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So, if you still remember me, I am the Malaysian-born Chinese intern from Dawn.com. I am still alive in Karachi despite the usual chaos in the city (I will elaborate to you later about how hesitant I felt on the historic day when being told that Osama was just one hour away from where I was, though I was braver than that). Since I wrote the blogs ‘What the Chinese guy said’ and ‘For the love of cricket … not the green insect’ earlier this year, I have been staying in my dim gloomy cavern, silently observing this metropolis for nearly five, full months. I would not mind if you define me as a half-Pakistani now, yet my neighborhood would never agree with this idea. They still point and stare at me every day without saying hello or a smile, as if I am a strange creature showing up in front of them, though they have been seeing me since January. They’ll talk to me only when I do those daily, unglamorous things in front of them (for example, brush my teeth in the shared toilets, clean my dirty clothes etc). In that case, my snooping neighbours would come to me and ask, “Chinese (with the funky Pakistani accent, it sounds like “Chai-nis”) also do this?” Nah, I am not complaining. I realized how nice they are after I visited a remote village in central Punjab. Well, what I am trying to say is, can you ever imagine that I have been living alone in this heavily populated city without seeing any Chinese people (or whoever looks like me) and not speaking Mandarin (my mother tongue) for nearly half a year?
“You are not even from China, how can you be a hard-core Chinese?’ Nadir, my colleague said to me while we were having lunch once.
While facing these gigantic ‘culture shocks’, I isolated myself in my lovely home (my friends prefer to use the word ‘haunted’ to describe my hostel), and meditated for hours, with the help of divine beverages and Pakistani herbs. Sometimes, I went out for pleasure weekend-parties and Chinese food cooking parties, living it up with my local friends.
One fine day, while I was going through what they call the ‘self-realisation process,’ a question came to my mind, “Why did you come to Pakistan and what do you really want to do here?”
“Life is very short and there’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend,” John Lennon tried to persuade me through my Sony Walkman, “Imagine all the people, living for today…” He was right. I longed to travel around this country, what was I waiting for?
Subsequently, I made my decision to head out for the long and exhaustive yet exhilarating and adventurous Pakistan travels. After one week of research on the route planning, my Pakistan discovery expedition, kicked off!
Saying goodbye to Karachi was not as painless as I thought it to be initially. It was joy and sadness both mixed up. I felt keyed up about what lay ahead of me as I said my goodbyes to my friends. The Chinese say, “The bitterness of saying goodbyes comes from the sweetness and the warmth contained by the sourness.” Partially it was because that I loved this metropolis too much. As quoted by Nadir, this city is “so alive and chaotic” that everyday can be a new experience. Unlike Singapore…that country is too calm remains the same everyday…not adventurous at all.
On 24 April, my journey officially commenced with the company of my colleague, Farooq, to interior Sindh, meeting our friend, Abib, in Nawabshah. Well, let’s be frank, I was at a farewell party a few hours before my departure. So, you could imagine how exhausted I was when I saw Farooq. I was saying goodbye to my American-desi friend the night before as she was leaving this country after silently helping the Pakistani society for four months, while my friend, Zeeshan, suddenly panicked because he realised that he had lost his car key at three o’clock in the morning. We had no other mode of transport. After a long discussion we found our way to Zeeshan’s house. I slept for a few hours and then woke up with a severe headache. It was a boiling, sun-drenched, long day and now I was sitting in Farooq’s car. The weather was so blistering hot that even the air-conditioner refused to work properly, marking a noteworthy start of my journey.
After dropping Farooq’s mother at his relative’s house in Hyderabad, we headed straight for Nawabshah. Having a glance at the vivacity of one of Pakistan’s primeval towns, I swore to myself that I would come back again and pay a visit to Hyderabad.
Well, it kind of came true pretty easily as 20 minutes later our car broke down and so we were on our way back to Hyderabad. The car could not stand the Sindhi heat anymore and its engine refused to work. We had no other alternative but to stay a night in Hyderabad.
In Hyderabad, I met Farooq’s friend, Ali Shah, a young Talpur. I did not know how influential the Talpur family was before the colonization period until I left the town, although I overheard a conversation about the feudal system in interior Sindh and I couldn’t believe that landlords still existed in this day and age. That evening, we had dinner together, along with Ali Shah’s friends. Unlike the image of brutal landlords I had in mind, he was a well-mannered and helpful, young man.
We decided to take public transport to Nawabshah; leaving Farooq’s car at Ali Shah’s place for maintenance. On our way to the bus station, Ali Shah said to me, “You should see this place.”
Here we were, standing in front of the Talpur family’s tombs. Hyderabad, being one of the oldest towns in Sindh, was founded in 1768 by the Kalhoros upon the ruins of a fishing village. It was known as “Nerun” at that time. Fifteen years later, in 1783, the Baloch tribe-Talpurs took over power and built the Talpurs dynasty in Sindh. The family settled down in Hyderabad and most of them were later buried in these domed burial chambers.
Located five minutes away from the centre of the town, the navy marble-carved tombs stood out pompously in front of me. Sadly, they were completely ruined, veiled in a congested neighbourhood.
Not only that, the colours on the decorated walls were fading away and some marble pieces seemed to have mysteriously disappeared. It seemed people had ruined the site by carving their loved ones’ names on the walls leading to permanent damage.
“Why did anyone not protect this site from being defaced?” I asked, with resentment. “I am sure that if it was in Malaysia, or Singapore, it would have been guarded soundly.”
“It is registered under the Department of Archeology, and when they did not get any money from the government, what could they do?” replied Ali Shah. “Now, we are using our family’s power to protect the tombs from being destroyed, but what we can do is limited.
Ali Shah had the key to the heritage, so we went into the tomb to pay our respects to the deceased. It was absolutely quiet inside the room and the temperature turned cool and pleasant, compared to the hot-and-dry weather out in the open. Traditional Islamic paintings covered the walls.
“So, if the money did not go to the tourism industry and the people, where did it go, weapons?” I asked.
There were no replies to my question.
The Talpur dynasty lasted for over 50 years before the British came with the incursion of expanding their colonial map, and their interests in the Punjab region. The Talpurs hence signed a peace agreement after several gory battles. The fort was smashed and thousands were killed. Some of the Talpur family members were banished to Burma and Rangoon, and never got to see Sindh again. The glory of the family lay in damaged ruins and architectural tombs while Hyderabad became a major commercial centre which the British used to call ‘The Bombay Presidency.’
In Nawabshah, daily life usually meant no-worries.
We met Abib in the evening and headed for his swimming pool, immediately after we had lunch, to cool ourselves from the heat wave. I was not a swimmer, so I tried to make myself float on the surface while Abib shouted, “You are a Chinese, how come you can’t swim?”
I knew that it would be a Sindhi speaking night when I noticed that Abib’s friends did not speak proper English. I wondered how the conversation between us would work out. “Sain chahala,” I greeted them in Sindhi (one of the only Sindhi sentences I had learnt). Farooq and Abib were the translators between the Sindhis and I.
I remained silent for the most part of the two-hour conversation, while observing the way the Sindhi language sounded. I was exceptionally amused by the out-of-tune, gigantic laughs during the conversation, which I later observed almost all Sindhi's typically laughed this way. “Sindhis believe that if you enjoy the conversation, you need to show it to everyone by laughing out loud,” Farooq said trying to explain the custom to me.
We visited several places the next day, surrounded by banana trees and sweltering Sindhi air, it seemed to me that the rest of the world, or even Pakistan, was very far-off. The people looked as if they walked in slow motion, living life their own traditional ways. It looked like there was nothing for them to worry about, despite the poverty written in their sad eyes. Life could be tough, yet simple.
Consequently, people in Nawabshah were more conservative - there were only two civil hospitals in Nawabshah where one was for men and another for women, and men were not allowed to enter the women’s hospital, vice versa. The rationale of it, I am sure most of the readers know well. So, I asked Abib, “If I met a car accident right in front of the women’s hospital and I was about to die, would they send me all the way to the men’s hospital, instead of the nearest hospital?”
“You are a foreigner, maybe a different rule would apply for you. But, for us, yes, to the men’s hospital we would go.”
Joyful moments flew past. Before the sun set, I was already standing at the railway station in Nawabshah, waiting for the train heading to Lahore. I would have to say goodbye to the company of Farooq and Abib, and the rest of the journey would be on my own.
“Man, I am very excited and nervous,” I said. Farooq examined my checklist to make sure that I had everything with me before I headed for Lahore unaided.
“Don’t receive food from others, don’t talk to strangers…” reminded Farooq.
“Hey, I am not a child! You are talking like my parents,” I complained. In Pakistan, there is nothing to worry about as long as friends are around. I placed the Sindhi topi and Ajrak gifted by Farooq and Abib at the bottom of my backpack. They claimed that giving gifts was part of the Sindhi custom to show hospitality.
I waved goodbye to my friends, seventeen hours before I would arrive in Lahore, wish me luck!
The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.
