This is the story of how a debater from Islamabad managed to find himself competing in the World Schools Debating Championships.
I got into debating in a pretty normal way. Islamabad has a developed MUN circuit, and back in the 11th grade, I attended FroMUN 2012. I learned two things here: First, that I enjoyed speaking against other people, and second, that all the best MUNers had histories in some mysterious sport called 'Parliamentary Style Debating'.
My interest piqued, I chose my A levels school, Westminster, on the basis that it had one of the better parliamentary debate societies and coaches in Islamabad, and from there on my love affair with debates began. For the most part, the affair was one sided…
In Pakistan, most debate tournaments are conducted mostly by the Debating Society of Pakistan (DSP), a non-profit, non-government, 25-year-old, volunteer-run organisation, committed to promoting free speech and critical thinking.
The DSP is mostly a Lahore and Karachi-based organisation, however, with maybe one tournament a year being held in Islamabad. The Capital is effectively the ugly duckling of the Pakistani debating circuit. The DSP debate circuit was some foreign cult that no Islamabadi debater had ever made much of an impact on in the history of the circuit or the DSP’s “Pak Team” — the national U-19 debating team that has ranked amongst the very best in the world for much of the last three decades.
Partly in order to select the Pak Team, the DSP holds a series of seven big U-19 tournaments over the course of the academic year, culminating in a huge U-19 National Tournament at the end of November.
Tournament rankings are compiled and the top 35 speakers of those tournaments shortlisted to compete for a spot in the Pakistan Team. These speakers then undergo an incredibly competitive process in which, after several speeches, interviews, and other forms of torture, they’re gradually whittled down to five speakers over the course of 10 days, in a series of four painful cuts: a cut to 18, then 12, then eight, and finally, a cut to the final five…
I expected to be cut first.
Somehow, though, I got through the first couple of cuts. And then, shockingly, I made it past the third. I was one of the top eight, a small step away from making it to the Pakistan team. I had to make it on to the team; I have never before felt more representative of my city than at this point. I could be the first Islamabadi in history to make it.
The final debate happened. I spoke well. The selectors left. The eight of us waited in silence.
The five selectors re-entered the room, and the tension was palpable. Some of us were sweating, and it wasn't just because of Lahore's rubbish weather. With a smile and a wave, Mrs Sonu Rahman, founder of the DSP and an amazing lady 90 years young, announced the lineup for the Pak Team 2015:
Zainab Hamid, the mercurial Captain of the Pak Team, and a three-time return speaker whose every speech is incredible.
Hassan Qaiser, someone who would run circles around his opponents with never-ending arguments discharged at an alarmingly rapid speed.
Hamza Tariq, a talking encyclopedia if there ever was one. This individual highlighted "agents of objectification" as the root cause of sexism, and we're not likely to let him forget it.
Asad Zafar, our resident philosopher. When he learned that there was such a thing as a purely moral argument, he knew he'd found his own little slice of heaven. Asad had a monopoly on morality in our team, which led to myriad amusing situations.
And then there was myself, a shy nobody from Islamabad who had found himself in a world very alien to his own.
I can say very honestly that after seeing my teammates, I wasn't sure of my own place on the team. There were moments early on in the training process, when I felt like I'd been picked more to fill some newfangled Islamabad quota than for my ability, because of my inconsistent performances.
However, training did improve me tremendously. It was a lengthy and comprehensive process which surprisingly involved more listening than speaking. We worked very hard on ourselves, improved tremendously, and took our final steps towards the “World” stage.
I'm saying 'we' a lot when this is fundamentally a recount of how 'I', as an outsider, felt about this journey. Truth be told, it's impossible to keep that 'I' distinct now. As the camp wore on, I became less and less representative of Taha and of Islamabad, and more and more representative of the team and of Pakistan.
And then, all of a sudden, we were in Singapore. Let’s talk about that for a moment, because it was an incredible occasion not only on a personal level, but in terms of the number of records we matched.
On the first day, we beat the Czech Republic and Nigeria. This was the first time in five years that Pakistan had won both of its first two preliminary rounds. We then went on to beat Ireland, our A-ranked team, followed by a victory over Croatia. By the end of day two, we had four out of four rounds in the bag.
The next day, the Peru and Kuwait teams fell before us. At six straight wins, we already had the best preliminary round performance that any Pakistani team had enjoyed since 2009. With a victory over Korea bringing that number up to seven, our run began to feel more and more like a force of destiny.
And at last, with a final victory over the UAE, we ended our preliminary rounds with a perfect record, breaking third, and outdoing every Pakistani team before us since 2005.
Then, we came to the break rounds. We won the octofinals against the Philippines, making it to the quarters for the first time since 2010. We managed to triumph over Greece, pushing us into the semifinals for the first time in a decade, placing us against hometown favourites Singapore.
At this point, we were competing for a place in the history books. We had already cemented our place as one of the best to ever do it, but two more wins and we would outdo everything ever done in the history of the DSP, and become legends.
Singapore, unfortunately, held the keys to the doors of Olympus. It was a good debate, held in a cavernous underground TV studio in front of a partisan hometown audience, and the five of us exited the tournament, largely content with what we had managed to do.
In an exceptional, memorable high-speed chain of events, our unit had reestablished the name of Pakistan as a force to be reckoned with in the World Schools Debating Championships.
It is a proud moment indeed for my team and I, but especially so for my country, Pakistan.
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The five of us back home. -Photo courtesy of author |