Pakistani Life

Fear is the most paradoxical of emotions.

Fear keeps us from truly challenging ourselves. Fear leaves us forging ahead on the path toward complacency, where we don't question our ideas, push our minds, or truly use our bodies. Fear keeps a beginner on the bunny hill or in a comfortable hotel in Europe. But, of course, it also stops us from jumping the highest cliff when we're not ready. It stops us from losing control of our minds by making us cling to what we know (in fact, I would venture that the hotel in Europe inspires less fear simply because it is familiar - we think we're more in control there). It keeps perceptions and paradigms in boxes...but it keeps minds alive (at least, that is, until the mind faces an inevitable end). That's the paradox of fear.

The key, of course, is to know when to let fear fall to the wayside. The key is to recognize when fear is misplaced, and when fear is interferring with your ability to love to live .

There are Americans in North Vietnam parading as Canadians; there is at least one Nederland hippy in Nepal with a maple leaf stitched to his backpack; and there is a traveler in Lahore who responds to the question "where are you from" with "I don't want to say right now." To say that these people are blind to the world is of course an overstatement of truth. In fact, the elements most precious to behold may be those hidden from our view - the solitary stranger with intense hatred for America may lurk just around the corner, after all. Perhaps all it will take is a statement of truth to the wrong individual and trouble could trot right up and clock us in the head.

But to make oneself up is to let fear dominate the everyday, to cringe behind an idea of false security in this very uncertain world (all of it, that is. Sitting on a coach at home provides the same false fortress). Those who resist the genuine local interaction miss the greatest opportunity to learn - for responses when Europeans proclaim their country cannot be half as enthusiastic. The repeated "very best country" and "oooohhh. Really? America?!" simply do not apply to, say, France. The lesson is not, though, in the competition between liberal socialist Berets and hamburgers and freedom fries; but rather in the reinforcement of the capacity of people on this end of the power balance to know the difference between people, ideas, and countries better than Western humans.

Yassim in Gulmarg: "if I were able, I would take all the Prime Ministers of the world and send them all to hell." He blames not Americans or America or Kashmiris or Pakistanis: he blames bureaucracy. The lesson learned is that people here, more or less, recognize that the loss of human lives is simply another part of politics - after all, that's the experience they've had with it. America has lived, largely, outside of such political imposition (save military deaths). We just deal with annoying ads bombarding us on television every couple of years.

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The onslaught of 18 unnecessary deaths in the western portion of Pakistan due to politics, it should be noted, occurred in tribal areas. Surely this fact has been splattered across the sporadic newsprint in the US of A just as it is routinely printed about areas of Afghanistan. A key point, though, that could be learned by simple literary research is commonly overlooked, I believe (at least, that is, I overlooked it until today).

The area bombed by the perhaps overly ambitious CIA in Bajaur Agency last week is one of the border tribal provinces of the Pashtun people: people with a moral code requiring vengeance for being crossed and thus openly inciting long-running vendettas; often resulting in 'moral' retributional killings. The areas were under control of the British during colonialism, but only in name it would seem. The lack of federal control continues to this day: the maliks, or tribal chiefs, maintain control over their territories while the Political Agent (PA) scrapes a bit of power for the government mostly through subsidy distribution. This translates to this: a few hundred yards from major highways the rule of law is extinguished and the government of Pakistan has no authority whatsoever.

Thus, the statment by the onlooker at the border ceremony that the people in the bombed region are "tribal. Completely different." Is perhaps an understatement. In this country that has no real sense of nation given that its age of 58 makes it a mere infant, there is no connection. Most people appear to feel more kinship to their Indian neighbors than to the Pashtuns within their own walls. Anti-Americanism throughout the nation, after the incident, then, is minor - certain banners reading "Down with America" nothwistanding,

Moreover, any sentiment among the people directly affected is geared at America, but usually through the personality of President Musharraf, whose military junta is less than respected. (In fact, he gains much of his legitimacy by allowing freedom to criticize him in the press, and I believe I have yet to read one positive comment on his behalf.) The people blame America, true, but more than that they blame their government for letting America bully them. Thus, we will continue for now to push fear aside and let truth emanate from our pores to find new reactions to America and to continue to enjoy the unprecedentedly friendly hospitality showered upon us.

Unprecedented hospitality, that is, by a 350 pound wrestler with armed guards all around his compound to protect both him....and his pet lion. This experience requires no analysis, only observation: we see a group of goats on a street corner in the old city, and go to photograph them. The man sitting behind them with his rifle smiles and shows us to the back, where a group of men including an old army colonel are enjoying kasmiri tea. Soon, we are enjoying as well. Soon after this, a man leading a lion on a chain comes out from the back, and chains said lion to a post near us. We drop our jaws in the fashion that has become all too routine, but this time I may have actually tasted my athlete's foot. We pet the lion. Yes. We PET the lion and pose for pictures.

The colonel departs, and the big man wrestler leads us to his room, where we, along with two Sikh men, are force fed lassis until we simply refuse to drink those poured for us. We are then force fed chicken biryani on the insistance that we need to gain weight and become wrestlers. The pictures above the seats on which we sit are of his brother - murdered a few months back the day before his departure to the US. Okay..one analysis: fishy.

We are eventually led back outside, where we witness a musician filming a music video with the lion as a backdrop. The terror on his face when the lion demonstrated mild discontent with his proximity was priceless. Bhai, the big man, insists that I am now his brother in a voice that may as well have been Italian and binding. Jenny is now his sister. If anything goes wrong, we are to call him.

Obviously, we should just call him Mr. Capone. There is no question.... how could there be? He has a pet lion, after all...

We saw the usual sights of Lahore as well - a big tower, a big mosque, etc. But most impressive was Thursday. It is useless to write about music. Music is its own magic. Descriptions like magic, magnificence, stunning, mind-bending, unbelievable, not of this world, and so mesmerizing that it will lift you to a higher force do not do justice to music. That is, LIVE music - music where the beat doesn't push your eardrum but thumps your soul. Where you feel vibrations from your toes to your hairs. Music in a room where to close your eyes is to engulf yourself in another universe without things - without floors, walls, ceilings. Without tiles, paintings, pillars, marble statues. A universe without others. A universe where sound encompasses the AUM...encompasses existence and everything existence can be.

The woman next to me in the mosque's basement cried at the Qawwali chanting as it engulfed her being. The cries for a better world that she heard actually pained her soul until she knew she would lose herself entirely if she didn't stop it. I, on the other hand, heard through the Urdu a call that the world is beautiful. I saw in the faces of people showering their money on those they respect the connection humanity in that marble catacomb of worship the love and beauty. She felt pain and grief, I felt hope and love. In such a way Music is no different than anything else on the planet in that it is a reflection of the self through one's own customized understanding of what he hears. Music, though, heightens choice in the mind - it colors one's personality, beliefs, and emotions bright yellow on the white page of being. Fittingly, then, the music didn't end. Instead, a crucial point understood perhaps by all in the room save the foreign few was reached - perhaps a specific drum was pounded - and as one the crowd jumped to its feet and made its exit. It left sadness and promise and beauty and whatever else it heard emanating through the air as it departed. The initial disappointment that I would miss the final note soon gave way as I emerged from the steps to the masses of the old city. The throngs of people, dirt, pollution, all seemed a little more pure as in my mind the songs went on. After all, I realized, we will all miss the last note...every single time. What exists exists always.

Night proved no different as I donned my new shaliwar kamiz fit for a hobo while a bearded giant in a shaliwar kamiz fit for a maharaja joined his towering white-clad comrade in bringing life to the forefront as they beat Sufi Dhol into their drums for a crowd packed into temple grounds like hajis at mecca. Their hands did not rest for three hours, as dancers shook their heads and felt their hearts (and most, admittedly, touched the sky in other ways as well). Gonga, who was born deaf, spins as he plays, sending the drum hanging from his neck flying centripedally skyward as he continues the rhythym uninterruped. The music cannot be felt through my words, but the mere fact that it existed (and exists) should comfort even the furthest observer. The mystical experience changed me...and a little thing like fear of an all-male crowd of hundreds of Pakistanis huddled around a courtyard at two in the morning proliferately drugging themselves to new highs would have kept it from me. Of course, in this even I might have quivered were it not for local support - and to Malik I am endlessly indebted.

Now we sit in Rawalpindi - the old city which is now virtually connected to the new capital of Islamabad, built in the late 20th century. We already met our first warm welcome from an autoparts trader from Gilgit, up north. In the next few days we might encounter some good, we might encounter some bad...who knows? But then, that's the point...isn't it?