Pakistan parting thoughts

Bismillah, alhamdulillah.

We made our way through multiple checkpoints on our way out. Cars were carefully checked and men with machine guns and pistols at the ready were in full view. In the few days that I have been here I have seen more guns than I probably have seen in my entire life and that is counting the screen variety too.

The gun culture is one of the lasting images that I leave with from Pakistan. Best exemplified by an elderly man who was sitting outside a chemist in a plastic chair. Dressed in a simple white shalwaar and khamees, his thin and wiry build allowed him to cross his right leg over his left easily. He sat with his left elbow resting on his knee while his right hand dangled down by the side of the chair. On the way in to the chemist we had passed the man and I had only noted his presence.

It was only when we came and sat back in the car and my vision was now at the same level as his right shoulder that my gaze traced his right arm down to his pistol holding hand. His forefinger was lightly resting by the side of the trigger, ready for action. I was informed that the gun was loaded and the man was a Pathan. If someone had asked me to judge his age I would have put it in the mid 60’s, it seems retirement is not an option for armed security guards.

Where the government has failed, the enterprising nature of the people of Pakistan have plugged the gap, whether in the provision of electricity with their generators, the provision of education through private colleges or the private provision of law and order there is an entrepreneurial flare that touches upon all these activities. Another example of the peoples entrepreneurial nature was a middle aged man who knocked on the car window as we were waiting for the rest of the group to finish their shopping.

Intrigued by the man’s briefcase though a bit wary of a pistol being produced from it I lowered the window and greeted the man. Reading the interest in my face he quickly opened his metal briefcase to reveal a folder with laminated copies of supplications. He quickly handed me two of the A4 posters, on had prayers that could be read when performing tawaf (the circambulation of the Ka’ba in Makkah done during the pilgrimage Umrah and Hajj). He explained that he had found the duas on the internet and had printed and laminated them and they would be very useful for Hajj or Umrah. I thanked him and apologised that I had just been in Umrah and so would not be needing the laminated posters.

Holidays for the average middle class in Pakistan does not involve trips to the United States or Europe but trips to the local shops to try and fix long overdue home improvement projects. There seems to be a constant low level struggle getting things done and wading through the corruption that infests the corridors of power from the lowest to the highest levels. Simple things such as getting an electricity line fixed will take the better part of a few days as repeated calls need to be made to the electricity board. Eventually through a combination of persistence and a hundred rupee note the required technician will turn up at your property to fix things.

This daily struggle to achieve simple things seems to sap the energy out of people leaving them less time to sit, think and innovate. In western countries where the administrative structure on the whole is well run common citizens are left with potentially a fair amount of free time. It is a pity that countries that most need innovation do the least to provide a conducive environment.

As we stand at the departure waiting zone, a well planned circular hall with glass windows allowing you to see people arriving and departing I set my daughter a quick task. To carry out a survey of the number of ladies wearing an Islamic attire arriving by plane.

At a first impression Karachi comes across as a very liberal city with respect to ladies and their attires, but first impressions can be misleading. She counted 100 ladies of which 30 odd were wearing some sort of head covering in the traditional Pakistani style. Of these 8 were wearing a full Islamic attire, with an outer garment and head cover. The statistics seemed a little skewed from our first impression on the streets of Karachi but nevertheless painted perhaps an encouraging figure that would not leap to mind if I had been asked to guess. Like all statistics there was an attached health warning, my daughter pointed out that the plane that had just arrived was from Dubai and a fair number of the arriving passengers were Arabs, who traditionally wear a more stricter female attire.

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