only started talking to me after we played a match where I narrowly lost. My English Language teacher told me I wasn’t going to get very far given the subject was, in her words, ‘extremely difficult’ and here I was jumping into the subject a little too late.

I ended up getting an A in my Lower Sixth exams. Not to be deterred, she claimed in front of everyone that English was not my mother tongue and I would continue to struggle.

She even set her conclusion in stone, writing words to that effect in her report which went into my UCAS and Cambridge University application forms.

This same English teacher nodded and smiled when a girl in our class said the Serb massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia Herzegovina was deserved because they were savages.

Suffice to say, my time at this school was one of the loneliest periods of my life. But I survived. I worked hard, spending most of my time in the library or in my study knowing that it was my ticket to a whole new world.

There I didn’t mind that I was different, the least popular girl in the year. Girls whispered behind my back, they blew hot then cold. In a way it was white noise that would come to an end.

And when I did get into Cambridge, I saw it as a big slap in the face of the English teacher who thought I’d never get in.

Explore: How I travelled to 20 countries in four years on a Pakistani passport

But it’s funny how I’ve pasted over that experience. I don’t look back on it with bitterness. I don’t hold any grudges. Life’s too short. Boarding school was merely a small stepping stone in my life, but one I probably needed. I was tested, I was thrown into the deep end. It was time to sink or swim.

When I compare it with my childhood in Scarborough, it was certainly one of the bleaker periods in my life and in a way, it paints my memories of growing up as a minority in that seaside town a much lighter shade.

Because for all my need to fit in, for the differences I felt and for all the restrictions I had at home, they were minor. As a child I was still quite free. I had the freedom to go out and explore with my friends, to go out on bike rides for hours at a time.

Our imaginations were there to be used. We were wholly unencumbered by schedules or video games or social media, and we played to our heart’s content, pretending we were witches and wizards, or grand explorers, the world at our feet.

We were truly rulers of our own universe. Skin colour, religion, and gender didn’t matter. We were all equals. Those are the elements that are precious.

No childhood is perfect. There’s light as well as dark. It’s what you take from it when you look back. And my childhood, the freedom that I had of growing up in a small town couldn’t be replicated in the bigger cities, and it can’t be replicated in today’s world where we fear for our children’s safety.

Our childhoods make us. I can’t go back in time and wish I was more confident, less bothered by being different. But when I reflect on that period, I cherish the importance of being different and embracing my differences, for who would ever want to follow the crowd?


Are you a Pakistani who grew up in the diaspora? Share your experiences with us at blog@dawn.com


Disappointments and reasons for optimism from the Bonn climate conference

0
0

As I walked towards the heavily-secured Bula Zone at the World Conference Centre in Bonn, Germany, to attend the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP23), an activist handed me a leaflet and mumbled in heavily-accented English, “Please help us save the Hambach Forest.”

Where have I heard the name of this forest before, I wondered. And then I remembered – it was during a visit to the Thar coal mine earlier this year where we were told that consultants from Germany were advising Pakistanis on how to exploit lignite, a type of coal found also in Hambach in western Germany.

Just as in Thar, there is a struggle in Germany too against a dirty fossil fuel like coal, especially in Hambach where an open-pit coal mine is endangering the 12,000-year-old forest.

This is what I find most exhilarating about the annual coming together of the signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC): The convergence of environmentalists from all over the world with a single-minded mission to save the planet from climate disaster.

Read next: The perils of inaction on climate change in Pakistan

COP23 was a technical conference – it didn’t have the excitement of the Paris Climate Conference (COP21) when a historic, legally-binding climate treaty was signed, agreeing to “hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to ensure that efforts are pursued to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C.”

The goal in Bonn was to flesh out a rule book, which will lead to the implementation of the Paris Accord from 2020 onwards. It might sound boring, but the conference was anything but.

The venue was divided in two zones, Bula and Bonn. ‘Bula’ means ‘welcome’ in Fiji and the small Pacific island, threatened by sea level rise and hurricanes, was the president of this year’s COP.

The conference couldn't be held in Fiji as the country doesn’t have enough hotel rooms for over 20,000 delegates!

The Bonn Zone, situated across a lovely park with ducks, lakes, and trees changing their autumnal colours, was where all the country pavilions were located. It was crowded with delegates buzzing with energy.

November, despite being cold and wet, is a festive season in Germany, and I entered the Bonn Zone at the beat of drums and could see dancers and performers in costumes at the German pavilion, who were inviting everyone to a nearby carnival.

Infographic: Nabeel Ahmed
Infographic: Nabeel Ahmed

I didn’t go the carnival but was told that thousands of activists had hit the streets of the city to protest against fossil fuels.

On one float, an activist dressed as Donald Trump was driven through the streets by a fleet of polar bears. A tipped-over, smoking model of the Statue of Liberty was dragged behind the troupe.

But while Trump has pulled out of the Paris Accord, there was a large contingent of representatives of states and cities of the US who had set up the US Climate Action Centre near the Bula Zone with the message: “We Are Still In”.

I visited the igloo-shaped tent later but missed out on seeing the former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who equated fossil fuels with smoking and told a packed audience, “Wouldn’t it be great now if they could... make the same pact with the rest of the world to go and say, ‘Let’s label another thing that is killing you - which is fossil fuels.’”

I did spot the former US vice president Al Gore, who told the audience that he had given up on persuading Trump to reverse his climate policies. He said the only way for the US to regain a leadership role in combating climate change was a new president in the White House.

Related: Special Report: Why climate change is a real threat for Pakistan

I finally reached the Pakistan pavilion, which was tucked away behind Germany’s. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a spacious, well-decorated stall with a small office where some members of the Pakistani delegation were gathered.

Unfortunately, there was little activity at the pavilion, with only one side event on the threats faced by the Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountains.

Pakistan’s newly-appointed minister for climate change, Mushaidullah Khan, took part in the ministerial segment of the conference, but aside from reading out a few scripted speeches, he hardly provided any vision or leadership to the delegation.

The Climate Change Authority that was supposed to have been set up by the government was nowhere in sight. It was supposed to hire professional climate change specialists who could also play a positive role in the negotiations for Pakistan.

The Pakistani delegation was instead spearheaded by the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Climate Change. They held negotiations with a ‘like-minded’ group of around 24 countries within the G-77 bloc of developing countries plus China.

The officials told me that Pakistan, which has signed and ratified the Paris Accord, was pushing for its earliest operationalisation and would like COP23 to adopt all the procedures and modalities needed to start its implementation.

The director general of the Ministry of Climate Change, Irfan Tariq, looked tired and exhausted. He had been waking up at 6am to make sure he got to the conference centre on time and had been assigning officials in his delegation to cover the various streams of negotiation.

Infographic: Nabeel Ahmed
Infographic: Nabeel Ahmed

The conference went late into the night and was finally wrapped up at 5:30am on Saturday, with many important issues, especially from the point of view of the developing countries, still outstanding, despite some compromises.

One of the main points of contention was the pre-2020 commitments to combat climate change. Remember, the Paris Accord comes into effect after 2020, and there many accords signed prior to the Paris deal. Two issues surfaced here:

First, developed countries have not yet fully financed the Green Climate Fund, a $100 billion project that was promised in 2009 and was supposed to be delivered by 2020, “to address the pressing mitigation and adaptation needs of developing countries.”

Second, the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, which “establishes a second commitment period (2013–20), adds nitrogen trifluoride to the list of greenhouse gases covered, and facilitates the unilateral strengthening of commitments by individual parties,” has yet to be ratified by enough countries to have any teeth.

The negotiating bloc of developing countries, comprised of the G-77 + China, had sought to have these points prominently included in the COP23 agenda, but the industrialised countries refused to give it due consideration at first. Ultimately, however, pre-2020 commitments were made an integral part of the final COP23 text.

But the disputes over funding weren’t restricted to the pre-2020 commitments; some related clauses in the Paris Accord came under scrutiny as well.

For instance, the meeting agenda didn’t include Article 9.5 of the Paris Accord, “which asks developed countries to report on their flows of climate finance to developing countries.” In the end, it was agreed that the point will be discussed in the meetings in the lead-up to next COP in Poland.

Dealing with losses and damages caused by the changing climate is just as important as mitigation and adaptation. Despite demands by developing countries, however, there are no dedicated funding channels in the Paris Accord to help less advanced countries in case of climate disasters. This point remained unaddressed at the COP.

As for coal, an alliance of 20 countries was formed which laid out the timelines by which coal needs to be phased out in order to attain the goals set out by the Paris Accord.

However, the declaration does “not commit signatories to any particular phase-out date. It also does not commit the signatories to ending the financing of unabated coal power stations, rather just ‘restricting’ it.” The host country Germany also failed to announce a phase-out date for its coal mines.

Photo courtesy Global Climate Risk Index Report, Germanwatch *The Lancet, 2017
Photo courtesy Global Climate Risk Index Report, Germanwatch *The Lancet, 2017

Despite the ambiguities and the delays, there were some positive outcomes. The conference was able to make progress on key social issues such as the Gender Action Plan that will put more focus on the impacts of climate change on women.

The Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform, "which aims to support the exchange of experience and sharing of best practices on mitigation and adaptation," was another highlight of the event.

Major work remains to be done if we are to avert a climate catastrophe. COP24, to be held next year in Poland, will finalise the rules for the implementation of the Paris Accord. An additional, earlier session has been planned so that all the points are ironed out in time.

I left Bonn feeling hopeful that a framework was slowly coming together under which we can face the numerous challenges up ahead.


Do you belong to a community that's impacted by the changing climate? Share your insights at blog@dawn.com

Disagreements between rich and poorer countries was a worrying aspect of the Bonn climate conference

0
0

As I walked towards the heavily-secured Bula Zone at the World Conference Centre in Bonn, Germany, to attend the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP23), an activist handed me a leaflet and mumbled in heavily-accented English, “Please help us save the Hambach Forest.”

Where have I heard the name of this forest before, I wondered. And then I remembered – it was during a visit to the Thar coal mine earlier this year where we were told that consultants from Germany were advising Pakistanis on how to exploit lignite, a type of coal found also in Hambach in western Germany.

Just as in Thar, there is a struggle in Germany too against a dirty fossil fuel like coal, especially in Hambach where an open-pit coal mine is endangering the 12,000-year-old forest.

This is what I find most exhilarating about the annual coming together of the signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC): The convergence of environmentalists from all over the world with a single-minded mission to save the planet from climate disaster.

Read next: The perils of inaction on climate change in Pakistan

COP23 was a technical conference – it didn’t have the excitement of the Paris Climate Conference (COP21) when a historic, legally-binding climate treaty was signed, agreeing to “hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to ensure that efforts are pursued to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C.”

The goal in Bonn was to flesh out a rule book, which will lead to the implementation of the Paris Accord from 2020 onwards. It might sound boring, but the conference was anything but.

The venue was divided in two zones, Bula and Bonn. ‘Bula’ means ‘welcome’ in Fiji and the small Pacific island, threatened by sea level rise and hurricanes, was the president of this year’s COP.

The conference couldn't be held in Fiji as the country doesn’t have enough hotel rooms for over 20,000 delegates!

The Bonn Zone, situated across a lovely park with ducks, lakes, and trees changing their autumnal colours, was where all the country pavilions were located. It was crowded with delegates buzzing with energy.

November, despite being cold and wet, is a festive season in Germany, and I entered the Bonn Zone at the beat of drums and could see dancers and performers in costumes at the German pavilion, who were inviting everyone to a nearby carnival.

Infographic: Nabeel Ahmed
Infographic: Nabeel Ahmed

I didn’t go the carnival but was told that thousands of activists had hit the streets of the city to protest against fossil fuels.

On one float, an activist dressed as Donald Trump was driven through the streets by a fleet of polar bears. A tipped-over, smoking model of the Statue of Liberty was dragged behind the troupe.

But while Trump has pulled out of the Paris Accord, there was a large contingent of representatives of states and cities of the US who had set up the US Climate Action Centre near the Bula Zone with the message: “We Are Still In”.

I visited the igloo-shaped tent later but missed out on seeing the former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who equated fossil fuels with smoking and told a packed audience, “Wouldn’t it be great now if they could... make the same pact with the rest of the world to go and say, ‘Let’s label another thing that is killing you - which is fossil fuels.’”

I did spot the former US vice president Al Gore, who told the audience that he had given up on persuading Trump to reverse his climate policies. He said the only way for the US to regain a leadership role in combating climate change was a new president in the White House.

Related: Special Report: Why climate change is a real threat for Pakistan

I finally reached the Pakistan pavilion, which was tucked away behind Germany’s. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a spacious, well-decorated stall with a small office where some members of the Pakistani delegation were gathered.

Unfortunately, there was little activity at the pavilion, with only one side event on the threats faced by the Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountains.

Pakistan’s newly-appointed minister for climate change, Mushaidullah Khan, took part in the ministerial segment of the conference, but aside from reading out a few scripted speeches, he hardly provided any vision or leadership to the delegation.

The Climate Change Authority that was supposed to have been set up by the government was nowhere in sight. It was supposed to hire professional climate change specialists who could also play a positive role in the negotiations for Pakistan.

The Pakistani delegation was instead spearheaded by the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Climate Change. They held negotiations with a ‘like-minded’ group of around 24 countries within the G-77 bloc of developing countries plus China.

The officials told me that Pakistan, which has signed and ratified the Paris Accord, was pushing for its earliest operationalisation and would like COP23 to adopt all the procedures and modalities needed to start its implementation.

The director general of the Ministry of Climate Change, Irfan Tariq, looked tired and exhausted. He had been waking up at 6am to make sure he got to the conference centre on time and had been assigning officials in his delegation to cover the various streams of negotiation.

Infographic: Nabeel Ahmed
Infographic: Nabeel Ahmed

The conference went late into the night and was finally wrapped up at 5:30am on Saturday, with many important issues, especially from the point of view of the developing countries, still outstanding, despite some compromises.

One of the main points of contention was the pre-2020 commitments to combat climate change. Remember, the Paris Accord comes into effect after 2020, and there many accords signed prior to the Paris deal. Two issues surfaced here:

First, developed countries have not yet fully financed the Green Climate Fund, a $100 billion project that was promised in 2009 and was supposed to be delivered by 2020, “to address the pressing mitigation and adaptation needs of developing countries.”

Second, the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, which “establishes a second commitment period (2013–20), adds nitrogen trifluoride to the list of greenhouse gases covered, and facilitates the unilateral strengthening of commitments by individual parties,” has yet to be ratified by enough countries to have any teeth.

The negotiating bloc of developing countries, comprised of the G-77 + China, had sought to have these points prominently included in the COP23 agenda, but the industrialised countries refused to give it due consideration at first. Ultimately, however, pre-2020 commitments were made an integral part of the final COP23 text.

But the disputes over funding weren’t restricted to the pre-2020 commitments; some related clauses in the Paris Accord came under scrutiny as well.

For instance, the meeting agenda didn’t include Article 9.5 of the Paris Accord, “which asks developed countries to report on their flows of climate finance to developing countries.” In the end, it was agreed that the point will be discussed in the meetings in the lead-up to next COP in Poland.

Dealing with losses and damages caused by the changing climate is just as important as mitigation and adaptation. Despite demands by developing countries, however, there are no dedicated funding channels in the Paris Accord to help less advanced countries in case of climate disasters. This point remained unaddressed at the COP.

As for coal, an alliance of 20 countries was formed which laid out the timelines by which coal needs to be phased out in order to attain the goals set out by the Paris Accord.

However, the declaration does “not commit signatories to any particular phase-out date. It also does not commit the signatories to ending the financing of unabated coal power stations, rather just ‘restricting’ it.” The host country Germany also failed to announce a phase-out date for its coal mines.

Photo courtesy Global Climate Risk Index Report, Germanwatch *The Lancet, 2017
Photo courtesy Global Climate Risk Index Report, Germanwatch *The Lancet, 2017

Despite the ambiguities and the delays, there were some positive outcomes. The conference was able to make progress on key social issues such as the Gender Action Plan that will put more focus on the impacts of climate change on women.

The Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform, "which aims to support the exchange of experience and sharing of best practices on mitigation and adaptation," was another highlight of the event.

Major work remains to be done if we are to avert a climate catastrophe. COP24, to be held next year in Poland, will finalise the rules for the implementation of the Paris Accord. An additional, earlier session has been planned so that all the points are ironed out in time.

I left Bonn feeling hopeful that a framework was slowly coming together under which we can face the numerous challenges up ahead.


Do you belong to a community that's impacted by the changing climate? Share your insights at blog@dawn.com

How ordinary citizens make their way through Faizabad during the sit-in

0
0

I have to travel across the Faizabad Interchange everyday to get to work and the commute usually takes less than 30 minutes.

That changed dramatically after the first weekend of this month when the capital came under virtual siege with the followers of a cleric blocking the expressway that connects Islamabad with Rawalpindi.

After spending hours and hours in traffic for the first few days after the start of the sit-in, I decided that enough was enough. I asked a colleague of mine as to how he was managing to find a way around the circus to get to work. He explained the faster and cheaper modus operandi and I followed suit.

All photos by the author.
All photos by the author.

The adventure began as I boarded a Faizabad-bound wagon. It all went smoothly, until we reached the interchange. This is where the writ of the state essentially stops. The interchange, which is normally packed with vehicles and commuters, was relatively deserted.

The empty Metro station made me wonder if we had built these structures of ‘economic progress’ to abandon them at the slightest sign of challenge to the government.

I was ‘greeted’ at the interchange by security; they checked my bag and frisked me, as well as the other commuters. Down the road, the path was blocked by containers, preventing people from going any further.

But, there are many who have no choice. Not everyone can enjoy the luxury of sitting at home and not go to work and about their daily routines just because the city is under siege.

One one side of the blocked highway is a ravine, which leads to a shallow brook. People have to descend to the stream and walk on the slippery stones to get to other side. On rainy days, the brook is deeper and one has to wade through knee-height water.

There is no lighting arrangement and at night, people have to use torches and cellphone light to navigate their way through the dark .

The first time I crossed the stream at night, I came across a young lady with a toddler in her arms. She was visibly scared and I volunteered to carry her baby, while she made her way through the water bare feet.

Editorial: The politics of siege

The proceedings are just as interesting on the other side of the highway, where a downward path through the trees leads to a field and a dirty and deep nallah. There’s a drain pipe going over the water, which has turned into a makeshift bridge for not just pedestrians but also bikes.

Although the pipe is big, it’s not safe - certainly not pleasant - to walk on. I have seen numerous scared men and women trying to scramble across, continuously ushered by the hopeful voices on each end that they can make it through.

This is what ordinary citizens have been reduced to.

After taking these two routes to work and back, I realised that these are rather metaphoric of life in Pakistan. Common people, in this country, have to somehow bridge over stagnant waters all the time. In a way, the latest dharna in Islamabad has taught us nothing new.


Has your life been affected by the Islamabad sit-in? Share your experiences with us at blog@dawn.com

What you need to do to prevent devastation from lung cancer

0
0

Every physician has a few patients during their practice who stand out; Mr Stevens (not his real name) was one of them for me.

He was a 6’ 4” Texan with a very distinct Southern accent. He was a retired financial officer, a very knowledgeable and articulate person.

At age 66, he loved travelling and reading, and was always ready to share his interesting experiences and was a pleasure to listen to.

One day, after he had just returned from vacation, Stevens came unscheduled to my clinic with complaints of sharp chest pains.

My initial assessment was that it might be a pulled muscle; however, due to his history of travelling and heavy smoking, I sent him for a computed tomography scan (CT scan) of his chest to make sure he did not have a blood clot.

A couple of hours later, I received a call from the radiologist regarding the results. It was not a blood clot; he had a 2cm mass, suspected to be lung cancer. It was quite unexpected and the poor patient was in complete shock.

After confirmation of lung cancer through a lung biopsy, it took us couple more scans to make sure that his cancer had not spread anywhere else in the body.

He was immediately referred to a thoracic surgeon, who did an excellent job removing the cancer. After surgery not only Steven's lung cancer was gone, but he finally got the message that he had to quit smoking.

Stevens was lucky to be diagnosed and treated in time, unlike many others in the US as well as in Pakistan. In the US, where smoking prevalence is less than Pakistan (16% vs 24%), more people die of lung cancer than any other cancer each year.

Exact numbers of lung cancer patients are not available in Pakistan due to lack of centralised tumor registry.

What often fools patients and physicians is that lung cancer starts and spreads unnoticed. By the time signs or symptoms appear, it has usually spread out to other parts of the body, making it incurable.

Treatment at a later stage is costly and usually carries poor outcomes. People who have seen their relatives or loved ones suffering from this cancer know the misery that patients go through during the last few months of their lives.

Early diagnosis of cancers can be achieved by screening people who are at high risk for developing cancers. The aim of a screening test is to catch a disease at an early stage, before it has any opportunity to spread. Usually, catching the disease early on makes it amenable to curative treatment.

However, all screening tests have pros and cons. An ideal screening test should be cost-effective, least harmful, and provide maximum benefit.

Mammography is an excellent example of a good screening test, which has significantly decreased the disease burden of breast cancer in western societies.

Historically, lung cancer lacked any effective screening test, making it one of the deadliest cancers. Chest X-ray and sputum tests were tried in the past, but failed to meet criteria for a good screening test.

CT scans were always known to diagnose lung cancer at an early stage, but due to concerns of high radiation exposure, the scan was not recommended for screening purposes.

Keeping this concern in mind, medical scientists designed a clinical study utilising CT scans with minimal possible dose of radiation.

In a landmark study, researchers studied low-dose CT scan (LDCT) for screening for lung cancer. After an extensive evaluation of benefits and harms, LDCT was found to be an effective screening test for lung cancer as it minimised the harms of radiation exposure.

Currently, this test is recommended by major physician organisations in the world such as United States Preventive Services Task Force, European Respiratory Society, European Society of Radiology, and the European Society of Medical Oncology.

Lung cancer starts as a small nodule that grows in size over period of months. At an early stage, cancer can be treated with surgery, which usually results in complete cure from this otherwise fatal disease.

However, if left untreated or undiagnosed, the cancer grows bigger and spreads to other parts of the body. At this stage, a complete cure is not possible and treatment is focused on containing the cancer with help of chemotherapy and radiation therapy.


An LDCT of the chest in a high-risk population can catch cancer at an early stage, hence decreasing lung cancer-related mortality by 20 percent.

LDCT screening should be done only for people who are at high risk of developing lung cancer. So if you have been a heavy smoker and are between 55 to 75 years of age, you should discuss lung cancer screening with your doctor.

However if you have quit smoking for more than 15 years, your cancer risk decreases significantly, hence this test may not be recommended for you.

Lung cancer screening programmes have been successfully adopted in many countries, including the United States, for last few years. During my recent visit to Pakistan, however, I found that the awareness about this valuable screening test was lacking among the general public and health care providers.

It should be noted that this scan is done with a regular CT scan machine and does not require any new equipment. Only the amount of radiation exposure is changed to an astounding 90% less than regular CT scan.

Major hospitals with cancer prevention programmes such as Shaukat Khanum Hospital are already using this modality for cancer screening, but a broader implementation, especially in public sector, is needed to get maximum benefit from this test.

There is no doubt that smoking cessation remains the cornerstone for preventing lung cancer and its importance should never be undermined.

But LDCT, along with smoking cessation, can significantly decrease the burden of this disease in our society.


Are you a medical practitioner involved in community education? Share your insights with us at blog@dawn.com

Women doctors don’t choose to leave work; they are forced out of their careers

0
0

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the women doctors of Pakistan. I was both surprised and humbled by the response.

People wrote in to say how it changed their perceptions of the profession and the place of women in it. Others pointed out errors and omissions.

By writing about women doctors, I only wanted to tell their stories, to understand their perspectives, and to hopefully start a conversation about the state of the medical profession in Pakistan and its gender dynamics.

What I did not expect was that it would lead to an introspection about how we read and perceive research, and what we think about women’s work.

There are three main things I would like to bring attention to in order to clarify the research around women doctors: The lack of data on women doctors, the misleading assumption that women have a choice in leaving work, and the definition of work itself.

Gender and data divide

Let me begin by the graph that raised the ire of so many people. Here it is again, for reference:

This graph shows the trend of doctors registering with the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) for practice every year. It also shows that since the past decade or so, more women than men have registered to practice medicine.

I had used this graph to question the oft-repeated, but seldom understood, narrative: ‘A majority of women doctors do not work.’

Some of you astute readers pointed out that this graph does not indicate how many of them actually work. And I agree with you.

As I had stated in that article, we really do not know how many women doctors work. And in the absence of any evidence, we really have no basis to claim that a majority of them do not work.

In fact, the little evidence we do have (like PMDC registration statistics), it shows that every year, more and more women doctors complete their house job and register the with PMDC with the intent to practice.

Believe me, not knowing is part of the problem. How I wish every woman doctor who ever hung up her white coat and stethoscope for an apron and tawa could have checked a form ‘not a doctor anymore’, told us why, and submitted it somewhere. But that does not happen.


Women doctors remain invisible in our statistics. Not collecting data about the enrollment of women in medical colleges, or their career paths after graduation, makes us indifferent to their realities.

It also sends a message to them that the state is not interested in hearing their voices. That they don’t matter. This invisibility also allows narratives like ‘women doctors don’t work’ to proliferate and dictate our policy choices.

Remember that these are not just numbers or percentages we are talking about. These are individuals, real and living, and numbers have a way of de-humanising them. They may be someone we know, someone in our family, the person walking next to us, or our best friend.

Each of these numbers represent a girl who spent more than 17 years of her life striving for her career, who gave up playing, going out with friends.

Who left her family to live alone in a hostel, who spent five years in medical college running from class to class.

Who spent night after night poring over Grey’s (who’s kidding, mostly BD), and Guyton, and Ganong, and Harrison, and Bailey & Love.

Each of these numbers also represent a family who broke a barrier: They sent their first girl to college, to a co-education institution, away from home, who invested not just money but also love and support in their daughter’s education.

The fact that any one of them is compelled to leave a career she so cherished, is not something to be used as a rhetoric device in political debate, or to advocate for ill-advised quotas or fines on women. It is indicative of how we, as a society, treat our women.

The fallacy of choice

Statistics aside, let me return to the idea that a majority of the women doctors don’t work, and try to unpack, what we really imply when we say that most women doctors leave their career for their families.

The underlying assumption is that women doctors choose to leave their career, choose to prioritise their families over their career, and choose to waste the valuable resources the state spent on their education and training.

Let us keep in mind that we would not ask a male doctor to make that choice. It would be just fine for him to never attend a single parent-teacher meeting, not know where the plates and spoons are, or how his socks and underwear magically clean themselves.

If he works late, he is dedicated. If he expects his wife to care for his parents, he is a good husband, and a dutiful son.

Also read: How a medical exam at a top notch Karachi hospital ended in sexual harassment

Over the course of my own education and research, I met and talked to many women doctors. But I am yet to meet one who, after years of gruelling hard work put into her education, does not want to practice her craft.

I did, however, hear stories of what women doctors faced in the course of their work.

They talked about the 36 and 48-hour duties, with barely a moment to rest in between. They told me how they had to almost fight the attendants of pregnant patients to arrange for blood before delivery, how they sometimes ended up giving their own in frustration, and how the hospital security mysteriously disappeared when patients’ attendants threatened the women doctors’ physical safety.

They also recounted stories of supervisors who wanted their own names included in research papers even when the supervisors had not done any of the work, who told them that they better not get pregnant during the training, and who systematically undermined their women trainees.

They told me of male politics and backbiting in their departments, when their male colleagues who flattered their professors ended up getting all the surgeries and procedures, and those who ‘knew someone’ got promoted.

They also told me of the anguish they felt when they counselled their patients to breastfeed their babies, but had to wean their own before the three months maternity leave ended, because even though policies exist to provide safe spaces and regular breaks for breastfeeding, no one bothers to implement them.

And when they complained about these biases, or harassment, or lack of transparency, or absence of a support structure, they were told that they were being ungrateful.

This is just half of the story. The other half happens in our homes.

There is Dr Naila. Her mother-in-law burned her degrees in a fit of rage when she started her job.

There is Dr Aliya; I saw the bruises on her arms and the black eye, after she mysteriously fell down the stairs one day.

Dr Fazeela: She was a pediatrician, at least until her marriage when on the first night, her husband told her that he did not believe in women working outside their homes.

Dr Fouzia, who did not tell her family or file a complaint when her supervisor tried to grope her in a meeting. She feared that she would be suspected of having a ‘bad character,’ that it would cost her her job.

Dr Sara, who has been rejected for more than 50 rishtas. Not because she does not want to get married, but because she is a surgeon, and always tells any suitors that she will keep working after marriage.

And then there is Dr Seema. Her husband told her after marriage that he wants her to keep practicing since he has three younger sisters to marry, and their dowry is not going to pay for itself.

More common is the everyday abuse: When a woman doctor is called a ‘bad mother’ because she wants to sleep after working for 36 straight hours.

When a mother-in-law rebukes her bahu because she does not bring her breakfast, and does not like how she puts dishes in the drawer.

When a husband expects clean clothes and a sparkling house every day, but cannot even be bothered to make his own bed in the morning.

When a TV ad proclaims that good wives spend their time cooking for their husbands, in order to sell spices.


The worst part is, we don’t think any of it as unjust, or even out of the ordinary. After all, this is a woman’s ‘real job’, isn’t it?

Majeed is an old man. Three of his daughters are doctors. I asked him why women doctors found it so hard to work, and his answer hits the dilemma on the head.

He said, “When our son comes home we expect him to put his feet up and drink tea. When our daughter-in-law comes home after work, we expect her to make tea for everyone.”

Read next: Pakistani medical codes weren't violated in sending friend request to Sharmeen's sister – and that's a problem

This is what every working woman, not just doctors, struggles with: The second shift of work that every woman faces, and faces alone. For which she is never paid, or even thanked.

We expect women doctors to care for us in our hospitals and we don’t value it; we expect them to care for us in our homes, and we don’t value that either.

Let me say this, and I cannot emphasise this enough, women doctors do not leave their career by choice. It is the rampant sexism in the medical profession, poor work conditions, and unequal distribution of work in our homes that pushes them away from their careers.

The myth of an ideal career and the redefining of ‘work’

Saying that most women doctors don’t work after their graduation also assumes that doctors can be neatly sorted into two piles: Working and not-working.

I made the same mistake when I started my research, and quickly realised this assumption is far from reality.

The dichotomy of working/not-working is based on the fallacy that doctors have a linear career, one that starts after education, and continues without any interruption till retirement or death (whatever comes first).

This is a model that, as the sociologist Joan Acker astutely pointed out, assumes ‘man’ as the ideal worker: Unencumbered by the biological demands of producing the next generation of human species.

This is a model that does not fit the experiences of the majority of women (and many men, for that matter, in the current state of our economy). Actual careers of actual women doctors are much more complicated, and almost impossible to label.

Related: The challenges of defining strict patient-doctor relations in Pakistan

Sumera, one of my research participants, was introduced to me as ‘not-working’. She told me she took a break after graduation to care for her three children, and when they were all school-going, returned to complete her specialisation in neurology.

“Now I am looking for a job, close to my home,” she said. Is she working or not working?

Faiza did not practice for 10 years after graduation. Her mother-in-law had a stroke and as a doctor-at-home, she was responsible for her care.

After she died, Faiza decided to go back to work. She realised that she will have to start from scratch and re-do her house job.

“I couldn’t do night duties as I had little kids at home. So, I opened a clinic in my home. I just see patients from my neighbourhood.” Is she working or not working?

Aminah is also taking a break after graduation to care for her two young children. “I cannot do a regular job with two toddlers and no one else to help,” she told me.

“I share a clinic with my husband in the evening. I can stay in touch with my training this way.” Is she working or not working?

After five years of taking a break, Najma bought an ultrasound machine and started doing ante-natal exams at her home. There isn’t any board outside advertising her clinic. It is not even a clinic, strictly speaking, just the guest bedroom in her house. Is she working or not working?

Arshia volunteers at an NGO that arranges free clinics in slums around Lahore. She does not get paid. Seema is doing her MCPS training in a public hospital, and has been working as an unpaid honorary trainee for two years. Which pile do I put her in?

Do not get me wrong. We need doctors to work in our hospitals, to be available in emergencies 24/7, to look after our mothers and children whenever the need arises.

We need women to work because otherwise we miss out on their perspectives, their ability to empathise, to care, and to listen. But this cannot happen without taking a deep and critical look at our homes and our workplaces.

Go to a hospital, any hospital. Take in all the chaos and misery that is around you.

Stand behind the doctor’s table in the emergency ward, with 10 patients thrusting their parchi in your face.

Go to the OPD, where you won’t be able to walk through the crowded corridors.

Spend a night trying to manage a diabetic patient in ketoacidosis, or trying to alleviate the pain of a patient with tetanus. Or see a young child die of dehydration or a mother due to eclampsia.

Then go home. Pick up your child’s toys from the floor. Pick your spouse’s laundry. Wash the dishes. Cook a salan, knead some flour, and make rotis.

Press the uniforms and dress you need to wear tomorrow. Make lunches and fill water bottles. Check that your children have done their homework. And when everyone sleeps, make that crown that your daughter’s teacher asked her to bring.

So next time you feel the urge to say that women doctors leave their career out of choice, walk a mile in their shoes first.


Are you engaged in the medical profession? Share your experiences of working in the health sector with us at blog@dawn.com

Rape is not a number and it should never become only digits in a report

0
0

Rape is not a number. And, neither should it nor other forms of gender-based violence ever become only digits in a report.

Yet, when it comes to researching this form of violence, experiences of gender-based physical and sexual violence are—more often than not—grossly reduced to mere statistics.

It is easy to make sense of numbers. The more extreme a figure, the more severe the situation appears. The higher a death toll, the worse it is. The more number of women raped, the higher the sexual assault rate is for that area.

While the collection of empirical data helps brings issues of sexual violence to light, viewing gendered violence in purely quantitative terms is an extremely reductive approach that not only contributes greatly to the erasure of victims’ experiences, but will also never alone provide the grounded understanding needed to annihilate gendered violence.

This is especially the case in Pakistan, where talking about sexual violence is taboo and crimes of such nature are highly under-reported, and any data that is collected will be unrepresentative of the reality.

If victims are hesitant to go to the police, it is very likely that they might not respond to research surveys either.

However, utilising the cases that are reported and the victims that are willing to share their experience, can help reduce the stigma around reporting and discussing rape and other forms of sexual violence.

We can also use the narratives to hone in on the notion that sexual violence is not a one-size-fits all and can occur in various forms.

It is only through a synthesis of both empirical as well as descriptive, qualitative data that physical and sexual violence can be tackled adequately.

On UN Women’s Facts and figures: Ending Violence Against Women webpage, the top line gives us a shocking figure:

“It is estimated that 35 per cent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner at some point in their lives.”

Just like that, a victim becomes a number on a report.

Ranging from anti-rape campaigns by NGOs to government policy-making, these figures are everywhere, and dominate the discourse around gendered violence.

While obliterating the school of nuance in service of a greater, global purpose, this particular ‘facts and figures’ collection of the UN is a great example of the rather widespread phenomenon of decontextualised work that exists within research on gendered violence.

By attempting to somewhat contextualise it globally, the data has lost all relative context; it skates over the experiences of 35% of women worldwide in order to produce a lumped statistic that minimises the victim’s experience.

If you scroll further down on the same page, you come across another seemingly comprehensive global figure:

“Around 120 million girls worldwide (slightly more than 1 in 10) have experienced forced intercourse or other forced sexual acts at some point in their Lives.”

120 million seems scary. In fact, it is scary. But, what does it tell an ordinary person or a policy-maker about the different shapes sexual violence can take or why it happens?

Here, empirical data alone has no other function except as a fear-inducing instrument. And, even that has the potential of being inaccurate: Pakistan ranks 6th in the top 10 worst countries when it comes to rape cases. Taking into account the rampant nation-wide stigma, who is to say that we don’t, in fact, deserve a higher rank?

The primary reason we study gendered violence is to understand how to defeat it, and that understanding cannot come from only looking at numbers.

Instead, obtaining qualitative data in the form of curating unique experiences of victims of gendered violence will prove to be the key to effective policy-making as well as educating the larger community.

This will also be the most representative of those surveyed since any data collected on gendered violence will be inherently qualitative.

Questions about physical and sexual violence are always predicated on the description of an individual’s experience of that violence.

Given the variation in experiences, any robust data collection around sexual violence cannot simply be a yes or no question.

It is distinct from victim to victim which is why a narrative style description should always be the primary form of data collection.

In cases where qualitative data is first collected, quantitative data is derived from that first set. These empirical numbers are then disseminated to the public and policy-makers alike.

Even though extremely nuanced qualitative data exists in the background, it is the numbers that end up influencing preventive policy-making.

Getting the numbers right then becomes the goal of formulating policy which, in most cases, delivers upending fixes to the problem.

More importantly, gendered violence, especially sexual violence, can take very different forms in situations of peace time as compared to situations of war and conflict.

In this case, experiential understanding of violence becomes indispensable because the idea that assault rates rocket or plummet during wartime is rendered obsolete if the rubric of sexually violent behaviour that we’re using to make the comparison is entirely different from what the wartime reality might be.

Subsequently, we would also need different policy mechanisms that can be better derived from particular experiences from wartime violence.

In order to gain a deeper understanding of patterns of sexual violence and its varying trajectory during peace and wartime, we must prioritise the circulation of experiences as primary data.


This does not mean that one should no longer make use of empirical methods, but that one should at least have something to ground those numbers in.

Enabling the experiences and voices of victims and circulating those instead of seemingly harmless numbers is definitely challenging.

The explicit nature of these accounts may be triggering for certain audiences, especially other victims. This is especially where an empirical approach comes in handy.

Laura Sjoberg et al. highlight that a "careful, complex engagement’ be used which is ‘multi-method, epistemologically pluralist, multi-sited, and carefully navigates these differences" of experience.

By bringing together both empirical and narrative-style data when it comes to sexual violence, Pakistan can more effectively deal with the issue of sexual violence by attacking both the perpetuation of violence as well as the prevalence of stigma against reporting these abhorrent acts of violence.


Are you a researcher or an activist working on issues of discrimination? Share your insights with us at blog@dawn.com

The transformation of Punjabi identity over the centuries

0
0

Facing murder charges, Udham Singh was presented in a court in London in 1940. On March 13 that year, he had shot dead Michael O’Dwyer, the former lieutenant governor of Punjab on whose watch the Jallianwala massacre had taken place.

Twenty-one years ago on April 13, 1919 soldiers of the British Army in India had opened fire on a crowd of peaceful protesters in a walled public garden in Amritsar and killed over 1,000 of them. The lieutenant governor had called it “correct action”.

Udham Singh, a revolutionary inspired by the Marxist Ghadar movement of Punjabi Sikhs against British rule and by Bhagat Singh, sought to avenge the massacre.

After killing O’Dwyer, he courted arrest. At the court, a copy of the Granth Sahib was presented to him so he could take oath before the trial.

Turning it down, he offered to instead take oath on Waris Shah’s Heer-Ranjha, the fabled love story of Punjab, a copy of which he had already procured from a gurdwara.

Much like Bhagat Singh before him, Udham Singh became a symbol of the Indian nationalist struggle. During the trial, he noted his name to be Ram Mohammad Singh Azad to emphasise how all the major religious communities of India were fighting for the country’s independence.

On one hand, Udham Singh through his Marxist political leanings had an international revolutionary outlook that he wanted to channel into the Independence struggle, which he refused to view through narrow communal or ethnic lens, as had started happening in the late 1930s and early 1940s. On the other hand, he was still rooted in Punjabi cultural ethos.

Shah’s Heer-Ranjha, now widely known because of its frequent references in the Indian film industry, is a Punjabi folk story, deeply ingrained in its culture and also one of the most important symbols of Punjabi identity.

While Udham Singh wore his Indian identity beyond the confines of any ethnic or religious group, by choosing to take his oath on the Heer-Ranjha, he also depicted his proud Punjabi identity. For him there was no conflict between these two identities.

Revolutionary Punjabi identity

All symbols of Punjabi identity are revolutionary in essence: Heer, who revolted against the institution of marriage and chose her true love; Ranjha, who rebelled against the institution of religion when it tried to take him away from his true love.

The Punjabi Sufi poet Shah Hussain blurred the distinction between the devotee and the divine, challenged conventional religion in favour of unrestrained religiosity, expressed through dance and music, an individualistic act of rebellion.

Similarly, the Punjabi poet Bulleh Shah spoke vehemently against religious clergy, Hindu and Muslim alike. The truth lies within you, he insisted.

Every January during the festival of Lohri, Punjabis celebrate Punjabi folk hero Dullah Bhatti, a landlord from Pindi Bhattian who took up arms against the mighty Mughal emperor Akbar to protect the revenue from his land.

Any discussion on Punjabi identity is incomplete without Guru Nanak, who sought to dissolve fixed religious identities. I am neither a Hindu nor a Muslim, he reiterated.

And there is, of course, Guru Gobind Singh who sought to fight for the honour of his people against the Mughal emperor Aurganzeb – the Guru Gobind Singh who could inspire a sparrow to defeat a hawk (as a famous pre-Partition Punjabi verse goes).

This Punjabi identity was deeply rooted in Bhagat Singh. He makes references to this Punjabi culture, to the revolutionary politics of the Sikh gurus in his collection of essays. Udham Singh, also a proud Punjabi, was following in his mentor’s footsteps.

The fragmentation

However, in the colonial era, soon after the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-1849), a new Punjabi identity was forged – the loyalist, pro-empire Punjabi. This image was reinforced during the 1857 war when a Punjab-dominated British Army helped defeat rebels in Delhi and other parts of North India.

Many Punjabi ethnicities and communities were honoured as “martial races”, a title that bestowed upon them a higher position in the race hierarchy and implied that they were loyal to the British.

The colonial era, therefore, saw a conflict between these two Punjabs:

One was revolutionary in its essence, the Punjab of Dullah Bhatti and Ahmad Khan Kharral, another landlord who fought against the British during the 1857 war, leading one of the only major rebellions from the province.

The other was the Punjab of chiefs and aristocrats who had been given the titles of Rai Bahadur, Khan Bahadur and Sardar for their loyalty to the crown.

The former Punjab was further fragmented in the early 20th century as education and urbanisation spread throughout the province. Punjabis were no longer Punjabis but Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs fighting for recognition from the British state.

Urdu became the symbol of the Muslims while Hindus fought for the right to use Hindi. Punjabi remained confined to the Sikhs, who eventually emerged as the sole inheritor of this Punjabi heritage.

This conflict between Muslim Urdu and Hindi for Hindus aggravated after the creation of India and Pakistan, as Pakistani Punjab emerged as the symbol of Pakistani nationalism.

Urdu became the language of the Punjabis, keeping up with colonial tradition, while Punjabi symbols such as Bulleh Shah, Shah Hussain, Guru Nanak and Heer-Ranjha slowly started receding to the periphery.

On the other side of the border, as Punjab was further carved up making it a Sikh-dominated province, a new Punjabi identity emerged that was synonymous with the religious identity.

While symbols of Punjabi identity were appropriated, they became relics of the past, out of sync with the contemporary Punjabi identity. It is this latter Punjab that both India and Pakistan would rather deal with.


This article was originally published on Scroll and has been reproduced with permission.


From Nasir al-Mulk Mosque to the tomb of Hafez: places to see in Shiraz

0
0

Blogger Steve Hänisch takes us along on his journey through Shiraz, Iran as he visits the Vakil Mosque, Karim Khan Citadel, the Nasir al-Mulk Mosque, the grave of the Persian poet Hafiz, and the UNESCO World Heritage site of Persepoli.

Shiraz is one of Iran's five largest cities. In the historic Old Town Shiraz are the Vakil Mosque and the Vakil Bazaar. The Vakil Mosque was built between 1751 and 1773 during the Zand period.

Under the rule of Karim Khan Zand, the founder of the Zand Dynasty, Shiraz became the capital of Persia in 1762. More than 12,000 workers were employed to construct the royal district.

Kharim Khan invited the best architects and artists of the time to design the Karim Khan Citadel, which took just a single year to build. The citadel became his living quarters.

There’s one thing in Shiraz you get up really early for, and this is the Nasir ol-Molk Mosque. The Nasir ol-Molk Mosque is also known as the Pink Mosque because many pink tiles were used in its interior.

It was built in the 1800s during the Qajar period. It’s best to visit very early in the morning because that’s the only time the sun shines through all the glass-stained windows.

No trip to Shiraz would be complete without paying a visit to the tomb of Hafez, who was one of the greatest Persian poets. The Shirazi poet also influenced a lot of European poets such as Goethe.

About an hour-long drive from Shiraz, is one of Iran’s most important UNESCO World Heritage Site, Persepolis, which means ‘the city of the Persians’.

It used to be the ceremonial capital of Persia from 550 to 330 BCE, until Alexander the Great destroyed it.

It is believed that he destroyed it by fire, as an act of revenge 150 years after the Persians destroyed the Acropolis in Athens.

Visit a restaurant in Shiraz and you’re likely to find delicious traditional Irani dishes such as mirza ghasemi and kuku sabzi. Mirza ghasemi is smoked eggplant, garlic, tomatoes, and peppers.

Kuku sabzi is Persian herb frittata, baked finely chopped herbs, mixed with egg and walnuts. Both dishes are served with fresh bread.


Header photo: Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji


Produced in partnership with Deutsche Welle (DW)

The events at Faizabad have made me realise that I'm now a minority in Pakistan

0
0

Pakistanis love myths. Whether it the myth of the Islamic Bomb or the myth of Pakistan as the saviour of the entire Ummah, we love to feel good about ourselves.

These myths allow us to live in a fantasy world, to ignore the true horror of our times. One such myth is that of the silent majority. The myth goes something like this:

The violence and intolerance in Pakistan is the undertaking of an organised minority and that most Pakistanis are, in fact, tolerant.

Whether it is a terrorist attack or a case of honour killing, it is the go-to myth for Pakistanis.

All of us feel satisfied in the belief that the silent majority abhors such practices. Yet, nothing ever changes in Pakistan. This silent majority never makes its presence known.

Like all of you, I have also waited, all my life, for this silent majority to finally stand up and put a stop to all the nonsense that is going on in the country.

You can’t blame me for believing in this myth either. My family, friends, and teachers all believed in it as I was growing up.

When I told my wiser colleagues that, after all these years, my trust in this silent majority was wavering, I was advised to keep believing.

I was told that the problem was that the silent majority was, well, silent. The task of activists and well-wishers of Pakistan was, then, to help the silent majority became vocal about the need to resolve the many contradictions of our society.

So, I continued to believe. I witnessed a generation of young activists emerge, all of whom were given the same advice. They all tried to make the silent majority speak against the deeply unjust socio-economic system of our country.

Some activists were killed, some were forced to leave the country, and others disappeared. But as a group, they still persisted.

The silent majority, however, was nowhere to be seen. Apparently, the silent majority was in deep slumber.

This week, the nation surrendered at Faizabad. I watched the revolution live on television but it wasn’t the kind of change I had been waiting for. This was not the coming of the silent majority that had been foretold.

I went back to my wiser colleagues and asked them to enlighten me as to what exactly happened at Faizabad. I was told that I was panicking for no reason and that this was only a minority that had laid siege onto the federal capital.

Editorial: The long road to recovery

This week was a painful one for me, for I finally learned that I had been living a fantasy all my life. There was no silent majority in Pakistan that some mysterious event was finally going to jolt them out of their sleep.

I used to laugh at children for believing in unicorns and fairies. This week, it occurred to me that I was no different. I was living in cloud cuckoo land as well.

This week it dawned on me that it was this fabled silent majority all along that had transformed the society into what it is today. The majority of this country is intolerant, and this is why they have remained silent in face of mounting social and cultural crisis. Their silence was tacit approval of the ugliness around us.

I feel sorry for the activists and the intellectuals who have spent their lives believing they could succeed in waking the silent majority up. The silent majority was always awake and had been laughing at those trying to summon a mythical group.

This week, I understood that I am actually a minority in Pakistan. The critical task for us now is to embrace this status and work to convince the intolerant majority to let us live in peace in their country.


Have you been affected by the Faizabad protest? Share your experiences with us at blog@dawn.com

My memories of the Bhuttos: decades of protests, politics, and funerals

0
0

I was buying paan leaves for my grandmother that morning in Larkana, when the shop owner Taufeeq bhai, turned up the volume of his radio.

The newscaster Khalid Hameed introduced the 11 o’clock bulletin, and announced that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had had his funeral performed and was already buried.

Everyone stilled. Within moments, life was leached out of the crowded Pakistan Chowk, as one by one, the mithai shop closed, the cycle wallah shut his garage, and Taufeeq bhai walked out of his shop in a stupor.

The villagers, who had brought butter and lotus roots to sell, squatted by the roadside with their heads in their hands.

For a few moments, Larkana, Bhutto’s hometown, was as silent as a graveyard.

Then, two military vehicles drove through the area. I am not sure who started it but the bazaar suddenly reverberated with ‘Bhutto zindabaad.’

My friends and I decided to cycle to the graveyard, Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. Armoured vehicles and soldiers blocked the entrance.

Groups of people had started gathering outside and soldiers pointed their guns straight at them and threatened to shoot whoever came forward.

The crowd didn’t require investigative reports. It broke into hysterical shouts of ‘Qaatil, qaatil, Zia qaatil.’

By the time of the soyem two days later, Mumtaz Bhutto and Khar were greeted with the slogans, ‘Ghaddar, ghaddar.’

Later, we found out that hundreds were picked up from Larkana and its surroundings.

Much of my childhood memories are wound up with the persona of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Being chosen to present flowers to Shah of Iran and Queen Farah Diba at the Mohenjodaro airport, stepping onto the wrong side and Bhutto carrying me to the correct spot.

In the 1977 elections, him visiting my home with his comrade and my mother's closest friend, Dr Ashraf Abbasi.

Him telling me to help canvass votes for him and laughing when I said ‘it is better to work for a revolution,’ parroting what veteran communist, comrade Sobho Gyanchandani had told us.

Him telling off my brother for reading Jasarat, because the newspaper was what he called a ‘right-wing propaganda machine.’

I remember going to his open kucheri. I wrote an application requesting a scholarship and handed it to him. He asked me to give it to the education minister Waheed Buksh Bughio, who was sitting in the same enclosure.

I told him that the minister, who was also my neighbour, could barely read English and could not write it at all. He enjoyed that, and it was only much later that I realised that it was part of his strategy – to keep the feudal lords in his political ranks but also belittle them in front of peasants and commoners.

BENAZIR Bhutto ran an election campaign in 1988 that was as electric as her return to the country from exile a couple of years earlier. | Photo: Dawn / White Star Archives
BENAZIR Bhutto ran an election campaign in 1988 that was as electric as her return to the country from exile a couple of years earlier. | Photo: Dawn / White Star Archives

I was almost 20 when I went on my first road trip to Punjab. My friends and I pooled our savings and rented a small car to drive to Lahore.

It was 1986 and we were heading to the Lahore airport because Benazir Bhutto was coming back. It was a joyride like no other. A festival of the wretched:

Tens of thousands poured out on the streets, among them those who had been in prisons, who had been tortured, who had been underground, the warriors of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, their embattled, fatigued families, the desolate peasants who were remembering how to dance again.

The crowds were suffocating, all desperate for a glimpse of BB, all gasping for a breath of democracy. It reflected in the historic 1988 election where every major feudal lord and tribal chief lost to the political unknowns fielded by the Pakistan Peoples Party.

I met and interviewed Benazir on numerous occasions while working for the Agence France Presse, and saw her aggression before elections, the adrenaline at escaping the crackdowns, teargas and barricades, and the bitterness at Farooq Leghari’s betrayal.

“I considered him a brother and he stabbed me in the back. He didn’t even wait for Murtaza’s chehlum,” she said, convinced that it was a conspiracy against the Bhuttos, to kill one and through that, delegitimise and finish the other.

Murtaza Bhutto had come back a staunch critic of his sister’s government, and a passionate, romantic revolutionary who wanted to change the fundamentals of the country’s power structures in one go.

We spent hours with him talking about his days of exile in Afghanistan and Syria, his meetings with world leaders like Arafat, Najib, Assad, and Gaddafi.

I told him that I thought he was too idealistic for Pakistan’s politics. He said without ideals, nothing remains except compromises and selling out.

Editorial: PPP at 50

I met him for the last time on a Friday evening for a press conference at 70 Clifton, where he invited me, Javed Soomro, and Mazhar Abbas, to go to an upcoming public meeting with him. We declined because of our story deadlines.

A few hours after leaving the press conference, I received the message ‘firing at 70 Clifton’ on my DC Pager. The roads were blocked. I ran from what was then Schon Circle to what was then Mideast Hospital.

I saw injured men being carried in. Nasir Hussain was slamming his head against a wall. Murtaza was gone.

I saw Benazir run inside the hospital in her bare feet, hitting her chest, screaming, ‘my brother, my brother.’ Ghinwa Bhutto, grief-stricken, held her daughter Fatima Bhutto, and turned away.

Once again the Garhi Khuda Bakhsh graveyard was filled with anguished and angry people, and once more the streets vibrated with emotionally-charged energies.

The image I carry over from that day is of Begum Nusrat Bhutto, the most tragic figure imaginable. She lost her husband, her youngest son Shahnawaz Bhutto, and now Murtaza whom she sided with in the political feud.

I met Fatima, then a very young girl, but composed and articulate in an interview, narrating her unforgettable memories of her father.

At that time I thought she might take up the mantle of Bhutto forward, but she turned out to become a world-renowned writer, and is now a good friend.

Nusrat Bhutto reacts at the execution of her husband.
Nusrat Bhutto reacts at the execution of her husband.

In 2007, General Musharraf imposed a state of emergency and closed down news channels. When journalists resisted, they were thrashed and beaten by the police.

In protest, I, along with a few other senior journalists, courted arrest. I received a solidarity call from Benazir when we were detained in the police station.

She visited Geo to express support, where Imran Aslam, Mir Ibrahim and myself had a long discussion with her.

She had just survived the Karsaz suicide attack. “You’re a ticking time bomb,” I told her. “You have to be careful.”

“Yes but I cannot hide inside when there is an ocean of people who have come out on the roads to greet me, who believe I can bring some change to their lives,” she responded.

Only a few weeks later, she was assassinated, and I was back at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. Sindh was in flames. The hostility was at a pitch the graveyard had never experienced before.

The slightest antagonism could have spiraled things into uncontrollable conflict, but the party leadership reined it back.

I could see Bilawal Bhutto and his sisters offering fateha. I hoped I never have to visit this graveyard for burials again.

So many of my memories are tied to this party, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the terrible. I have turned 50 years old, and the party is also 50.

In the past year, I have fought and survived cancer. The party has its own cancers to fight.

From what I have learned about the disease, it does not have external triggers or causes.

It starts as an internal mutation. It is this that the PPP must fight against, and half of the fight is a matter of will.


Do you have first-hand recollections of a significant historical event? Share your story with us at blog@dawn.com

The Bhuttos and me: a lifetime of politics and funerals

0
0

I was buying paan leaves for my grandmother that morning in Larkana, when the shop owner Taufeeq bhai, turned up the volume of his radio.

The newscaster Khalid Hameed introduced the 11 o’clock bulletin, and announced that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had had his funeral performed and was already buried.

Everyone stilled. Within moments, life was leached out of the crowded Pakistan Chowk, as one by one, the mithai shop closed, the cycle wallah shut his garage, and Taufeeq bhai walked out of his shop in a stupor.

The villagers, who had brought butter and lotus roots to sell, squatted by the roadside with their heads in their hands.

For a few moments, Larkana, Bhutto’s hometown, was as silent as a graveyard.

Then, two military vehicles drove through the area. I am not sure who started it but the bazaar suddenly reverberated with ‘Bhutto zindabaad.’

My friends and I decided to cycle to the graveyard, Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. Armoured vehicles and soldiers blocked the entrance.

Groups of people had started gathering outside and soldiers pointed their guns straight at them and threatened to shoot whoever came forward.

The crowd didn’t require investigative reports. It broke into hysterical shouts of ‘Qaatil, qaatil, Zia qaatil.’

By the time of the soyem two days later, Mumtaz Bhutto and Khar were greeted with the slogans, ‘Ghaddar, ghaddar.’

Later, we found out that hundreds were picked up from Larkana and its surroundings.

Much of my childhood memories are wound up with the persona of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Being chosen to present flowers to Shah of Iran and Queen Farah Diba at the Mohenjodaro airport, stepping onto the wrong side and Bhutto carrying me to the correct spot.

In the 1977 elections, him visiting my home with his comrade and my mother's closest friend, Dr Ashraf Abbasi.

Him telling me to help canvass votes for him and laughing when I said ‘it is better to work for a revolution,’ parroting what veteran communist, comrade Sobho Gyanchandani had told us.

Him telling off my brother for reading Jasarat, because the newspaper was what he called a ‘right-wing propaganda machine.’

I remember going to his open kucheri. I wrote an application requesting a scholarship and handed it to him. He asked me to give it to the education minister Waheed Buksh Bughio, who was sitting in the same enclosure.

I told him that the minister, who was also my neighbour, could barely read English and could not write it at all. He enjoyed that, and it was only much later that I realised that it was part of his strategy – to keep the feudal lords in his political ranks but also belittle them in front of peasants and commoners.

BENAZIR Bhutto ran an election campaign in 1988 that was as electric as her return to the country from exile a couple of years earlier. | Photo: Dawn / White Star Archives
BENAZIR Bhutto ran an election campaign in 1988 that was as electric as her return to the country from exile a couple of years earlier. | Photo: Dawn / White Star Archives

I was almost 20 when I went on my first road trip to Punjab. My friends and I pooled our savings and rented a small car to drive to Lahore.

It was 1986 and we were heading to the Lahore airport because Benazir Bhutto was coming back. It was a joyride like no other. A festival of the wretched:

Tens of thousands poured out on the streets, among them those who had been in prisons, who had been tortured, who had been underground, the warriors of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, their embattled, fatigued families, the desolate peasants who were remembering how to dance again.

The crowds were suffocating, all desperate for a glimpse of BB, all gasping for a breath of democracy. It reflected in the historic 1988 election where every major feudal lord and tribal chief lost to the political unknowns fielded by the Pakistan Peoples Party.

I met and interviewed Benazir on numerous occasions while working for the Agence France Presse, and saw her aggression before elections, the adrenaline at escaping the crackdowns, teargas and barricades, and the bitterness at Farooq Leghari’s betrayal.

“I considered him a brother and he stabbed me in the back. He didn’t even wait for Murtaza’s chehlum,” she said, convinced that it was a conspiracy against the Bhuttos, to kill one and through that, delegitimise and finish the other.

Murtaza Bhutto had come back a staunch critic of his sister’s government, and a passionate, romantic revolutionary who wanted to change the fundamentals of the country’s power structures in one go.

We spent hours with him talking about his days of exile in Afghanistan and Syria, his meetings with world leaders like Arafat, Najib, Assad, and Gaddafi.

I told him that I thought he was too idealistic for Pakistan’s politics. He said without ideals, nothing remains except compromises and selling out.

Editorial: PPP at 50

I met him for the last time on a Friday evening for a press conference at 70 Clifton, where he invited me, Javed Soomro, and Mazhar Abbas, to go to an upcoming public meeting with him. We declined because of our story deadlines.

A few hours after leaving the press conference, I received the message ‘firing at 70 Clifton’ on my DC Pager. The roads were blocked. I ran from what was then Schon Circle to what was then Mideast Hospital.

I saw injured men being carried in. Nasir Hussain was slamming his head against a wall. Murtaza was gone.

I saw Benazir run inside the hospital in her bare feet, hitting her chest, screaming, ‘my brother, my brother.’ Ghinwa Bhutto, grief-stricken, held her daughter Fatima Bhutto, and turned away.

Once again the Garhi Khuda Bakhsh graveyard was filled with anguished and angry people, and once more the streets vibrated with emotionally-charged energies.

The image I carry over from that day is of Begum Nusrat Bhutto, the most tragic figure imaginable. She lost her husband, her youngest son Shahnawaz Bhutto, and now Murtaza whom she sided with in the political feud.

I met Fatima, then a very young girl, but composed and articulate in an interview, narrating her unforgettable memories of her father.

At that time I thought she might take up the mantle of Bhutto forward, but she turned out to become a world-renowned writer, and is now a good friend.

Nusrat Bhutto reacts at the execution of her husband.
Nusrat Bhutto reacts at the execution of her husband.

In 2007, General Musharraf imposed a state of emergency and closed down news channels. When journalists resisted, they were thrashed and beaten by the police.

In protest, I, along with a few other senior journalists, courted arrest. I received a solidarity call from Benazir when we were detained in the police station.

She visited Geo to express support, where Imran Aslam, Mir Ibrahim and myself had a long discussion with her.

She had just survived the Karsaz suicide attack. “You’re a ticking time bomb,” I told her. “You have to be careful.”

“Yes but I cannot hide inside when there is an ocean of people who have come out on the roads to greet me, who believe I can bring some change to their lives,” she responded.

Only a few weeks later, she was assassinated, and I was back at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. Sindh was in flames. The hostility was at a pitch the graveyard had never experienced before.

The slightest antagonism could have spiraled things into uncontrollable conflict, but the party leadership reined it back.

I could see Bilawal Bhutto and his sisters offering fateha. I hoped I never have to visit this graveyard for burials again.

So many of my memories are tied to this party, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the terrible. I have turned 50 years old, and the party is also 50.

In the past year, I have fought and survived cancer. The party has its own cancers to fight.

From what I have learned about the disease, it does not have external triggers or causes.

It starts as an internal mutation. It is this that the PPP must fight against, and half of the fight is a matter of will.


Do you have first-hand recollections of a significant historical event? Share your story with us at blog@dawn.com

What I learned about marriage after getting divorced

0
0

The recent news of Prince Harry’s engagement to Meghan Markle has got me thinking about my experiences of marriage.

Do you remember your wedding day? How did you feel? Did you cry? Did panic cause butterflies in your stomach? Were you ecstatically happy and couldn’t wait to start married life? Or was it merely a right of passage? Something that was expected of you, a filial duty?

Then again, perhaps you’re resistant to the idea of marriage. To you, it’s an anathema, an outdated and abhorrent notion that causes you to break out in hives

I’m not against marriage. I remember little flashes of my first wedding: The pungent smell of the silver glue on my green and red lehnga, smiling a little too much for an Asian bride.

I remember being nervous. I asked my brother to tell me a rude joke, a request which was caught on camera.

I couldn’t keep my eyes cast down. I wanted to look, to take it all in. Why on earth not?

And I remember when multiple aunties attempted to clip a huge nose ring on to my nostril. The operation was eye-wateringly painful. I didn’t want to wear it. And in my heart of hearts, I didn’t want this wedding.

I’m not about to enter into a debate about whether arranged marriages are better or worse than love marriages. But what I will set out are some loose guidelines for those who are thinking of tying the knot, and equally, for those who are arranging the knot-tying.

1) Do not look at other married couples and think you can emulate them

I was seven years old when my sister married. I thought the world had ended. Post nuptials, I wedged myself between the married couple, looking absolutely miserable.

Later that night, I sobbed and sobbed, utterly heartbroken, believing that I had lost my sister forever. Suffice to say I hadn’t.

She was still very much present in my life, but in a slightly different way. It’s like having your favourite pizza with an extra topping, albeit one that you don’t want, but a topping you end up liking.

Looking back, I feel for my brother-in-law who was faced with this odd little girl with a pathological love for his wife.

But to his credit he accepted me wholeheartedly and understood my need to attach myself like a leech to my sister.

Theirs is a marriage that has lasted 34 years. An arranged marriage between strangers. Two strangers that lived in two different continents, thousands of miles apart.

At the time of their wedding, my sister was 20 years old. A veritable spring chicken. My brother-in-law is a decade older. For some, that’s a generation. But it didn’t seem to have mattered. Time strengthened their bond. That, in the grand scheme of things, is quite a feat.

When it came to the prospect of my own marriage, I looked to my sister’s example. I idolised her – still do, but not in such a fanatical way – and thought that, well, if she could do it and make it work, so could I.

But there were some fundamental differences. I met the man who became my first husband, someone almost a decade older than me, at the age of 17. I was 18 and about to go off to university when we got engaged.

By 20, I was married. At that age, I had the emotional maturity of a 13-year-old.

In short, I am nothing like my sister. We’re as similar as a laddoo and samosa. A tiny little detail I should’ve recognised.

2) Do not approach marriage with an ulterior motive

I approached the prospect of an arranged marriage with a clinical rationalisation. In fact, sometimes when I look back at this time, I think I must lie somewhere on the spectrum, because I was pretty unemotional and calculated about my decision.

Let’s rewind.

University loomed and even though they expected great things from me, my parents still had a whisper of doubt about letting their daughter loose.

In order to sleep easier at night, they believed it was in everyone’s best interests to attach me, their youngest and most wayward child, to a suitable boy.

And I merrily went along with the plan because I believed my life would be easier for it.

I could have the best of both worlds. If I was engaged, I could lead the life as a student without the constant interference and paranoia from my parents.

I didn’t contemplate life after university. Generally, teenagers don’t think more than a day ahead, let alone years, and to compound matters, I had no idea what married life actually entailed.

For me, the notion of marriage was like a roughly drawn sketch of something so abstract, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what it looked like.

To conclude, securing freedom is not exactly a robust reason for accepting a marriage proposal.

Wholly unsuitable reasons for marriage may also include, but are not limited to, boosting your income, securing a green card, gaining citizenship, and preventing your parents from committing suicide if you refuse to marry.

3) Do not approach an (arranged) marriage as a social experiment

This is marriage we are talking about. A union for life with one person. Read that very carefully: For. Life.

And in that regard, marriage isn’t some sort of anthropological exercise.

All those years ago, I remember thinking it would be quite interesting to go against the norms of western culture by having an arranged marriage, go to a top university, and get a top job.

Let’s show the world that arranged marriage works, people! I could have my cake and eat it too.

I think I also told myself that to gain greater conviction in my decision to go down a path less travelled.

At university, I was the strange and slightly exotic creature. But the great thing about university is that you can be more or less who you want and no one really cares.

When they learnt I was engaged, my peers looked at me with shock, but then quickly forgot about it. No one, friends included, thought I’d actually get married after my first year. But I did, partly to prove a point.

But surely, that is not the actual point of marriage, is it?

4) Actions speak louder than words

My then in-laws wanted me to go to university in the city where their son worked. In this case, London.

Now, Britain’s capital has some very fine institutions, but quite frankly, my mind was set on Oxbridge.

My parents had to argue pretty hard to reinforce that point. If their daughter had potential, then they weren’t going to let it slip away.

Had I not got into Cambridge, I would have gone to a university in London, but in all honesty, I had even greater incentive to get into my first choice because I didn’t want to live with my husband.

I should be grateful that marriage boosted my academic ambitions, but once again, that shouldn’t be the point of it.

Here are a couple of other things that were telling: I refused to change my name. And, I refused to wear a wedding ring.

On the first, many women choose not to change their names, but in my case, I didn’t want to adopt my husband’s surname because it was my way of staying in control and holding on to my identity. I couldn’t quite accept I was married and changing my name was a step too far.

On the second – not wearing a ring – that should’ve been a little more worrisome. I did wear an engagement ring, but really, that was because it was a little less final than a wedding band.

An engagement ring is like a get-out clause. A wedding ring isn’t. This reads as though I wasn’t faithful. I was. Faithfully so. I was just in permanent denial.

So, if you’re acting in a way which is a little circumspect when it comes to marriage, it’s a pretty sure sign that this person and this marriage is not right for you.

5) Have some common interests

Marriage isn’t easy. It takes effort on both sides. But it also helps if you like doing a few things together.

I’m not saying you should be bound at the hip like conjoined twins, but at least share a love of something.

It could be going out for a walk, going to the movies, to the theatre, going bird watching, train spotting, or building model aeroplanes. Whatever floats your boat.

The little experiences are the things which bind you together. Loafing about, watching television is all very well if both of you enjoy it, but when only one of you is doing that and has no inclination to lift his or her bottom off the sofa, then that’s an issue.

My first marriage was a wasteland. In fact, I preferred to spend more time at work than at home. And that’s a very sad thing indeed.

6) Forget about the L-Word

For the moment, put aside the idea of love. The key question is, do you even like one another? Could you have a lasting friendship?

Yes, love is amazing and if you are in love, that’s brilliant,it’s wonderful, and it’s a rip-roaring ride that leaves you exhilarated and exhausted at the same time.

But that love will settle. It will ebb and flow, and the true signs of something lasting is whether you have a friendship, a kinship, and a closeness that will keep you together.

As brutal as this may sound, I didn’t really like my then husband.

7) Can you assimilate?

While we didn’t live together, I had to assimilate into a new family, adapt to a different way of doing things.

I was expected to wear shalwar kameez. I was expected to speak Urdu all the time, which wasn’t exactly an asset of mine.

I was thrown into an environment where the women were not as strong and independent as the women in my own family.

I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t like being told what to do, what to wear, what to think.

I started to question religion, fast realising I was practising a faith for the sake of pleasing everyone else.

In short, I was doing many things to please others, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to fit into his family, or any kind of group for that matter.

I just wanted to just be me, to have the space to discover who I was, to figure out for myself what was important, what my values were, what my aspirations were. and what I truly believed in.

8) For the love of God, ensure you respect one another

As you read this, you may conclude that I was a bit of a brat. A little selfish. And you would be right. But, I was also a child and I had a lot of figuring out to do.

I did eventually grow up. I began to have an idea of who I was. And yet, our relationship didn’t adapt.

I never expected or asked for the things which went on behind closed doors. Actions that no one would ever contemplate happening, but they did and they left me scarred.

Irrespective of what culture or society we live in, certain acts cannot be rationalised or excused. They are wholly unforgivable. And I will never be able to forgive and forget.

Those events were the death knell in our marriage and after seven years, I summoned up the courage to leave.

9) And if you choose to leave…

Divorce is like bereavement. It’s traumatic. The guilt I carry for leaving is like a screw that twists deep inside my heart.

I turned my back on a second family. I severed many ties. I left people brokenhearted. But most importantly, my parents stood by me, recognising that if I stayed I would have been deeply unhappy.

Ultimately, it was the right thing to do. When I left, I could breathe. My wings had been unclipped and I was free.

I was the maker of my own destiny, and that was the best gift in the world.

10) Ensure you can be in it for the long haul

Irrespective of whether you have an arranged marriage or you marry out of love, irrespective of the culture you come from, marriage is a journey two people embark on together.

There has to be mutual respect and equality. You must enjoy being with one another. To laugh together, cry together.

Neither person should feel suffocated, arguments shouldn’t be swept under the carpet. And marriage certainly is not a place for subjugation and violence.

At 19, I should never have got married. That is the harsh reality. Before my father passed away, he said my marriage was one of his deepest regrets.

But I went through with it of my own accord. No one held a gun to my head. I wasn’t kidnapped, dragged to a village and forced to wed some strange, illiterate, toothless, old man.

Eventually, I did fall in love and I married for the second time. For the record, I couldn’t wait to change my name. I wear a wedding band, but not an engagement ring.

During the midst of a successful career, I decided to stay at home with my children and I am woefully financially dependent on my other half. But, I’m content and couldn’t wish for more.

Although I wouldn’t go so far as saying that this is a happy-ever-after-ending. The map of our life together is still very much in the making.

My other half and I are enjoying each day as it comes, overcoming the tribulations thrown our way, and thanking our lucky stars that we have each other and our children.

And yes, we aspire to spend the rest of our lives together, for better or for worse.


Have you had challenging relationship experiences? Share your story with us at blog@dawn.com.

Viewing all 15293 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images