Tag Archives: kindness

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I stopped the car by the side of the road. There was no fruit at the bazaar; the festival of Eid means that everything shuts down and there are as few supplies in the shops as there would be on Christmas Day in England. The fruit-seller at the end of our street somehow had his cart piled with apples, peaches, bananas, and the last of the summer mangoes.

He greeted me warmly. We chatted about prices for a while and then he started to put fruit into the set of scales on one end of his cart: first crisp red apples, then peaches, then mangoes which he said would be the last this year; they seem to disappear with the summer heat. A kilo of each, plus a dozen bananas, came to about £4.

My daughter, five years old, climbed out of the car and came to stand by my side. She watched the fruit-seller closely, then whispered in my ear:

“Why is his arm broken?”.

I hadn’t noticed, but his left arm ended below the elbow. I asked him what had happened. He told me how he was born in Kashmir near the Line of Control. One day, as a child, he found a round, metallic object in a field near his house. He picked it up, and it – a landmine, perhaps, or a bomb dropped from the air – exploded, taking off his left hand. He told all of these things in the painfully straightforward, unemotional manner in which Pakistanis seem to relate extraordinarily tragic and painful things.

I translated for my daughter and she looked at him, wide-eyed. He smiled and tickled her on the cheek.

“Praise God, you have wonderful children” he said, smiling.

We drove home in silence. We stopped outside our house and I turned off the engine. My son’s voice broke the silence.

“When I grow up, I’m going to be a war-stopper” he said.

The Flat Battery

September 9, 2016

Pakistan, Travel

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taxi

I turned the key. The engine chuntered, whirred…and stopped. I tried again, and again. Same result. I sighed. I was stuck by the side of a back street, somewhere in Pakistan, with an immobile vehicle.

This is not an ideal situation. Before coming to Pakistan we received thorough safety and security training, and much of it seemed to revolve around attempting to avoid precisely the kind of situation in which I found myself. Alone, stuck, on a hot day. Diplomats in this position would be calling their emergency contact number and having a helicopter buzz in to pick them up, but people in my position don’t have access to that kind of thing. The day was hot, and getting hotter. A trickle of sweat ran down my back in a particularly insidious manner.

Suddenly a taxi approached. It is always easy to tell when a Pakistani taxi is approaching. It makes a sound like two pounds of rusty screws inside a tin bathtub being thrown down a flight of stairs. The rusty bathtub approached and I hailed it with enthusiasm and not a small amount of panic. I explained to the friendly driver what my predicament was, though no explanation was really necessary: clueless foreigner, immobile car – breakdown. It’s not as though I was stopping to enjoy the view, which consisted of a few half-dead shrubs, a rusty dumpster, and a great deal of dust.

“No problem” said the taxi driver. “Push it, it’ll start ok”.

I went to the back of my own car and started pushing, regretting almost immediately my decision to buy a black car. The taxi driver was in the front seat. I pushed, and sweated, and my palms sizzled audibly, and the car started moving. After a few seconds I broke into a slow jog and the engine chugged into life. The car drove away, slowed down, turned round, and came back to me. I never once entertained the notion that the taxi driver would do anything else. Pakistan is rather wonderful in that way.

I thanked him and offered him some money. He refused, of course. I insisted, of course, and of course he refused again. I smiled and stuffed it into his top pocket.

The next day I got the battery changed. Fewer breakdowns, hopefully, but also fewer opportunities to be blessed by an unexpected person.

Pakistan: Rekindling The Romance

April 13, 2016

Pakistan, Parenthood, Travel

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We were stuck in traffic in Abbottabad. We had turned off the main road onto a side street barely wide enough for two cars to pass. A van was parked on the left hand side and when we pulled out to pass it, another van headed straight for us. He screeched to a halt in front of us. As I prepared to back up, another van pulled up behind us, and another behind him. The van in front of us attempted to back up, but two more vans pulled up behind him. We gazed at each other through our respective windscreens. The engine idled away. In the car seat behind me our infant son started to whimper.

It had been a bad week. The attack in Lahore had shocked us deeply, dragging us into a familiar mood of anger, sorrow, and desperation. The same evening there was a riot in Islamabad. Schools were shut, the buses were cancelled, and the city ground to a halt. We needed a holiday, so we loaded up the car and drove north through the green hills of Hazara District. And now, a few metres after turning off the Karakoram Highway, we were stuck.

The crucial thing, I knew, was not to lose my temper. But this is easier said than done when there are four small children in your car who have already driven for four hours, and when your nerves are frayed to breaking point from the stress of driving up one of the most stressful stretches of road in the country. Pedestrians were filtering through the traffic jam, glaring at us as they squeezed past our car as though we were personally responsible.

There is something about being glared at by a succession of bearded Pakistani men which makes one reconsider one’s life options. What a peculiar circumstance to find oneself in! Stuck in traffic in a town four thousand miles away from my own country, eight thousand miles from my wife’s own country, in the town famous for being the final dwelling place of Osama bin Laden. The men passing our car looked fierce, warlike, with turbans, straggly beards, and default facial expressions of profound grumpiness, as though I had wronged them in a past life.

Surrounded by seemingly hostile people I was struck with a profound sense of not wanting to be there. Of not wanting to be in Pakistan at all, really. A sincere desire to be somewhere, anywhere, else, preferably somewhere with a beach and a succession of cold drinks with little umbrellas in. I couldn’t take it any more. The heat, the traffic, the unrelenting stream of bombs and protests and overwhelming public anger, the caustic and abrasive daily grind of Pakistani life.

Suddenly the driver of the van in front of us clambered out of his vehicle and came to my window. He looked angry. The crowd paused to see what would happen. I took a deep breath, prayed briefly, and opened the window.

He thrust his hand into our car and shook mine warmly.

“I am most sorry for inconvenience” he said, smiling gently. “Perhaps if you move car back just a little bit, we will be able to make progress”.

He moved to the back of our car and encouraged the vans behind us to shuffle backwards. One by one they did, opening up space for us to reverse into. Once his path was clear he got back into his van and drove off. As he passed our car he stopped, held his hand out to shake mine, and thanked me warmly.

“Thank you so much, sir” he said with a simple smile. “Welcome to Pakistan”.

What Normal Islam Looks Like From My Bedroom Window

March 6, 2015

God, Pakistan

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In Pakistan the backs of houses are usually where laundry is done. Guests would be invited into the front rooms, which are decorated and furnished to honour those visiting the family, while menial tasks such as cooking and washing are done at the back. The rear of our house backs onto the rear of the houses on the street above ours, and so it is that when I go out to put in laundry or check to see if the hot-water boiler is still functioning I inevitably encounter our neighbours. Their balcony is where they, too, do their laundry, hang their clothes, or come out to lie on a charpai (traditional bed) to warm themselves in the sun. I try not to linger; the rear of the house is normally the place where women come to relax, and I don’t want to make them feel uncomfortable by intruding on their private space.

Our bedroom is also at the back of our house, meaning that our bedroom windows looks out over their balcony as well. Every morning and evening while tackling the stream of emails that ping into my inbox I look out to the our neighbours come out to pray. They take down their prayer mat, orient it towards Mecca, and kneel down to go about their prayers. They close their eyes, their lips moving in silent piety, they bow down, they look left and right, and they go through the simple routine just as millions of Muslims do several times a day, in Pakistan and around the Muslim world. Their prayer routine is simple, undemonstrative, calm, elegant, and peaceful.

Islam has come under intense scrutiny in recent years. The actions carried out by a tiny minority of Muslims have resulted in every single Muslim in the world being viewed with suspicion, as if 1.2 billion Muslims are somehow responsible for the violent fanaticism of a few thousand. No matter that this is blatantly illogical and deeply unfair; no matter that this is akin to considering all Indians culpable for the actions of a handful of rapists or blaming every single Chinese person for the corruption of a few Party officials – this is how the world seems when you absorb the crass and foolish generalisations of the media. Islam, it seems, stands accused of having a problem.

Except for the overwhelming majority of Muslim people, that is. After living in Pakistan for four years normal Islam seems, to me, pretty normal. Quiet, pious, polite, undemonstrative, peaceful. Confident, yet humble. These are the characteristics of Muslim people as I have come to know them after living amongst them for four years. It is a long, long way from the violence and intolerance flaunted around the tabloids of the Western world.

I go out to get the laundry out of the washing machine and my neighbour looks up from his chair where he is sitting to read the newspaper.

“Salaam aleikum!” he calls cheerfully. “Peace be upon you!”.

And upon you too, friend.