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I’ve been lucky enough to have been able to travel extensively across Asia, Europe and the United States in the last decade or so.
But my favourite destinations remain to be certain European cities that I have visited more than once – especially Amsterdam, Berlin and Rome.
Long before I managed to visit Europe for the first time in 2003, I always had a rather romantic perception of the countries in that particular part of the world.
I first began to develop this quixotic view about European countries after I joined college in Karachi in 1983 when I was just 17 years old.
At the time I had started to go around describing myself as a Marxist. But the more I read about various aspects and variants of communism and socialism, the more I got drawn towards admiring classical Cold War ideas such as ‘Euro-Socialism’ and the politics of the Welfare State practiced by Social Democratic parties in (what was in those days) called Western Europe.
But, alas, when finally I did manage to set foot on European soil in 2003, I had already entered my 30s.
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The Cold War was over and European Socialism and the Welfare States that it had spawned were struggling to keep pace with the political and economic shifts that had started to swing in after the end of the Cold War (in 1990).
More importantly, I was a South Asian man arriving from a bellicose Muslim country at a time when the world had already turned on its head by the tragic 9/11 events in New York.
I wasn’t quite sure what sort a reception Europe would give to a man arriving from a country that had begun to be perceived as a ‘pariah state’, engulfed by an ideology that had supposedly made some Arab nuts crash those planes into New York’s World Trade Canter in 2001.
But in Europe I faced none of what I had feared. Cities such as Amsterdam, Prague, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Naples, London, Istanbul, Barcelona, Lisbon, et al, fascinated me.
I did all that I could to understand them, not as just another foreign visitor or a tourist, but more as a keen student of cultural and political histories.
However, till this day, whenever I am visiting Europe (or even the US), I occasionally do get some awkward glances and additional questions when (after being asked where I was from), I reply, Pakistan.
But most of the time the additional questions in this regard are asked by folk who are genuinely interested in knowing about a mysterious Muslim nuclear power that is not Arab, yet Islamic; militaristic, yet democratic; Indian-ish, but not Indian; and extreme in parts, liberal in others, but – if I may – largely ‘moderate.’
I do my best to explain the many political, historical and cultural complexities that make Pakistan such an enigma to those who live thousands of miles away from this hotbed of bedlam.
Of course, this explanation to them comes from an entirely ‘moderate’ Pakistani Muslim.
I do not roll out knee-jerk apologias for why my country at times hasn’t behaved the way a vibrant nuclear-powered democracy should.
I explain things as a Pakistani nationalist who tries to clarify that no matter how ragged or ‘roguish’ Pakistan sometimes seems, it remains to be one of the oldest democracies in the Muslim world, whose people are repulsed by things like monarchism, and are inherently pluralistic, multicultural, enterprising, innovative, and with a healthy respect for its powerful army.
I’ve struck some truly fascinating conversations with all kinds of European men and women, and I never hesitate to confess my admiration of how they go about doing things in politics, economics and the arts.
Also read: Confessions of a ‘cultural critic’
I have never faced any episodes of ‘Islamophobia’ – as such. Maybe because I do not go out of the way to exhibit religiosity, in what I understand and respect to be largely secular societies? Perhaps.
But off and on I do experience some rather curious occurrences.
For example, once, when I was in the French city of Cannes to represent a Pakistani advertising agency at the Cannes Advertising Festival (in 2009), I was having lunch with my better half at a café just outside the imposing structure in which the festival was being held.
Sitting at a table near ours was a middle-aged European couple. A grey haired man and woman. I’m not sure if they were French.
The lady kept glancing towards my wife. My partner finally turned sideways and gestured a soft hello to the glancing lady.
This is when the lady turned towards me and asked: ‘Where are you both from?’ in heavily accented English.
‘Pakistan,’ I replied, smiling.
‘Oh,’ the lady’s voice rose a bit. ‘I’ve heard that men beat up their wives there …!’
Clearly taken aback by the comment, my better half decided to bury her head in the menu card. But I kept looking at the lady who waited for my response.
‘Ahem,’ I cleared my throat. ‘Indeed, we do,’ I said.
‘In fact I just finished beating up my partner before we came here for lunch. And now I am feeding her so she can get healthy enough to face yet another beating …!
My companion tittered and the lady quickly looked away. Now, it was her partner’s turn to bury his head in the menu card.
Over the course of the lunch, the lady kept stealing glances, until I finally rose my glass of mashroob-e-maghrib and softly exclaimed: ‘Cheers. Here’s a toast to wife beating.’
I shared this episode with a Dutch friend and a German acquaintance, and both were rather appalled. But we all saw the funny side of it as well.
Yes, as a Pakistani, I do come across some awkward moments while travelling across Western countries, but thankfully, such episodes have been extremely rare.
On the contrary, (and entirely to my liking), on most occasions, as a Pakistani traveller, I have found myself being treated as a somewhat more exotic entity compared to our more omnipresent South Asian counterparts: The Indians.
I’m perfectly fine with that.