Suffering the wrath of gods

(Originally appreared in the Guardian newspaper of London on October 10, 2005.)

By Peter Preston

DISASTERS are always most poignant, most chilling, when you know the terrain and the people. So I had stood on the sea wall in Galle, watching kids fly kites, a few months before the tsunami engulfed the south of Sri Lanka.

So I remember sitting in a waterfront square in New Orleans early — too early — one morning, hearing the band from the night before still playing.

So the roads north from Islamabad, deep into the Hindu Kush, are roads I have travelled in peace and in war. What you mostly miss from Pakistan earthquake coverage is a sense of the people. Not bodies pulled from beneath piles of rubble, but the sheer mass of humanity exploding round every bend of every road.

What’s Pakistan’s population now? Maybe 162 million, heading for 163 million before autumn ends. When I first went there in the 1960s, for one of those ritual wars against India, that figure was only 68 million or so, but even then accelerating pell-mell as medicine brought infant mortality down. The nation General Musharraf strives to control doubles in size every 33 years. Half its citizens are 15 or under. It is a constant crowd, a teeming throng.

And that gives this earthquake its deadliest edge. The towns and cities are full, concrete blocks and wooden shacks hurled together in a desperate effort to cope, but it is the countryside that somehow seems over-born: village after village perched on steep, sliding hillsides or hunched in valleys, a clutter of huts and tin roofs, a TV satellite dish and, if their luck has held, one imposing mansion a hundred yards away where the village boy who went to Bradford or Atlanta 30 years ago to make good has returned to spend his retirement, his accumulated largesse, and to die.

It is this landscape, down rocky, rutted tracks, crisscrossed by streams with broken bridges, that the earthquake has shaken to its frail foundations. Sometimes early death counts — see New Orleans — are too fearful; but this time, I guess, there can be no good news. This time the toll will rise and rise — with so many children lost since, simply, there are so many children.

The chill grows deeper, then. “I am driven with a mission from God,” George Bush may — or may not — have said the other day. God may — or may not — have told him to “end the tyranny in Iraq”. How does that strike us? As devout, foolish, or (as a harassed White House spokesmen quickly added) “absurd”? But the past 10 months, right on through an absurdly benighted 2005, have been full of missions from somewhere and perhaps from someone.

Where was the weekend’s earthquake most devastating? In Kashmir, where the war I covered long ago, like so many other Indo-Pakistani wars, began, a land divided by armies, terrorism and religion. But look around as more disasters pile in. Who has died in the past few days? Thousands of Muslims in Pakistan, surely hundreds of Hindus or Sikhs or Christians across the border in India.

Meanwhile, modestly publicized Hurricane Stan, the one that didn’t threaten Texas or Louisiana, has just killed hundreds more — Roman Catholics — in Central America: more schools swept away, more children gone. Let’s put 2005 in pulpit perspective. The tsunami, as the old year ended, destroyed Buddhist and Hindu temples, mosques and churches with indiscriminate violence. It swept away the agnostic pleasure domes of Thailand’s tourist coast. It drowned people of almost every religion and none. Add New Orleans for the cymbal clash of the born-again and the black, for Southern Baptists and old-time religionists, and what have you got? A year of disaster spread and shared. A year with a mission to destroy.

Here is a year when those (like me) who can find no faith look out in bemusement at a globe defined and divided by religion. Oust the godless Saddam from Iraq. Bring Sunni and Shia together to worship the great lord democracy. Trade new popes and Paisleys for old. Never stop talking about Jerusalem — or the “glory” of the suicide bomber.

It is all, this bleak morning in Azad Kashmir, somehow beside the point. So many dead children, but what does their death mean — except that our earth is fragile to the core and that no nation and no mission can escape its power? Some of the dead lain out here will be militants, used to cross-border infiltration, assassination, bombing. But they will have perished, too, like the kids in the streets, the politicians in their offices, the mullahs at prayer — all victims of our doomed human mission to understand.

Sexual Harassment in Karachi: Writing Aloud

(I recieved this article from Sidra today. I reproduce it here in full.)

By Corina Carrumba
April 7, 2005

I hate the fact that everywhere I go I am made to feel that I can’t because I’m female. It’s making me angry, defensive and stressing me out. Just driving one place to another - they make me feel like I should not be on the road as they harass me as much as they can because I am. It’s a two way road but he will drive in the centre. If I overtake because he’s driving too slowly he will make sure to honk when I pass by. If he sees me trying to make a turn from far off, he’ll flash his lights from that distance because he doesn’t want me to go before him. It really gets to me.

The message they seem to want to give to me is that I shouldn’t be venturing out on my own and if I am they can treat me like a specimen under a microscope. I am at their disposal to stare at, glare at and harass. Rather than giving me right of way, they will go out of their way to make sure I don’t get it. If I park and walk a bit to collect my groceries, they will sing under their breath, whistle or make a lewd comment – and I’m just trying to get my bloody household essentials. If I’m driving home from a hard day’s work, two men on a scooter will dance provocatively and hoot while they pass me by.

The fact of the matter is enduring sexual harassment while living in Karachi is a given. I’ve traveled to Columbo and Mumbai and it’s NOT as bad as this over there. Why here? Zia’s Islamicization? What the hell went wrong? How on Earth did we end up with a generation of men that believe that they can do what they want to women? And the thing is if you try to complain about it and want to label it sexual harassment no one wants to listen to you. That term makes people switch off. They’ll first of all defend their Pakistaniyat telling you it’s like this in other places as well. Or, they’ll tell you you’re upper class, Westernized, blowing things out of proportion. They’ll tell you its part of city life. The important men in my life will dismiss my complaints but get furious when they hear these comments or see those lewd looks. But they will claim that I blame men for everything. . .that I use gender discrimination as the trump card to justify all injustices. Their solution is to shelter me as much as possible. And in a way they are right - women with drivers, or armed guards or male escorts are much less prone to harassment. But they can’t understand that that’s not the solution I want (and nor is it feasible). I want to carry on with my day to day life on my own - picking, dropping, working. . .without being harassed. Plus, how can I not be accusatory when I get faulted for being female everyday? Wherever I go, the message I get is that I have no rights on account of being female and they can do what they want to me.

The frightening thing is that it’s true – legally I have virtually no rights as a woman. There is no law protecting me – only them. Predominant in the Pakistani legal and political system is that a woman’s body is everybody’s business to debate, fight over and use to prop up male interests such as political clout, tribal sense of honor and religious patriarchy. The Hudood Ordinance and uncontested gang rape rulings of tribal panchiyaats are testament to that. And because the law gives the message that anything they want to do to is justifiable they exploit wherever they can. I cant help but think that I`m hanging by a thread - living under the pretense of normalcy in my car. If anything goes wrong, an accident, a disaster, theft - I`m stripped off the shelter these glass windows give me - and am at the mercy of this country where women legally, politically and economically women are treated as second rate citizens. Thats why I try to drive home as quickly as I can.

But as soon as I step into a public place I am reminded of this secondary status. Standing at the bank in the ladies line, men intercept and the attendant behind the counter doesn’t say anything. When it’s my turn, some man tries to shove his papers in front of mine only to withdraw when I bark – THIS IS THE LADY’S COUNTER. The entire idea of having a separate lady’s counter or separate lady’s section on the bus I find perpetuates this misogyny – as if women should be segregated like pariahs of society - not to advantage them but to exploit them further. Rather than dealing with the problem, women are brushed aside.

The message the laws, institutions and practices in this society convey is that it is always the woman`s fault because she is a woman. A bearded man grazes me from behind while I walk to a religious shrine and when I YELL at the man who did it he tells me it’s my fault for walking on the side of the road. And if I complain they admonish me for trying to do things on my own. ‘Why the hell are you driving on your own?’ Or, ‘why didn’t you send someone to the bank for you?’ Or, how can we forget, `if you covered up from head to toe this wouldnt happen`. But how long can they dictate where I go and what I do? Why should I succumb to this harassment by restricting my movements? Why is it always my fault?

I am afraid because I get so angry and I yell and scream and one day I might even hit someone. What scares the hell out of me is that if he screams back at me, hits me or worse, what protection do I have? As an upper middle class woman maybe influence – a cell phone call to a relative who knows a high up police person. But at that particular moment, his misogynistic mentality has more immediacy than my potential class influence. The thought scares the shit out of me. That thought along with that of all those men on the road gawking and watching. If he does anything to me I know they won’t do anything. God, how did Mukhtaar Bibi feel being paraded naked in front of all those people? How did she survive it? You’re a caged bird and they derive pleasure from watching you flounder when you’re injured. How did it become like this?

And, how the hell am I supposed to bring up a daughter in this social climate? In a place where I took my twelve year old baby sitting charge to an open concept mall where I could see all floors from my seat on the ground floor. When she went upstairs for five minutes to purchase something on her own she returned only to tell me that some man had leaned toward her and blown in her ear and she was afraid he would kidnap her. God. I am never going to leave her alone.

But how much can I protect her? How much can I protect myself? And my daughter?

I don’t want to live a life behind glass windows and metal doors but they harass you into relying on them. I had the walls raised in my house because I feel so vulnerable wherever I go. I love it because it makes me feel secure. I relied on my husband to tell two strange men off who were sitting in the shade outside my house. They stare at me when I drive up the driveway and open the gate. I had always wondered why people would want to barricade gardens outside their house. Aren`t gardens for people to enjoy? I now want to do the same to mine so people dont sit there. Am I paranoid? It’s like fingers are pointing at me and I’m being pummeled from all sides. but If I complain they tell me I’m a feminist. They can do what they want, say what they want, piss on the streets if they want and I cant even get my bloody household essentials or open the gate to my house? Does getting angry about that make me some elitist bra-burning, man-hating feminist?

I also cant help but think that in our society it is class not citizenship based on which you obtain rights. For a woman, class status buys dependence through limiting interaction in public. The higher the wall, the more servants - the more respect/rights you get/have. Someone like me who drives is being punished for not hiring a driver. I think that when they look at me its with contempt because they think I can afford it but am trying to be Westernized and independent. And its men as well as women who think this way. A close relative was on her way to pick her kids from school when a bus hit her standing car. When she climbed on the bus to demand the driver`s papers a female passenger on the bus went on an on about how my relative should hire a driver and that it was all her fault. The way our society is structured perpetuates elitism. I think gender and class are interwoven. This makes me think that Pakistan is not inherently a misogynistic society but that political and economic factors have made it so.

Does it bother others who drive or try to be independent? I know it’s a lot easier for me because I have the option of being dependent and I have some degree of protection and power that class buys you. What about those who don’t? What can we do?