Monday, October 23, 2000

Pakistan




Pakistan, where we have spent the last ten days, gets its name from an 'Urdu' word meaning 'land of no lingerie stores'. It is a vibrant and colorful country and one of the crazier places you'll ever go--unless, of course you go, like, you know, to the funny farm.

Right away on our plane ride into Islamabad, our first stop, we knew Pakistan would be different when we saw three different passengers on the plane travelling with hawks. It seems that the country really appreciates birds as aviaries abound.

There are also these sort of mini-van buses that would make Gaudi blush everywhere you go. These colorful buses are privately owned and decorated, and run regular routes. The proud owners will spend as much as $3,000 to have one of their buses hand-decorated, and this is a lot of money when you consider the people taking the bus are generally working over 12 hours a day for less than a dollar.

The Pakistani aesthetic tends to a sort of circus baroque where more is definitely more. You can see this in the garish colors, ornate mosques decorated with gold and silver, bright clothes and in the saccharine histrionics of the thousands of music videos and movies produced every year in 'Bollywood'. It's very happy and energetic, like the Pakistanis themselves.











Pakistani ebullience literally pours out into the streets, as going somewhere in Pakistan consists of getting on, or hanging on, one of the crowded buses; loading up your camel and cart; hailing a three-wheeled motorized (or not) rickshaw; riding a bicycle with huge bales of cargo strapped to it; or cramming your whole family onto a small motorcycle (I'm not kidding, we regularly saw a man driving with a woman sitting side-saddle and two young kids on a motor bike that was probably no more than 100cc). The only rule of the road seemed to be that of Inshallah, or god willing. What's amazing is that despite this mayhem of dust and traffic and zig-zagging, pedestrians and vendors coming to your window offering papadam or coconut and the staccato symphony of short honks, which everyone uses to let other drivers know that they are overtaking, or that, yes, they are running that red light and cutting across three lanes of traffic containing five lanes worth of vehicles to make a left turn, that through all of this, everyone seems to be fairly calm and enjoying themselves. There's no road rage!

The people, and there are at least 15 million of them crammed into Karachi, are incredibly friendly and helpful, unless, I suppose, you're from India. One taxi driver explained to us as that he didn't like the people from India because he thought that they put on nice faces but had empty hearts. While this may show the driver's prejudice (a prejudice which may be understandable given the two countries' ongoing strained relationship) it also shows the Pakistani value on 'having heart'.

The countryside is beautiful, but there is no work. There are also a fair amount of armed terrorists wandering around in the north. Artisans still practice their craft of weaving, carving, needle pointing etc. exactly as it has been done for hundreds of years. They may work for a week on decorating one cloth band that sells in the market for the equivalent of a dollar.

So, many Pakistani men are faced with the decision of staying in their home village where there is no work and little to no facilities (school, clean water, Internet etc.), or move to the crowded, polluted city and work for almost nothing (by even their standards). Luckily, there are no bars in predominantly Muslim Pakistan and 'Keno' hasn't been invented yet, so most of the money they earn makes it home to their families, which on average consists of seven or eight children a wife and parents or grand-parents. No pressure, right? The other choice is to join a work gang in Saudi Arabia or Dubai or another of the wealthy oil countries in the Gulf. This generally entails getting and then giving up your passport (the employers keep the passports “for your protection”) and working for several years at a time without returning home.

As a result of this cheap and abundant labor force, all the hotels and nice restaurants are ridiculously overstaffed. It was almost a nuisance to arrive at the hotel and have three people trying to open doors and help us with our luggage (tip, tip, tip), then we would get to our room and every five minutes there would be a knock at our door with someone offering to get us water or do laundry or clean our room, again! Despite or because of this extra-help, I'm not sure which, you still never quite get what you want. And that, of course, is what makes Pakistan so crazy and so much fun.

I think it would be difficult to live in Pakistan for several reasons. First, although I loved the energy and craziness, you would want at least a few things to work like you expected, for instance a flight leaving when it says, rather than earlier, later or just not at all. Second, it is still a primarily Muslim culture which means that men and women don't talk much (or hold hands) until they are married, which even then is generally arranged for them. Third, it ain't easy to find what Jesse calls a 'brew-ha'. Fourth, and most significantly, it would be hard to live around so much poverty. I would feel uncomfortable having a cook, a driver and a gardener, but would also feel guilty not hiring them with so many people in need of work. Alas, life is a paradox and I lost one of my dox in the washing machine!

Speaking of washing machines, you won't find many here. What you see in the photos below is the enormous laundry land in Karachi. We were told that this sprawling maze of concrete troughs, basins, children and piles of clothes services the whole city. Like a Fed-Ex fleet on foot, women work their routes picking up dirty laundry from people’s houses and delivering them, dunked, beaten, twisted and cleaned laundry several days later.



No comments:

Post a Comment