I am (unashamedly) pro-American —Kamran Shafi
Whilst Khaled surely means the American state when he says America, why should the name only denote the state? Why should it not denote its people? Just as the vast majority of the Pakistani people are not responsible for the excesses of their governments, so too should the Americans not be held responsible for the doings of theirs
Khaled Ahmed writes in his piece, Voodoo of being pro-American, (Daily Times July 20): “There was a time when rightwing Pakistanis were not afraid of saying that they were pro-American. The leftwing intellectuals used to laugh sarcastically at this confession. Now no one wants to admit that he is pro-American. He can’t even confess that he believes that there are also things that the Muslims do wrong. We have reached a point where nothing is objectively analysed because the device of blaming the Americans for everything we do wrong is so easily available”. How right he is, for being the hypocrites we are, we are constantly in denial. The American government helps of course, by being so arrogant so needlessly.
Whilst Khaled surely means the American state when he says America, why should the name only denote the state? Why should it not denote its people? Just as the vast majority of the Pakistani people are not responsible for the excesses of their governments, so too should the Americans not be held responsible for the doings of theirs.
Well, let me say it loudly, here and now, I am pro-American. And, come to think of it, pro-Brit too. Note immediately please that I did not say I was pro-George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, or pro- any the other beauties who make up the criminal, un-elected, neo-con junta that has the United States by the throat. Neither am I pro-the-Iraq- assault by the US and its Brit poodle. Nor am I (any longer, might I add) pro-Tony Bliar, nor pro- the witch doctors that helped Blair lie to high heaven about WMDs and Saddam’s capability to put them together and launch them inside of forty-five minutes as the pretext for joining the American junta in launching the assault on Iraq. But I sure am pro-American; and pro-British.
I am pro-American and pro-British for many reasons, only two of which I have room for today: first because of my very good and very dear friends who are Americans and very good and very dear friends who are British: I am pro-American because of Don Gazan, an American Jew (I mention his religion deliberately), whom I met and became friends with in Tokyo in 1981. He and his Japanese wife welcomed me into their home as a family member. A home I could go to and stay at whenever it took my fancy to get out of Central Tokyo for a few days, whenever I needed a respite from the fast pace of life in the mega-polis, whenever I needed a little TLC. There wasn’t a gentler person than Don, small and wiry but with a heart as big as himself.
Don had served in Vietnam as a clerk in a supply unit, the equivalent of our Army Service Corps. He chose to stay on in South East Asia after his tour of duty was (mercifully for him) over. He went to Japan, got a job as an English language teacher, met and married his wonderful wife and put down roots in the Tokyo area. I hope he and his are well: I have had no contact with him ever since my electronic diary died on me some years ago. With it I lost all the addresses and telephone contacts put together over a period spanning something like 30 years of my life. Nobody ask me please why I was fool enough not to have a back up of some sort: I have kicked myself enough.
I am pro-American also because of my very dear H who honoured me so by calling me her elder brother: a beautiful, bright, well informed, vivacious, and oh so gracious woman who has been such a friend to my family and I for twenty years and more now. How fondly I remember her visiting my farm, often with her son Edward, who was a great hit with everyone for his chaste Punjabi! He is a fine young man now, combining the great qualities of head and heart of both his mother and father.
I am pro-American because of Pat and Laura and another of our nearest neighbours in Stony Creek, Connecticut, when we were in the United States for a year, my wife a Fulbright scholar. On the very first morning of our arrival into a house which had not a stick of furniture in it there was a knock on the door and there was this lovely looking woman, Pat, standing there asking if we needed any furniture, she having an attic-full which wasn’t being used at the time. Yes, I said, we did need some, and rattled off a list. We soon had a dining table, some dining chairs, two beds and other odds and ends. Pat quickly became our 8-year old Zainab’s ‘surrogate grandmother’, to whose house the child used to run as soon as she got off the school bus.
Pat was (is, indeed) a retired science educator and had great contacts with the leading science teaching and teacher-training research institutions in the United States and my wife was soon in contact with, apart from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, where Prof Bruce Vogeli was her supervisor, the Smithsonian Institution; the National Science Foundation; the School of Education, City College of New York, and other such, through this remarkable woman. Indeed, Pat herself, and all these institutions, donated so generously so much training material, laboratory equipments and books for elementary science education in Pakistan that we have to date not found the money to transport them to Pakistan (after a ‘friend’ let me down a full two years ago).
As to Laura, a creative artist and working woman, she was such a help in so many ways that it is just not possible to enumerate them here. Suffice it to say that she and her husband Jim and their two boys made our stay in Stony Creek that much better, that much more enriching. I mean, dash it, you could telephone Laura in the dead of night and ask her to please look after Zainab for there was a family emergency one had to attend to in another city miles away. She and her family were always there for us.
These were people we had befriended; with whom we were on visiting terms. There were other acts of kindness by people with whom we were only on waving terms, so to say. There is no more telling example than the time when Zainab locked herself out of the house and couldn’t get in. The bell wasn’t working, I was in the study writing and my wife was taking a shower. The poor child just sat down on the front steps and began to cry. The lady from across the street saw her, took her by the hand to her house and told her stories until my wife went looking for Zainab and found a contented child drinking milk and eating biscuits and listening to American folk tales.
I am pro-American because even today, barring some cases of abuse of Pakistanis or “Middle-Eastern looking” persons, and in spite of the bigoted and obscurantist John Ashcroft and others of his ilk sitting atop law enforcement, most people from Pakistan are more fairly treated there than they are in this, their own country. Just go to any police station anywhere, in any province, and find out for yourself, gentle reader.
As to the British, whilst one has many wonderful Brit friends too, there is not space anymore to recount their individual acts of kindness and care. Let us then, just take the attitude of the British state towards refugees, mainly economic asylum seekers from this part of the world. It is molly coddling all the way. And this despite the abuse the misogynists’ heap upon their benefactor! I wonder how many of you know, but according to the Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the organisation that has done the most, almost irreparable harm to the image of our religion across the world, the flag of the Khilafah (Caliphate) will first fly atop Buckingham Palace!
Why it won’t fly from Mubarak’s palace or King Fahd’s or Gaddafi’s or Musharraf’s Army House they won’t tell us. But I shall try next week to tell you why it will first fly on Buck House.
PS: I am no “rightwing” Pakistani
Kamran Shafi is a freelance columnist
dailytimes.com.pk |
