independence day

Some disorganized thoughts on Pakistan's 70th anniversary of independence, framed by the ongoing events in Charlottesville:

Pakistan is still deeply shaped by its history as a British colony. The government is modeled on a parliamentary system. The legal framework often still includes laws that were enacted under the Raj, including the constitution, which is based in part on the Government of India Act of 1935. And white supremacy, in the form that the writer Sara'o Maozac called "white idolatry" in an essay that should be more widely read than it is, is a daily fact of life here. When SRB and I were at the Khunjerab Pass last week, around a dozen young men asked if I would take a selfie with them over the course of 20 minutes. They don't know me or who I am, I am (obviously) not a famous person. But I'm white, and so, as SRB put it, they "spotted one!" Seeing a white person is exciting. My foreign friends of color here do not have that experience. This jibes with Maozac's description of going to Ghana as a young African-American man and being bewildered at the attitude of young Ghanaians, who were thrilled to be around his white classmates but didn't have the time of day for him.

White idolatry is present in the US, too, although in a different way. For example, white people getting cast to play characters of color in movies. Tilda Swinton as the Tibetan teacher of Doctor Strange comes to mind, or Emma Stone playing a quarter-Chinese, quarter-Hawaiian person from that movie "Aloha." But no black or Chinese or American Indian stranger has ever asked me to take a selfie with them in the States. It's an uncomfortable experience, especially when the person reacts negatively when refused (I almost always refuse selfies). And I wonder if it's akin, in some way, to the experience people of color have in the West when they're the only one in a room full of white people. Slight tangent: it occurred to me that we had a moment like that with Linc at the beach this summer, when we were talking about anarchism. He said, Listen, I'm not an expert on anarchist theory. But we were all expecting him to be a representative of this group we don't know much about or have much experience of. Interesting parallel.

Pakistan is also deeply shaped by Partition, the creation of separate states for Hindus and Muslims out of the Raj that resulted in a massive human tragedy and ultimately the dominance of the military in Pakistani politics. There have been times in the last 70 years when 90% of Pakistan's state budget went to defense. Antipathy toward India drives nationalism here, as I saw first-hand at the Wagah border crossing last November. And much of the violent trouble Pakistan finds itself in is exacerbated by the inability of it and India to make peace with each other. The neocolonialist adventures we've been on in Afghanistan for the last 15 (!) years ran right into the teeth of Pakistan's use of proxies all over the region to counter India's influence. That use goes back to the founding, long before 9/11 or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

But US involvement in Afghanistan and our bombing of Pakistan mean that many people here are furious with us, and that we make a good boogeyman. And that means there are places here I cannot go because to do so would endanger my life. There are spaces in the US that are closed off to me, and rightly so in many cases, but the worst that would happen to me in them is some social awkwardness. Here my employer prohibits me from driving to or through certain places, for my own safety.

I need to take a break from writing, so in conclusion, Pakistan Zindabad.

low visibility

Bit of an airport adventure this morning. SRB and I woke up bright and early to see if we could get her on the PIA flight to Gilgit. There's a music festival and conference up in Passu this weekend, in the upper Hunza valley, that's being hosted by my colleagues. She's friends with the festival organizers and they invited her to play. But their plan for getting there -- four buses driving through the night, including through some iffy territory security-wise -- made her uncomfortable. Rightly so: I'm not allowed to travel through there by road without a really good reason and plenty of advance notice and clearance from our security.

So our admin manager spent hours yesterday trying to get us both on the PIA flight. Managed to get me a seat but not her, but then it turned out a helicopter mission was going up with plenty of extra seats. She's not allowed on the heli but I'm cleared to go anytime if there's a spot. So we woke up at 5 AM, made some coffee, got to the airport, and went straight to the ticket counter. The flight was booked but we asked if she could buy a standby ticket. The guy said sure, I'd brought enough cash to pay for it (about $100 for a foreigner ticket), and so she ended up taking off. Miraculous.

Unfortunately, the helicopter got up over the Margallas an hour later and turned right back around. Visibility over there was terrible, not more than a couple hundred meters and then everything was lost in the haze. Ordinarily we'd have waited to see if it would clear up but no dice: the haze only gets worse before it gets better and the pilot was worried that by the time it cleared up enough to fly over Abbottabad and into the mountains it'd be dicey in Gilgit. Disappointed!

On the plus side, SRB made it just fine and one of our drivers met her at the airport and took her to the Serena for breakfast before departing for Passu. Not sure if anyone else was riding with her but I wouldn't be surprised if so; apparently it's going to be a big event. She's never been up north before, so even if I have to stew down here for another day I'm glad she's getting to see Gilgit and Hunza. With any luck I'll join her tomorrow.

karachi

Six years after I first visited Karachi, I'm back. Flew in last night with LNT for a 1.5-day workshop, hosted by the Sindh government, on off-grid energy with a special focus on solar. Our colleagues who work on habitat have been doing little trials on solar power for individual households and small communities for 6-7 years, and so we were invited to participate. My colleague RB gave a presentation today and then spoke on a panel in the afternoon and acquitted himself very well, which was a relief. Always nerve-wracking to see someone talking about our work to a room full of people who are not just unfamiliar with us, but who might give us funding or help us out in other ways if they get a good first impression. And public speaking is hard. RB has a weird, slow style, but he comes across as very knowledgeable and he has interesting stuff to say. For example, most of the speakers were from the government or the private sector; RB was one of only two from the nonprofit/civil society sector. And, probably not coincidentally, he was one of the few people who focused on the need to engage communities and addressed the lived experience of poor people who are being approached by this and that outsider trying to get them to adopt (and pay for) a new technology.

Some credit for that goes, if I may so so rather immodestly, to me. We had breakfast this morning as a little team and after hearing RB's thoughts about what he wanted to focus on, I encouraged him to consider that our main difference in a meeting like that is our credibility as a community-centered institution. We're not out to make a buck or get votes. We're out to help poor people's quality of life improve, full stop.

Karachi is enormous, people here think that when the ongoing census is completed it'll claim the title as world's most populous city, with possibly north of 30 million residents. I'm confined to a small part of it on this trip, given that I'm at a conference in the hotel I'm staying in, and that I'm a relatively rich person who basically only knows other relatively rich people. Last night I connected with a friend from Islamabad's brother, who's the marketing director for a big consumer product company. They had a product launch last night and he invited me to come along. It was at a yacht club on the water and there were lots of models and actors and TV presenters and producers and the like there. Chatted with a bunch of them, mainly very nice. And friend's brother was a good host, introducing me to people and checking in on me periodically even though it was a work event for him. Much more relaxed experience than the similar event I went to in Lahore last November, in part I'm sure because I've been here longer now and am a lot more self-assured.

Marketing is, well, let's just say it's not for me. I am, in a way, in sales -- business development and resource mobilization are just jargony ways of saying sales -- but at least I don't have to pretend (or perhaps convince myself to genuinely believe) that my inexpensive retail product is changing lives. Nothing like a room full of people taking a TV ad extremely seriously to remind one that advertising is ludicrous.