Back in the early 70s I spent some time in Pakistan, mostly en route to India and Nepal or back to Afghanistan. Those two countries were where it was at for travellers on the Hippie Trail.
Pakistan wasn't a particularly comfortable country to be in, especially for western women. There was a vague feeling of menace from some of the younger Muslims, a feeling neither myself nor my friends and fellow travellers ever experienced in Iran*, Afghanistan, India or Nepal. But all in all, Pakistan was still a part of the "civilised" world; that is, tolerance was guaranteed by law.
I returned to the west in July 1973, on the eve of the first coup in Afghanistan, when the amiable King Zahir was deposed by his cousin, Sheikh Daoud. In fact, the day after I crossed over to Iran from Herat, all borders to Afghanistan were closed. Afghanistan has never been the same since, and probably never will be again.
Pakistan suffered a similar fate a few years later, when Zia-ul-haq came to power. What had been a somewhat worrisome but democratic nation now closed, in the grip of religious fanaticism, not its borders but its tolerance.
Pakistani novelist Moni Mohsin, briefly describes what happened and why Pakistan is still lost to us.
-- Carl O'Hageman
* Because of the Shah's insane laws against dope, often resulting in public executions, everyone sped through the country without looking left or right. Once across the border into Afghanistan, they relaxed and spent the rest of their time stoned.
Best of Times, Worst of Times Originally published in The Sunday Times
By Moni Mohsin, from an interview by Caroline ScottI come from a family of educated, westernised people. My father and grandfather studied at Cambridge, but we were equally rooted in eastern traditions and I felt completely at home with both. At my convent school in Lahore, I learnt the Lord’s Prayer and sang psalms. I read Enid Blyton alongside the Koran, yet there was never any question that we were anything other than Muslim. So when General Zia came to power in July 1977 and announced he was going to bring Pakistan in line with Islamic thought, we were all taken aback.
Pakistan has never had a taste for extremist religious parties. I’m a Shi’ite and I grew up in a minority, but I never felt that this was a problem. I had Parsee teachers and a Christian ayah. We accommodated each other’s differences. But now Zia had brought them centre stage, the genie was out of the bottle. Overnight, all non-Muslim practices — such as kite-flying or attending a New Year’s Eve party — were banned.
One of the first things he did was to pass a Hudood ordinance. So if a woman was raped and brought the case to court, she had to provide four male witnesses to prove she was speaking the truth. If she couldn’t do this, she was accused of adultery and stoned to death. Obviously, women stopped reporting rape and men became more aggressive.
A slogan, Chadar aur chaardhiwaaree (“The sheet and four walls”), started to appear everywhere. The message was women should be covered and confined to the home. If you were caught outside, you were asking for trouble. In fact, “She asked for it” became a kind of mantra.
My father is a very devout Muslim, but a staunch supporter of women’s rights. I remember him coming back from the mosque in a towering rage because the mullah had incited the congregation to take a stand against westernised working women, saying: “It is your duty to drag women into their homes and keep them there.” There was a lovely playground outside our house, where I’d played as a child. It soon became overgrown because no women could go there.
There was a growing feeling of anger and hostility towards us. I’d feel it all around me if I walked through a bazaar, because men were becoming more emboldened by women’s lowered status. They would comment on our clothes, disrupt whatever we were doing, and instruct us to cover up. If you went into a cinema hall with your head uncovered, men would pinch you or run up and bang into your shoulder hard. I felt anyone could do anything at any time. Worst of all, this was dressed up as belief in the sanctity of womanhood — as if this kind of behaviour was for our own protection.
When President Zia tried to pass a law that said the testimony of two women was equal to that of one man, women were in uproar. Seventy of us came out onto the streets of Lahore. Our procession was surrounded by about 500 policemen, who tear-gassed us and beat us and abused us.
Poets were silenced, journalists imprisoned, including my brother-in-law, who was kept in custody without trial. A man and a woman sitting together on a park bench could be stopped and asked for their marriage licence. I was once walking along a beach in Karachi with my cousin when we were stopped by a policeman and asked to prove how we were related. We were threatened with arrest unless we came up with either a marriage licence or paid a bribe.
Throughout my childhood the rickety gate to our house was always open. My father was passionately anti-guns, but after my aunt and my cousin were robbed at gunpoint, the gate was replaced by a steel monster flanked by a couple of guards with Kalashnikovs. Thieves could ring your doorbell before pointing a gun at you and asking you to hand everything over. Sunnis were pitted against Shi’ites, and the streets became dangerous. I remember Shi’ite doctors being picked off and shot on their way home from work.
When Zia’s aeroplane was blown out of the sky on August 17, 1988, people danced on the streets. One man picked bougainvillea flowers, tucked them in his turban and danced for joy. On TV, after 11 years, female presenters took off their headscarves and threw them to the floor.
I don’t know if Zia did what he did just to stay in power or if he believed he was doing the right thing. And I don’t really care. All I know is he wrecked my country and made me a stranger in my own land. People are very resilient, but once the genie is out of the bottle, it is incredibly difficult to get it back in again.
