Today is a significant day. This is the tenth anniversary of my column in this fine newspaper. Ah. I see you forgot to bring a present. That’s fine. No, no, honestly, I forgive you. I began writing to you 10 years, 520 weeks, 3,652 days and over half a million words ago. When I started, I was a 26-year-old who had just moved back from the US to (re)start my life in Pakistan.
It was not an easy decision. Even a decade ago, liberal and sane were not qualities synonymous with the model Pakistani citizen (one of the reasons, aside from vengeful aunties, that I chose to write under a pseudonym for all these years). As an obese teenager dreaming of the glitz and glamour of an imagined life abroad, I never thought I would ever voluntarily move back to Lahore if I ever left. But after eight years away in America, I realized something profound: staying away is not the same thing as moving away. I knew deep down that I had been trying to escape Pakistan, to keep away from all the things I imagined would curtail my life were I to move back.
But there was a part of my soul deeper still that knew that whatever else happened, I needed to confront my relationship to the country I called my home on my own terms, a country that had in the years since my birth made every effort to demonstrate how people like me were unwelcome.
The Pakistan I returned to - one which murdered governors and defended murderers - felt cruel, cynical, and callous, altogether unlike my childhood in Lahore. And yet, of course, it was the same. So much of the intolerance, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, patriarchy, racism, classism, elitism (and all the other -isms we call “culture” instead of hatred ) had always been there. Left to grow unobstructed for years, their ubiquitous presence felt like an unbearable but logical conclusion to our communal choices. The only difference was that people were now freer to assert their social conservatism without need to justify their belief in a tolerant future. It was easier to wrap up in the comforting gauze of religiosity and sectarian hate which so often gives comfort when all else had already failed. And so much was failing.
You were there with me in my awkward first steps as I tried to make sense of these new surroundings with some measure of humour, where rose bushes had been replaced with barbed wire, street lights with army checkpoints and school gates with metal detectors. You were there as I ranted about the last few inches of a now fully grown fundamentalism stalking the country like an ogre in a fairy tale. You were there when I moved out of my parents’ place and into my own two ramshackle rooms out of the lonely opinion that adults should at leas try to forge their own way in the world. You were there as over the years those rooms became a house, and that house became a home. You were with me when, in an effort to demystify my own country to me, I drove down to the shores of Karachi, or up to the mountains of Kalash. You were there in the 12-hour electricity blackouts in the heat of a humid summer, the random visits from security agencies, the fashion weeks, the art openings, the weddings, the birthdays and holidays.
You probably don’t know it, but you were also there when I fell in love for the first time, as you were when I slowly put myself back together afterwards. You were there when I applied for a green card, and you were there on that transformative day that I got my approval.
Even as I moved back to New York City, without by an expiration date for the first time in my life, I kept returning to life in Lahore for long periods. The visits were a comfort to me, like a distracted son who keeps a hand on his mothers kameez just to know she’s still there.
I thought, well maybe I can have a life in both places? Maybe, just maybe, I don’t have to give up on the familiarity of rootedness in order to live happily? When a year later I met my partner on one of those trips home, I knew - in that part of our soul that always knows the truth about big things - that this was why I was drawn back to Pakistan after leaving: to meet the person who could carry the best of the country on with us wherever we go.
10 years, 520 weeks, 3,652 days and over half a million words later, I am, finally, ready to move on. And while that means saying goodbye to writing here every week, it also means saying goodbye to you. You, my faceless friend, who have stayed with me for all these years. You who have laughed with me, thought with me, cried with me, loved with me.
‘Thank you’ feels too small a phrase for being there every week, for taking the time from your own day to spend with me, for encouraging me to try new things and explore new places, for helping me when I fell, and for cheering me when flew (mostly into irate rages). I hope I was able to bring some measure of joy into your Friday mornings, as you have brought into my life every week for a decade. I am more grateful than you will know. I shall miss you more than I can say.
Thank you.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com
It was not an easy decision. Even a decade ago, liberal and sane were not qualities synonymous with the model Pakistani citizen (one of the reasons, aside from vengeful aunties, that I chose to write under a pseudonym for all these years). As an obese teenager dreaming of the glitz and glamour of an imagined life abroad, I never thought I would ever voluntarily move back to Lahore if I ever left. But after eight years away in America, I realized something profound: staying away is not the same thing as moving away. I knew deep down that I had been trying to escape Pakistan, to keep away from all the things I imagined would curtail my life were I to move back.
But there was a part of my soul deeper still that knew that whatever else happened, I needed to confront my relationship to the country I called my home on my own terms, a country that had in the years since my birth made every effort to demonstrate how people like me were unwelcome.
The Pakistan I returned to - one which murdered governors and defended murderers - felt cruel, cynical, and callous, altogether unlike my childhood in Lahore. And yet, of course, it was the same. So much of the intolerance, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, patriarchy, racism, classism, elitism (and all the other -isms we call “culture” instead of hatred ) had always been there. Left to grow unobstructed for years, their ubiquitous presence felt like an unbearable but logical conclusion to our communal choices. The only difference was that people were now freer to assert their social conservatism without need to justify their belief in a tolerant future. It was easier to wrap up in the comforting gauze of religiosity and sectarian hate which so often gives comfort when all else had already failed. And so much was failing.
The Pakistan I returned to - one which murdered governors and defended murderers - felt cruel, cynical, and callous, altogether unlike my childhood in Lahore. And yet, of course, it was the same
You were there with me in my awkward first steps as I tried to make sense of these new surroundings with some measure of humour, where rose bushes had been replaced with barbed wire, street lights with army checkpoints and school gates with metal detectors. You were there as I ranted about the last few inches of a now fully grown fundamentalism stalking the country like an ogre in a fairy tale. You were there when I moved out of my parents’ place and into my own two ramshackle rooms out of the lonely opinion that adults should at leas try to forge their own way in the world. You were there as over the years those rooms became a house, and that house became a home. You were with me when, in an effort to demystify my own country to me, I drove down to the shores of Karachi, or up to the mountains of Kalash. You were there in the 12-hour electricity blackouts in the heat of a humid summer, the random visits from security agencies, the fashion weeks, the art openings, the weddings, the birthdays and holidays.
You probably don’t know it, but you were also there when I fell in love for the first time, as you were when I slowly put myself back together afterwards. You were there when I applied for a green card, and you were there on that transformative day that I got my approval.
Even as I moved back to New York City, without by an expiration date for the first time in my life, I kept returning to life in Lahore for long periods. The visits were a comfort to me, like a distracted son who keeps a hand on his mothers kameez just to know she’s still there.
You probably don’t know it, but you were also there when I fell in love for the first time, as you were when I slowly put myself back together afterwards
I thought, well maybe I can have a life in both places? Maybe, just maybe, I don’t have to give up on the familiarity of rootedness in order to live happily? When a year later I met my partner on one of those trips home, I knew - in that part of our soul that always knows the truth about big things - that this was why I was drawn back to Pakistan after leaving: to meet the person who could carry the best of the country on with us wherever we go.
10 years, 520 weeks, 3,652 days and over half a million words later, I am, finally, ready to move on. And while that means saying goodbye to writing here every week, it also means saying goodbye to you. You, my faceless friend, who have stayed with me for all these years. You who have laughed with me, thought with me, cried with me, loved with me.
‘Thank you’ feels too small a phrase for being there every week, for taking the time from your own day to spend with me, for encouraging me to try new things and explore new places, for helping me when I fell, and for cheering me when flew (mostly into irate rages). I hope I was able to bring some measure of joy into your Friday mornings, as you have brought into my life every week for a decade. I am more grateful than you will know. I shall miss you more than I can say.
Thank you.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com