Fawzia Naqvi - A tale of two passports

courtesy, Kafila
For the first time Pakistan’s elected President has completed his full five-year term and has willingly stepped down to transfer power to another elected President, a herculean achievement for a country with chronic dictatoritus.  The people of Pakistan must be congratulated for ensuring that democracy becomes an enduring grace and not just a good idea in some unforeseeable future.  So while there is earsplitting cacophony of debate and disagreement on virtually all issues, there is near unanimous political consensus that the army should remain in the barracks and that there should be peace with India. The time is now. And Pakistanis have accomplished this in an era when Pakistan is suffering its worst hellish nightmare of daily bombings and killings by terrorists, and a loss of over 40,000 of its own citizens in the last decade or so.  Pakistan teeters on the precipice of a very dark abyss, and has been inching ever closer to this dangerous edge for the last 34 years if not more. 

The first disturbing sign which I can remember was when the state institutionalized bigotry by officially declaring the Ahmadi community non-Muslim in 1974, opening up a hornets nest of discrimination, violence and unequal citizenship.  A tragic disaster, and fatal capitulation to right wing elements, by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. No one is really safe in today’s Pakistan but clearly those less safe, those hunted and killed are the Shias, the Christians, the Ahmadis and the Hindus. Those doing the killings have given insidiousness to the meaning of “the land of the pure.”

I am remembering the year 1979 as I rummage through a stack of old and now expired Pakistani passports, shoved inside the drawer of my bedside table. At the bottom of the pile are two passports stapled together back to back.  And there it is, my very first passport issued in Lahore on April 17, 1978 and renewed in Manila in 1983. The second passport is issued in New York in 1988. The 1978 passport has my very first Indian visa, dated April 19, 1979, the date written out by hand and signed by Mr. Rajinder Dutt, First Secretary Embassy of India, Islamabad. It is a three months single entry for a child with entry/exit at Attari, valid for a 7 days visit to New Delhi.  There is also my very first “no objection” stamp from the Pakistanis, giving me permission for a single visit to India. The no objection is valid for one year. 

My very first stamp at Attari is dated April 25, 1979 when I walked to India and then a stamp at Wagha dated April 30, 1979 when I walked back to Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first and only elected Prime Minister had been hanged on April 4, 1979. General Zia ul-Haq and the Pakistan military were firmly in control and preoccupied with the purification of Pakistan, rooting out any perceived impurities still lurking around. My two passports stapled back to back tell a tale about Pakistan and how we got to where we are in that country.

The cover of my passport says “Pakistan Passport” in both English and Urdu. Inside there is the passport number, my full name, the name of my father, my profession, the place of my birth, my height, visible distinguishing marks and finally my national status as Citizen of Pakistan.  Let us flip over to the passport issued to me ten years later in 1988 in New York. The cover now says Islamic Republic of Pakistan in both English and Urdu and additionally it says Passport in Urdu, then “Jawaaz al-Safar” in Arabic and then Passport in English.  The sudden appearance of Arabic on Pakistani passports also harkened to the large exodus of Pakistani labor to the Middle East, a majority being given employment in Saudi Arabia. Everything else inside my passport is the same except for one addition a religion line has been added.

In 1984 General Zia inserted into the constitution that all Pakistani parliamentarians must take an oath declaring Ahmadis Non-Muslim and all citizens must attest to that when applying for a passport. There are many brave Pakistanis today refusing to sign this odious form sanctioning hate and violence against Ahmadis. General Zia insured that Pakistan became an extraordinary anomaly in many disturbing and now devastating ways. The very act of proving citizenship now required committing oneself to egregious discrimination and violence against citizens of our own homeland. I recall a move by the All Pakistan Sipah-e-Sahaba (ASS)to encourage the newly labeled Majlis-e Shura, formerly called the Parliament, to propose that Shias wear markings which identified them as “Kafirs.” This deadly nexus between sectarian groups and some influential politicians dates far back to the era of General Zia Ul Haq, the self-anointed chief warrior of Islam. It was perhaps a step too far for most Pakistanis as well as neighbors such as Iran, which saved Pakistan’s Shias from this fate. So for at least three decades the Sipah- e-Sahaba and its cousins Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has settled instead for killing Shias wherever they can find them...
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It is a December dawn in Delhi when I drawback the thick curtains of my hotel room in Saket. I am simply mesmerized with the vision looming in the lifting mist. It is the Qutb Minar. Three decades later I am once again seeing this most spectacular monument, I believe it was the only historical site I was able to see in 1979. And upon every return to Delhi, I am now given a room with this view, the glorious Qutb Minar is always framed in my window, and perhaps in my mind’s eye when I think of Delhi.  The details of being here three decades ago are hazy and faded, but I am having flashbacks and trying to recall moments I haven’t thought of in so many years.

The flight from Amritsar to Delhi is somewhat of a blur except that a very young Sanjay Dutt was on our flight and when the Air India hostesses found out we were Pakistani children we were fawned over as minor celebrities ourselves. They were slim and pretty and wore sarees, and insisted we eat and drink because as their guests we must do so. I remember a lot of laughter and giggling.

I was met at the Delhi American School by my father’s college friends who were professors at JNU. I was to stay with them at their home on the JNU campus.

I went back to JNU for the first time in March 2013 and after my meeting I asked our host if she could tell me which direction the late Professor’s house used to be. My memories of JNU are again so faded. Perhaps it was uniquely the JNU slice of Delhi which I was exposed to, but my impression of Indians was that they valued intellect above all and that they lived a far simpler lifestyle than what we were accustomed to in Pakistan. I found no vestiges of flashiness or flaunting of wealth. 2013 reveals a very different Delhi, a place I cannot reconcile to the city and people I visited in 1979.  I have stopped trying to do so and have tried to re-program my thinking to believe it is indeed two different places. Driving through the gates of JNU this March I felt completely disoriented and in doubt as to whether I had ever been to JNU before. But I do remember the multi-storied house, I remember climbing the stairs to the rooftop and gazing out over the campus and far beyond. It was so much like Lahore in its grandeur and elegance and yet so different. It was also the very first time I had seen Hindu deities being carried during a religious procession in Chandni Chowk. I had never before seen so much humanity in narrow spaces and it overwhelmed me. And I remember emotions of disquiet, strangeness and trepidation of being amongst strangers. I felt alone as a Pakistani adolescent amongst Indians who I found peculiar, foreign and yet so familiar...
read more: http://kafila.org/2013/10/17/a-tale-of-two-passports-the-year-1979-and-walking-to-india-fawzia-naqvi/#more-20335