Saba Imtiaz: Everyday is a winding road..

Ghazi Salahuddin on Newsday, Geo TV -- 'in 1970, we'd been given the gift of hope..and now we have that again'.

I haven't felt optimistic about Pakistan's future in a long time. Let it not be short lived.

Labels: future, politics

In a course I took at university in January 2005, we had an assignment to research the Constitution of Pakistan for a description of the rights we have as citizens. I remember when I stood up and rattled them off, there were looks of disbelief all around - because the composition of class made of young people from the middle and upper middle class sections of Karachi, had heard these for the first time.

That was shortly before I joined AIESEC, and realized that the rights I took for granted gave me a chance to make a difference in society by changing the state of apathy that I permanently existed in in Karachi.

Today, as our rights have been abrogated, and the Government will soon be trotting citizens off to be tried in military courts, I look back to that day and at the general state of apathy that despaired me, and to the news headlines from students, lawyers and civil society's protests and wonder, where did the foundations we took for granted dissolve into nothingness? Where do we go from here?

The house of cards that the foundation of the existing regime has been built on is tumbling down.

An excerpt from a book I read recently describes exactly how I feel right now:

As I stood there alone on the hospital grounds, with people rushing around me, I had a strange experience: I felt as if my heart had been torn from my body and had landed with a thump in an empty space, a vast void that I did not know existed. I felt tired and frightened. The fear was not of bullets: they were too immediate. I was scared of some lack, as if the future was receding from me.

- Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran

Labels: politics

I don’t remember the last time I spent this much time poring over news websites from home or actually watching TV channels streaming online. Most days, I am proud to be from Pakistan – since that shapes so much of my identity living abroad – but I am embarrassed to have a military dictator as the recognized leader of the country.

While my nonchalant father (nonchalancy comes after having seen this happen four times in his life. I told him about what had happened online since he wasn’t watching TV and well, not like that would have made a difference since all TV channels were off air) reassures me that everything will be fine, I find comfort in the smaller things that have come out of the country being under Martial Law – the judges that have refused to take oath under yet another Provisional Constitutional Order, the lawyers and human right activists that have been taken under house arrest for the conviction of their beliefs and their power to mobilize masses, and of the journalists who continue to work despite having a gag order.

Today, as I saw a news report from my sister (a journalist at Geo TV) while civil society members were being arrested and attacked in the background, my heart gripped with fear. I am incredibly proud of her for being a journalist - at this time in particular - and were my mother to be alive today she'd be ecstatic that she is speaking out at the current state of affairs in the country, but I can't help but wonder how many more frantic phone calls I will need to make to find out where she is after the news clip ends.

Pakistan has started a horrible, horrible chapter in its long and turbulent history - and every passing minute, the senselessness of the situation becomes more incomprehensible.

Today, if I had the chance to exchange my passport for one that didn’t come out of the banana republic that Pakistan is slowly becoming thanks to the whims of a power hungry dictator, I don’t know what I would do. Living in Jordan has made me realize that at least I come from a country that is legally recognized, as opposed to the numerous Palestinians and Iraqis I encounter at various Ministries and Embassies.

Am I worried? Yes.

Do I want to go back home? I don’t know.

Labels: politics