fire & water

an Airblue aircraft crashed into the Margalla Hills in Islamabad this morning. over 150 people are dead. the pilot was asked to circle the area, for there was no room to land, and during this duration the contact tower lost contact with the pilot, and the plane crashed into the hills. turn on your tv set: black smoke bellows from amongst the trees. bodies burn, and the earth is on fire.

and while flames engulf love and lugagge in islamabad, waters drown people and places in karachi.

it has been a while since the monsoon rains hit karachi, but the skies have officially broken open, the cackling thunder reminding us that the break is getting bigger. in a city that is bursting at the seams, where many are homeless and hungry, it is no surprise the rain (despite being a sweet respite from the summer's heat for some) is a nuisance for many. there are always casualities in this sort of weather. whether is it because they drowned, were electrocuted or caved into their own "homes." when the streets flood, they cover up open manholes, and people fall in. manholes that hole, and swallow up, men and women and children.

someone i considered a friend, told me how she understands i have hurdles in my life, more than the average person, but that it is i who chooses to wallow in them. a plane crash, and a flooding are reminders to me that i am fortunate than most.

i was lucky (and that's all it was) that i did not need to be on that flight. i am fortunate (and that's all it is) that mine were the kind of parents who slogged their lives away so that i have shelter, and when it rains in my house, it is because the windows are leaking, and not because i have no windows. i have never felt rich, and parts of my family are constant reminders that i am not rich, i am just privileged...

and yet, i feel such disdain, such disgust and such utter repulsion in moments for this country.

i am aware of my privileges, i see them in effect everyday, but i have never understood how people who experience white privilege, who travel the world and see third world countries, who clutch a return ticket in their hands, and a passport that opens up the world to them, have the right to tell me they understand my hurdles.

i have struggled with ideas of white privilege since college. i find it ugly and upsetting that a murderer born in the US has freedoms that i, as a law-abiding citizen in Pakistan, never will.
i find it atrocious that my life and my life opportunities are limited because of where i was birthed. i find it repulsive that in job interviews people (in pakistan) ask me what is wonderful about being a woman in pakistan, not understanding that the question is a farce, the premise of it is entirely inaccurate and untrue.

i am not the people who crashed today. i am not a burning body. i am not the people who drowned yesterday. i am not a bloated carcass.

and for that i am grateful. really, truly, grateful.

but Weber's theory of relative deprivation comes to mind.

i live in a country where having parts of my body grabbed is common.

i live in a country where i knew what rape was, before i knew what college was.

i live in a country where strange men have said disgraceful, disrespectful and vile things to me, on the streets, in shops, and sometimes in the privacy of another's home.

i live in a country where i am not a person, not a face, but the only part of me that is ever really seen, is the part of me that is really never seen: my genitalia.

i live in a country where i struggle with my privileges because beggars line up at every traffic light begging, clawing, and jabbing like feral children, for whatever i might have.

i live in a country where as an educated woman, i have fewer privileges than an uneducated, illiterate, wife-beater of a man.

i live in a country where there is no power.

i live in a country where there is no power to generate power.

i live in a country where having a gun held to your head, and your cellphone and wallet taken, is as common as the lentils we eat.

i live in a country where there no consequences and no ramifications.

i live in a country where there are too many consequences and too many ramifications.

i live in a country where i can not walk down the street.

i live in a country where you will hear of 4 years olds who did walk down a street and ended up raped and dead in a vacant plot.

i live in a country where the waiter that serves me food at a restaurant, will probably never be
able to afford the meal i ordered.

i live in a country where in sex is a chore, and a painful and violent sex-life is standard.

i live in a country where bombs, guns and drones are more common than pens, pencils and markers.


i live in a country where i am perpetually not safe.
i live in a country where we are permanently not safe.
i live in a country where 'safe' is a thing of the past.

but i am alive. today. and just as (despite my grieving) i can never understand what went through the heads of those passengers, aboard that plane that burns ferociously, and just as i will (despite all my sympathy) never comprehend the last thoughts that run through a drowning persons mind, as they choke on rain water and seepage, please do not assume you will ever understand my struggles, or the toll they may take on my mind, spirit and body.

no two people experience tragedies the same way. no two battles are ever really the same. you will never understand another, but you can listen, and you can hear. and you can say, "i am here, with you, for you."

and while no two people are ever the same, i will argue that pakistani's are ridiculously resilient. make what you want of that. disease, destruction, poverty, injustice, intolerance...throw it all this way, and yet you have this ridiculously resilient population that keeps on keeping on.

towards what?
for what?

just as we all have our own battles, we all have our own goals.

some of which we desire to achieve despite the soaring of the flames, and the crashing of the waves.