Summer has arrived. The air is drier, the sun fiercer, the people angrier and the humming of generators – our ambient apocalyptic soundtrack – even louder. I don’t believe anyone really looks forward to the seasonal transition here, not least because the Muslim shower (aka the single greatest purchase in Pakistan after those amazing tennis rackets that electrocute mosquitoes) begins to scald your private parts with punitive spurts of boiling water, a daily betrayal that you only recall, for some reason, once you’ve pushed the button.
I’ve already begun looking into holiday options and have found the universe rigged against me in the form of the Visa Restriction Index or VSI. The VSI is a list that shows you just how devalued you are, as a Pakistani national, by other nationals on this planet. It lists out, in descending order, the best passports in the world to have for travel based on how many countries the holder can enter without a visa. Top of the list is Singapore (most people there are millionaire Asians, duh). Singaporeans can enter 192 countries (i.e. the whole world) without issuing any kind of advance warning. Next are the British, the Americans and the Canadians, all jostling for space with the richer EU countries. Then you get to Brazil (146 countries), Israel (144), Russia (94), the formerly cannibal nation of Vanuatu (79), Saudi Arabia (64) and Kyrgyzstan (56). I thought that was the end of the line and kept scrolling to see where Pakistan was but it turns out there was a whole second page, which you would obviously only care about were you not on the first. This second, darker page included Niger (53), India (52), and the Central African Republic before getting to the truly shady places like Nigeria (48), which oddly beat out China (44).
If you’re looking for us, you’ll have to go further down. So far down, in fact, that you can’t help feeling like you’ve failed the test of your life. Out of all the residents of all the countries in this world, Pakistanis have the third most restrictive, unloved, sucks-to-be-us travel document there is. The only countries worse off than ours are Iraq (who, at 31, only beat us by a single nation) and, it goes without saying, Afghanistan (28).
[quote]The Canadian visa application requires a blood sample along with my passport[/quote]
At the end of the day, we are tied with Somalia.
In case you’re interested in measuring the amount of liquid in Pakistan’s proverbial glass, of the 32 places we can visit, most are in Africa, and the rest are places like Tuvalu, which I might be more excited about if I knew where it was.
I resigned myself ages ago to not being able to travel freely, and so have already begun my visa applications for this year (it feels like applying for college, every time). I am trying to get a pass to the EU, initially to meet friends for a reunion of sorts in Poland which I’ve already missed (thanks for asking) and now mainly out of wounded pride. Next I’m going to try for an American visa, which I haven’t had for a couple of years now. It’s actually quite a simple process, all things considered. So many people apply for it that they’ve got a system down. It includes an online form (a prickly thing that doesn’t let you skip questions) and then an interview, which I have yet to schedule. The Americans, bless them, don’t require anything other embassies don’t. Quite the reverse, I feel the American application is rather simple by comparison to, say, the Canadian, which requires of me a blood sample along with my passport.
All this may be because the Americans are going to reject most applications and so don’t want to be burdened with unnecessary paperwork, but after dealing with the Europeans I think it’s because they don’t take as many lunch breaks. The folks who live in the diplomatic enclave in Islamabad now constitute pretty much the only foreigners you see here (except for certain Nigerians in jewelry shops; what is up with that?) and sometimes their events can be a lot of fun.
This week, for instance, I was invited to the Queen’s Birthday Party, an annual event thrown by British diplomatic missions across the world, kind of like the 4th of July for Americans. The hall was decorated with a giant picture of the Queen (hey, it’s her party) flanked by shirtless pictures of the boxer Amir Khan, a rare example of British-Pakistani talent that doesn’t involve a beard or a bomb. Other portraits included the writer Nadeem Aslam. It was a perfectly charming event except for a giant cake in the shape of the Pakistani and British flags that was cut by the Chief Guest in honor of queenie. The funny thing was that in some kind of racially charged, Freudian attempt at self-branding, the caterers had made the British cake out of white sponge and the Pakistani flag out of dark chocolate. You could see the diplomats’ eyes widening and dart around as the knife sliced the cakes innards to reveal the inherent symbolism.
What was infinitely stranger was that the present Governor of Punjab, who used to be an MP in Britain and is now a VIP here, couldn’t make it to the party and so insisted on throwing his own party for the Queen at the Governor’s House. How is that legal? I mean, should the governor of the Punjab throw a birthday party for another country’s head of state for no apparent reason, even if he’s technically her subject? My answer is a resounding yes, largely because he actually sang happy birthday before getting confused about which name to use, thereby getting everybody to mumble either “the Queen” or “Elizabeth” before giving up altogether.
I wonder if the Somalis say it right.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com and follow @fkantawala on twitter
I’ve already begun looking into holiday options and have found the universe rigged against me in the form of the Visa Restriction Index or VSI. The VSI is a list that shows you just how devalued you are, as a Pakistani national, by other nationals on this planet. It lists out, in descending order, the best passports in the world to have for travel based on how many countries the holder can enter without a visa. Top of the list is Singapore (most people there are millionaire Asians, duh). Singaporeans can enter 192 countries (i.e. the whole world) without issuing any kind of advance warning. Next are the British, the Americans and the Canadians, all jostling for space with the richer EU countries. Then you get to Brazil (146 countries), Israel (144), Russia (94), the formerly cannibal nation of Vanuatu (79), Saudi Arabia (64) and Kyrgyzstan (56). I thought that was the end of the line and kept scrolling to see where Pakistan was but it turns out there was a whole second page, which you would obviously only care about were you not on the first. This second, darker page included Niger (53), India (52), and the Central African Republic before getting to the truly shady places like Nigeria (48), which oddly beat out China (44).
If you’re looking for us, you’ll have to go further down. So far down, in fact, that you can’t help feeling like you’ve failed the test of your life. Out of all the residents of all the countries in this world, Pakistanis have the third most restrictive, unloved, sucks-to-be-us travel document there is. The only countries worse off than ours are Iraq (who, at 31, only beat us by a single nation) and, it goes without saying, Afghanistan (28).
[quote]The Canadian visa application requires a blood sample along with my passport[/quote]
At the end of the day, we are tied with Somalia.
In case you’re interested in measuring the amount of liquid in Pakistan’s proverbial glass, of the 32 places we can visit, most are in Africa, and the rest are places like Tuvalu, which I might be more excited about if I knew where it was.
I resigned myself ages ago to not being able to travel freely, and so have already begun my visa applications for this year (it feels like applying for college, every time). I am trying to get a pass to the EU, initially to meet friends for a reunion of sorts in Poland which I’ve already missed (thanks for asking) and now mainly out of wounded pride. Next I’m going to try for an American visa, which I haven’t had for a couple of years now. It’s actually quite a simple process, all things considered. So many people apply for it that they’ve got a system down. It includes an online form (a prickly thing that doesn’t let you skip questions) and then an interview, which I have yet to schedule. The Americans, bless them, don’t require anything other embassies don’t. Quite the reverse, I feel the American application is rather simple by comparison to, say, the Canadian, which requires of me a blood sample along with my passport.
All this may be because the Americans are going to reject most applications and so don’t want to be burdened with unnecessary paperwork, but after dealing with the Europeans I think it’s because they don’t take as many lunch breaks. The folks who live in the diplomatic enclave in Islamabad now constitute pretty much the only foreigners you see here (except for certain Nigerians in jewelry shops; what is up with that?) and sometimes their events can be a lot of fun.
This week, for instance, I was invited to the Queen’s Birthday Party, an annual event thrown by British diplomatic missions across the world, kind of like the 4th of July for Americans. The hall was decorated with a giant picture of the Queen (hey, it’s her party) flanked by shirtless pictures of the boxer Amir Khan, a rare example of British-Pakistani talent that doesn’t involve a beard or a bomb. Other portraits included the writer Nadeem Aslam. It was a perfectly charming event except for a giant cake in the shape of the Pakistani and British flags that was cut by the Chief Guest in honor of queenie. The funny thing was that in some kind of racially charged, Freudian attempt at self-branding, the caterers had made the British cake out of white sponge and the Pakistani flag out of dark chocolate. You could see the diplomats’ eyes widening and dart around as the knife sliced the cakes innards to reveal the inherent symbolism.
What was infinitely stranger was that the present Governor of Punjab, who used to be an MP in Britain and is now a VIP here, couldn’t make it to the party and so insisted on throwing his own party for the Queen at the Governor’s House. How is that legal? I mean, should the governor of the Punjab throw a birthday party for another country’s head of state for no apparent reason, even if he’s technically her subject? My answer is a resounding yes, largely because he actually sang happy birthday before getting confused about which name to use, thereby getting everybody to mumble either “the Queen” or “Elizabeth” before giving up altogether.
I wonder if the Somalis say it right.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com and follow @fkantawala on twitter