Between the bombs Ayeda Naqvi

The media portrays us as living only from bomb to bomb. But life continues in between and around those bombs. And in the end, it is that life ” swirling and flowing like a river stream around the boulders in its path ” that makes me belong here In her book, “Meatless Days”, Sara Suleri outlines beautifully the reasons that compelled her to leave Pakistan . “I felt supped full of history”, she writes, “hungry for flavours less stringent on my palette, less demanding of my loyalty.” And so, craving for more “insipid” flavours in a distant land whose crises were merely academic, she left. Living in a country in which everything was so emotionally charged, the blows so close to home, she started longing for a safe, predictable lifestyle, one in which each setback to the nation did not feel like a punch in the stomach. This is a familiar predicament for many of us. And yet it is the very reasons given by Suleri that make me want to stay. The fact that Pakistan’s dilemmas are not just academic abstractions, the fact that I have so much invested emotionally are what keep me from leaving. To walk away from Pakistan would be to walk away from someone because you love them too much. It is the sound of the jharoo in the morning, the way that the birds sing in the bamboos each sunset and the smell of the ground when it rains that make this place feel like home. It is watching your kids play with children whose parents you grew up with and whose parents your parents knew that gives you roots that are not always easy to transplant. And so, in between the violence and the bombs, life goes on. It has to. My children are evacuated from their schools, their school windows shattered by bomb blasts. They are too young to even know what bombs sound like. But morning after morning we continue to wake up, get dressed and go to school. My mother in-law’s living room windows also shatter from the Model Town blast. But life goes on: her baking resumes and my husband and his brothers carry on arguing about who gets to take the leftovers home. And me? I continue to work on my little corner of the world. My six year-old develops a nervous tic after watching Benazir’s assassination on TV. I start making a conscious effort to turn off the news when he is in the room. My driveway looks shabby so I gather up my courage and do what I have long wanted to do: get new tiles. The living room rug needs a good cleaning. It is pollen season, I must make sure the house is dust and pollen free. I continue to teach. I continue to write. Life must go on. I must continue to clean my little corner on earth in the hope that if I do my part, so will others. Maybe it is a futile exercise. But the Holy Prophet (PBUH) once said, “If the end of the world comes and you are planting a tree, continue planting the tree.” I do not know if the end of the world has come. Sometimes it certainly feels like it. But I continue with my work. What else can we do? As a friend recently said, “Yes, things are a mess. But it’s our mess.” To relocate to a cleaner, politer environment would not bring peace but merely serve as a scathing reminder of our escapism. In “Meatless Days”, Suleri returns to Pakistan after years of self-imposed exile, craving for the sounds and smells of her homeland, the Himalayas of her childhood, the winsome gullies of the hill-stations and describes how there, after years, her sinuses glowed with a fabulous commingling of wood smoke and green tea. “No trying company could stand between me and that exquisite odour”, she writes. “I drank my tea and then went quickly to stand on the sheer verge that separates Pine’s Hotel from the greatness of its valley, where my lungs again could breathe as they have never elsewhere breathed.” As I read Suleri’s descriptions of Nathiagali, my own childhood spent in that idyllic hill-station come alive: the bonfires, the barbeques and the ghoray-wallahs yelling as we galloped away without them. Yes, it is moments like these that bring your life to a full circle; moments that, for me at least, are tied to Pakistan . The media portrays us as living only from bomb to bomb. But life continues in between and around those bombs. And in the end, it is that life, swirling and flowing like a river stream around the boulders in its path, that makes me belong here. Ayeda Naqvi has been a journalist for 16 years and a teacher for three. She specialises in Sufism and is the Coordinator for Sufi Order International in Lahore