Swat

I wonder, whether in the years to come, someone will finally pinpoint a day for Pakistan’s Nakba so we may mark Swat’s tragedy and remember the war that we seem to have lost for all intents and purposes.

in a constant state of ‘what-next’

I am wrapping up a year of my life. A year in a completely new environment – new people, language, customs, traditions, food, lifestyle.. I can’t find the strength to look back, and I can’t muster the optimism to look forward because the future is one big black hole of unknown. All I can do right now..is keep breathing.

May 12.

A year ago, I sat, with a suitcase brimming with clothes all over the floor, preparing to leave Karachi, listening to gunshots from the not so very nearby Shahrah e Faisal, watching Karachi being set ablaze, being made hostage, being subject to the same kind of violence I witnessed when I first moved there.

A year later, I sit, in a different city, dreaming of the day I will pack up my suitcase and go back home, despondent yet again, at how the more things change, the more they remain the same.

This was my blog entry for May 12, 2007:

Bagiya Lahoo Luhan

Habib Jalib (1928 – 1993)

Haryali ko aankhen tarsen bagiya lahoo luhan
Pyar ke geet sunaoon kis ko shehar hue weeran
Bagiya lahoo luhan

Dasti hain suraj ki kirnen chand jalaye jaan
Pag pag maut ke gehre saye jeewan maut saman
Charon ore hawa phirti hai le kar teer Kaman
Bagiya lahoo luhan

Chhalni hain kaliyon ke seeney khoon mein lat paat
Aur nahjaney kab tak hogi ashkon ki barsaat
Dunya walon kab beeteinge dukh ke yeh din raat
Khoon se holi khel rahe hain dharti ke balwan
Bagiya lahoo luhan

Translation here

And I just realized this blog is 5 years old. Yikes.

you said it, babe

My horoscope for today.

You are probably concerned with serious matters today, which can lure you past the lighter issues that typically interest you. Maybe you missed something or maybe you just got it wrong and now get a second chance. Reconsider what in your life is most valuable to you. Be practical, for you could be required to live with your current choices for a while.

A Bakistani in Jordan: Adventures in Amman..continued

Hanging out at the Pakistan Embassy – which truly felt like a small piece of home with Dawn and Jang newspapers (and the editions with the most important headlines of the past 2 months), and having a good old discussion on bureacracy and where to get Pakistani food in Amman…

Eating a proper chicken tikka meal with my Jordanian teammate, where for once I could tell him on what sauce to order with tikka, laugh at how much mess he made with the puris and collapse into laughter again at the horrendous menu spellings…specifically puris = bouri bread, and samosas = samboosak. This wasn’t as bad as me having to stop myself from laughing hysterically when the server at Wild Jordan pronounced the drink Winnie the Pooh from the kids’ menu as Winnie the Booh. I kid you not.

Going to the Ministry of Interior, getting an approval letter in record time (or so I thought then), being adopted in the waiting line by a bunch of men who acted as my translators and chided me for speaking so fast, as well as a security guard manning the Manager’s office who would refer to me as “yes, no arabic, you go ahead” everytime I would stand in line outside the office (which as a woman, is awesome – because there are only 2 women for every 20 men and they get through faster), feeling like I had been teletransported back home when there was an electricity blackout at the Ministry for 20 minutes, and meeting a Pakistani there from Rawalpindi whose been living in Jordan for 7 years, and who spoke Urdu as painfully slowly as I do now..

Going to the Ministry of Interior again, getting another approval letter in actual record time (30 minutes max), and realizing that the guy at Counter # 10 knows my name even without looking at my form…which as always was half complete, filled out in Arabic, English and Urdu (Urdu and Arabic have the same script, I can only understand written Arabic to an extent, and my friend at Counter # 10 doesn’t care anyway!), and chatting with the woman at the police station who thinks it is quite amazing that I live here without any family…

Getting my Dad to tentatively approve my going to Lebanon! (Asking if going to Israel was a good idea and having that turned down first was a stroke of genius) Destination: Beirut – soon!

It is highly irrational to be superstitious in this day and age.

Today, I realized I still am.

A glass jar broke in the kitchen and I spent the evening wondering what would happen next. Really, you can’t blame me. The last time I swept glass from the floor it was from a bottle that had inadvertently broken in my hand and I spent the next 2 days changing band-aids.

Anyway, someone just said something to me that sort of made me face a not-so-near reality I’d chosen not to think about at all. It also has me oddly depressed.

Life’s like that.

fields of gold

*fingers and toes crossed* – moving to Jordan for a year in a few months..

its the wrong time for somebody new.

I am currently:

• Addicted to Grey’s Anatomy. Seriously. When the pile of DVDs ended I moped around like an alcoholic craving a shot (or two) of straight alcohol. Thank God for downloads & the great Internet.
• Addicted to the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack. Some of the best music I’ve heard recently on a TV show.
• Realizing that it is funny/sad that all of the servers at Espresso know my coffee order by heart, what flavor Foxy’s I like, and that I don’t put sugar in my coffee, but eat it straight from the packet.
• Trying to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. Quick overview of blog archives reveals previous ideas were babysitter to Z’s kids [forced upon me, I really don't like kids] / wedding planner / career counselor / cook / cool consultant. I still don’t have any idea. Suggestions are welcome. As long as they don’t entail doing something so boring that I will think writing a Pakistan Studies paper is what fascination is made of.
• Happy that the new version of Blogger finally works! Hence the new template and labels and all zat.

yay! future career plan all chalked out!

So I returned back home sometime last evening from a phenomenal national conference (well technically – lets say my mind and body really returned today cos I went to sleep right away and woke up disoriented at 3 AM (some people woke up at 5 PM wondering if they’d missed sessions) ) – and while I caught up on the outside world I saw Dhruv’s blog and his fantastic advice column. I couldn’t resist writing in to the man himself.

Here goes:

Dear dC,

My personality/work are such that I end up being asked to give advice on everything under the sun and my cellphone has become more of a ‘Advice Hotline’. Unfortunately, about 50% of the time people don’t end up taking my advice and then end up crying and coming back to me a year later saying they wish they’d listened to me while I resist the urge to say, ‘I told you so!’ Sometimes I wonder if I should move to the top of a mountain where my advice will have more meaning and an aura of romanticism. Please tell me how you manage to cope with all this.

Advisor to the people,
Confused in Karachi

Dear Confused,

I have often been faced with the depression arising out of the curse of unending wisdom and knowledge. It is truly the bane of intelligence. There are however, solutions. Firstly, quit whining.

Secondly, do not resist from saying ‘I told you so’. It is an effective, clinical and awesome thing to say to someone that has obviously not taken the good advice you have been so gracious to provide. Secondly, the pained expression on their face from such supposed heartlessness is worth a million bucks.

Ok, moving to the top of a mountain is not a good idea (unless it’s the swiss alps which are in general more developed and habitable than some of the ‘posh’ areas’ of places you and I come from). Mountains are cold, windy and good to see from a postcard. Do not be foolish.

Instead, I suggest you become a cool corporate mckinsey/BCG type person and charge unheard of amounts for telling people something they already knew but were too dumb to notice. This way you will get a nice office, good looking co-workers and an air of superiority that you can blanket with a crazy bank balance and proud parents. Do not give advice to idiots, it will only make you feel like one.

Hope this helps.

-dC