Short Fiction: "Imam Zamin"
By Fawzia Naqvi
February 2, 1995
My relationship with Pakistan is that of an unhappy marriage. Where you cannot live together and cannot irrevocably part. Time spent together in the short term is full of intense love, longing and wonderful memories. A longer period of time spent together brings resentment, suffocation, misunderstandings and despair.
Alienation from one’s homeland is alienation from oneself. It is one of the most disturbing and painful separations. I go through it year after year. And each year it gets just so much harder. I suffer terribly when time to depart draws near, for me leaving my parents is traumatic. There is no word to describe this feeling, I am completely traumatized. It was particularly severe this time.
What can I tell you about the sensation of being in your own country? The sights and the sounds, so familiar only when you are amongst them again. The way the sun feels on your face in the early morning. The sounds of the street vendors beginning their morning rounds. The traffic and the peculiar noise of the public transport found in Pakistan. It is addressing others by their relationship to you, a different term for each relationship. It is being amongst family, its is being amongst so many of your own.
The morning paper, yes even the city page of The Dawn announcing the death toll and the civil strife which paralyzes half the city. It is mine. I am part of what happens there. When I read the paper when I discuss the events I am talking and reading about something which is mine too. I take responsibility too. I am no longer a foreigner reading about other people’s troubles.
Do you know what it is like to split your soul into two pieces? That is what it is like just before one enters the doorway of the airport building. The final glance at your family before you must move on.
Monday was my last day in Karachi. I woke up as early as I could to maximize the time with my parents, but the hours just flew by as I had to visit family and friends to say goodbye and then some people started to come by to our place to see me.
I had started to feel physically ill in the evening and had to conceal my state so that my parents would not go through more anxiety over my departure. My cousin Mehdi had come over and had decided that he would accompany me and my dad to the airport. I thought it was a good idea so that my father would not have to come home alone under the present conditions in Karachi.
At midnight Amium my Aunt called to tell us to stay at home because they could hear gun fire near the Clifton Bridge. I went to my bedroom to lie down. I wanted to calm and console myself that everything would be all right.
I went over in my mind the ritual of goodbye in my home. I have been doing it since 1983 the first time I left home for Mount Holyoke College. But it never gets easier. I hate myself for not coping with Karachi and not coming back for the sake of my parents who are alone there.
As I lie on my bed I see my mother putting the “Imam Zamin” around my arm. It is a thin strip of cloth with money inside. A blessing for a journey. The money is to be given to the needy upon arrival. And then at the door she will make me touch some flour and some money, another blessing for my safety. Who will cry first is always the worry.
There was no question of sleeping as the flight was at 6:30am and I had to leave for the airport by 4:30am. I have always wondered why flights arriving and departing Karachi do so at such an awful hour. One leaves the country like a thief in the night making the separation doubly painful.
It is as if Karachi is telling me “don’t leave”. It is not easy to leave me behind.”
A thin fog lay over the city as we drove down the empty streets. There was no one about except for the Army Rangers and the police patrolling the streets. We come to where the Clifton Bridge looms ahead in the fog; the approach to the bridge is blocked off. Something has definitely happened up ahead. Mehdi tells Idrees our driver to make a detour; there is some panic in his voice.
Karachi is in my past the minute I hug my father goodbye. The tears so far suppressed are surfacing now. I feel the floodgates breaking open. I turn away quickly toward the entrance of the airport. The baggage handler looks solemn too and waits for me to decide whether to go ahead or wait.
I keep walking. Mehdi comes up quickly beside me and puts his arm around me. He kisses my forehead as I turn to look at my dad one more time. He looks worried and is very tired. He has not slept at all and will not do so till I have arrived safely in New York!
The men move aside and look at me respecting the tears, “perhaps she is a newly wed bride leaving her family for the first time”, they are likely thinking. I see the downcast faces looking at me with understanding. It must be a nightly ritual at this airport.
Even the security guards usher me in unchecked not wishing to get in the way of a tearful goodbye. I walk through the doors quickly, one last look back. I try to smile and wave one last time to my father and to my cousin. Pakistan is once again a place I have left behind.
The lounge where I wait for my flight to be announced is truly my no-man’s land. It is neither in Pakistan nor in the United States. It is where time stands still for me and I am caught in between two worlds.
Dawn is coming over Karachi as the plane begins its taxi. I try and catch a glimpse of the city through fogged window panes. I am too distracted to notice that the Imam Zamin has fallen down to my wrist. I catch a hold of it before it falls to the ground and carefully tuck it away in my purse.
When I sit up again the plane is lifting me high above the city and as Pakistan disappears below me I imagine hearing the first call to prayer with which Karachi must have awoken, unaware and unconcerned that I have come and gone once again.
February 2, 1995
My relationship with Pakistan is that of an unhappy marriage. Where you cannot live together and cannot irrevocably part. Time spent together in the short term is full of intense love, longing and wonderful memories. A longer period of time spent together brings resentment, suffocation, misunderstandings and despair.
Alienation from one’s homeland is alienation from oneself. It is one of the most disturbing and painful separations. I go through it year after year. And each year it gets just so much harder. I suffer terribly when time to depart draws near, for me leaving my parents is traumatic. There is no word to describe this feeling, I am completely traumatized. It was particularly severe this time.
What can I tell you about the sensation of being in your own country? The sights and the sounds, so familiar only when you are amongst them again. The way the sun feels on your face in the early morning. The sounds of the street vendors beginning their morning rounds. The traffic and the peculiar noise of the public transport found in Pakistan. It is addressing others by their relationship to you, a different term for each relationship. It is being amongst family, its is being amongst so many of your own.
The morning paper, yes even the city page of The Dawn announcing the death toll and the civil strife which paralyzes half the city. It is mine. I am part of what happens there. When I read the paper when I discuss the events I am talking and reading about something which is mine too. I take responsibility too. I am no longer a foreigner reading about other people’s troubles.
Do you know what it is like to split your soul into two pieces? That is what it is like just before one enters the doorway of the airport building. The final glance at your family before you must move on.
Monday was my last day in Karachi. I woke up as early as I could to maximize the time with my parents, but the hours just flew by as I had to visit family and friends to say goodbye and then some people started to come by to our place to see me.
I had started to feel physically ill in the evening and had to conceal my state so that my parents would not go through more anxiety over my departure. My cousin Mehdi had come over and had decided that he would accompany me and my dad to the airport. I thought it was a good idea so that my father would not have to come home alone under the present conditions in Karachi.
At midnight Amium my Aunt called to tell us to stay at home because they could hear gun fire near the Clifton Bridge. I went to my bedroom to lie down. I wanted to calm and console myself that everything would be all right.
I went over in my mind the ritual of goodbye in my home. I have been doing it since 1983 the first time I left home for Mount Holyoke College. But it never gets easier. I hate myself for not coping with Karachi and not coming back for the sake of my parents who are alone there.
As I lie on my bed I see my mother putting the “Imam Zamin” around my arm. It is a thin strip of cloth with money inside. A blessing for a journey. The money is to be given to the needy upon arrival. And then at the door she will make me touch some flour and some money, another blessing for my safety. Who will cry first is always the worry.
There was no question of sleeping as the flight was at 6:30am and I had to leave for the airport by 4:30am. I have always wondered why flights arriving and departing Karachi do so at such an awful hour. One leaves the country like a thief in the night making the separation doubly painful.
It is as if Karachi is telling me “don’t leave”. It is not easy to leave me behind.”
A thin fog lay over the city as we drove down the empty streets. There was no one about except for the Army Rangers and the police patrolling the streets. We come to where the Clifton Bridge looms ahead in the fog; the approach to the bridge is blocked off. Something has definitely happened up ahead. Mehdi tells Idrees our driver to make a detour; there is some panic in his voice.
Karachi is in my past the minute I hug my father goodbye. The tears so far suppressed are surfacing now. I feel the floodgates breaking open. I turn away quickly toward the entrance of the airport. The baggage handler looks solemn too and waits for me to decide whether to go ahead or wait.
I keep walking. Mehdi comes up quickly beside me and puts his arm around me. He kisses my forehead as I turn to look at my dad one more time. He looks worried and is very tired. He has not slept at all and will not do so till I have arrived safely in New York!
The men move aside and look at me respecting the tears, “perhaps she is a newly wed bride leaving her family for the first time”, they are likely thinking. I see the downcast faces looking at me with understanding. It must be a nightly ritual at this airport.
Even the security guards usher me in unchecked not wishing to get in the way of a tearful goodbye. I walk through the doors quickly, one last look back. I try to smile and wave one last time to my father and to my cousin. Pakistan is once again a place I have left behind.
The lounge where I wait for my flight to be announced is truly my no-man’s land. It is neither in Pakistan nor in the United States. It is where time stands still for me and I am caught in between two worlds.
Dawn is coming over Karachi as the plane begins its taxi. I try and catch a glimpse of the city through fogged window panes. I am too distracted to notice that the Imam Zamin has fallen down to my wrist. I catch a hold of it before it falls to the ground and carefully tuck it away in my purse.
When I sit up again the plane is lifting me high above the city and as Pakistan disappears below me I imagine hearing the first call to prayer with which Karachi must have awoken, unaware and unconcerned that I have come and gone once again.
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