The Paradox of Pakistan
By Umar Hussain
UC Irvine
If you drive through the streets of Lahore, Pakistan, you will fear for your life—if you’re from a country like the United States. None of the traffic laws are enforced in Pakistan, and this lack of enforcement creates a dangerous everybody-for-themselves mentality on the road.
You are the king of the road. You only worry about the road ahead of you; the rear- and side-view mirrors are not even necessary. Some cars don’t even have them. A car’s horn is only used to let a driver know that he is are driving slower than the person behind him is and that he needs to get out of the way to make room for the driver behind to pass. Three-lane streets become six-lane streets, and red lights become stop signs. Mysteriously, traffic always flows and you never see accidents. One can only imagine what would happen to traffic if there were a disturbance.
Though things seem fragile and on the brink of disaster, there is a chaotic order to life in Pakistan.
There is an old Pakistani joke that sums up this view: They say that when a communist Russian leader came to visit Lahore, he looked at the place and immediately proclaimed, “There must be a God because there can be no other explanation for how this place still exists.”
This winter break marked the first time I visited Pakistan in 14 years. I left the day after my last final and returned on the first day of the winter quarter. While I was there, I got to cover all the essentials of a trip to Pakistan. I visited Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, two of the largest mosques in the world, the village where my parents grew up, bargained in various electronic and clothing shops, ate the delicious authentic food, attended a Pakistani wedding, saw the historical British colonial edifices and much more. However, nothing hit me more than the assassination of former Prime Minister and presidential candidate Benazir Bhutto.
I was in Rawalpindi two days before the assassination, which is a city about a half-hour outside of Islamabad. It is the headquarters of the Pakistan army. Even with the military presence and the well-known expectations of the attack, the terrorists were able to carry out the mission and put Pakistan in possibly its most hectic state since the early days of the partition from India in the mid 1900s.
Ironically, my experience during the assassination and its aftermath was much like my experience at the time of 9/11. As a Muslim-American during 9/11, there was much hostility against Muslims. I remember waking up in the morning with the whole family gathered around the television staring in shock and pondering what was going to come next. We, along with other Muslim-Americans, had to take caution when leaving the house. My older brother, who attended a Catholic all-boys school, was kept home out of fear. My younger brother and I went to our Muslim middle-school just like any other day, but were sent home after the school had no choice but to shut down amidst threats from those angered and riled by the attacks.
Similarly, on the day of the assassination, I woke up from a nap I was taking on a couch in front of a TV to see all my aunts, uncles, cousins and brothers gathered around and galvanized by what the letters read on the screen. Everyone began guessing the truth behind the assassination. Every angle was covered. Was it al-Qaeda? Was it Musharraf? Was it the United States? Was she faking her death?
We had a wedding event to attend that night, and my brothers and I were all excited. We would finally see a Pakistani wedding in Pakistan with our whole extended family, an experience we hadn’t had in 14 years. The phone rang and it was my Dad, who was staying at another family member’s house. He spoke with my uncle. My uncle hung up the phone and came to us with the news. We would not be allowed to leave the house. We were all disappointed, but when we heard what was happening in the streets, we were worried. Angered citizens were storming the streets, burning tires, banging bats against cars and wreaking all kinds of havoc. There were numerous accounts of hate crimes against Muslims after the destruction of the Twin Towers. Many shops experienced attacks from vandalism to total destruction.
As a Pakistani-American, it was dangerous for my brothers and I to go out on the streets. The Pakistani public is not fond of the United States’ policies, especially its involvement in the Middle East. It is funny how in America, people would target my family because we look like Muslims, and in Pakistan, people would target us because we look like Americans. Again we were “guilty by association,” and again we were forced to stay indoors.
Pakistan seemed like a country that could boil over amidst the assassination. Even in Lahore, a city that was a four-hour drive from Rawalpindi and the city we were in at the time, the effects of the attacks were full-fledged. It’s unfortunate that people get belligerent over such events and that those who are innocent almost always get affected. My little 12- and eight-year-old cousins should not have had to look out their windows and see individuals on the street burning vehicles and firing bullets into the sky.
The United States has to watch its policy in a fragile country like Pakistan—a country Time magazine deemed the most dangerous country in the world. If there is just one little accident, all of the traffic will be disturbed. (University of California www.newuniversity.org)
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