Saba Imtiaz: Everyday is a winding road..

One year later, I am sitting at home in Karachi, missing my other home in Amman, my lovely apartment, the people I met and knew and the random sights and sounds that became as familiar as if I'd lived in Amman my entire life.

I want to say something befitting the past year – the challenges, the depression, the moments of euphoria, the feeling of joy I had every time I updated a document for updated facts and figures: more members, more experiences, more partners, more events, more interns, more exchanges – at that time, it was easier to just go with the flow. I can't write anything befitting.

I know, without a doubt, that being on the Jordan MC was the best decision I ever made in my life – and I know that that feeling of ‘this is right’ – that I had in March last year has never been as intense at any other turn of my life recently. Call it writer’s block, or an acute failure to summarize, but there is no way I can even start describing my year, the people I met, the experiences I had..

One year ago, I didn’t know my teammates very well. One year later, I know them all too well – their propensity for forgetting things, arguing topics to death, our collective ganging up on each other and our shared love for watching seasons of TV shows all weekend and quoting Barney Stinson nonstop. There is so much I could say and write about them, but it still hasn’t sunk in that our team's term has ended, the same way it hadn’t as we sat on a bench in the airport as they saw me off and made our last jokes together.

One year ago, I was hopeful for an AIESEC country’s future. One year later, I am sending out resumes and setting up dates for job interviews, hoping for my own future, my real life to begin, for me to bring that value added experience into an organization. (When will I stop writing in sales-speak?!)

Reflection has never been my strong point and probably never will be, but I am infinitely more self aware about the person I am now. I miss so many, many things about Jordan – which is why the fun emails I get from Laura and Nadim make me smile every morning and often giggle hysterically, and sometimes make me wish I could extend my residency to have some proof of my connection to the country beyond memories, photographs and people.

Bas khalas – yella shabab, lets move on.

Ten days ago, I arrived back home - such a mythical word last year, home was what we spoke of longingly, on holidays when we cooked food from our countries and recreated the illusion of a different life in our kitchen and living room. Millions of conversations with nomads about lives at home, and now, as I feel the sea breeze make the heat of the day melt away, it feels like I've always been here.

I arrived back to Karachi in a sea of about 200 people at immigration. Gone was the familiar airport in Amman/border at Jaber, the very short queues, the ahlan wa sahlan and 'Welcome to Jordan!' greetings. Karachi's airport was chaos - possibly over 200 very hostile, uncouth and pissed off travelers, wailing kids (one of whom banged his head on the floor) and general inefficiency. At one point there were new queues forming at every available desk, with people rushing madly to them in the hope that they would get to escape sooner. All while I stood with a very heavy carry on bag and my laptop (God bless Gulf Air!) and told off people for breaking queue. Rrright.

With some sense of the niceties inculcated in me in Jordan, I said salaam to the official who burst out laughing and said 'aap ne aakhir himmat kar he lee!' (you finally dared to say that!) I don't think anyone had even said hello to him in the past hour that I'd been standing in line. Welcome to Karachi. Shukrans, Marhabas and Ahlans are old news kiddos. I have to perfect my 'I am right and you bloody well know it' look.

I finally got out of the airport, only to find no one to greet me. No one! About 15 minutes, 10 rounds with a very heavy trolley later I found a payphone and called my sister - who sheepishly turned up 5 minutes later with my friend Mikaal. Since I'd been stuck in Immigration for an hour, they'd gone to McDonalds. Of course. While they were eating fries, I was being advised by an elderly man to stop wandering around and just wait in one spot. In any case, I'm superglad that they came - did I mention it was my birthday and I turned 23 while waiting in the Bahrain airport for my flight to take off, so seeing them was really a cool surprise in itself?

And how is it to be back? That appears to be the question of the month -- (all of last year, the question was: How do you find Jordan?) - its absolutely fantastic. I loved living in Amman, and I loved my life there - but Karachi - sigh. The sheer joy I still feel, despite the electricity breakdowns and other problems a crazy metropolitan city like this has, at being back - being able to sing aloud madly to old songs, read incessantly, talk to friends about the same things over and over again, gossip, familiar faces (of people I like and don't) - the knowledge that I will never, ever take any of this for granted again.

And of birthdays and surprises - my friends (after my incessant whining at aforementioned sadness of birthday spent in Immigration/various airports) got me a cake while we were hanging out at Latte Lounge - which I really didn't see coming (they must have gotten better at planning surprises!) until the overefficient server comes up and says "So, should I bring the cake now?" at which my friends groaned collectively and looked like they wanted to kill the guy.


Thankyou guys!

The end of my nomadlife existence has been replaced with my quest to find out what it really is that I want to do with my life (apparently getting rich needs to have a career to go along with it) - more later, provided Karachi Electric Supply (?) Cooperation cooperates. :)

It feels strange, these days. Sometimes I wonder if im losing my mind, or am just too tired by the time , but everywere I look around I feel like I am seeing scenes from home. I thought the TV screen in a coffeeshop was showing a Pakistani TV channel, and I often see people who look vaguely familiar, except they’re not at all.

In the past few months, I have become acutely aware of behavioral system clashes – I realize so many of the behaviors I sought to adhere to at home clash with how people act and behave here. This is purely related to AIESEC, because culturally I find other differences, of a more pleasant kind. But the acute feeling of homesickness, (that I think I am proud of feeling, simply because it tells me of what are the things I valued and miss, as opposed to when I lived at home, and so many things were what I took for granted). But the feeling of being lost in translation, of having blank looks and stares on either sides, of people just not understanding that this (the introverted, quiet person) is who I really am, and I am not uncaring, its because I find the seemingly required change process, against what I believe in and stand for.

This is not meant to be a reflection on all the people I have met and worked with in this country, for even in the madding crowds, I have met people who simultaneously keep up a constant flow of bilingual translation and make an effort at empathy.

I speak to three of my closest friends almost everyday, and between our common sighs, crazy plans for the future and an understanding that we are trying to come to terms with our past and our present and our future, I realize that to me, it is truly love, friendship and all the sappy annotations personified when I know that despite them being tired, overworked, exhausted, battling different timezones, expensive text messaging rates and faulty internet connections, I can always reach out and chatter on. And despite the fact that sometimes it is very, very hard for me to explain what it really is that is going through my head, or for me to understand stories in fragments, it has kept me going, helped me smile, and helped me breathe when I wanted to panic and board a plane going anywhere.

Here's to our collective pasts, presents and futures. My coffee cup brimmeth over.

Questions about my personal life have begun to scare me. I don't have time to think about this, I don't have time to think about this, goes the refrain in my head - and when I am confronted with questions that force me to think my head goes blank. You know, like that moment in a Calculus exam when nothing makes sense, and you wish you were anywhere, anywhere but here?

Someone asked me a few days ago how I still felt an identity crisis everytime I leave and arrive back to Jordan. I have no idea why, but the question of the nomadic existence has popped up in conversations recently, and despite the fact that I haven't been as much of a nomad as some of my other friends, the thought of even seeing the inside of an airport is giving me hives. Going from airport to airport, filled with a sense of trepidation or excitement, replete with a soundtrack to match, playing on repeat in my head and on my mp3 player - I am living this much-coveted dream finally, instead of wondering about it (because now, when I see people saying that they want to travel the world, I wonder whether they know how much it can emotionally make or break you?)

I haven't written anything meaningful in a while, and I have an entire folder full of thoughts and emotions from everything I felt when I first arrived. Is this writer's block or just the fact that familiarity has now transcended everything? The conflicting feelings of wanting to stay and wanting to move on are blending into nothingness. I have to be awake in 5 hours and all I want to do is to wake someone up so I can talk to them, or wish I had asked someone to stay awake so I could talk. Except these days, I rarely make any sense at all.

Oh well. As always, GetFuzzy says it best:

sigh.