Melting the polar ice

Posted by Imaduddin on November 22nd, 2007 | Categorized as Stories | 229 views and 4 Comments

The tables have turned, the shoes have been swapped, and the doctor has now swallowed the very medicine she mercilessly poured down her first born’s throat.

Since adolescence, every time I’ve spent my birthday in England, I’ve tried to pack the day with activities, trying to ensure that there was no time for the inevitable. Yet the inevitable always managed to live up to its reputation, courtesy my mother dearest: my dreaded “surprise” birthday party.

The problem is not that I’m shy or introverted, or that I mind being the centre of everyone’s attention - my younger siblings would testify to that. The problem is that Ami insists upon delving through my Year 9 and 10 diaries for my friends and their phone numbers. She’s never managed to move on to the Year 11, 12 or 13 diaries, even though I have tried placing them strategically as a hint that this is where she must look. Okay, so I admit it – it was awkward (read: politically unfeasible) for me to organise my own birthday party. That being the case, year after year, Ami would manage to invite the wrong friends: friends that I’d outgrown. And so, year after year, I would suffer conversations that I no longer found palpable.

To add salt, the next day I would have to explain to fifty-odd people why so and so hadn’t been invited: “because I hadn’t organised the party myself,” I would resignedly say.

Why was it “politically unfeasible” for me to organise my own party? Well, imagine that you’re the only Muslim adolescent in a class of 114 atheists, one Mormon, one Hindu, two Catholics and one Buddhist. Half of them are your friends, so that’s a guest list of 60 people – all of whom can only be diplomatically appeased if you’re having a full-scale disco party. But then, you offend your Pakistani parents’ sensitivities because disco parties in England usually involve booze, dirty dancing and rampaging hormones. If you aim for a civilised party on the other hand, and want to cater to your parents’ sensitivities, then the only way you can accommodate 60 people is by hiring out a mansion.

And so there lay my political dilemma: a clash of cultures. Being a good Pakistani son, while remaining an accepted and integrated citizen in the angraiz culture, is like engineering peace between Hitler’s Germany and Churchill’s Europe. I chose to be Neville Chamberlain and run away from the matter. I started taking day trips into London’s androon sheher with my best friends, in the hope that my mother would give the surprise birthdays a rest.

Not everyone agrees with the clash theory and the need to run away from unwanted realities. A few Eids ago, I was translating for Irish and Welsh-born American medics in Balakot and Mansehra in earthquake hit northern Pakistan. They wanted to take some time out and find some common ground with the religious welfare group Al Khidmat; build bridges to share experiences and coordinate relief work. The medics were thoroughly impressed by Al Khidmaat’s medical camp and as the sun began to set, we were hosted by some of Mansehra’s Jamaat-e-Islami party leadership for tea. Dr Steve Price played devil’s advocate and asked our host, former naib nazim and son of a prominent Jamaat-e-Islami leader, what he thought about his brother living in America. “There is no clash of civilisations as Huntington claims,” commented advocate Shujaat. “Everyone should visit America; everyone should visit everywhere. The world is becoming smaller and we are living in a global village . . . we should be working for humanity. That is why you are coming from far-flung remote areas like the USA and the UK to help.” Though I have to disagree with him on the first point, he is certainly correct about the world becoming a progressively smaller place. That being the case, there’s really no place that I can run away to in my attempt to leave behind unresolved issues.

This is because the issues I had thought I’d left behind in the Wild West are actually only a short airplane ride away. It’s really quite uncivilised how Lahore’s population quadruples in the winter. All the ex-pats descend from the far-flung, remote areas . . . and suddenly, Nano’s hitherto empty house – which had been my sanctuary for the past year – was invaded by ten other people. Amongst the returning natives is Ami. That year, she turned the big five-O and unaware, the poor dear provided me with an opportunity for the perfect revenge. Arrange “surprise” birthday parties, for me, would she! I’d show her, and show her good.

I rubbed my hands in glee and hatched up the scheme in my Machiavellian little mind. Then I started dialling numbers . . . ah, the power of having your parents’ phone directories. I’ve survived a year in the Land of the Pure now (in spite of 20lbs of weight loss), in no small measure due to the fact that my parents’ networks of family and friends were only a phone call away. And so it came to pass that revenge involved a surprise tea party for Ami’s forty-odd cousins and friends – and, as the grand finale, getting into the act the 200 people at the posh dinner for King Edward Medical College class of 1980’s reunion that she later attended. Birthday songs accompanied a fluffy Santa who served a suitably Delicious Chocolate Symphony cake (as the purveyors so charmingly termed it). Revenge was indeed very sweet.

The clash, however, is just around the corner. Once again, Ami and I are in the same country for my birthday and though there are no Year 9 diaries for her to consult, I nevertheless find myself dreading the inevitable. This time, it’s not a clash of civilisations that’s turning my head towards the androon sheher, but a clash of families. The unresolved issue – that my life is enriched by many people who don’t feel comfortable in the same spaces - appears to be chasing me around the globe!

A year before I graduated, I attended the convocation for UC Berkeley’s class of 2003. Professor Martha Olney, one of the university’s most popular teachers, told the graduating class that their education had equipped them for this moment - a taster of the real world. “As you position yourself strategically between your dad and his boyfriend, and your mom and her partner in the post-graduation photograph,” she said with a twinkle, “you’ll be using the culmination of what you’ve learned in those Psych 101, Sociology 102 and Peace and Conflicts 110 classes. They’ve been waiting over 20 years for this moment and the picture will hang proudly on their lounge walls for another 40 years.”

I didn’t see the wisdom of her words. 2004 came and I asked my divorced parents not to attend my graduation. In the university’s student body elections, I’d run, won and delivered on the mandate of introducing dialogues to facilitate understanding of politically polar views. And yet, here I was, unable to bridge the polarities within my own home. Equipped with an education or not, I was not doing a good job of facing up to life’s realities.

I should really organise my own birthday. After all, how bad can it be?

Imaduddin Ahmed

Born in Lahore (Pakistan), my parents moved to England before I was one. Moved around quite a bit and schooled in eight institutions before flying off to California for university at UC Berkeley. Since then, have had three full time jobs in California and Pakistan in a campaign office, a women's rights NGO and with a newspaper and have had two temp jobs in England. Currently enrolled in a distance law programme with the University of London and am waiting for my visa to begin economic research in Bangalore (India).