August 19 , 2011

 

Ethan Casey’s Second Book on Pakistan

To many Pakistani-Americans, Ethan Casey is a familiar name. He has already made a mark as a favorite speaker at their gatherings, as the author of two books on their country, as a person who takes genuine interest in the activities of their community and their leaders, as a net-worker with their representative members in the US and in Pakistan.

An overwhelming impression I have gained of the man on a close study of his book “Overtaken By Events; A Pakistan Road Trip” is that he is a prolific, hyper-active person who wears too many hats at the same time - journalist, writer, public speaker, traveler, teacher, student, and a constant builder of a network of persons who matter for him professionally and personally. He is thus a man in much hurry and he is pushy too without being offensive.

His second book is actually a sequel to his earlier book “Alive And Well in Pakistan: A human Journey in a Dangerous Time”, which was a first person, non-fictional narrative of the times spent traveling and living in Kashmir and Pakistan between 1994 and 2004. In 2003, he spent a semester as a founding faculty member of the School of Media and Communication at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore. He is a popular speaker at student bodies of various campuses in the US.

His book being reviewed here recounts a six-week overland journey, accompanied by his photographer, that started from Bombay, went to Hyderabad Deccan, Delhi and Agra and then crossed over to Pakistan at Wagah and covered all major towns and cities in the country culminating in Karachi. Evidently, the author could hardly absorb the historical, social and cultural milieu of the places visited in such a hurry. That was not the objective of the author either; his account is not meant to serve as a travel guide.

As a note on the book cover declares, the book is intended to humanize Pakistan and Pakistanis “for a global readership and offers compelling perspectives on events during a volatile period in a chronically volatile country”. It is not a product of research and scholarship. The author did not wish to add to the torrent of commentaries on the politics of Pakistan’s predicament.

“As an American writer concerned with Pakistan”, Casey contends, “I took as my task not only to listen thoroughly and respectfully to Pakistanis, but to translate or approximate their views in ways that enhance the understanding and enlist the sympathy of Americans. I mean human sympathy, not necessarily political sympathy, although they inevitably dovetail.”

Literally dozens of Pakistanis, of various walks of life, march through the pages of the book describing their takes of the developments in their country. The author seldom goads them in any particular direction. He lets them tell their stories of their own volition and with their own interpretations.

At the start of his trip in Bombay, he interviewed the famous Indian film Director and Producer, Mahesh Bhatt, who pointed out the illogicality of the prevailing adversary relationship between India and Pakistan and underlined the rationality of a symbiotic arrangement. Quoting Gandhi, “If there is no accord between India and Pakistan, this region will be in the vortex of fire”, Bhatt remarked: “You have to understand that you have come to that point in history where you cannot hurt the other without hurting yourself. You need a new narrative”. Appropriately, he calls the first chapter of the book ‘A New Narrative’.

Ambreen Ali, a young Pakistani-American Seattle-based journalist, with a Master’s degree under her belt, portrays to Casey the confusion in the minds of hyphenated youth like her as to their identity. Ambreen is treated as an American by her cousins in Pakistan and her compatriots in the US look upon her as a Pakistani. “If I am not an American, what am I?” she wonders.

Casey too was facing a conflict in the pursuit of his vocation as a journalist. He had drunk deep at the literary fountains of English essayist from Johnson to Hazlitt to Chesterton to Orwell and was finding it odious to adhere to the American cult of objectivity and professionalism. Yet, his book being reviewed here is an epitome of objectivity verging perhaps even on pedantry. Reporting his conversations, he goes to the extent of giving in inverted commas his own utterances.

This does not mean that his book is totally devoid of his own observations, although they are few and far between. Here are some excerpts:

“…most Pakistanis I knew were remarkably generous and gregarious, sometimes even touchingly unguarded, regardless of their commitments or connections. Their country was perpetually a cauldron of schemes and theories; and their families, army batches, and alma maters encompassed everyone from ardent democrats to religious nuts to pro-military nationalists. They knew from experience that until the day one or another faction finally prevailed, which would probably be never, somehow they had to live with each other. So they could be remarkably indulgent of each other on a personal level…. One of the paradoxes of Pakistan is that while it never achieved rural land reforms after independence, thus the tiny landowning class remains powerful today, it’s also a self-made, frontier country… There has been a deliberate attempt, on the part of the landowners, not to have educational institutions established in their villages. Because they think that if the people are educated they’ll leave the village, and they will not be able to exploit them.”

“Americans and Pakistanis strikingly share several national traits; both countries are self-conscious settler societies with artificial borders, founded on unattainable abstractions.”

Casey, a popular speaker at fundraising functions of Pak-American associations working for the betterment of life in Pakistan and for providing educational facilities in rural areas, finds them at loggerheads with each other as they vie for contributions from within their own community instead of reaching out to US citizens and charities.

Ignorance and illiteracy are behind so many ills of the society, he felt. In the crucial field of education, Casey found “A do-it-yourself ethos that seems to have developed out of the vacuum created by the absence of an effective state schools system.” The non-governmental organizations engaged in this field have been doing laudable work, he finds.

Casey was able to accomplish so much in such a short time as he had the advantage of personal contacts with numerous persons in crucial positions from the point of view of his narrative. “In Pakistan connections are hard currency”, he declares. Yet, quite often, he found himself unprepared and confused. “Whenever I feel I’m starting to get a handle on things, I’m overtaken by events”.

syedarifhussaini@gmail.com