Return to Pakistan

On Sept. 11, the region where I was born suddenly became the center of the world -- and I knew I had to go back.

Editor's note: Salon is proud to introduce Asra Nomani, our Central Asia correspondent who recently arrived in Lahore, Pakistan. Nomani will cover the intensifying war against terrorism from the region, with frequent news and culture dispatches for Salon.

By Asra Q. Nomani

Sept. 28, 2001 | LAHORE, Pakistan -- "Allah hafiz."

"God keep you in his protection."

My bure abu sits in the early morning in his home here in the historic city of Lahore, as the sun warms the new day with its light. He is my father's eldest brother and he says goodbye to his 31-year-old son in Dover, N.H., through a skinny microphone that broadcasts his voice over the continents and oceans through Microsoft's Hotmail. They have discussed the latest about America's potential partnership with the Afghani Northern Alliance, plus, as static buzzed between them, whether to chat on Yahoo or Hotmail.

Raised in Pakistan, my cousin came to my hometown of Morgantown, W. Va., seven years ago to earn his master's degree in engineering before starting work in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and then moving not long ago to a new job on the East Coast.

This is the reality of the new war that looms over the world. It is no longer a day like the reconquista when Queen Isabella slaughtered anonymous Muslims and Jews in Spain if they refused to convert to Christianity. It is no longer Us versus Them. Or, in this case, U.S. versus Them. We are them. They are us.

My dadi (grandmother) comes into the room and sits in front of the Philips desktop computer, now encased in clear plastic slipcovers. She is my father's mother, 88, born into the rural town of Hinganghat in India when the British were still colonialists. She was married at 14 to my grandfather, Mumtaz Ahmad Nomani, who became a successful defense attorney in the old city of Hyderabad. She traveled alone in 1942 from Wardha to Benares with her children at a time when few women dreamt of doing such a daring thing as traveling unaccompanied by a man. She even drove a car, learning on a racecourse, until she hit a rickshaw. There were no power brakes back then. They paid off the rickshaw driver for maybe 15 rupees, 20 rupees tops (between $3 and $5 then).

"He was happy," she insists.

Three sons and five daughters settled in Pakistan, uprooting themselves from their lives in India in the years after India won independence from the British in 1947, dividing itself into a mostly Hindu India and a predominately Muslim nation of Pakistan. Dadi wept about leaving her homeland, but as she grew older, her sons called her to Pakistan in the 1980s. My father was her one child to settle in America in the 1960s, after earning his Ph.D. from Rutgers University, bringing my mother, brother and me over to a life where we couldn't have imagined the Barbies, slumber parties and Disney World vacation in our future. Another daughter recently moved from Pakistan to Fremont, Calif., with her husband and family. Now, Dadi counts 12 grandchildren settled in America, including my brother and me, and dozens of other relations in an extended family that makes everybody her "bhai" (brother), "apa" (sister), "beyta" (son), or "beyti" (daughter).

I took her hand, softened with age, and told her yesterday, after my 39-hour journey beginning from West Virginia, that she looked strong.

She corrected me. She has dropped from 50 to 42 kilograms [110 to 92 pounds] in recent months. The back of her hair has the orange-red of the henna with which she dyed it. The hair around her face frames her in silver. Her face is creased with a lifetime that has seen imperialism, revolution, war, famine and the extension of her family to the far corners of the world. She is part of the older immigrants from India who still wraps yards of sari around her waist, throwing the "pallu" over her shoulder, rather than switching to the salwar kameezes; the tunic kurtas, harem pants and dupattas that make the more modest style of Pakistan. She is certainly daring compared to the chadors that shroud the women of Afghanistan in a sea of cloth, with only netting before their eyes. But she is an elderly lady and is allowed her fashion statement. I try to probe her for her thoughts about the World Trade Center bombings, the mujahedin, Osama bin Laden.

She pauses. "How old is Khalida's son?" she asks about a cousin of mine, still single and available.

War? The war can wait. Dadi still has a granddaughter to see married. And she's puzzled that this granddaughter has crossed the ocean with only Lonely Planet's "Pakistan: A Travel Survival Kit," a new padded laptop backpack from Office Depot and a JFK Airport shopping bag filled with World Trade Center key chains, New York Police Department pencils and two New York Fire Department stuffed bears (one red, one blue) to give away as gifts. War looms as a reality in this home in Lahore, where CNN's "Larry King Live" is replaced with Pakistan Television, PTV, and its roundtable discussion between a man who looks like a skinny Santa Claus with a "topi" cap, a fiery woman commentator without a dupatta covering her head and Pakistan's foreign minister explaining his government's friendship with America. "Jung" is what war is called here.

Dadi doesn't pretend to know who did what. But she knows about war.

"Jung nahee kuroh," she says. Don't do war.

"Nuhksahn hay subkoh," she says. It will be ruinous for everyone.

Next page: Once a quiet bride, I return with a voice