Hoopla over a uniform...

What does our country really think it will gain by forcing Musharraf to give up his uniform? What will it gain by getting him to give up all that he has accomplished in his military career for the sake of being president or give up the presidency for the sake of being COAS? How much will we really gain by having a civillian president?

It's the principle of the matter, supposedly. Supremacy of the people must prevail, no matter what the circumstances, and no single entity must weild as much power over the country as the President of Pakistan currently does as jointly holding the title of COAS. Such power can be dangerous. It could ruin a country while it's leaders plunder and steal from it's wealth, and the public is at there mercy, unable to question, unable to protect what is rightly theirs. But wait... hasn't that been the the case in our country inspite of a democratic process of electing leadership?

Proponents of democracy cry about how our past elected governments were never allowed to complete their tenures, but would that really have made us better off? Back then, when we were engaged in a facade of democracy, did anyone think to ask our leaders... did anyone have the nerve to ask them: our country has incurred billions of dollars in debt... for what? What do we have to show for it? Where did all that money go?

Did we really have any accountability then?

The principle of democracy rests on the premise that people make informed decisions. That very principle makes the process inherently flawed in third world country like ours... for what if we attempt to implement this process in a place where the majority is at the mercy of a few, held hostage by its illiteracy, by its poverty, thus making it susceptible to misinformation, propaganda and blackmail? Would those decisions be informed? Would they reflect the true desires of the majority? Wouldn't the democratic decision in such a scenario in reality be the preference of a few?

This is not an argument against democracy.

Lets first understand that democracy is less a process of electing leaders and more an ideology of freedom. Let us realize that for democracy to have its desired effect at the national level, our people must first be empowered with the freedom to think for themselves at a personal level. The essence of democracy, the supremacy of the people, cannot be won unless we confront our personal hypocracy regarding the democratic process. Lets first ask if we really do believe in an individual's freedom to choose. The same people who tout banners demanding a democratic process of electing government do not believe in their grown children's right to choose their life partners or their career paths. We may eventually be able to swing a democratic election, but we will never win, even if the group we vote for does, not if we aren't honest believers of the process first, not if we don't believe in empowering EVERYONE with the right to choose, not if we think we know better and others don't, not if we keep making decisions on behalf of others without taking their sentiments into account, not if we don't consider ourselves accountable for the decisions we make.

Lets not blindly cry for democracy because we've been told it's right, but because we feel, we understand and we believe it's right. To institutionalize freedom with democracy, we must first believe in the right of each individual to that freedom. Only then can we make a democratic decision that brings in a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Until then, the process will remain flawed and we are better off with a despot who appears to have done more good than harm. He can keep the presidency and his uniform... until we're ready to make an informed choice.

Why I should blog more often...

Everytime he leaves, I feel my heart shatter into a zillion pieces. There's a lump in my throat I can't get down, a cry waiting to slip out, a tingling in my fingers aching to clutch his arm to keep him from going. I watch him leave, my eyes filled with sad, childlike desperation as I whisper a quiet prayer for something to change and keep him from leaving.

Then I tell myself... Fariha, it's only a business trip. He'll be back Thursday.

There are times my mind can get carried away, my imagination running rampant, taken hostage by nonsense fears. I woke up in the middle of the night and watched him sleep, watched him breath... the world getting warmer each time he breathed out. A thought crossed my mind that I tried to shove away instantly and for that reason alone I believe it became stronger.

What if this was the last time I saw him?

You're an idiot, I told myself. He'll be back before the end of the week, like he's come back before. You'll be with him soon like you always are. There's no reason to indulge in this nonsense.

But what if... ?

We take life and health so much for granted. But do we really know? When we say "Insha Allah" does that not inherently imply the risk that God may decide to end our life any time? I will see him Thursday, Insha Allah - if God Wills to let him live that long, or if He Wills to let me live that long. So my fear may not be so unfounded. It may not be nonsense.

What a child you are, Fariha! Grow up!

I put up this calm facade to keep him from worrying about me, but he doesn't know. In the hours after he's gone I try to recall and document every moment of my life that I have spent with him. I go through his closet just to sense the smell of him in his clothes. I go around, meet friends, watch tv, read a magazine or two, but I am just obssessed with the thought of him. I recall happy moments we've had with each other, and sad ones. Sometimes I'll laugh to myself and sometimes I'll cry. I'll clear out the memory of my mobile phone so I can receive his sms's, but not before painstakingly writing down all of his messages on a piece of paper that I will hang on to like gold. I'll scribble the corny joke he made yesterday on the back of my grocery list and stash it away in my "memory box".

I go through a milder form of this almost everyday as he leaves for work. It's not a paralyzing condition. Surely I continue my daily activities as any normal person would, except I keep waiting for his mandatory phone call. I think about whether he's had lunch or not, if his boss has been relatively good to him today, if he's drinking enough water, if he's driving carefully. And in one of those rare moments where I stand outside myself and observe, I find it strange that I am still so caught up in him, so desperate for him after almost 6 years of being married to him, still obsessing over him like a teenager with a crush. Oh, by the third year you're usually ready to toss each other off a bridge, someone had once told me. I remember when we met people in the first year of our marriage, couples who had been married hardly three or four years (no kids), they would refer to us as "lovebirds" and the wives would tell me that the excitement dies down after a while and things are much different later on. Different? Yes I guess they are. I don't think I obsessed as much the first year as I do now.

It'll be okay... just pray for him, for his safety, for his health. God will bring him back, just like He always does. Just, for goodness sake, get out of his closet already!!

You know that part about maintaining whatever sanity I have left? I really ought to blog more often.

Obsessive Compulsion about Shopper bags

My task lately has been to find space in my inlaws' house to stash away all of our stuff that shipped from Houston. This is no easy task, trust me, since all the cupboards are so full that noone has dared to open them for fear that everything will just fall out. Some of those closets haven't been opened since the dark ages. My brother-in-law suggests all of those closets ought to be set on fire and burned down but Mom and Dad refuse to part with anything. There was a tense moment (understatement of the year) when Humair suggested throwing everything out, and for a while it seemed our stuff would be spending it's days outside around the back of the house. Then, with some tact and diplomacy I convinced them to at least empty out the closets and see what's in there and see if some rearrangement could give us some space and once the closets are more organized, maybe it'll be easier to decide what to keep and what to toss. Humair wished me good luck as he flew back to Cairo last week. But I was confident... I knew I could arrange our stuff such that we wouldn't need too much space... just a couple of closets would be fine. I was able to put away most of everything in a day and in the process Mom and Dad actually agreed to give away some items that came out.

Rummaging through eons old curtains, sheets, rags, extension cords, broken toys , useless gifts, broken door knobs, half empty bottles of expired shampoo, several eyeglass frames with no glass in them, a box of saved teeth belonging to my brother-in-law (eww...), I discovered an unusual abundance of shopper bags. I found bags in all sizes, shapes, colors, some old some new, some plastic, some paper, some folded neatly, other's crumpled up and jammed into any space available. There were 2 "Kids 'r' us" bags" which I know are at least 20 years old because these are from Kuwait and Humair's family had moved to Pakistan by '84. I'm certain there are bags here that have seen more years than I have. And it doesn't matter if some bags are just to small to be used for anything other than whatever it was that came in it... they're all here, and God forbid anyone talk of throwing them out....

It's a strange relationship between women and shopper bags. There is this unescapable urge to save them. How can you not? You can use them for so many things. You use them to line the trash can (why buy those expensive "made for trashcan" bags?). And then sometimes you need to give someone a gift and it's always great to find a nice shopping bag from a good foreign department store (who cares if it went bankrupt and disappeared 15 years ago?) to give it to them in. You can use them for storage... sure you hardly ever store your stationary or all those rags in a plastic bag but it's a great idea and we'll get around to doing it someday. I've noticed this odd compulsion to stow away bags in myself. I used to think Ammi (my mother) was strange, the way she would check to see that the cleaning lady didn't run off with too many bags, or the really nice ones at least. Mom (his mother) is no different, except she may not exactly resort to hiding the really nice ones the way Ammi did.

I may be a bit too obsessive... I even have a hierarchy for my bags... the thin one's from the grocerymart are plentyful and not really pretty so they're used to line the trashcans around the house and I don't fuss over them much. But I must deivide them by size so that the appropriate size goes on the respective bin. Then there are the smoother, stronger department store bags, that are too good to use for trash and I'm sure I'll use them for something someday... perhaps to store clothes when I have clothes to store, or maybe if I ever have to give someone a gift, although I hardly think I will ever do that... surrender the bag I mean. Those are folded neatly and put away, out of the maids' reach so she may not take off with one of them. Perhaps the most prized are the little gift bags, some plastic some paper, with their cute rope like handles and lovely patterns, some of them actually from really nice apparel or shoe stores with the brand name printed across. You obviously can't give a gift in them, nor are they good for storing ANYTHING, but gosh, I just can't bring myself to throw them. Those I hide in drawers underneath all of my winter clothes or right at the back of the closet where they are out of sight and out of reach. Even then, throughout the year, I will find them tossed in the garbage by you-know-who, and I'll take them out, dust them and put them right back. Maybe in the evening Humair will discover that I took them back and we'll have a nice amicable discussion (another understatement) about it over tea. I know I have a problem.... but it's not hurting anyone... yet. Maybe someday my daughter or daughter-in-law can make me see I need to toss them. I think I'll be ready to part with them by then.... maybe.

Rambling... poor writing

I used to be able to write so well. I'm writing now in an attempt to salvage whatever skill I have left, but I realize my writing isn't quite as interesting, as elaborate, as thought provoking or as articulate as it used to be. Perhaps because I haven't had much to read lately. Since we moved to Cairo (less one month when we discontinued our subscriptions to various magazines in Houston), I haven't read a thing. Nothing. Sure, there are some websites on the internet I often visit, but lately I haven't had the time to go online all that much.

On one of the book shelves in my in laws' house I found a collection of some pretty good novels that I had always meant to read and somehow never had access to or when I did, never had the time to. We had to ship all of my books here to Karachi and I just haven't been able to find a good book store near our place in Cairo. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed a good book, as I conjured images and scenarios to play out the scenes in the book in my head... putting faces on the characters, imagining their voices. I could lose myself in a good story for hours at a time. I enjoyed learning new expressions, different ideas and perspectives and most of all, having more to think about... writing material.

Hopefully I'll be able to finish what I've started to read (Stephen King's IT, just in case you were curious). I've realized though, after having read through hardly a tenth of the book that I have lost quite a bit of the patience I used to have of waiting till I've read through the whole thing to find out how it ends. But I'm relearning it. Lately it had become surprisingly and quite annoyingly easy for me to become distracted. I couldn't sit and write a paragraph of email without getting up and almost seeking out a distraction... making some tea, flipping through TV channels, brushing my teeth, or simply walking around the house. Perhaps, besides the dearth of thought provoking stimuli, this was a reason for my poor writing. So I'm relearning to focus and patiently remain focused. Once I'm done, maybe then I'll be able to turn out pieces that are more than mere rambling.

Perspective

"It's really sad," said Humair of the state of affairs in Karachi: of the lifestyles of people living here earning measly salaries and wages, of the roads so broken and littered with filth and the shops so rundown and ill maintained. Last time we were here was hardly 6-7 months ago, back in February when we visited from the States and I don't recall feeling so dismal about life here. But this time somehow it seems to rub in more. It hit us quite unexpectedly, since this time were actually quite relieved to get away from Cairo and come home to Pakistan. Moreover, one would have thought that we would have found Karachi pitiable coming from the States considering we had a much cleaner and more organised culture to compare it to, ... and yet, oddly enough, we never really did. So why this sudden sting.. this sudden realization on this trip? It doesn't make sense.

Cairo is more like Karachi... more like a third world city, boiling over with more cars than it's roads can handle, more buildings per square inch than should be legal and more dust and grime than... well... just a lot of dust and grime. The contrast between Karachi and Cairo is less stark and yet it seems to accentuate the difficulties in lifestyle here more than ever. It's a phenomenon that I've been trying to comprehend, and now that Humair has left for Cairo and I'm here in his parents' house with plenty of time on my own, I thought, sifting through dusty closets that haven't been opened in 10 years (at least) searching for space for stuff that came out of our 20 ft container, somewhere I might be able to find some logic to explain this.

Don't get me wrong, we don't think Karachi, or Pakistan for that matter is a sad place to be. But people who live here do experience a difficult lifestyle. The work hours are much longer and wages much lesser, the cost of living is rising seemingly with every breath, the traffic is horrendous, roads have huge craters, and trash is everywhere. This is a third world country after all so what do you expect? Coming from the States, we seemed to think that Karachi had otherwise done quite well for itself and all of this was part of being a member of the third world.

But then we went to Cairo... also a third world country and living in Cairo took it's own getting used to, despite still receiving an expat salary and expat benefits. There is no doubt that life for local Egyptians is very hard. The cost of living has been driven sky high by the influx of expats in recent years and although the country must make beaucoup from all the tourism attracted by those five thousand year old Pyramids and mummies, there's no sign of that money anywhere. Perhaps the only thing better about Egypt compared to even the US is that the cost of petrol remains pretty low. But there's nothing more to rave about. Shopping wise, Karachi and Lahore seem to offer more than all of Cairo, unless you want to pay US prices for egyptian made items. So then why, after living in Cairo, does Karachi make us so sad? Perhaps because Cairo, as crowded as its roads are, as small and old as it's airport is considering the amount of air traffic that goes through it and God knows the air is filled with more dirt and dust than the air here in Karachi, life doesn't seem as dismal for the locals. The roads somehow manage to remain clean, and rarely do you come across a ditch in the road. Even people in the really really low income bracket can own a home of their own, albiet one that may be a hole in the wall with barely any plumbing and could fall over within the next five years, but everyone can afford a roof over their head. Here at home, we see relatives who work twelve hours a day, six... sometimes seven days a week, and still barely make enough to make ends meet. They can't even dream of having their own place just yet. They're lucky if they can pay their share of household bills in the home they share with their parents and possibly other married siblings.

Perhaps because we were expecting Karachi to be the same as if not better than Cairo, did the differences become more apparent. Things are definitely getting better and perhaps have gotten better since our last visit. It was just odd the way it struck us coming from a third world country and it didn't when we came from the first world.