Questioning this Pakistaniyat

from the lens of reading + writing

I tend to peruse the same ‘new arrivals’ bookshelf at the library every few Fridays to see if something fresh pops out at me. This particular Friday I experienced a bit of hesitation before going to the library, but I went anyway. I found, or rather was found by, a little green book on that same shelf. It’s a collection of short stories by women writers from Pakistan, published in 2007. I eyed it with some suspicion at first. The thing I’ve noticed with books like this, or anything that’s titled with an explicit Pakistani-identification, is that they tend to aspire to live up to that identity.

What I’ve felt in recent months, or actually just become aware of, is that there’s a part of me that feels being Pakistani is only relevant or worthwhile if it’s in relation to or has been experienced in the West. I think I’m becoming suspicious of this need to have an identity, which seems to only come out in contrast to something else. To be Pakistani means to not be totally American/British/elsewhere-ese, and to be a woman means, generally, to not be a man. Both those things together in any kind of creative expression-type setting tend to overemphasize those particular markers of identity. Womanness and Pakistaniness. Pakistani womanness. Oppression and struggle. This reminds me of something I read in the intro of a Toni Morrison book, where she kind of criticizes this idea that to be a black author primarily means to be a black author, as if her blackness overrides all other elements of her life experience. It’s not that it’s not an important and very much life-shaping part; it’s just not all there is. Because it’s in contrast to the dominant whiteness, it becomes the main identity marker.

I feel similarly. I wrote some time last year about the inherent defaultness we grow up with that an American or otherwise ‘white’ existence is the only real or relevant one to which we, the colonized, must match up. I have stories I wrote as a 6 year old featuring blue eyed children whose mothers had names like Samantha. I didn’t concoct those things out of my brilliant imagination - I was fed those ideas, because that’s what was available.

In what seems like an attempt to fight back against this mainstreaming of whiteness, what I’ve noticed Pakistani writers do is present to a foreign audience the literary experience of an idea of Pakistaniyat. This is made evident in descriptions that overemphasize the role of very much Normal things, like shalwar kameez or conservative grandmothers or chai. It’s almost like an exoticized caricature of a real place and real people. I noticed this in a book by Daniyal Mueenuddin (In Other Rooms, Other Wonders) that I also picked up from the library. I’d heard about it before and was excited to read it, but for some reason I couldn’t get past the first few pages. I felt like I was being explained to, almost babied, about a rural culture that is unfamiliar to me but which I’d rather be shown somehow, with an assumption of familiarity, than told so explicitly as if I am some Other. If none of this makes sense, then the biggest indicator for me that something is not written for a Pakistani audience is when regional words are italicized and translated to English in brackets. For instance, daal (lentils), or charpayi (traditional woven bed). Perhaps we can let the people educate themselves.

There’s nothing wrong with writing to a foreign audience. And anyway, maybe many of us don’t read in order to be shown worlds we already know. But what about worlds we don’t know, within the worlds that we do know? This last part is what probably feels refreshing about the little green book I picked up on Friday. Its editor happens to be an Indian writer, but the content of the stories is not bound by some kind of identity marker, nothing that warrants definition or explanation. While I still do notice a discomfort in some of the writers as they describe a ‘local’ environment, that they may be unsure themselves of who they’re writing for, I still feel like I can spot myself in that audience. Forget Pakistan, Karachi itself is home to so many underworlds we will never truly know. And I’m sure those stories exist, but who is reading them? What language are they written in? Would anyone care to translate for an English-speaking Pakistani audience, that situates itself and even defines itself in relation to its own context, as opposed to a Western one?

These are some questions. It’s nice to read about the subversive thoughts of an old Christian woman whose daughter wants to get rid of her by moving to Australia, written by an author who I tried to Google but could not find. It’s nice to recognize places and feelings and smells on a page without being told what they are, but just knowing by association, because of an existing intimacy with a place. An intimacy that doesn’t necessarily need to name itself.

I want to read about normalcy and normalness. Every single person is an entire universe of their own, but the true things that they will see, feel, hear, write, share will speak to some true thing in me, and someone else, and someone else. I wonder where the true decolonizing happens. I don’t want to say that we must strip away our identity markers, but maybe we need to do that sometimes. See our lives for what they are, rather than in relation to what they’re not. But maybe we need to see both to see anything at all. My growing understanding is that the answers lie in the questions.