Eid, a Celebration of the End of Ramadan

Eid in my house is always the same every year, but instead of being a monotonous affair, it’s become a much anticipated tradition. My father and brother attend the earliest Eid prayers, and my mother drags me out of bed because I refuse to be alert at the hideously early hour of 6am. I always take my time getting dressed in my newest pair of shalwar kameez while my mother puts the finishing touches on the halwa that she prepared the night before in anticipation of the holiday.

After prayers, my entire extended family gathers at my house and indulges in a delectable, traditional Pakistani breakfast of puris, halwa, aloo, chole, and sheer khorma. The kitchen floor is covered with plastic bags displaying raw puris that need to be deep fried, and my aunts prepare the rest of the breakfast with my mother while my cousins run around the house or play video games and my uncles watch Geo TV. Later, my cousins and I scheme about the best methods of extorting Eidi from our uncles, some of whom make it notoriously difficult. I always end up being the emissary for the rest of the group, because I am one of the few older cousins who is not ashamed to pander for money. It’s a loud, robust holiday for us, with its distinct rituals, flavors, and foods.

However, I believe that the last Eid I celebrated with my family was probably six years ago, in my freshman year of college when Eid coincided with Thanksgiving break. That was also a confusing one for me, as I was attending college in Boston, where the Muslim community had started its fast one day before my parents did, but I celebrated Eid with my family in New Jersey, where the community fasted for one day less than I had. This split was by no means atypical, and at times, the divide over Ramadan has had a clearly demarcated cultural and ethnic face, as the Arab Muslims followed Saudia Arabia’s declaration of the first day of Ramadan while the Pakistani Muslims followed Pakistan’s declaration. I had never been cognizant of these disputes because they had never really affected me, since when I lived at home, I just followed whatever my parents decided to do, and most of the Muslims in my community—many of whom were South Asian—tended to celebrate on the same day. Yet when I went to college, and the imam declared the beginning of Ramadan, I called home and wished my parents Ramadan Mubarak. Their confused reaction –“You’re one day early!” my mother told me—shocked me with the realization that now I was in a state of discordance with my parents. It was strange to be fasting when my parents, who had always been my guides in spirituality and religion, were not fasting, and I resented the semantic divides that cleaved the beginning of the holy month for my parents and me. The questions of moon sighting versus calculations, or whether we should follow Saudia Arabia considering that we would have to follow their calendar for Hajj, were not uniquely interesting to me, and at first, I wanted to follow the calendar to which my parents were adhering. Although I had to follow the local community, I felt a certain degree of sadness about this deviation from the norm.

Since then I have been fortunate enough that even though Ramadan has begun on multiple days—one year there were three “first” days of Ramadan from within different communities—and the controversy over the inception of the month has continued, my parents and I have miraculously followed the same calendar, even though I continue to live in Boston. Yet other issues have separated me from my family’s celebration of this month. Participating in family celebrations has become harder and harder as I become busier with school work, and now in medical school, it is virtually impossible to go home for Eid and celebrate it in the tradition that my parents established decades ago. My life is a whirlwind of exams, patient visits, and classes, and I cannot find the time to take time off from school to go home for Eid. This physical distance necessarily leads to some degree of emotional distance as well, and when I call home to wish everyone Eid Mubarak, I feel isolated, as though I am intruding on a celebration that I used to be a part of but no longer am. My generation in America is one that is highly mobile and lives in a society in constant flux, but this lifestyle can feel as though our home base is only the stuff of memories. Perhaps, in some way, it is—the memories of warm puris and gleeful children’s laughter, of playful haggling with my uncles for Eidi—and therefore can be wrapped up and taken with us wherever we happen to be.

Not My Representative

The nomination of Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate has deeply angered me, and not only because I am an ardent supporter of Senator Barack Obama. To be honest, I probably would not have been as angry if McCain had chosen a man who was pro-life, whose only foreign policy experience was, as she so quaintly put it, living in Alaska, and whose solution to the oil crisis was not to think of more sustainable ways to live our lives but to further exploit our natural resources and environment by drilling in Alaska. In and of themselves, these issues are significant enough that I would not vote for such a candidate, but I would not be as angry as I am now. No, the reason I am angry is the fact that the Republicans chose Sarah Palin as the first female nominee for their party.

Their choice personifies the disregard that the party has for female intellect. The Republicans have their fair share of talented, intelligent, politically savvy and experienced women, and instead of choosing a woman who exemplified those qualities, they chose Palin. They sifted through their party, thought about picking a woman, and nominated the one who was the least qualified to run the country. Instead of picking someone who might actually be McCain's equal, they chose someone who would always be considered not only his junior in terms of experience and age, but also in terms of analytical and intellectual ability. Palin is by no means stupid—the former beauty queen knows how to package herself well enough to become governor of Alaska and then the Republican VP candidate--but she is also brash and ignorant of global affairs (since when can one see Russia from Alaska?). Her time in office has been marred by hints of political scandal that force me to question her ethical system. She promotes family values but lacks moral direction when it comes to firing people she does not like. For someone who represents the first woman on the Republican ticket, she is doing a pretty terrible job.

The Republicans and Sarah Palin herself claim that she is the typical American mom and represents the average American woman. As an American woman, I refuse to be represented by someone like her, who is so uncomfortable with her femininity that she claims to wear "school-marm glasses" to make herself look less attractive. Not only is that statement insulting to men (obviously they cannot think straight around attractive women), but it's also offensive to women (of course all bespectacled women are unattractive!). Her resume and educational level are less than impressive, but that did not seem to matter at the Republican National Convention where cameras focused on Palin sitting next to Cindy McCain cradling her five month old infant. Palin's image as a good mother was emphasized much more than her image as an experienced candidate. The message was clear: that was a woman's role, not going to Yale Law School and being a senator of one of the most populous states in the country and then running for president.

The contrast between Palin and Hillary Clinton could not be starker. Clinton is a woman who has achieved significant, tangible goals. She, too, has raised a family, yet no one is calling her the prototypical American woman. She is a highly educated woman with a formidable grasp of policies and global affairs, and even though I did not agree with her stances and vehemently oppose her decision to support the Iraq war, I still respect her, which is not something I can say of Palin. Palin has nothing to recommend her as a future VP, whereas Clinton would at least have been qualified for her position as president.

Palin now has the honor of being the first female nominee on a major party's ticket, and that rankles, because she is not a woman who is uniquely qualified for anything. To think that she represents an honor that shows how far women have advanced in American politics seems to be a travesty to me.

The Insinuations of Terror

Since I returned from Mumbai three weeks ago, I have had some time to reflect on my experiences there, especially as a Pakistani. While I was there this summer I noticed that the media, although not the ordinary people I came into contact with, was distinctly unfriendly towards Pakistan. About two months ago, , Pakistani and Indian border patrols got into a skirmish which each side blamed on the other for starting. The Hindustan Times, a prominent English-language newspaper, reported that of course the Pakistanis would claim innocence and implied that Pakistan had instigated the skirmish. This skirmish was followed by the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, and again, rumors spread that the ISI was behind the bombings. In fact, India's national security advisor, M. K. Narayanan, advocated that the ISI "should be destroyed". Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, even proposed that the Taliban was being managed by the ISI as a tool of foreign policy. Apparently, he had conveniently forgotten the suicide bombings and violence that Taliban-trained fighters have wreaked on Pakistan.

The cycle of pointing fingers at Pakistan without substantive evidence continued with the bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad on July 25th and 26th. Almost immediately, the media accused Pakistan, or more specifically, the ISI, of having a hand in the bombings. Although a shadowy organization named the Indian Muhajideen claimed responsibility for the bombings via an email sent to the media, rumors arose of this organization being nothing more than a front for the ISI. In fact, just two hours after the last bomb exploded in Ahmedabad, a newscaster announced that Pakistan probably had a hand in the bombings.

The days following the attacks were tense. The multiple bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad had put the country on high alert, and the media kept showing sensationalistic images of streets running with blood after a bomb exploded outside of a hospital in Ahmedabad. Escalating violence between Pakistan and India only provided further circumstantial proof that Pakistan was involved in the recent terrorist attacks. On July 28th, at the Line of Control in Kashmir, Pakistani soldiers opened fire on Indian soldiers, killing one. In retaliation, Indian soldiers returned fire and killed four Pakistani soldiers.

The violence in India has been terrible, but I find the claims against Pakistan to be slightly absurd at times. Pakistan certainly is partly at fault for the situation in Kashmir, but of course the Indian troops also share the responsibility of the violence. The bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad to me definitely seem homegrown, but it seems that because the Indian government cannot find other culprits, it picks the target that has historically had many altercations and bloody disagreements with India: Pakistan. Pakistan has become a convenient scapegoat for the Indian government; instead of working to apprehend domestic terrorists, it blames Pakistan for infiltrating the country and seeding terror throughout India.

Yet the situation in Afghanistan certainly makes matters murkier by implicating the ISI; in fact, the Afghan government blamed the ISI for the bombing. Although the C.I.A. has not supported the Afghan government’s assertions that Pakistan had a hand in the bombing of the Indian embassy, the agency has complicated matters by presenting evidence to Pakistan suggesting that members of the ISI have cultivated ties with militant groups operating in Afghanistan. The nature of these relationships remains obscure, as does the exact involvement of the ISI in the escalating violence in Afghanistan. Yet the implications are tangible. As the US questions the ISI’s policies and its loyalties, this provides further room for conjecture on the part of the Indian press that perhaps Pakistan really has been behind all the terrorist attacks on India. It also makes it easier to believe that if the ISI has connections to the militants in Afghanistan, then it may also have connections to a group such as the Indian Muhajideen.

Where does the truth lie? The secretive ISI certainly commands a good portion of it. The recent C.I.A. evidence makes it obvious that the ISI has not been forthright about the extent of its dealings in Afghanistan, and the Pakistani government should increase the accountability of the ISI. Yet this does not mean that the next logical leap would be to blame the ISI for the attacks in India.

The relationship between India and Pakistan has a long way to go before the two countries are completely reconciled to each other. These past two months have been especially tense ones for the two countries, with multiple incidents of violence disrupting the ceasefire in Kashmir and the hesitant peace between the two countries, and do not bode well for the future. America’s most prominent South Asian allies have to work at becoming allies with each other as well.

In the Throes of AIDS

J.J. Hospital, a government hospital in Mumbai, has the largest A.R.T (antiretroviral therapy) center in Mumbai, with about 7000 patients currently enrolled. So many people were crammed into the waiting room of the center: Hindus, Muslims, young wives, old men, children, and all of them were HIV positive. I had never felt the force of the epidemic as I did that day. Standing in that crowded waiting room, being jostled by a crush of people trying to get life-saving medicines, I understood the scope of HIV. It wasn’t striking indiscriminately, and no one was to blame, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but be angry at the husbands who infected their wives and children. I know that this anger is not justified and this is not a question of fairness—no one deserves to get HIV, regardless of how risky their behaviors are—but I just felt like these women and children didn’t even have a chance to protect themselves.

My co-worker took me to the HIV wards, and one case I saw there made me cry. A woman, Supriya, lay on a bed in the last stages of AIDS. She had perhaps days left in her life, couldn’t talk, move, or respond, and was probably going to become comatose within hours. The flesh had just melted off her bones, and all that was left on the bed was a mass of jutting bones and taut, jaundiced skin. She had been in the hospital for 10 days, and the doctors hadn’t even bothered to give her any medications because according to them, there was no hope for her, as her CD4 count was disastrously low and her viral load was too high. So they left her on a bed in a dead end hallway to die, and she lay dying minute by agonizing minute, belaboring every breath she took.

Her mother and aunt were with her, and her mother told me Supriya’s story. Supriya’s husband was a truck driver employed by the Bombay Municipal Government and nine months ago, he had fallen ill. He died three weeks ago from full-blown AIDS, which he had probably contracted from a sex worker.

Supriya loyally took care of him, even though her own health was not as good as it had been, and Supriya’s mother pleaded with her to come to Bombay to get tests done to determine why she wasn’t feeling well. However Supriya said she didn’t want to leave her sick husband because she was afraid of what the in-laws would say if she left him; she did not want them to think that she left her husband when he needed her in order to get treatment for herself. She didn’t know about his sexual history, nor did she know he had AIDS—although he and his family knew and never told her. So she remained in a village hours away from her family, caring for her dying husband while she was slowly falling prey to the same killer that had ravaged her husband’s body. It was finally when he died that she learned the truth, but by the time she came to Bombay to get tested and treated, the only thing the doctors told her mother to do was pray.

Her mother sat watch over her daughter’s body, fanning away flies and straightening the blanket over the wasted flesh. She told me she only had two children, and now one lay dying before her. Supriya was barely 40 years old, and she had three children, the youngest of whom was eight years old. Her mother wanted to take care of these soon to be orphans, but barely made Rs. 2000 per month working as a maid and was struggling to pay for necessities for herself and her son as it was. She could not contemplate how to pay for the education and needs of three young children in addition to her already significant expenditures.

As she contemplated the future, this brave woman broke down into tears, and I put my arms around her and was so overwhelmed with emotion that I started to cry, too. It was not very professional of me, but there was nothing I could for this woman or her daughter in a professional capacity; the only thing left for me to do was mourn with her in a human capacity.

Brothers

We celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, but there is no day set aside for our siblings, perhaps hinting at the complexity and depth of sibling relationships. Relationships with parents seem relatively straightforward when compared with the ones we share with our siblings. Siblings hone in on our flaws, while parents may be unwilling or unable to recognize the truth that our siblings, closer to us in age and less forgiving of our inadequacies, so readily see. Siblings are also a source of comfort and friendship—that is what my younger brother is to me. He is my best friend, and in honor of his 23rd birthday, I would like to dedicate this column to him and to all the other younger brothers who have alternately beat the crap out of and unconditionally loved their older sisters.
Among my brother’s first childhood memories is my experiment with Newton’s law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I was a five-year-old brat, and he was a stubborn four-year-old. We were locked in a mortal tug of war over a hideous, bubble gum pink winter jacket that neither of us really wanted. We struggled over it until a rather nasty thought popped into my head: “What would happen if I just let go?” So I did, and my brother didn’t even have time to savor the sweetness of unexpected victory before he flew head first into the sharp, jutting corner of our sofas. He stood up, a pool of blood streaming down his face. “I’ve killed him!” was my first remorseful thought. The second was an instinct for self-preservation: I had seen enough of the show “Cops” to know what they did to the bad guys. As my uncle frantically dialed 911, I knew it was all over, and so I did the only thing I could do: I hid under my aunt’s bed for hours, until my brother came home with his forehead held together by 4 tiny stitches. He still has the scar to this day.
Our relationship evolved as we grew older, and he grew taller and stronger. More often that not, I was on the receiving end of the violence, although the most he would do was try to smother me with his smelly socks. We fought like rabid dogs over toys, the radio (I was a Backstreet Boys fan and he wanted to listen to Metallica, and we only had one radio), even clothes (I’ll admit that this was all my fault; I stole his clothes during my thankfully brief tomboy phase). My mother despaired that we would kill each other. Then one day, it all just stopped. One day in high school I remember sitting with him at the kitchen table at 1am frantically trying to study for my Latin final the next day. All of a sudden, he said something, and it was either really funny or I was really tired, but I laughed so hard that I fell off my chair, landed on the kitchen floor, and kept laughing. At 2 in the morning, we were still swapping dumb stories and jokes. That night marked the beginning of a friendship that has sustained me through some of the most difficult and wonderful times of my life.
My brother has been there for me at every turning point in my life, alternately providing comfort and solace and deflating my ego and ensuring that I remain humble. When I got my first proposal as a geeky teenager with braces and my brother found out, he laughed so hard that he could barely gasp out the words: “That auntie must have been blind!” which promptly deflated any pride I could have taken in finally getting a proposal after years of being the ugly duckling in my family. When I was having gastrointestinal problems just thinking about going to college and living so far away from home, he helped me move a van full of boxes into my new dorm room and came to visit me at least once a year at college, often driving five hours just to see me for two days. When I obsessed over academics, he reminded me that there was more to life than just studying and told me to be spontaneous…so we planned a trip to Ireland together. When our grandfather died, the only person who could really understand what I was feeling was him.
With his sardonic wisdom, he analyzes exactly what I’m feeling when I myself can’t figure it out. He patiently puts up with me when I’m being a bossy, overprotective older sister. He reflects the person I wish to be and encourages me to develop into that person. He has taught me how to enjoy the present moment. For all that, little brother, I want to thank you.

Work in the Time of Monsoon

Work in the time of monsoon: it doesn't happen. At least not for me! We have had continuous rains since last Thursday, and luckily yesterday there was a pause in the downpour that was long enough for me to finish my shopping and other errands. I was also able to focus a little bit on work and not worry so much about whether the trains were operating or whether they had been stopped because water had flooded the tracks…or when the electricity was going to go out again…or whether I would have to wade through at least half of a foot of water again to get to work. Aaah, if only I could adequately convey the pleasures of being drenched to my very bones. I can't remember the last time I was completely dry. On Sunday I went to a restaurant and I was half afraid that they would throw me out because I left a puddle of water around my chair. (They didn't, probably because they were having too much fun laughing at me and my "funny" accent. Someone asked me: "Madam, which village are you from?" implying that I was from a region so backwards that I couldn't even speak Hindi with the proper accent.) I have been at a basal level of dampness for so long that when the rain stopped today I wanted to dance to celebrate finally being dry.

Work at the NIRRH is pretty much the same, rather bland. So I've adopted a fully hedonistic philosophy and have decided to do things that will not only make me happy but enable me to fully understand Mumbai culture. All of you know me well enough (and have read enough of my emails from my year of travel) to know that for me, understanding a culture occurs mostly through my stomach.

Let's start with Bollywood so it doesn't seem as though I'm eating my way through Mumbai. I saw THE best Bollywood movie last Saturday. Very cute, called "Jaane tu…ya Jaane na" (literally, Either you know or you don't). I highly recommend it and will try to get my hands on a (pirated) copy to bring home. It has been the talk of the town since its release three weeks ago and was instantly a huge hit and propelled its cast into eternal fame.

Does paan have any nutritional value? Since I've been eating paan quite frequently, I've decided that the leaf in which all the sweet cocunut and other dried fruits is wrapped in has some nutritional value just because it happens to be green and a leaf. I must justify my addiction somehow! I've also decided to eat off every street cart I come to because they are just so good!!! I've had the best lassi from this tiny shop. I ate an entire pomegranate on the street and didn't even mind the funny looks I was getting. I found this great tea place. These two guys have just set up shop on the sidewalk, and they have a cart from which they sell freshly made ginger flavored chai, and my goodness, that is the best cup of tea I've ever had. I have indulged a little too often in what is fondly known as "the poor man's lunch": vada pav because it's so filling and so cheap (about 8 cents). It consists of potatoes mashed with spices, covered in dough, then fried and stuffed into a bun (pav) that is lathered in spicy sauces. I've had all sorts of snacks from the sidewalk, ranging from caramel and honey covered peanuts to bhel puri, this conglomeration of dried rice and fried bits of bread, onions, and chutney, to freshly made sugar cane juice. The food here is so so good, and people love to eat, which makes me very happy because that is exactly my attitude.

On a serious note, this past weekend in Mumbai was a bit tense. After the multiple bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad, all of India was on alert for terrorist attacks, and although thank God nothing has happened in Mumbai, I was a little bit worried this weekend. More people have died in terrorist attacks in India since 2004 than anywhere else in the world except for Iraq, which should give you an idea of how dire the situation is here. Yet I have to admire the people for continuing on with their lives and striving to retain an air of normalcy.

August 6th is my last day of work, and then I fly to Delhi to vacation with my brother, which should be very exciting. I am very much looking forward to next week and then to coming home!

Street Life

Life in Mumbai happens on the street. Every corner is lined with carts selling bhel puri, samosas, and sandwiches. Juice makers abound in this humid city; when I exit the train station, having pushed and shoved my way through the congested platform and emerged with my person and property intact, although drenched with sweat, there is a luxurious feel to the glass of sugar cane juice that I sip contentedly. The city abounds with the noises of people living: cars honking, rickshaws screeching to a heart-jolting halt, people holding conversations in a variety of tongues, hawkers selling their wares, as diverse a selection as one could find in any Macy’s. The goods range from cell phone holders to Qtips to underwear. Who needs department stores when a gamut of choices approaches you, in the form of a skinny man wearing a Nehru cap? He claims he’s got the best pirated movies in town, but I move away from the temptation of illegal goods and gravitate towards the colorful pyramids of fruit whose price and color cajole me into buying at least a few varieties a day.
My first few days in this metropolis, I didn’t know where to look. The overwhelming sights and sounds (not to mention the smells—fresh cow dung at 8 in the morning is a smell not to be forgotten) made me feel as though I could look and hear forever and still not absorb everything that Mumbai offered to its populace. If I blinked, I felt that I would miss a crucial piece of life happening that would never happen again. I wanted to capture the image of the fisherwoman who was transporting her basket of dead fish on the train and the beautiful six feet long saris that fluttered from every balcony in the city, left out to dry. I wanted to try all the food on the streets, from the coconut water (literally a straw stuck in the middle of a green coconut) to the Mozami (a cross between an orange and a lemon) juice to the real desi lassi.
Each part of the city had something different to offer. When my friends and I explored the area around the Gateway of India, I discovered a Mumbai that I had never imagined: a city with British architecture and an entire train terminal dedicated to Queen Victoria. The days of colonialism were firmly etched onto this city; the English architecture hid the marks of a beauty bought at a price so heinously high that it tore apart a subcontinent and spawned three countries still struggling to define themselves decades after independence.
However, everything is not so picturesque in this city in one of the poorest countries of the world. When I wrote that life in Mumbai happens on the street, I meant that quite literally. One day en route to a train station, I noticed that the entire sidewalk was covered in ramshackle houses made of tarps and plastic signs. The sidewalk had been colonized by the poorest of the poor, who couldn’t even afford to rent a one-room shack in the slums of Mumbai but had been reduced to squatting on the sidewalk. Children ran naked around the houses; women brushed their teeth on the streets and spit into a bucket; men bathed in plain view of all passerby. I was horrified by the indignity of poverty that I witnessed only a few blocks from where I worked amid palm trees and restaurants offering delicious food. People had been reduced to eking out an existence in front of everyone’s eyes. Although they had claimed a part of the public sphere for their homes, they were as marginalized and as ignored as the stray dogs that ran wild through the streets.
There is little I can do to reconcile the posh area around the Gateway, where poverty dare not encroach, to the sidewalks eclipsed by the insistence of the human spirit to survive. I remain horrified by the depth of poverty in this country where 80% of the population subsists on less than $2 per day, but at the same time, I admire the resourcefulness of people so determined to live. It brings to mind a key point in Jeffrey Sachs’ book The End of Poverty: give people a way to reach the bottom rung on the ladder of economic development, and they will climb up. His thesis is based on decades of research and government advising, but I can see its potential even in my limited experience as an observer of human nature here in India. The determination among this populace is so palpable that it will propel them to climb ladders, as long as the basic means of life are guaranteed. Only then will the disparities that have woven themselves into the streets of this city slowly begin to narrow.

The Unstereotypical American

The first day that I reported to work at the National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health in Mumbai, my supervisor stared at me perplexedly.
“I’m Huma Farid, from America,” I hastened to remind her. “I’m supposed to be a summer intern here…” This woman seemed to have no recollection of who I was, despite the barrage of emails we had exchanged prior to my arrival.
“Yes I remember your name,” she responded. “I was confused for a few moments. It’s just that you don’t look like someone from America.”
It didn’t take me long to figure out what she meant. I was wearing shalwar kameez, but that was to be expected, as the dress code at the institute was shalwar kameez. What my supervisor had honed in on was the scarf that was covering my hair. She later told me that she had not expected someone from America to be dressed in a “traditional” manner. I wondered whether she had expected an American woman along the lines of Sex and the City.
A somewhat similar experience had occurred when I visited Karachi when I was thirteen. I went out with a close family friend’s daughter and her friends, who were only three years older than me. They told my parents that it was just going to be a group of girls, but when we reached the restaurant where we were going to have lunch, all the girls’ boyfriends were waiting for them. At that point, I had never even talked to a boy, much less had lunch with one, and I was strictly prohibited from doing so by my parents.
I sat as far away from the boys as possible (I also believed then that boys had cooties), and one of the girls offered me a cigarette. “I don’t smoke!” I gasped, aghast that girls in Pakistan smoked.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” another girl asked me. “Is he white?”
I was at a loss for words. These girls were asking me about things that were completely alien to me and to the way I was raised. “I’m thirteen,” I managed to whisper before shoveling as much food into my mouth as fast as I could so that no one could ask me any more questions.
“Is she really from America?” the girl asked rhetorically.
That experience completely destroyed the idea my parents espoused that Pakistan was a pure and pious land, unlike America. It also exposed me for the first time to the idea that people expected Americans to behave in a certain manner.
Often, the only imagery people have of America is through Hollywood. Thanks to popular movies and shows, people believe that all American women sleep around and wear scandalous clothing. One Indian even asked me if Americans wore any clothing at all. Have they completely lost all family values, another Indian asked me. Sure, America’s 50% divorce rate doesn’t bode well for family values, but neither does the fact that over 37% of married women have experienced domestic violence in India, I wanted to reply.
A decade ago, I had no idea how to respond to Pakistanis who didn’t know what to make of the fact that my parents had raised me so traditionally. Lately in India, I’ve started showing pictures of my friends—all of whom are of different ethnicities and all of whom wear as much clothing as the average Indian woman dressed in a Western style—to people who ask me these questions. They are the average American women, not Sharon Stone or Janet Jackson, I want to show them.
I also want to tell them that I’m the average American born Pakistani woman. Many women of my generation were raised by parents who had emigrated from Pakistan to America in the mid-to-late 1970s, right around the time when General Zia was trying to shape Pakistan into a more religiously conservative country. They carried those values with them to America and imparted a strong emphasis on tradition and culture to their children. In some ways, my generation was raised in the microenvironment of 1970s Pakistan, despite the fact that Pakistan itself has long since moved beyond the 1970s. Many of us still carry the mark of that upbringing, whether we choose to follow it now or not. All of us, myself included, have picked and chosen the parts of our parents’ values that we believe most compatible with our lifestyle in America, but at heart we remain a hybrid generation, neither fully Pakistani nor fully American. However, that’s the point: America has always been a hybrid country, a conglomeration of beliefs, cultures, and ideologies. It’s something that Hollywood can barely express; it remains for those of us who travel abroad to present an alternative view of an American.

Midway Reflections

I haven’t written in a long time because I haven’t really had very much to say, or at least not anything that was very positive. I’ve reached the half-way mark of my time in India, and I feel that I have very little to show for it. Mostly, this feeling comes from my dissatisfaction with work.

I’ve been working at the NIRRH for the past 3 weeks, and initially, the project sounded great—it’s important to understand how domestic violence impacts women’s and neonate’s health, and as I read through some of the case studies, I realized how necessary this work was. The problem is getting the work done. I suppose this is the traditional dilemma in any developing country, but it is incredibly frustrating and not something I had counted on. The way we recruit women to interview as our study subjects is through this free government program that offers vaccinations to infants. However, ever since I’ve arrived in India, the vaccine stock has been depleted, and they haven’t gotten new stock from the WHO yet. Talk about bureaucracy. Because there has been no vaccination program, there are very few women with babies 6 months and under that have been attending the clinic in Govandi (the slum area I talked about in my last email). Therefore, we have extremely few study subjects…I did get started interviewing one woman who was experiencing some violence in her home, but before I could really get to know anything about how or why it was happening, she had to leave because her husband (who was perpetrating the violence) was waiting outside the clinic for her.

So in a total time period of 3 weeks, I’ve interviewed 1.5 women. That is it. So I’ve really been frustrated because I feel like I’m getting 0 field experience, which was the primary reason I came to India. I mean, the office work that I do at the NIRRH—summarizing relevant studies on domestic violence, male involvement in family planning, fertility rates in rural India, etc, etc.—I could have done in the comfort of my home in NJ. So it’s not very fulfilling or demanding work, and while initially it was interesting to learn about all these problems in the slums and rural India, now learning about those problems is getting frustrating because I can’t DO anything about them. I feel like a useless cog in a poorly oiled machine.

As a result, for the past few weeks, I’ve been missing home intensely. That’s surprising, not because homesickness is strange, but because I spent all of my gap year traveling to random countries and knowing none of the languages, and here, I blend in pretty decently most of the time, yet my time in India has been marked by intense periods of homesickness and loneliness. For all of you who work, I don’t know how you do it. I much prefer student life to the 9-5 grind. My commute to work is about 1 hour each way, and by the time I get home, I’m so exhausted from pushing and shoving my way onto a train and then a bus that it’s all I can do to do some reading and then just crash until it’s time to wake up the next morning and start the whole uninspiring routine again. I’ve been so busy with work life (work 6 days a week) that yesterday was the first day that I went sightseeing in Mumbai.

That was really fun: I saw Haji Ali, a mosque devoted to a man named Ali who set out to complete Hajj, or the pilgrimage to Mecca, but ended up drowning en route, and his friends managed to find his body and bury it on the spot overlooking the sea in the direction of Mecca, and people built a mosque on that site. It’s a really interesting building; if the tides come in, the path to the mosque is completely covered by water and no one can reach it, so you have to go during low tide only. I thought the mosque’s name was also really touching: Haji Ali, meaning Ali who was completed Hajj. It’s a nice testament to the importance of intentions in Islam that even though this man wasn’t able to complete the pilgrimage, everyone honored him as though he had because that is what he set out to do.

I also saw the most important Hindu temple in Mumbai, devoted to Lakshmi, the goddess who is the patroness of Mumbai. That was a bit of a hectic trip: we picked up some devotional items for Lakshmi and then as we walked into the temple, there was a mad rush to give the items to the pundit who would bless them, and so I ended up staying to the side so that my friends, who are Hindu, could ask the pundit to perform the rites. Afterwards, we walked behind the temple, which also faces the sea. We ate amazing street food and drank lassi (yogurt mixed with water or milk—for the sake of my digestive system, I hope it was milk—and sweetened), and then saw Chowpatty Beach. This was the first time I’d seen the sea since my arrival in Mumbai. Andheri, where I live, and Parel, where I work, are pretty far from the seashore so I could have stayed in those areas and never have known that Mumbai had a nice shore! The Arabian Sea at Chowpatty Beach, however, is pretty filthy. The water is a mucky brown color and there are plastic bags littering the shore, so it’s not a place anyone would want to swim in, and indeed, there were no swimmers yesterday.

We also went to the aquarium, which was pretty tiny, but did have some really cute sea turtles and some interesting fish that I had never seen before, such as the tiger fish and the red parrot fish. We also walked along Marine Drive for a little bit, and my friends and I all commented on how if you only saw Marine Drive and the buildings lining it, you would never know that Mumbai was a city that also contained such unimaginable poverty. Our final destination was Gateway of India, an arch constructed in 1911 to welcome King George and Queen Mary to Mumbai. It’s enormous, and faces the Taj Hotel. When I saw the Taj, my mouth fell open. It’s stunningly beautiful, but also, a bit pretentious in this city that contains Dharavi, the largest slum in all of Asia. The area around Gateway is the nicest area of Mumbai; many of the buildings were built by the British, and although some are in a state of decay, the sidewalks are so clean that I couldn’t believe I was in Mumbai (I mean, where did all the street hawkers and beggars go??) and the roads actually have walk signals for pedestrians. We walked past Flora Fountain, also built by the Brits, which, despite its name, has no water, and saw Victoria Terminus, the largest train station in the city and built to commemorate Queen Victoria. Aaaah, colonialism.

And then it was back to the Mumbai I knew, which I oddly found more comforting than these last vestiges of colonialism remaining in the city.

I’m really lucky to have found such amazing co-workers. They were the ones who took me around the city yesterday, and if it weren’t for them, I would probably have spent this entire weekend just sitting around in my PJs as I do every day after work. They have also been really supportive, and we’ve talked about our mutual dissatisfaction with the (lack of) work, and they have been very understanding.

I’ve been trying to keep abreast of the politics here, which are very interesting and distinctly unfriendly (not hostile, just unfriendly) towards Pakistan, which is to be expected, but still a little surprising. For example, the recent bombing in Kabul of the Indian embassy inspired some whispers that Pakistani insurgents were behind it, and just last week, Pakistani and Indian border patrol got into a skirmish which each side blamed on the other for starting. One of the papers in Mumbai said that of course the Pakistanis would claim innocence, and there was a distinct impression that the Pakistanis must have started the skirmish. There is definitely a long way to go in Pakistan/India relations, and the fault lies with the politicians of both countries.

I think the biggest shock for me however has not been being Pakistani in India but covering my hair in India. It’s not as though anyone has said anything offensive to me but people are very surprised that an educated woman would choose to wear hijab, because they view it as an oppressive symbol and the only Muslims they know who do cover their hair or openly identify as practicing Muslims all live in the slums. It’s definitely a symbol associated with a certain class of people, and I break all the stereotypes, so people, even my supervisor at work, have a hard time fitting me in to their standard world scheme. Muslims in Mumbai at least are extraordinarily uneducated, especially Muslim women, who are often pulled out of school by their parents to help with housework/enter a vocation to make money. Just yesterday I met a 14 year old who had been pulled out of school after the 7^th grade to learn how to sew so she could make money for her parents. It’s absolutely criminal; in many ways, the community is condemning itself to poverty by not encouraging the young girls to pursue any educational opportunities. I myself have yet to meet an educated Muslim here. The only Muslims I have met have been rickshaw drivers or the people in the slum communities; I have heard about a few Muslims who work at the NIRRH but have yet to meet them, and also, I’m the only woman who wears hijab at the NIRRH. That makes for very interesting conversations.

Two funny stories to end this on a more positive note:

Yesterday, I was really missing home, and as I was walking to the bus stop, I thought maybe if I close my eyes and wish it hard enough, I’ll end up in America. Too bad I didn’t have red shoes to click. Anyways, I closed my eyes for a few seconds (which was probably a bad idea, as I could have gotten killed by all the traffic) and wished as hard as I could to be back home, and when I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was a rickshaw driver peeing into the open gutter along the sidewalk. Well, I am definitely still in India, I thought to myself, and then I looked objectively at the situation and just started laughing.

Earlier, I was talking about how I blend in pretty well. Well, sometimes, not well enough. One evening after work, I was walking around the market near where I live, when I just started craving a gulab jamun. For all those of you who have not been blessed with the good fortune to have eaten a gulab jamun, it’s this amazing ball of gooey, sweet goodness that is fried (of course) and then coated with sugary syrup. So I walked up to this sweets store that looked quite popular and asked, in Hindi/Urdu, for a gulab jamun. I must have spoken about 10 words, but the man looked at me and immediately asked me where I was from. I started laughing and asked him how he knew I wasn’t from Mumbai and he told me my accent was funny. Well, he gave me the gulab jamun and in the meantime told me his entire family history (people here are very friendly, especially the merchants) and I ended up telling him what I was doing in Mumbai and ate that gulab jamun with a lot of relish right on the street corner with everyone doing their shopping around me. Yum.

The Quandary of the Good Samaritan

The first thing I noticed in India before the plane had even landed was the slums. As the plane descended towards the runway, at first I thought what I was seeing was the debris of recent construction, because the houses were so small and low and were constructed from random collections of construction material: bricks, plywood, and roofs of tarp, or if the inhabitants were lucky, of corrugated tin and shingles. The structures seemed resigned to permanence despite their inherent instability.
The landing afforded me a closer view of the congested slums that clustered around the airport, but by the time I reached the house where I would be living for the next seven weeks, I had conveniently forgotten about them, until the family friend with whom I was staying showed me the view of the streets of Mumbai from one of her windows. I walked to the window directly opposite and noticed that the complex of apartments with names like “Mahal” attached to them was surrounded by a colony of slums. The back of the slums faced us, but the front of the colony mingled with stores selling granite and marble; the building blocks of the rich were a constant reminder to the colony of the things it could never afford.
I was reminded of the first time I had seen this type of poverty, a poverty so unmitigated that people devised desperate measures to ensure their meager survival. I was thirteen and was staying in a relatively posh area of Karachi. My room had a heavy floor-to-ceiling curtain that completely eclipsed the window, and it was only a few weeks into my stay in Karachi that I became sufficiently curious to ask what sort of view was behind the curtain. My cousin had nonchalantly responded that it wasn’t any sort of view that I wanted to see, but I drew back the curtains and saw a street—or rather, a muddy thoroughfare encrusted with donkey dung and debris. Rickety houses made of cardboard, tin, in fact, any material that people could get their hands on, leaned against one another in a haphazard fashion.
Facing that slum in Karachi, I felt that I had never been so close nor so far from poverty. I was secure in my nice flat with running water and Western toilets in a gated colony, while the people living across from me were starving. At the same time, though, I was just beginning to understand that poverty in a developing country was very different from poverty in a developed country. I was also beginning to recognize how incredibly sheltered I was from the realities of life.
That experience left in an indelible memory, one that was recalled when I saw the slums in Mumbai. Witnessing the depths of poverty from an outsider’s perspective in both Karachi and Mumbai made me question what my responsibility was towards members of society who most needed aid. It also made me extremely uncomfortable, because I will always remain an outsider. I will never fully understand this type of poverty, because no matter how much I work within these communities, I will always be in a more privileged position because I was born in America, was educated at an Ivy League institution, and will have a steady job with sufficient pay.
Before I arrived in Mumbai to work on a project sponsored by my medical school, my friend and I had talked about the quandary of international work. She had commented that work in the field of global health was appealing to many people and had mused that a part of the draw of global health was its glamour. When privileged people educated and brought up in wealthy countries sacrifice all these privileges to work in destitute areas of the world, one cannot help but be in awe of them. These people do deserve respect because they have contributed so much to the societies in which they work. Their unique privileges—an excellent education, connections to wealthy societies—have enabled them to do great work abroad but also set them apart from those among whom they work. Sometimes it even feels to me that by working internationally, I am propagating a benign form of colonialism. The message I am afraid of sending is that I come from a society that has been so successful at solving its problems that now I’ve come to your country to solve yours.
Of course, America hasn’t been successful at solving its problems, and the intentions which inspire people to work in global health are generally noble. Yet the uncomfortable disparities between those who work internationally and the people among whom they work persist and should be acknowledged. Global health is a necessary field, but the future lies in not just ameliorating the consequences of poverty but addressing its roots.

First Impression: Mumbai

I arrived safe and sound in Mumbai about a week and a half ago. The first few days were spent in getting over my jetlag and getting situated. Mumbai is such a crazy, crowded, bustling city! It’s also really noisy; the sound of horns honking, people shouting, vendors hawking their wares, is sometimes overpowering. My first few days here, when I would walk down the street, I wouldn’t know where to look first, because there were so many interesting things to look at! People set up shop on the sidewalks and sell all sorts of fruits and vegetables, nuts, juice, umbrellas (for the monsoon season!), Ziploc bags, even underwear (although why anyone would want to haggle for undies in public is beyond me).

I started work last Monday and really like it at the National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health (from now on known as NIRRH, as I am too lazy to type it all out). I’ve been added to the so-called “Violence Team” because our project deals with domestic violence. My co-workers are amazing! They are such nice people, and I’ve become especially close to two women who work with me, Shruti and Meghna. We have been working on developing a survey for women with young children to explore how domestic violence affects maternal and child health, and we do research in the office 4 days a week and do field work 2-3 times per week. The field work requires going to the slums in Mumbai, in an area called Govandi, and doing in-depth interviews with women who live in the surrounding slums.

So far, I haven’t done any interviews, but I have been reading through the interviews that were done recently, and it’s so shocking to see the things that these women, who are so incredibly vulnerable, have been put through. One woman had been forced into prostitution by her husband, and others were beaten before, during, and after pregnancy...others were beaten by their mothers-in-law, others wanted to leave home and improve their lives. It’s worse because these women are so young. The one who was forced into prostitution was only 22, and had 3 kids already, the oldest of whom was 9, so imagine at what age this woman was married.

I’ve been to Govandi twice, and on Saturday, we left the clinic and walked around the community and talked to people who lived there. The main streets of the slums aren’t terrible; they are what you would expect of a developing country, but the inner paths leading into the houses—if they can be called that—are terrible: cramped, barely 3 feet across, houses perched on top of each other. Most of the houses are just one room that is probably just 10 x 14 feet, if that much, and as many as 8-10 people can live in that one cramped room that contains a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bed. There’s no sewage system, just open gutters filled with putrid, periwinkle colored, sluggishly flowing water with garbage floating on top. All the flies of the world seem to have settled here. Garbage collection occurs infrequently, and most of the time, it’s just a redistribution of garbage: garbage from one heap is added to another heap a little farther away. The basic needs of people are not being met at all in the slums.

The poverty in the slums has really shocked me. 80% of the people in India subsist on less than $2/day, and in Govandi, it’s very obvious. Kids run around the streets barely clothed, people can’t afford fees for public schools, lines at clinics are long. What’s most depressing is the fact that people are born in the slums, spend their entire lives there, and then die there as well. There’s no means for them to leave because a good education is practically unattainable.

A part of me was awed by the sheer tenacity of the human spirit to persevere through such immense adversity.

All in all, I’ve had a good experience here so far. I haven’t been able to photograph as much as I would have liked to, but I’m planning on taking more photographs soon. I’ve attached a few of the clinic in Govandi where we work, and of the surrounding area of slums. I also haven’t done any sightseeing, because things have been so hectic at work, and I only have one day free, so I don’t have much free time. The food here is really good! There is so much regional variety and the food from one part of India is so distinct from food in other parts of India that I feel like I’ve been experiencing all sort s of new things.

I’ve been traveling primarily via trains, and that has been an experience in and of itself. There are all women’s compartments in the train, and at first I was lulled into thinking that those wouldn’t be that bad. Ha! My friends, imagine yourself squished on every side between very amply built Indian aunties, whose already admirable girth is further enhanced by yards and yards of sari and you will understand my predicament. These women also know how to shove. Two days ago I almost couldn’t get off at my stop because a quite stout auntie was trying to get into the train, and she was barring the door as she was shoving her way onto the train, and I was being pushed back by the sheer mass of her ONTO the train I wanted to leave, and then to top it all off, she’s screaming at *me* to move. Luckily, an Indian woman took pity on me and grabbed my hand and pulled me off the train. That’s Indian trains in a nutshell. Be prepared to shove and push your way onto and off of compartments.

First Lady vs. First Gentleman

The long battle for a Democratic primary candidate has ended, much to my relief, probably because the candidate I support was named the Democratic contender in the presidential elections. Hillary Clinton’s supporters, however, are not very happy. Some of them contend that she deserved to be named the Democratic nominee for president, as though someone is born with the stamp of a presidential nominee. When Barack Obama won the nomination, Clinton’s supporters attributed his victory to sexism, alleging that Hillary had lost only because of her gender. (They conveniently forgot about her vote in favor of the war in Iraq; McCain may want to stay for another century in the violence-embroiled country, but Clinton was one of the people who authorized the invasion in the first place.)

Clinton’s supporters point to the inherent sexism in American politics as contributing to the downfall of their candidate, and I find myself agreeing with a portion of this statement. Yes, American politics has elements of sexism, but not in the way that so many Clinton supporters are getting riled about. While it is true that at times Clinton was scrutinized on certain things that were never an issue with Obama—such as one statement that her shirt was too low cut—by and large, sexism did not defeat Clinton; she herself created her demise. However, I noticed blatant sexism in another arena of the Democratic primaries: the controversy surrounding Michelle Obama.

I was watching Anderson Cooper on CNN at a heinously early hour last week when he and three political pundits commented on Michelle Obama’s role in her husband’s campaign. The press had labeled Michelle “an angry black woman” after her comments about being proud of her country for the first time, and this had put the Obama campaign on the defensive. Cooper and the political commentators spoke about Michelle Obama as a strong woman and how that image may hurt her husband’s political aspirations. It seemed that Michelle’s outspoken comments were detracting from her husband’s campaign, even though Barack’s outspoken comments on race only amplified the respect people had for him. People loved Michelle when she spoke last summer about her struggles growing up, how the campaign was affecting her family life, and what it was like to be a working mom. Yet the minute she ventured past the domestic sphere and commented on politics, the press attached an ugly racial epithet to her and the public’s perception of her changed, so much so that there are hints that the Obama campaign has hired a PR person to soften Michelle’s image.

One might point out the example of Bill Clinton as another outspoken spouse, and rightly so. Bill Clinton also came under fire from the press because of his egregious comments throughout the primary about Obama and why people were voting for him. The press went so far as to call him a potential liability for Hillary, but nobody called him “an angry white man.” There was no name calling after any of Bill’s gaffes, but when Michelle made a viable comment about the issue of race in America, the press vilified her.

It seems that America cannot handle strong, opinionated women unless they are running for office. Hillary’s opinions are well-known to all, and she was lauded for her political analyses, but this was acceptable because she was running for office. Yet because Michelle Obama’s husband is running for office, she is expected to remain silent while he expounds his political views to the public. The message that is being sent is that a woman is supposed to stand beside her husband and defer to his political acumen. She is supposed to present the soft side of her husband to the public; she is supposed to comment on their family life but not on her husband’s political beliefs. Despite Bill’s excessive commentary throughout the campaign—at one point, it seemed that Bill was running for office, he was campaigning so much—the attitude towards him was very different from the attitude towards Michelle. With Bill, people joked that what else was he going to do except campaign for his wife and present her views to the public? After all, he has had so much experience campaigning. But with Michelle, people questioned her right to even present, much less comment on, her husband’s views and to be outspoken.

What it came down to was that Michelle’s role, if Obama were elected, would be as First Lady, which has been shaped by centuries of tradition. Why must a potential First Lady be a domesticated wife, a woman who leaves politics to men to confine herself to the immediate circle of her family? Perhaps that role should be consigned to the past, and a new image of a First Lady, befitting the change that the Obama campaign advocates for, should be minted.

Beauty Onstage

My op-ed this week was prompted by an article that appeared in the Pakistan Post last week featuring Miss Pakistan World on the cover, with a two page spread inside. I was so angry that the PP had published yet another cover page with a model that I called the editor, who to her credit, responded in a really patient manner. She had come under a lot of fire for publishing this article and had wanted to do it to present a different side of the paper, but people were not really appreciating that, so I decided to tackle the topic.
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The June 5-June 11, 2008, issue of the Pakistan Post featured an article about Miss Pakistan World and instigated quite a few comments among the Post’s readers. To be honest, I was seething with anger the moment I saw Miss Pakistan gracing the cover of the newspaper. I am vehemently opposed to all beauty pageants, whether they are Miss World, Miss Universe, or Miss Pakistan, because they serve only to fetishize beauty and propagate the idea that women can and should be viewed as sexual objects.

However, despite my personal opinions on this matter, I believe that this article should have been published. The press should be free to print articles about controversial topics, because how else will there be discussion and a free exchange of ideas if there is no freedom in the media? Discussions shape people’s attitudes and ideas, and even if we disagree with the idea presented, we are better able to articulate our thoughts precisely because we are well-informed. Too often, the Pakistani community assiduously avoids discussions of controversial topics, when it is precisely these topics that should be discussed. Subjects that confront us when living in Western societies are blithely ignored by parents and the community, with disastrous consequences resulting for Pakistani youth. It is not enough to say participating in X action is wrong—we should be prepared to provide insightful evidence for our opinions. Likewise, those who have presented dissenting opinions shouldn't be lambasted, but rather, dialogue should be opened up. The end result will be a more educated society with well reasoned foundations for its beliefs and traditions. One of the ways in which to accomplish this goal is through presenting topics, however controversial they may be, in the media.

Supporting freedom of the press allows both sides to present their opinions to the world, and I exercise this right every time I write an article. In this past issue of the Pakistan Post we read about one aspect of the Miss Pakistan World pageant, and I applaud the author for introducing this topic to us, but at the same time, certain questions were left unexplored. Should anyone who participates in these pageants—whether she wears a bikini or not, whether she dates or not—be viewed as a representative of Pakistani culture? Unequivocally, absolutely not. Let us not even venture towards the Islamic aspect of beauty pageants, because one need only examine verses 30 and 31 in Surah 24 that clearly enjoin modest garb and attitude for both men and women to understand the Islamic perspective on beauty pageants. Instead, let us approach this from a different angle: that of the modern day feminist.

The problem lies not with what a beauty pageant contestant is wearing so much as the very nature of the pageant and the message she is sending when she participates in it. On the Nadia Khan show on Geo TV, Sonia Ahmed, the organizer of the Miss Pakistan World Pageant, stated that the beauty pageant culture “is a women’s rights culture.” I don’t know what sort of women’s rights she has in mind, but parading women onstage with the sole purpose to choose the most beautiful of them does not advocate any sort of women’s rights in my mind. Judging women on their figures and faces propagates a culture that trivializes women’s achievements and emphasizes only outer beauty. It sends the message to women all over the globe that their intellect is secondary to their physical appearance, and reflects a value system that hinders any celebration of true femininity that goes beyond merely the physical. Sonia Ahmed conveniently forgot about the 1969 feminist protest of Miss America in Atlantic City when she effused about how beauty pageants support women’s rights. The women who really have fought for women’s rights would completely refute this statement.

Therefore, even if Mahleej Sarkari had participated in Miss Pakistan World fully clothed, I would have disagreed with Sonia Ahmed’s categorization of Ms. Sarkari as “an ambassador.” An ambassador does not denigrate women and does not participate in a culture that sexualizes women. Sonia Ahmed also mentioned Miss Pakistan World’s efforts to bring a softer image of Pakistan to the West, claiming that people who see Mahleej in a bikini and in Pakistani clothes change their opinion about Pakistan. Having a woman show off her body will never change people’s minds about a country. Rather, having Pakistani women speak up about women’s issues, educating women, producing female Pakistani physicians, lawyers, journalists, advocates, artists, engineers, and businesswomen will. What Pakistan needs is not more women to walk onstage in a skimpy two-piece; what it needs are successful, educated, and articulate women who truly represent the best aspects of Pakistani culture.

Women: Bend like a Willow

My family has celebrated two engagements in the past month, and so when I went home last weekend, preparations for the engagement parties, suggestions for the wedding dates, and speculations of what everyone would wear where the foremost topics of conversation.

The marriage frenzy was so intense that even I got a dose of it in the form of advice about the importance of compromise in marriage, a concept with which I fundamentally agree. However, there was an important amendment to the advice I was offered: it was important for women to compromise more in a marriage and be willing to mold themselves to their husbands.

I was astounded. What was it about being a woman that allowed Pakistani culture to recommend that I subsume my needs to those of my husband? Despite my education and the fact that one day I would be self-sufficient and (hopefully) a member of a respected profession with authority and knowledge about the human body and health, I was still being told that in a marriage, none of that mattered. My gender still dictated how a man would interact with me.

There is no doubt that compromise in any relationship is important. Unfortunately, people in my generation are so accustomed to having their every whim satisfied that they do not understand how to compromise, regardless of their gender. The divorce rates for Muslims in the US reflect this development: 31% of marriages end in divorce. Compared to the 50% divorce rate among all Americans, 31% for Muslims may not seem terrible, but in both Iran and Turkey, arguably among the most progressive Muslim countries in terms of education and economic opportunities for women, the divorce rates are below 10%. One could counter that perhaps the permissibility of divorce in the US accounts for the nearly tripled divorce rates among American Muslims, but many Muslim communities have as conservative ideas about divorce in America as they do in either Iran or Turkey, so clearly there are other factors at play in this situation.

The culture of instant self-gratification is partly to blame for the demise of American Muslim marriages; we have lost the patience to work through problems and cannot sacrifice for others. Yet does this problem of not compromising naturally lead to the solution that women must be prepared to become like putty in a man’s hands? If we forego our own identities and our own personalities when we get married, there would probably be fewer problems in a marriage, but there would also be significantly less happiness. Self-immolation is not my version of a compromise. This solution is not feasible not only for me, but for any other Pakistani American. If only women are doing the compromising, a relationship can never truly be a partnership and mutual respect will be nonexistent. People may claim that these ideas of partnership and of men and women being equal are recent inventions heavily influenced by Western society. They are not.

In the Quran, women and men are given different responsibilities in regards to a family—men are explicitly labeled as the protectors and financial providers for their families—but that in no way means that women are second-class citizens. In fact, the opposite is true: the Quran adjoins men to respect women. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) helped his wives with the housework, and considering that men don’t help their wives with the housework in this day and age, his actions said a lot in the 500s CE.

With these examples, I struggle to understand how the onus of maintaining a marriage has fallen upon Pakistani women. I cannot even ascribe it to the differences in thought among different generations, because growing up, I saw my father helping my mom with the housework, and both my parents worked together and compromised for the sake of their marriage. Obviously then, a partnership is not a novel concept among Pakistanis. It is not something that we women who have been raised in the West have suddenly begun to demand; it is something that has roots in our tradition but has largely been ignored.

Perhaps instead of telling women to mold themselves to their husbands’ needs, we should be teaching both men and women the importance of compromise and sacrifice. Instead of placing the burden of sustaining a marriage on the shoulders of Pakistani women—which obviously has not worked, considering the high divorce rates—we should be asking people to think about marriage as they would think about any other relationship where understanding and equality are central aspects of the bond between two people.

Radicalizing Religion

5/8/08

Muslims living in America “don’t throw bombs, but they create political cover for ideological support of this jihadi movement” claimed David Horowtiz, a founder of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, in an article recently printed in the New York Times entitled “Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School” (April 28). This article documented Debbie Almontaser’s effort to found a public school in New York City where children were taught Arabic in addition to a standard public school curriculum. Her message was clear: she wanted the graduates of this school to be “ambassadors of peace and hope.” It sounds like an ideal vision in this world of conflict, war, and bitter strife, so what was the problem? It was Ms. Almontaser’s religion: she is Muslim.

News of the school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, which was sponsored by the Gates Foundation, enraged the likes of David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes. Mr. Pipes interpreted Ms. Almontaser’s desire to open a school as way to propagate the ideas of radical Islam. He told the New York Times reporter that “It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will lead to the implementation of sharia…It is much easier to see how, working through the system — the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like — you can promote radical Islam.” Apparently, any time we as Muslim-Americans want to take part in this society, whether it be by educating the youth, presenting our viewpoints to Americans, or accepting a government job, we are bent on infiltrating and destabilizing American society. Never mind that many of us living in America consider it our country and our home; if we exercise our full rights as equal citizens of this society as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, Daniel Pipes would have the rest of America believe that it is for a nefarious purpose. Instead, we are to remain as second-class citizens, to be viewed with suspicion because of a group of men who hijacked not only airplanes but our religion, who perverted our way of life, and who defied the things we hold sacred: the preservation and sanctity of life, the respect accorded to all of humanity, and the message of peace and love which are cornerstones of every religion, including Islam.

On September 12, 2001, everyone became a self-proclaimed expert on Islam. The people who had no idea where Afghanistan even was (and still don’t!) talked about the Taliban and their oppression of women with undisputed authority. People who had never heard about hijab now had long-winded discourses about sharia. The anger against the terrorists was palpable, and America had its eye—and its military firepower—focused on Osama Bin Laden. Since then, that focus has shifted from criticizing a group of terrorists—who amounted to a tiny speck of the 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide—to attacking Islam itself. This year, that Islamophobia has become more apparent to me than at any other time since 9/11. When people express concerns about Barack Obama’s supposed ties with Islam and demand to know whether he believes in Jesus Christ as the son of God, when a woman like Ms. Almontaser, who has spent so many years working with other faiths, is reviled and attacked for the sole reason that she is Muslim, when Muslims are accused of carrying out a “soft jihad” when we ask for the rights we deserve as citizens of the US, the reality of the prejudice is indisputable.

The message is clear: Americans are not ready to accept us as fellow Americans.

Instead, they label us as foreign even when we espouse more of America’s democratic values than some Americans whose families have been here for generations. Mr. Pipes demarcates the divisions Americans and Muslims by painting all Muslims as extremists at heart. “Are these people who are not using violence but who are not fully enthusiastic about this country and its mores, its culture — are they on our side or are they on the other side?” he said about Muslims in the New York Times. How is opening an Arab-language school showing that Muslims aren’t enthusiastic about American mores? Since when did doing something different become un-American? This country was founded by an extraordinarily different action that defied the greatest empire in the world. This country exists to challenge mores and culture—ever hear about the student riots in 1968 and the Counterculture of the 1960s?

As far as I’m concerned, there are no sides, just false divisions that men like Daniel Pipes create to undermine the unity of this country. I’m tired of apologizing for the misguided actions of others. I know what I stand for, and none of it contributes to a polarizing debate that alienates me from my fellow Americans. I’m a Muslim, and I’m a patriot.

Class and Race

4/24/08

For the past few weeks, Americans have been confronted by the realities they do not wish to acknowledge—that race and class remain divisive issues in our country. The rallying cry of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” rang through the towns of the 13 colonies while their economy was driven by slave labor. Horatio Alger popularized “rags to riches” stories where protagonists succeeded because of American meritocracy, while child labor was rampant in American cities and the poor lived and died in filthy slums.

People can claim that these examples from the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries have no bearing on life in America now, but to think this way is a fallacy. Since its founding, America has been a great country, but has also been a hypocritical one, and this duality and the historic socioeconomic situation in America have colored contemporary Americans’ lives and culture. We value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but find no problems incarcerating 1.6 million Americans, the largest number of incarcerated people in any country in the world. We boast of world-famous American universities, but when an African-American male between the ages of 18-24 living in inner-city Boston is more likely to get killed than to attend any college—forget about an Ivy League one—, we as a society have a problem, and this problem has everything to do with race and class.

These are cold, hard truths in the American story. The differences in lifestyle between those of certain races and classes are painstakingly obvious to the conscious observer. The African-American population that has been historically repressed for centuries cannot suddenly achieve a high quality of life after the end of segregation. The immigrants who were spat upon and told to return to their country and whose college degrees gathered dust in the closet while they drove taxis to make ends meet did not make the leap from rags to riches. Those without feasible economic opportunities cannot compete with a class of society that has an abundance of resources. Yet people do not wish to hear these truths. It is as though racial integration, affirmative action, and financial aid at universities are enough to assuage our consciences and to assure ourselves that we have done all we can to remedy the blights of racism and class privilege. Yet who are we really helping with these initiatives?

Recently, Harvard Medical School unveiled a new financial aid plan whereby students from families making less than $120,000 will receive more financial aid. As a first-year at Harvard Medical School and as a student whose family falls firmly into the category of making less than $120,000, I was thrilled to hear that my six-figure debt might be reduced to a five-figure one. Imagine my surprise when I read in the same article that only about 1/3 of Harvard Medical students would actually be affected by this financial aid policy. How is it possible, I wondered, that 2/3 of some of the smartest future doctors also come from incredibly privileged backgrounds? Are only wealthy people smart? Obviously not. Then the next question is: why aren’t more children who grew up in working-class or middle-class families at Harvard Medical School?

The tangible connection between wealth and future success has manifested itself even at Harvard Medical School, with its need-blind policy of admission, for the obvious reasons: wealthier parents can afford personal tutors, private lessons, and tuition at exclusive high schools. We have to face the facts that people are exposed to different opportunities depending on their socioeconomic status, and that, in turn, depends upon race to a certain degree. I’m not saying that all minorities are poor and disenfranchised, because that would be a gross miscategorization of the problem. What I mean is that socioeconomic status—in other words, one’s class—shapes the path one’s life takes. For many years, the upper echelon of society had its doors closed to all racial and religious minorities, and now that is gradually changing. In many ways, it is easier to break the barriers of race than of class. There are many minorities represented among my peers at Harvard Medical School, but fewer people hail from working class families. Money cannot buy you everything, but it can smooth the way to success regardless of the color of the hand holding the dollar bills.

Faced with this conundrum, we must ask where we as a society have failed. We have provided life and liberty to people but have not given them the means to live. We offer financial aid at universities but neglect early education. We decry Jim Crow Laws but do nothing to address the contemporary, continuing ghettoization of American cities. Race and class are firmly interwoven into the narrative of American history, and it is time we address them.

The Xenophobic Melting Pot

4/9/08

These past few weeks have placed Harvard College in the spotlight again, a role to which it is no stranger, but instead of highlighting the College’s academics, the media is in a frenzy over the women’s hours at the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center (QRAC), one of the College’s gyms. Reporters from all over the country have been interviewing Muslim women affiliated with the Harvard Islamic Society about this new policy, which was instituted on January 28. Harvard College’s daily newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, has published articles and editorials about this issue. The Crimson’s readers have responded with bitter comments about a religion that is “hijacking” American liberalism for its own purposes and comparing Muslims to Nazis. Underlying all this discussion is not just a complaint about restrictions on male access to the gym but a xenophobia so potent that it alarms me.

The women’s hours at the QRAC are an inconvenience both to the women who requested the hours and to the men who live in the Quadrangle and wish to use the gym. Each of the twelve residential houses at Harvard has its own gym, and the women who requested the gym hours originally asked for hours in their residential house’s personal gym. That request was denied, and instead, the administration decided to allocate women’s hours in the QRAC, which is one of the least used Harvard gyms and is the farthest from where the women originally requested time. The time slots for women’s only access to the gym were also established by the administration with little student input, and some men argue that the specific timings of the women’s only hours cut into prime gym time. Yet now people are lambasting Muslim women for making unreasonable demands when the potential problems could have been eliminated had the administration initiated a college-wide discussion with the students. Unfortunately, it seems as if the university accepted the policy not for the interests of the students, but rather just for the sake of preserving the notion that Harvard respects religious diversity. While the administration’s intention—to accommodate students who made a reasonable request—was appreciated, their implementation of the request has only fomented criticism. Furthermore, blame has unfairly been dumped on “an antiquated segment of a particular religion” and an “anachronism” as one of the Crimson’s readers put it, referring to the Muslim students and Islam, respectively.

It is criticisms in this vein that make me question the liberalism and tolerance of American society. Why is requesting women’s only hours at a gym seen as Islam taking over? No one seems to have a problem with Curves, Slim and Tone, and the other 1, 250 fitness clubs that are only for women or offer women’s only hours across the U.S. Yet just because Muslim women happened to make the request, people panic about Islam’s encroachment upon America’s finest university and ridicule the women who are so oppressed that they cannot even work out in front of other men. Yet NOW, one of the earliest feminist organizations in the country, supports women’s only gyms and succeeded in lobbying to prevent the Massachusetts state legislature from banning them. The Muslim women who requested women’s hours requested them on behalf of all women at Harvard who would feel more comfortable working out only among women, and as is proven by the nation-wide popularity of these women’s gyms, thousands of women across the country—whether they are Muslim or not—appreciate these facilities. It is not a question of oppression; rather, their request is a symbol of how far women have come in asking for their rights.

Critics claim that Muslims should assimilate instead of making unreasonable demands. Yet when a separate, Kosher-only refrigerator is available in every dining hall at Harvard and Harvard’s Jewish students observing the Sabbath are allowed to take final exams on Sundays instead of Saturdays, no one shouts at them to assimilate. The Jewish students’ requests are just as valid as the Muslim students’, but no one calls their religion an anachronism, nor do they compare observant Jews to Nazis. The profound fear of Islam that has penetrated Western society gives rise to these comments. A woman in hijab is oppressed, even if she attends the most prestigious university in America, and Islam gives birth to extremists and suicide bombers: these are the messages that we have accepted. American culture is incredible in many ways that all members of this society should accept. Yet assimilation does not mean wholesale destruction of one’s own culture; rather, it implies integrating parts of one’s ethnic culture and adopted American culture. America has been famed as a melting pot for centuries, but lately, this melting pot has been distinctly unfriendly towards Muslims. Let us not forget that freedom of religion is the basis upon which this country was founded.

War and Peace

3/24/08

Last week during my spring break, I decided to explore San Francisco with some friends. When we reached the city, we wandered around and attempted to look for maps to guide us to the famous tourist destinations that San Francisco is so well known for. Instead of the Golden Gate Bridge, though, we stumbled upon a massive anti-war protest. Protestors had organized a lay-in, where they laid down across the road and prevented traffic from passing through. Across another side of the street, people in bright orange jumpsuits, their faces covered by black hoods, their heads bowed, sat next to each other like broken dolls to represent the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. The street was lined with riot police in full garb, batons at the ready. A circle of riot police had also surrounded the people who had lain down across the road. Despite the imposing amounts of security and police presence, the atmosphere was defiant and even exuberant.

As one peace group handed out anti-birthday cake to commemorate the five year anniversary of the Iraq war, my friends and I were stunned to realize that the war in Iraq had begun on exactly this day, March 19, in 2003. Five years of bloodshed, civilian deaths, and the wholesale destruction of a country’s infrastructure, economy, and national spirit had been occurring, and we had not even remembered the day it all began. Moreover, 4,000 American lives (and thousands of Iraqi lives) had been lost and billions of dollars from an already struggling American economy had been rerouted into an offensive war that had been deceptively labeled as a war of defense. In our consciousness, war had become such an ongoing spectacle that it carried nearly no importance for us. After all, we weren’t the ones risking our lives as American or Iraqi soldiers. We weren’t Iraqi civilians exposed to deprivation and living in constant fear of insurgents, bombs, and sectarian rivalries. We were Americans, and not just any Americans: we were a generation infused with apathy, a generation that had grown up in a complacent, self-satisfied America that had too quickly forgotten the activism of the 1960s and ‘70s.

The protest reminded me of everything I had chosen to forget about the war in Iraq. It had been years since I had attended an anti-war protest, even though I considered political activism an important aspect of civic life. I first attended an anti-war protest the day the war in Iraq began; the groups on my college campus had organized a walk-out and rally, and I remember being so inspired with the idea that I was part of a movement that had dared to challenge the government. People were spirited and united. Three years later, another anti-war rally was organized on campus. I stopped by but left soon afterwards, dismayed by the small number of people who had gathered together.

Somehow, in just a few years, the atmosphere has changed. As the war stretches on, and the government makes it amply clear that its citizens’ protests cannot affect its political course, people have lapsed into apathy. Even a part of me has given up the hope that I can ever contribute to change through activism. There is no point, I reason, in making myself hoarse by shouting anti-war slogans when they land on deaf ears.

My generation does not have the moral stamina to withstand resistance; instead we give up when we are not immediately congratulated with political change. We do not have the foresight to reason that political change did not come immediately after the student protests in the late ‘60s either. Even after the student protests in 1968 against the Vietnam War, the U.S. did not officially end its involvement in Vietnam until 1973. With our knowledge of history, we should know that political change will not occur overnight. Yet, we are a generation that has become accustomed to instant gratification, and so when faced with a challenge that requires patience and perseverance, we are easily defeated. By and large, we accept authority and hesitate to criticize the establishment. We view political movements as a vestige of the hippie years and remember only the long hair and bell bottoms and not the courage, hope, and inspirational vision of a better future that those activists proposed.

My faith in this generation of Americans was restored during the rally last week. As I saw young people being handcuffed and led to police vans, I marveled at the fact that people were willing to be jailed on grounds of civil disobedience in a time when civil disobedience has little role in our society. Their defiance of accepted norms indicates that the international situation has reached a nadir. The desire for change has resurfaced among my generation—all we need is the momentum to sustain it.