Sarfraz Manzoor

life and legacy of Jinnah. its a strange feeling to return to the same place and feel like a different person. i am not just returning to one mauseleum of course, i am returning to what is i suppose the motherland.  Once my family left Pakistan in the summer of 1974 they waited another eleven years before returning. I was fourteen years old and we visited Karachi and Lahore; one of the photographs i have from that time shows me and the rest of the famiy standing in front of the monument constructed in honour of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Fast forward twenty one years and there is below another photograph again with me standing in front of that monument but this time i am a 35 year old man, this time without my family and now returning to pakistan to make a radio documentary on the life and legacy of Jinnah. its a strange feeling to return to the same place and feel like a different person. i am not just returning to one mauseleum of course, i am returning to what is i suppose the motherland. the last time i was here was two years ago when i was in Lahore to collect my mother but this is the first time i have been in Pakistan not for family reasons but for journalistic ones and the experience has been utterly different. since arriving very early on sunday morning i have had the good fortune to meet some utterly fascinating people- journalists, publishers, academics and even a gentleman who was an aide to Mr Jinnah himself. on my first night in Karachi i was invited with my producer to a dinner party at a huge house in the prestigious Defence district. the guests were charming, sophisticated people, the sort i always knew must exist in pakistan but the sort i had never met on my previous visits. the thought that struck me while i was eating their sumptious food and refusing their kind offers of whiskey and beer was i wonder if this life would have been available to me had my father remained in pakistan? would i have had a chance to be invited to such an occasion? and the answer i am sure that i would not. instead my father had to leave and i had to become successful in britain to then be able to return to pakistan and be able to sit with the esteemed guests around that table. and thus the conclusion i come to when reflecting on that is how grateful i am to be living in britain and for my father to enabling that. for second and third generation immigrants there are of course issues of conflicted identity when they have been transplanted into another country but on reflection i would rather be wrestling with existential problems rather than economic ones and had i remained in this country i might have been less conflicted but i would also have been less likely to have had the opportunity to become a success.

there is no doubt that there is an incredible life to be lived in Pakistan if you are a member of the privileged class, all the things which seem to be out of bounds or unavailable to everyone else are available whether it is drink or casual sex or the best jobs and so on. but it all occurs behind closed doors and it can only occur inside. this is understandable but i think i would find it rather stifling. i would find it particularly stifling if i was female and some of my most fascinating conversations have been with women here who have told me what their views are about being female in this country. some have said straight up that pakistan is a deeply misogynistic hypocritical society where men fear women and especially female sexuality. others tell me that actually there are many opportunities for women here and that the silent majority in the country are actual secular and moderate. this suprised me as i was also told about hard it was to be female and not be judged constantly. if you smoke in a car you are intimating that you are loose and available. if you dare to live in an apartment on your own you become a target. one girl said it was easier to be gay in pakistan than a woman. i dont know how much this is true i am only reporting what i have heard but its certainly true that there does seem to be a huge contrast between the vision jinnah had for pakistan which was to be a secular democracy and the way that pakistan is portrayed and the way it arguably is which is a country where islam casts a huge shadow and the military are in power. if jinnah was alive now, i have heard countless people say, he would be appalled at how his vision has been betrayed. perhaps its not quite as grim as that and maybe the majority are not seduced by the mullahs but if there is a silent secular moderate majority it might an idea to start considering raising their voice.