I’ve always had problems with borders. Maybe it’s because the place I call home keeps changing. Or maybe it’s what causes me to keep changing the place I call home. I’m not sure.
Either way, the basic itinerary of my life has been this: born in Pakistan, moved to Washington DC at age eighteen, to Pakistan again at 28.
When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist. In Istanbul , I wasn’t dreaming of the next meal or next sight. I was dreaming of moving there.It was a city most suited to nomadic spirit.
A Pakistani friend of mine called me water lily.My friend, a Lahore-born nomad like myself, had a theory about us. We spoke Urdu, cooked mutter keema, danced the bhangra, regularly overslept; we had roots.
And yet we drifted from place to place. So he called us water lilies, after a plant rooted not in earth but in ponds and streams. At that time I scoffed at his poetic sensibilities.
Now being in Pakistan and supposedly being "home" I still feel like an alien I guess I am a water liliy after all.
If home is where the heart is, my heart is forever moving, a gypsy
If a piece of cloth and a stadium slogan is a test of nationalism,
I have no nation
If piety is measured in prayers, in a ledger in a language I don’t understand,
I am a heathen
If speech is an adequate expression of sentiment,
I have no words
If living by somebody else’s rules is sociability,
I am a misfit
If white is black and black is white,
then I don’t exist.
Either way, the basic itinerary of my life has been this: born in Pakistan, moved to Washington DC at age eighteen, to Pakistan again at 28.
When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist. In Istanbul , I wasn’t dreaming of the next meal or next sight. I was dreaming of moving there.It was a city most suited to nomadic spirit.
A Pakistani friend of mine called me water lily.My friend, a Lahore-born nomad like myself, had a theory about us. We spoke Urdu, cooked mutter keema, danced the bhangra, regularly overslept; we had roots.
And yet we drifted from place to place. So he called us water lilies, after a plant rooted not in earth but in ponds and streams. At that time I scoffed at his poetic sensibilities.
Now being in Pakistan and supposedly being "home" I still feel like an alien I guess I am a water liliy after all.
If home is where the heart is, my heart is forever moving, a gypsy
If a piece of cloth and a stadium slogan is a test of nationalism,
I have no nation
If piety is measured in prayers, in a ledger in a language I don’t understand,
I am a heathen
If speech is an adequate expression of sentiment,
I have no words
If living by somebody else’s rules is sociability,
I am a misfit
If white is black and black is white,
then I don’t exist.
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