This is the second part of a series on the Muslim identity crisis. Find part one here.

The disciple of a Sufi master, who spent several years learning Irfan, the knowledge of the Sufis, came back to his master to tell him that he was now a man of knowledge. When he knocked at the door, the master asked, “Who?” “Me,” said the disciple. “Go back. There is no room for two in this house,” said the master.

The disciple went away to learn more and when he came back, the master asked again: “Who?” “You,” said the disciple. “Yes, get in, now you have knowledge,” said the master.

But can I knock at the door? I am not two. I am many. Like a broken mirror, I reflect a thousand images. One day I looked at the mirror. I saw a thousand faces staring at me. One moment all looked familiar. The next all looked different. It scared me. I threw the mirror away and it broke into dozens of pieces, fragmenting me further in the process.

Where do I begin my search? I look inside and out. See no light.

I seem to be floating around in a mist, a fluffy velvety mist. It softly touches my toes, moving up. Out of the cloud emerges a face. One moment it is my face. The next moment it is someone else’s. I try to touch it, hold it but it melts away. Many faces appear. I feel around, trying to hold them but they slip through my fingers and disappear in the fog which is slowly slithering around my body.

I am tense. I want to scream. I want to hold onto something. But all faces, all images disappear in the haze as I stretch my hands. Shadows dance on the wall. Broad, bold shadows, leaping around in a rhythmic chaos.

They whisper to each other and laugh; a full-throated laughter fills my room. My skin prickles with fear. I try to escape to the comfort of past images.

I seek refuge in narrow, warm streets, away from a cold Washington morning. Familiar smells of closed rooms, sweat and herbs wander in the streets, getting stronger as the heat increases.

I see people pushing, shouting, laughing and jostling. The muezzin calls for the evening prayers. A soothing shadow slips down the minarets. The sun is plucked from the sky.

The night drops from the clouds. But the streets are not deserted. They are now filled with the faithful smell of summer evenings. People still move around, laughing and shouting. I extend my hands. Try to coax them into my existence. But they slip off out of my hands. The mist licks my fingers and the shadows moving on the wall scare me. I reach out but only touch the cold, slithering mist.

The longing never ends. I wander like a lost soul through the images that fill my mind. Sometimes the images look familiar to me. Sometimes they float through my mind like strangers. But as the time passes, these strangers also become a part of me, of my identity. Yet the confusion continues.

Sometimes I see myself in a valley full of both familiar and strange images. I see people, buildings and trees slowly emerging out of the mist. I see cars, buses and trains. An airplane flies over my head.

I see shops and office blocks. I see people working on their computers, lifting telephones, talking to those thousands of miles away in foreign languages.

“Ref. Your E-mail. Is it the same list we approved earlier?” asks an electronic message from New York. The man working on the computer looks at his watch. As expected, the reply came in less than an hour. This is e-business. An hour equals a year.

Although all these seem foreign, they also look familiar. I feel sure of myself moving around in this world of computers. I need them. I am used to them. They form part of my identity.

But then the muezzin calls again. “Allah is great, Allah is great,” he reminds the faithful. The man switches off his computer, turns his face towards Mecca and prays. There seems no conflict between his faith and the technology he is using.

The scene changes again. Now I hear a thousand horsemen, crossing the world’s highest mountains and running into the valley. They come in groups, some small, some large. They keep coming for hundreds of years. Wherever they stop, they build homes and settle down. It sounds familiar. I understand it. I identify with it.

But my search does not end here. Now I hear music and songs. It is a group of girls in white saris with red borders. Wearing fragrant garlands around their necks and arms and colorful bindies on their foreheads, they sing as they move towards the river with their offerings of flowers and fruits. I understand their song. I recognise their music.

Dress. Flowers. Fruits. All seem familiar. After all, we share so much with them. Our social habits, our culture, languages and even physical features are similar. So I see a link.

Their song fades away. Once again I hear horses and battle cries. These are ancient warriors who came with their horses and arrows and conquered the valley. They came and over-powered those who lived here before them. But the valley conquered them too and they never went back. Now they live with us. I speak the words I borrowed from them; I share their customs, their tales and even their prejudices about castes and creed.

But does my journey end here? No, I also have affinities with those who lived here before them. I feel a sense of attachment to the un-ciphered tablets discovered from the ruins of the Indus cities of Moenjodaro and Harrapa. The statues of the mother goddess fascinate me. The dancing girl of the Indus is no stranger. She lives inside me — frozen in a frame of ecstasy which has been copied by countless generations of dancers ever since.

Many in my country say that this journey of thousands of years ended in 1947 when we assumed a new identity, that of Pakistanis. After that we should shun all other identities. We have been trying to do so for more than 60 years now but it has not worked. I can’t ignore the invisible string that links me to all those who came before me.

Yet there are some who put my new identity in conflict with my old identities. Besides being a Pakistani, I am also a Punjabi, a Sindhi, a Baloch and a Pashtun. And I am also a South Asian.

There are some who don’t feel comfortable living with the past. The controversies they stir also disturb me. It has pitched my faith against my politics, my traditions against my work, my ethnic origin against that of others and my language against that of my neighbor.

My being a Muslim is not enough. I also have to identify myself with the groups doing politics in the name of Islam. My being a Pakistani is not enough. I must also associate with those who look at any mention of other historical, social or cultural references with suspicion. I also have to subscribe to the narrow ethnic identities of various groups who have their own definitions of nationalism.

The author is a correspondent for Dawn, based in Washington, DC.