Peshawar: Part 2 Aging, Sickness and Death

August 4th, 2010. Taliban kills Siffwat Ghayur, the Commandant Frontier Constabulary, and four of his bodyguards in suicide attack.

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Lifting another page on the life size flip chart, with a blue marker, she corrects every single mispronounced word I utter. Scribbled on the sheet are Urdu words like: Ramadan, Iftar, Namaz, Fajr, Piyar, shadi, bhaijan, deshd gird, intahai pasand, taqiq. Vagera, vagera. She trained as a doctor in Pakistan, but today, Anika Sahiba is the person teaching me to read the Arabic Alphbet, speak Urdu, and begin to understand Pakistani culture (with a heavy dose of all things Pathan:). I spend every day, for nine months, in one-on-one instruction with teachers like Anika. Teacher feels like the wrong word. In a country as important as Pakistan, she's doing more than teaching me. Is it mentoring, mothering, guiding? I'm at a loss for the word, perhaps today, four years later, I still don't know what best captures what transpires in this kind of intense learning experience.

Each of the professors in the Urdu department pours their heart into students like me. In addition to the basic grammar, and essential verbs we learn, its the first 100 specialty words I learn that speak volumes about where I'm headed. Words that Anika Sahiba has been writing on the flip chart.

For months Anika Sahiba listened to me break-in my Urdu tongue, and help construct the mental infrastructure of what I will come to know as all things Pakistani. For instance, how to express, in that context, that I care. Before she sent me off, from the incubator of the language school into live-Pakistan, she introduced me to her mother and younger sister. We celebrated the Basant festival, flying kites similar to the competitions you have read about in the Kite-Runner.

When I arrived in Islamabad later that year it was her mother and sister who received me like family in a country that did not feel like home. They invited me onto their home for doodh pati and chicken karahi, they introduced me to gardening and how to hire house help, included me in their family wedding festivities, and dropped by during Ramadan.

A close relative of Anika Sahiba, Kiran, became a regular in my yoga circle. She opened world after world for me. Starting each life over, again and again, is difficult. One can only enter the real streams of any culture if someone invites you in, decodes it for you, helps you see the inside of this culture's beauty and terror.

Kiran included me in the book club in her home, we discussed Urdu Ghazals, Jinnah's view of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. As a professor at the all women's college in Pindi, Kiran invited me to sit in her Valentines Day lecture. The debate amongst the female grad students was around whether or not Valentine's Day should be celebrated? What is love? Is this a western imposed commercial holiday attempting to undercut their religion history and culture, or a moment to celebrate all kinds love?

She explained to me that the complexities of providing this level of graduation to women in Pakistan was very sensitive. Only 4 percent of the Pakistan population graduate from college. There are wildly mixed opinions about educating girls, at all, in certain parts of the country. She was serving with a passion I recognized from my months of study and conversation with Anika Sahiba.

Many marriages are arranged in Pakistan. And increasingly educated woman have a stronger inclination to challenge the status quo: to suggest to the patriarch that she might select her husband. Even voicing these kinds of challenges has resulted in removing the girl college, at a minimum, and on occasion has led to violence.

Each time I flew back to thew states,Anika Sahiba has been there to help me make sense of integrating what it means to live in the states when a place as trying as Pakistan was the land I had come to call home. In DC, she and her husband came to Third Street church of God with me. They participated in the Sammie's award ceremony. And most recently, helped throw my "Off to Colombia" party.

While Anika Sahiba has helped me make sense of my Pakistani life in the states, back in Islamabad in my daily mediation and yoga practices, it is Kiran that was there to help me make sense of the ongoing violence. She joined our morning Mysore practice, being one of the few who really embraced the value of learning to define one's own limits. I firmly believe and always tried to teach that the most important thing is to show up, at the same time, and same place for a minimum of 7 breaths. No need to over do it, and lose your practice entirely after 4 weeks. Kiran always knew just what she could sustain. She'd show up in the dark of pre-dawn morning, before Fajr and complete a few sun salutations, a bit of pranayama, and take her 7 breaths.

Kiran was one my Connectors, in the Malcom Gladwell sense of the word. She introduced me to some of the people who touched me most deeply in Pakistan. Like Saima, a blind friend of hers who had started an ngo to help the blind read. For a time, Kiran brought Saima to yoga classes. And Saima, a happily married, social activist and teacher ranks at the top of the list of most optimistic people I've met.

Maybe you can guess where I am going.

I remember one moment so vividly after an early attack on an Italian restaurant, the only one that served alcohol, run by a same sex couple in Islamabad. I've written about this before, I'd been there Thursday with dear Shamza and Friday with Ole Nadeem. Sat night, the exact table I had been sitting at was destroyed in an attack.

One of the main coping mechanisms I used to survive was convincing myself that it wasn't really that dangerous, but there were times when this strategy cracked. When my inside self would take over and convince me of the contrary. It had become so normal to never walk,jog or bike on the street, to travel in armored cars with a gang of armed escorts to practice weekly our emergency contact procedures. I remember sitting with Kiran in my living room preparing to meditate when she shared with me how scared she too felt. How concerned she was for the impact of these attacks on her two young sons. How she too was going to avoid markets and restaurants for a while. I felt so much better hearing how this important person and anchor would navigate the new reality.

Part of what becomes normal, but is really quite traumatic is the constant need to reconfirm that no one you know, or close to someone you know, had been killed by the most recent bomb. I remember when Aazar told me of his trip to Apara market, when the red mosque bomb exploded and he had to step over limbs to run out of the scene. I remember when the PC hotel blew up and Manisha was inside, running out barefoot with just her cell phone in hand. And last week, Anika wrote me to tell me that her brother in law had been killed by the Taliban. A direct attack on him by a suicide bomber. My heart breaks for this whole family. A family filled with people who model a well lived life, who care deeply, teach passionately and serve with their whole heart.

Reprinted with Kiran's permission, here is her reflection:

"Good bye Safi Lala"

Memories float by. I think of the last time I spoke to him – morning
of 14th July his birthday (he had joked about becoming an old man);
the last time I saw him ( he had preferred sitting out in the lawn and
sipped Mirinda (there was always a bottle of his favorite drink
hidden away from the children in the freezer - it’s still there); the
family lunch over which we collectively teased him about the media
interviews he was having to give in his Pushto accented Urdu (“bomb
putt gaee”) ; the “humour in uniform” anecdotes he related: a soldier
with a particularly large , manly mustache had been reprimanded by him
for hiding underneath the jeep during an exercise, ‘ look at the size
of your mustache and look at your behaviour’ - ‘sir my mustache is
not bullet proof’ was the curt reply; the time when he turned back
from the main door, took me aside and asked me quietly if everything
was okay; the daily early phone call he had made his routine after my
father’s passing away.

More than the words or gestures it’s the enveloping sense of
protection. It extended to everyone from the people who worked with
him to family to friends. He had convinced one of his seniors who was
reluctant to allocate budget for sun hats for the traffic policemen by
taking him out on the road and making him stand under the sun ‘you
can’t take ten minutes of it yet you expect my men to stand for hours
at a stretch without any protection’. After the kissa khawani
operation he was asked what he would like as a reward - he asked for
medical entitlement for the men he was leading.

The sense of pain is not just for the loss but for the senselessness
of the loss. How dare these sub humans snuff out a life that was a
source of strength for so many people. How dare they take away the
childishness in his children’s eyes and replace it with bewildered
confusion. For everyone whose lives he touched the sense of loss runs
deep.

They say that each person evokes a slightly different shade of your
spectrum , and that particular shade fades when that person isn’t
there anymore. The part I find myself personally grieving for is the
role of the little sister. Hearing’ Kinoo’ in his deep voice always
made it so easy to let go of adulthood and have him take care of
problems – never quite understood how he managed everything but he
did. Safi lala tha ba uwayoo was a standard solution each time life’s
trivialities got overwhelming. Now it’s not.

The world is a lesser place today.
Good bye Safi lala.



Pablo Neruda's Y cuánto vive el hombre, por fin?

How long is a man's life finally?
Is it a thousand days, or only one?
One week or a few centuries?
And how much does he live while he lives?
How long does a man's death last?
And what do we mean when we say, 'gone forever'?

We fret and ask so many questions
Then when it comes to us
The answer is so simple.

A man lives for as long as we carry him inside us,
For as long as we carry the harvest of his dreams,
And his work moves the lives of others,
For as long as we ourselves live,
Holding memories in common, a man lives.

His lover will carry her man's scent, his touch;
His children will carry the weight of his love.
One friend will carry his arguments,
Another will hum his favourite tunes,
Another will dance for him,
Another will broadcast the seed of his laughter,
And some will share his terrors.

And the days will pass with baffled faces, then the weeks, then the months,
Then there will be a day when no question is asked,
And the knots of grief will loosen in the stomach,
And the puffed faces will calm.
And on that day he will not have ceased,
But will have ceased to be separated by death.

How long does a man live, finally?
A man lives so many different lengths of time.