Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [133]
The barber who took care of my cut and shave was a middle-aged man named Arif—assigned to me because he was the only one who spoke English. Looking at one another we both raised our eyebrows in recognition. Then I cautiously inquired whether he was Pakistani.
“Of course I am Pakistani!” he exclaimed, breaking into a smile. After shaking hands like old friends, we switched from English into Urdu and he told me about his family, the house he was getting built for them, and how he longed to go back and be reunited with his homeland. It seemed that homeless Pakistanis were everywhere in the world.
During the course of the shave, when my neck was exposed to the ivory-handled blade and a trickle of foam ran down onto my chest, he stopped and looked at me in the mirror.
“What are you doing tonight?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“I’m going to a celebration. You should come.”
I thought it over for a moment. For a second my stomach clenched as I thought of Ittefaq and the last time I’d been invited somewhere by a Pakistani. “What sort of people will be there?” I asked hesitantly.
“Just average people,” he replied.
That wasn’t much to go on. “What time does it start?”
“After midnight,” he replied. As we exchanged glances in the mirror, I could see that he was confused about why I was being so reluctant. To a Pakistani, an invitation should be accepted out of consideration and kindness; it would be rude to refuse. When I stayed quiet, Arif shook his blade, wiped it, and then resumed scraping. Each time he wiped the little hairs onto the white napkin on the counter, he tried not to look at me.
Arif’s silence and confusion weighed heavily on me, so I tried to make small talk. “What do you think about what’s happening in Pakistan?”
He clicked his tongue and shook his head disapprovingly. “What is there to think? These people are giving a bad name to Islam.”
“Which people?” I asked, suddenly alert.
“These people who blow people up. That’s not Islam. Don’t they understand that Islam is about moderation? They are giving every Muslim a bad name. In the West people think badly about us.”
“Yes,” I said, encouraging him. “These people are responsible for many deaths, including those of Muslims, and of heightening tensions between Westerners and the Muslim world.”
“What can you do?” he said, sighing. “They’re out of control.”
I became quiet again. I wanted to tell Arif that if he joined me he world learn that the militants could, in fact, be controlled. I was envisioning him as the working-class hero of my movement to reform the religion, but I couldn’t form the words. Instead, I told him that I’d join him at his celebration.
Around midnight Arif and I met at the barbershop to go together in his car and arrived at an empty field serving as a makeshift parking lot. We were far removed from the part of town where the glamorous shops and restaurants were located, though we could see the skyline in the distance.
Leaving the car, we walked toward a small, squarish structure at the end of the lot. Gathered outside it numerous people—all men—were shaking hands, embracing, and kissing cheeks. Arif patted me on the back with a pleased look on his face before introducing me to a number of people, most of them wearing traditional clothes. I quickly realized that all of them were Pakistanis. Urdu, Punjabi, and a little bit of Pashto flowed among the congregants. There was a lot of