Dear Pakistan Read online

  ‘You’d never go out with a guy though, would you?’ What a stupid question. The look on her face couldn’t have been more withering if I’d asked her if she’d murder her mother.

  ‘Never. Besides, I know whom I shall marry already. There would be no point.’ I understood but I couldn’t help thinking friendship with a guy could be nice; they have a different way of looking at things from girls. Then I thought of Danny and remembered how much more easily it could go wrong too, because there was always that other dimension: the chemistry side of it.

  Yasmeen put her arm around me. ‘You look beautiful in our clothes, you wear them well. You know our customs and my parents would not mind Shehzad marrying a girl like you. But you are not Pakistani.’ She was meaning to be helpful, so why did I suddenly feel so stripped and wretched?

  ‘We all have to find our own place wherever we are and be true to it. We can treat you as a sister and you are my dearest friend, but you do not believe what we do. Deep down you listen to a different voice and you will never be one of us as you are part of your own culture.’

  ‘Sometimes I feel more Pakistani than Australian.’ I hoped I didn’t sound stubborn but I could feel something being ripped away from me and I wanted to dig my fingernails in to hang on. ‘I didn’t feel like that in Pakistan. There I knew who I was.’

  Yasmeen took off her chiffon scarf then and held it over my eyes. ‘Tell me what you see.’

  ‘Everything has a red haze over it.’

  ‘And the curtains? What colour are they?’

  ‘Red.’ I pulled the scarf away. The curtains weren’t red. I stared at the flimsy white scrim moving gently at the window.

  ‘If you looked through your own scarf, everything would be a different colour, would it not?’

  I picked up the end. She was right; the curtains looked as if they’d been left in the blue rinse Shuhila used to soak our sheets in. I didn’t say anything. I felt I was going to hear something I hadn’t asked for.

  ‘At the moment you are wearing two pairs of glasses and the colours are neither one thing nor the other—not pure. If you looked at those curtains through both scarves at once they would be purple.’

  Instantly, I knew where she was heading. ‘But I don’t want to stop thinking like you.’

  ‘You do not need to, but you must learn to choose your moments. It is like wearing glasses with silk attached. We have learned to take one pair off and put on another in a matter of moments. But predominantly we have one set on.’

  ‘Rosina has chosen to wear another?’

  She nodded. ‘It is possible to understand two different ways of thinking but you have to choose which one should take the lead or you will always be confused. You will always fall between two worlds, wanting to be in the other place when you are not, always yearning for something else, your soul restless and alien in both places.’

  My eyes were watering but she was tender as she continued. ‘I tell you this because I love you and I have watched Rosina also. You are trying so hard to be like us. You do not have to. We love you as you are because you understand us and accept us. It is enough. If you want to wear our clothes because you like them, that is good. But please do not feel you must on our account. If you are out with a boy at the movies, please do not feel you must rush the other way. It is your custom. We understand.’

  ‘Did Rosina tell you?’

  ‘Ji, but my parents do not know that Rosina was there that day so please do not mention it.’ I shook my head, astounded that she’d known all along, yet her manner had never changed towards me.

  ‘When I first came, Jameela, I was finishing high school also. Then I realised it was as though the Australian girls in my class were seeing life in an entirely different colour from me, and when people see things in a different light, communication is difficult. I had to learn I could not be exactly like them, that I saw things differently. In time, I came to see how they understood things as well.

  ‘Maybe it is more difficult in your case, for you can see through our glasses and theirs at the same time, getting a different perspective from us all.’ She hugged me then. I sure needed it. In some way, I felt as if I’d been taken apart piece by piece yet I still felt whole. I could only hope I was all there and no bits were missing.

  ‘Choose which world to live in, Jameela, and visit the other often.’

  That afternoon all the girls had washed, redone each other’s hair and put on their shell headdresses. Rushda had taken over the details of my life so well I didn’t need to do anything for myself.

  ‘We go to river now,’ she stated as the other girls bustled around. It sounded like an invitation just to me, yet all the girls were heading down to a large grassy, flat area guarded by huge gnarled and ancient-looking trees. Suneel’s mother walked beside me.

  ‘Our dances were once kept only as celebrations to nature, the change of seasons—a celebration of life, one could say. Today, it will be so again.’

  ‘Isn’t it always?’

  ‘Nay. Sadly many people have found how interesting our little valleys are. Once our culture claimed a million people, now there are only three thousand of us in these valleys. To survive, we often dance for payment, so tourists can see how we used to be.’ I could sense the bitterness and the shame in her tone.

  ‘But Suneel wants to change all that. He has ideas of starting a weaving factory, creating rugs and blankets with goat hair. They do it in parts of the Arab world. Our people would be making their own money and not be at the mercy of the materialistic revolution that is raping this whole country.’ I didn’t answer. It sounded too serious for me to comment.

  The girls were forming a circle. Suneel’s mother beckoned me to link my arm with hers as Rushda was doing with my other arm. The men were further off and a teenage boy carrying a huge roughly-made drum stepped into the centre. The girls were giggling. There were young children as well, the little girls in miniature headdresses like the older girls.

  The steady beat of the drum began, echoing my heart, as the girls sang a high pitched chant while their feet slowly and rhythmically stepped round the circle.

  I found the slowness of the dance deeply moving, not only because I was sneaking looks at the other side of the river, watching for Suneel to appear, but because it made me feel one with the lush green surroundings, at peace and thankful for the beautiful world.

  A sigh broke out from the chanters; the drummer shifted beat. Suneel was walking down towards us, flanked by his father and the village men. Like the other men he wore traditional clothes: the baggy trousers and long shirt with a rolled lambswool cap set back on his sunlit head.

  The drummer stopped and the chanting died down as Suneel entered the circle. Then the drum beat again, slower than before as Suneel walked around the inside of the chanters’ circle, until he stopped with his back towards me. The drum rolled, Suneel turned, his right hand stretched out. Without thinking, I put my hand in his, the way any Westerner will instinctively do when they see an open palm.

  Everyone was clapping and laughing but I didn’t feel as if I’d accepted a proposal, though I felt wanted. Rushda was practically bursting with pride and mirth as if she’d been picked herself. Wouldn’t she have liked to be chosen? Yet there was no jealousy in her smile. I had a lot to learn about acceptance and oneness from a person like Rushda, who lived the ancient teaching that what was good for all was best for one.

  I wondered if I could live like that—like Rushda, like them. What if Suneel decided to take another wife when I was forty? Not being Muslim, he probably wouldn’t, but there’d be something else I didn’t understand.

  Suneel couldn’t have looked more pleased if he’d been on a prancing white stallion with my scarf on the end of his sword and a dead dragon at his feet. It might be exciting to help him with these people. It’d be social work, like Dad did. Yet was it really for me? In that moment, I
wasn’t sure.

  16

  ‘I didn’t want to come back.’ Dad was grinding coffee beans. He liked to do it by hand, turning the wrought-iron handle on the wheel slowly, smelling the fragrance as the beans gave up their pungent treasure. Even Mum preferred to do many things by hand and crushed garlic in a huge wooden mortar with a pestle she’d brought from Pakistan. It was probably one of the reasons no one else’s curries came close to hers for flavour.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I was finally getting a ‘deep and meaningful’ with Dad. It was going well. I’d heard something new already, for I’d thought I was the only one that didn’t want to return. ‘You chose to come back, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, we chose. But that doesn’t mean my heart was in it.’

  I leaned closer to the grinder, my eyes shut. Freshly ground coffee was therapeutic.

  ‘I was happy there, doing what I’d been trained to do, what I thought I was meant to. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted the best for you kids and that’s why we returned. Your mother wanted to come back.’

  ‘She was happy there too, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, but she can change midstream quicker than me. Once she sees the reason for a plan, off she goes. That’s why she’s coped better. If it wasn’t for your mother holding this family together these past six months …’

  I could’ve said, ‘Dad, you’ve been fine,’ but we’d both know it was a fib just to make him feel better.

  ‘I’m glad you’re feeling better, Dad. I didn’t know what to say to you. Some days you were just like Basil with his tail caught in the door, roaring one minute and your head in the corner the next.’

  ‘Was I really like that?’ Poor Dad. On the one hand he looked as if he wished I hadn’t been so graphic, yet he also seemed pleased we were talking at last. He tapped ground coffee out of the drawer of the grinder. My taste buds were hoping he’d make coffee with it.

  ‘I felt displaced when we returned. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought it would be easy, because I knew everything here. But I’d changed so much. I felt like a blundering idiot every time I tried to do anything. Things here had changed. I felt as though I didn’t belong, yet I was born here.’

  ‘Did you feel like that too? I thought you were just missing Pakistan.’

  ‘I couldn’t have put it into words then, I suppose. Maybe we should have commiserated together.’

  ‘Mum seemed fine.’

  ‘Yep. But there were times that she didn’t tell you kids about. Did you know she walked into a supermarket, walked around for two hours and came home with nothing?’

  I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine Mum doing that at all.

  ‘There were too many choices. It just got too much.’

  ‘Like Elly in the Teddy Bear Shop.’ And me with the music and the movies, and Danny, and school.

  ‘Is it worth it, Dad? All the pain and confusion?’

  He put his arm around me then. ‘Of course it is. We’re all doing much better now. Give us another year or two and we’ll all be totally adjusted. But that experience of living in a different culture from your own is one of the most enriching things that can happen to a person. You have a different perspective on life from the one you would have had if you’d been brought up here.’

  I got the coffee mugs out to trigger Dad’s brain into making coffee. It worked; his hand reached for the filter papers. Since he was getting introspective, I decided to throw something at him that had been bothering me all year.

  ‘Dad, who do you think I am?’

  He grinned, the ‘I’m twenty-five years older than you’ type of grin. ‘That seems to be the catchphrase today, doesn’t it? We never thought about it much when we were young.’ I must have looked impatient for he swung me around on the stool so we were face-to-face.

  ‘I’ll tell you who you are, if you so desperately want to know. You are Jaime Richards—maybe a bit different from the usual run-of-the-mill kid, but that’s what makes you Jaime. Don’t knock it. It just happens to be the reason why you’re so special.’

  I don’t know whose eyes got mistier, but it was so good to have him back in one piece. Even through all those years in boarding school and the quality holidays we had, making every moment count, he’d never said anything quite like that.

  Later, Suneel and I had been left alone, if one could call it that. There were still people in view but at a distance. Suneel began talking about the valleys of the Kalasha; there were three but the valley of Rumbur was definitely his passion.

  ‘It’s pathetic how our culture is being diluted. We’ve lived through countless invasions, we’re the only community in the whole of Pakistan to have held out against Islam. It wasn’t smiled upon either, but we survived.’

  He grinned then, although nothing seemed funny. ‘Now we’ve come smack up against Western twenty-first century materialism and the four-wheel-drive.’ He made it sound as if he’d been alive since Alexander the Great. He made me see his vision, made me almost feel the fire in his belly as he outlined ways he’d achieve his goals.

  ‘Do you see this?’ He pointed to the scar that ran down his cheek. My head nodded; I’d wondered about it. ‘I was beaten at school for not becoming Muslim. The older boy had a knife. He said he’d cut my heart out, then I’d be sure to go to Paradise. As it was, I was lost, he said. But I knew even at that age what I must do, what I must be.’ He stepped closer to me as his voice became softer but the passion didn’t leave his tone.

  ‘I want to save our valleys, our way of life, our traditions before it’s all washed away in a tide of plastic bags, TV sets and long-life milk.’

  For the first time I wondered if he was prone to exaggerate. Then I remembered this would end up being a proposal and tried to gather my thoughts together.

  ‘Little one.’ He took off his cap and held it across his chest in the humble fashion in which he’d apologised to me in the jewellery shop. Was it only two weeks ago? ‘Please become my wife. As soon as I saw you, I knew it would be you. We can do this together. I know we can.’

  My breathing stopped a second as if my heart was taking stock of life and deciding whether to carry on. I’d waited for this moment, dreamed of it; thought of nothing else for the past few days. What could I say?

  I stared up at him standing there, hope mixed with confidence in his eyes as he waited. His smile, now tender, would grow to one of love and passion for me, not just for the valleys. Life with him would never be boring; it would have excitement, meaning and purpose but would it be my purpose, my life?

  Then, I knew. I turned away for a moment to pull my thoughts in order before I faced him. ‘Suneel, I’m honoured, but I’m so sorry. However much I would grow to love you and your people, I can’t stay. This is not my country, its ways are not mine, your people not mine.’

  He bent to interrupt me, but I put out my hand to keep him at bay, so I could think clearly.

  ‘My parents are leaving for Australia in a few months. Please understand. There are things I haven’t done. I want to go to university. I want to know my family, my country. I want to find out where I fit in the whole world, not just here.’

  ‘Jameela—’ The anguish in his eyes was a terrible thing to see. His hands shook as he brought them up to his chest. ‘You must not do this. It is written in here that you are the one. You will love me. Please do not be afraid.’

  ‘Love is not the problem.’ I daren’t tell him I cared already, for maybe he’d try more effective persuasion. ‘Please understand. Your people will never accept me, not totally. I’d always be the foreign princess, the one that came from afar, who was different. Every time there is a war or some political crisis with extremists, you would have to hide me. I won’t always be able to stand at your side. Don’t you see? We have different visions. We look down a different path.’

  As I stood there watching him trying to wrap self-res
pect around himself and draw up extra strength from inside, I knew I couldn’t stay. Sooner or later I’d wish I’d chosen differently. All the same, I hated to say those things. I wanted to hug him, say I cared, say it wasn’t because of him, but I dared not touch him. If I did, I knew I’d forget all that I’d said as I remembered clearly what it felt like to be shielded from death by his warmth and to feel my heart jolt in a happy sort of pain when he was standing close.

  He closed his eyes. At first I was surprised he didn’t argue further; then I began thinking of his mother and the people of the village. They’d be happily expecting my positive answer. Hadn’t I put my hand in his at the dancing? Then a frightening thought occurred to me. Would he force me to stay? He was quiet for what seemed a long time until he finally spoke.

  ‘Jameela, I too am sorry. Maybe I expected too much, and too soon.’

  Suddenly I was sobbing; I felt Suneel’s arms come round me, tentatively, as though years of abstinence made them rusty and stiff.

  ‘There is no need to weep,’ I heard him say. ‘Your parents will come and take you. Everything will be arranged.’

  ‘But I’m so sorry. You had a dream and I ruined it.’

  He held me away from him then so I could see his face—sad, but still protective of me. ‘That is not your concern. We cannot be responsible for making other people’s dreams come true.’ He held me again then. I was sure he wasn’t supposed to, especially after I’d said ‘no’ but it was almost as if he needed just a tiny taste of what it would have been like.

  ‘Do not forget, little one, this country, the way you have been raised as one of us. It has shaped the way you see the world. It is part of you. Do not deny it.’

  ‘I’ll never forget, Suneel, not anything.’ Especially not you, my heart cried, but how could I say things that would only make us feel worse? How could I explain that in loving him I could still leave? I doubted he’d understand.