NOT that I earned any of the checks in its pattern, but the keffiyeh I have is not bought at the abaya and rosary shops that sprang up across the country in the decades that followed its acquisition. The black-and-white checked headgear was given to me by a Palestinian girl, Wafa.
Not sure if I and many among my generation should consider ourselves fortunate or otherwise as Palestine for us is not some far-off land and its inhabitants some characters we read about in history books or whose map is spotted at sundry religious groups’ marches timed more for local political expediency than any deeper connection with Wafa and her people. The deep sense of helplessness causes this ambivalence as our ties with the Palestinians go further than political slogans and natural empathy with a people a majority of whom are our co-religionists. We went to school with them.
My alma mater, the University of Karachi (KU), counts among its alumni Sudanese, Somalis, Algerians, Iranians, Jordanians, Thais, Filipinos, and yes, Palestinians. We, the Sindhi, Baloch, Pakhtun, Seraiki, Punjabi, Gilgit-Baltistani, and Karachiite students, were concerned as much about Nelson Mandela’s continued incarceration under the apartheid regime as we were about Abu Ammar’s, aka Yasser Arafat, whereabouts in those days. Our sympathies and, dare I say, affiliations at times lost sight of the bigger picture and degenerated into bickering over support for Fatah and the Popular Front. Hamas was just making its presence felt. Yes! On the KU campus. One would avoid visiting their camps during the admissions drive lest our Fatah friends got offended.
The similarities between Pakistan and Israel are too many to enumerate here. The recycling of the same faces and policies in both polities sometimes reduces the entire political edifice to a game of musical chairs. Fear, nay perennial existential threat, marks the national psyche of both countries. Of late, the superior judiciary in Israel has come under the same type of pressure that we witness to varying degrees under almost all forms of government in Pakistan. While movements for restoring judicial independence have lasted longer over here, the scale and intensity of the recent pro-judiciary protests in Israel outdid a similar outpouring of support for the Supreme Court. And while both countries have relied on economic and military support from the US, in Israel’s case, the tail has usually wagged the dog, whereas we get called out every time we try to play smart with the Yanks. Moreover, they have Dimona and we have Kahuta.
It has been over 40 years, yet it seems like yesterday.
During a brief exchange programme in Boston, I once shared a room in a dorm with an Israeli rally race driver-turned-motor journalist. Whenever we were missing from class, we would jokingly tell our course mates, ‘Must be going through my things right now’. Not sure if it was deliberate, but religion and politics did not come up for discussion. He seemed like a decent guy, nothing like Benjamin Netanyahu or Amichay Eliyahu, who would not discount the nuclear option in Gaza. I hope he holds a similar view of me and does not think we’re all school and mosque bombers here.
During my university days, the departmental chair got furious when at a mock UN session, a few of us decided to declare that whatever peace process and solution was acceptable to the legitimate representative body of the Palestinians was good for us. The PLO had accepted the state of Israel. Our dear professor believed he knew better than the Palestinians what was best for them. We students were convinced that no amount of moral and diplomatic support gave us the right to second-guess those who lived cheek by jowl with the Israelis and whose generations had come up in refugee camps.
To make matters even more personal, Waheed and Abu Limun became my next-door neighbours in Karachi. All we had to do to exchange cups of tea and extremely thick and sweet coffee was to get to our rooftops and call out to each other. Our building was somewhat higher than theirs, but Abu was so tall he could stretch his arms and exchange steaming mugs. Life happened, and we all drifted apart. It has been over 40 years since, yet it seems like yesterday. Waheed’s kid sister back in the West Bank was named Maha. Wafa could not have been more than three when she gave me the keffiyeh. I pray that she and Maha have survived all that providence has in store for the Palestinians. I somehow have no such illusions about Waheed and Abu.
(An army of repression hides behind a fig leaf/ People of the olive groves became destitute).
The writer is a poet. His latest publication is a collection of satire essays titled Rindana.
shahzadsharjeel1@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2023
Wafa’s keffiyeh
64
0
11.11.2023
NOT that I earned any of the checks in its pattern, but the keffiyeh I have is not bought at the abaya and rosary shops that sprang up across the country in the decades that followed its acquisition. The black-and-white checked headgear was given to me by a Palestinian girl, Wafa.
Not sure if I and many among my generation should consider ourselves fortunate or otherwise as Palestine for us is not some far-off land and its inhabitants some characters we read about in history books or whose map is spotted at sundry religious groups’ marches timed more for local political expediency than any deeper connection with Wafa and her people. The deep sense of helplessness causes this ambivalence as our ties with the Palestinians go further than political slogans and natural empathy with a people a majority of whom are our co-religionists. We went to school with them.
My alma mater, the University of Karachi (KU), counts among its alumni Sudanese, Somalis, Algerians, Iranians, Jordanians, Thais, Filipinos, and yes, Palestinians. We, the Sindhi, Baloch, Pakhtun, Seraiki, Punjabi, Gilgit-Baltistani, and Karachiite students, were concerned as much about Nelson Mandela’s continued incarceration under........
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