The Person of Passion

My cousin Akram bought a new house in Rahim View, the same colony I live in, and he gave me the responsibility to arrange a person for re-coloring the walls of his house. I asked around and the snow ball connection of the people I know finally brought me to Nizar bhai who many people said was really good in coloring the walls of apartments. I hired him, and spent some time with him while he was coloring the walls. He talks a lot, and after the second day he started talking about his family and his life in general. He told me that he has to go home and cook meal for his daughter. I asked him what happened to his wife that he has to cook because it is very uncommon in Pakistani culture for males to cook. He said “Womeribachike paidaish ke 1 saal baad mar gai mere liye”. I said sorry, but I was confused if she got divorce or actually died.  His story got my interest and I felt the desire to explore his life more and to listen to what he has to say about how his life is compared to other people he meets. After the coloring was done in a week, I found him in a Dhaaba every night 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm when there is a power breakout in our area. I continued talking to him informally every day, and last night I asked his consent if I can use the information he provided me during the last month for an anthropological research paperabout his life?He said: “Koi baatneheyar, mukhtasar si zindagi hae meri, kisi se kia chupana. Hum to khuli kitab ki tarah hain. Ap ko kuch aur puchna hae to puch laen.” I asked him a few more specific questions and this paper is an attempt, in light of all these discussions, to look at his life putting him in the web of socio-cultural and economic factors that have shaped him to be who he is, or otherwise how he has shaped these factors to make his life what it is now.

            It is very interesting how Nizar said that his life is like an open book. I was amazed by how this notion that he presented synchronizes with the idea of Clifford Geertz when he says: “Doing ethnography is like trying to read a manuscript” (Geertz, 1973). It seemed very true during my research, because I was actually opening up texts from different chapters of his life in the context of the societal framework. The first thing I reconnoitered was about his family and kinship. Nizar has a very short family of two; he and his daughter, and he divorced his wife a year after their daughter was born. His family is actually from Baluchistan, and his dad migrated to Karachi to find job and they never went back to Baluchistan. He has three brothers and two sisters, but he has no connection with his brothers and he talks to his sisters on phone only. He says: “They have their lives and I have mine, I do not like to interrupt them”. I tried to emphasize on how can he say that, but then I stopped myself thinking that maybe I was looking into his life from my rural eyes where there is a lot of community and family sense. Are most urban families like that that they do not care much about families and kinship? I wonder had his dad not migrated and he was stillliving in his village in Baluchistan, would that have helped in keeping their family together? I guess it is another research question which one can explore to find the relation of families in the urban and rural settings. I inferred that in his culture, the kinship is usually defined by patrilineal descent because he never talked about his mother’s family at all.

            Nizar got married in 1920 to a girl he loved. His wife was the sister of his brother-in-law. There was already an existing relationship which made his marriage happen very easily. This way of selecting spouse he says is quite common in Baloch culture. His main focus though was that it was a romantic love which made him to select his wife. I think selection of spouse because of romantic love is getting quite common in Pakistan nowadays. As Levine says: “Whether the cause of romantic love, biological or cultural or both, is an increasingly common basis for marriages in many cultures” (Levine et al. 1995). It was quite heart-breaking to hear him say with a very sad face: “Usi se shadi kia jis se pyar tha, lekin pher baad me jis se pyar tha usi se nafrat hone lagi”. They got divorced in 1998 because things did not work out very well. When I asked him why he got divorced, he said “Sir marne se behtar hae jaan churaun. Zabardasti ka rishta nehe nibhata, mere liye Do or die situation hae, Yes ya No hae, bus.” It is an interesting perspective that relations cannot be forced on anyone, and he brought in some English to enforce his point but I do not know how that was a ‘do or die situation’.  I got what he wanted to say, but the change of language I guess was more profound way for him to convey the message although it would not have made much sense to any English speaker. I think he also wanted to sound more professional and formal by speaking these few words in English. It is a depiction of how a very common person like Nizar is also still effected by our colonial history and that how we are still colonized mentally that we consider English more formal than Urdu.

            The part which attracted me the most is that how great of a father Nizar is to raise his daughter as a single dad. I have not seen many such cases in my life in Pakistan, because either the kid is taken away by the mother or the father gets married again to another woman. Nizar did not get married because he thought that marriage might take him away from taking care of his daughter. He didn’t give his daughter to his ex-wife because she got married to someone else and Nizar had no guarantee that the new husband of his wife would take good care of his daughter. Again, he did not want his daughter to follow matrilineal descent for her kinship because that would have then obviously broken his ties with his daughter. I am confused if it is the patriarchal system which made him take this decision “to be a man” and take care of his daughter, or it was the real feeling for his daughter. This really broke many stereotypes like fathers are not as affectionate towards kids as mothers or that mothers’ love can never be given to kids by fathers, etc. He said: “Baap koshish kare to maa ka kaam karsakta hae. Mae ne kiya na yar. 1 saal ke bachi ki 21 saal tak parvarish ki, aur wo khush hae. Aur kia chahye”. He says that his mother helped her for the first 3 years to raise his daughter but then she died as well and he was all alone to take care of his daughter.His daughter has done matriculation and is working with FOCUS, a disaster management organization, as an intern. Nizar still cooks for her every day except when she would like to cook for herself or cook her favorite food. Nizar has to earn and as well as do most of the house chores. He says that he never forces his daughter to do anything. This is again an intriguing form of power relation that although he is the dad, he lets his daughter decide whatever she wants to do; and it is quite hard to find such power relation between parents and children where kids have as much power as the parents. He even lets her meet her mom who lives in the same colony they live in now. I was thinking when he was saying all this that is the kid still her daughter legally as she is married now, and does the kid calls her and consider her as a mother or something else? Is marriage really about legalizing and divorces about de-legalizing relationships?

            Nizar’s dad used to do the work of coloring walls and he found interest in it as well and started doing wall coloring from very early age. He did his matriculation from Government School, Nazimabad but then he had to quit education because of domestic and financial issues. He wanted to study, but had he gone to college; he didn’t have money to feed himself and his mother. He had no option other than start working as a labor wherever he found an opportunity. After his dad died, his brothers went to different places, got their own families and lived separately. Nizar was the youngest of all, so he lived with his mother in his mother’s sister’s house. After his mother died in 2006, he left his aunt’s place (or was made to) and he said that he spent two years living on the footpath. When I asked him if any of his family members helped him or why didn’t he ask them for help, he said: “Nehe, Bhai to apnehainlekinbhabian to apni nehe na, islye bhaion ke paas nehe gya aur behen to waise bi behen hain, unse to mang nehe sakta tha. Aur waise bi Allah deraha hae, kisi aur se kia mangna”. This statement tells a lot of things like he thinks that it is not fine at all to get any gifts from his sisters because they are women although he told me that one of his sister lives in the USA. I see that in his culture or only him as a person is limiting getting gifts to males only. Secondly, he does not think of his “bhaabis” as part of his family and that is why he lived on the footpath instead of going to his brothers. I am not judging him or saying that he is doing it wrong, but I think it is just a simple outcome of the patriarchal society he lives in and it has made its roots into his mind and has shaped his behaviors. The last part of his statement also makes me wonder if this notion of believing in Allah and not to ask from anyone except Him disturbs the gift exchange economy.

            One day I asked Nizar bhai if I could meet him at his house and I think he trusted me enough by then that he gave me his address. I was quite surprised to see that he lives in a bungalow now with two bedrooms, 1 drawing room, a sitting area and a kitchen. It is a beautiful house and is very well maintained. He earns 15000-25000 rupees per month, and it is quite enough for him, his daughter and for paying the rents of the bungalow. He has lived in different parts of Karachi. He used to live in Karimabad before coming to Salima Garden, but he says that the same amount (5000) he pays for a bungalow here was what he also had to pay for a single room in Karimabad. He never owned a house and has always lived in a rented house, but he is grateful that because of changing houses so many times; he got to know a lot of people. It is remarkable to see the rent difference of houses between different parts of the city, and I think it is also because of the British division of Karachi. They had made certain parts like Clifton and Defense area the places for the British elites to live with development and modernity happening very rapidly as compared to all other parts of the city and we have continued that tradition of demarcation of space till now.

            The daily routine of Nizar is quite simple: Wake up at 6:00 am, work till 4:00 pm (when there is work), rest for 2 hours at home till power goes off, spends 6:00-8:00 in the chai Dhaaba talking to his friends and then goes home, cooks food, eats and sleeps. He says that he does not have anything to do for fun, and he does not like going out on hang outs, does not do any drugs and does not play games. I asked him how he was dealing with his sexual life now that he is single for 20 years. He said that he has killed it and he never thinks about it. I wonder if he is being honest and that he never masturbates or goes to brothels, but he says that it is a psychological pressure to have sex and believes that he has overcome that pressure. He says: “Nafs pe qaboo panae sae Allah insan ko kamyab karta hae”. Nizar is a Shia Imami Ismaili Muslim and he believes that religion has a great role in his life.  His religion is best for him because he thinks that his religion is respected throughout the world. I asked if he ever tried to get to know any other religion. His reply was “Mujae na masjid aur na mandir ki zarurat hae kiu ke hamare paas raah dekhane wala hae aur mera mazhab sub se acha hae”. Isn’t that what everybody says that there religion is the best? I think that people are brain washed in every religion to be the most dedicated followers and that is why they never look into any other religion to understand them or to take them as an option.  An interesting thing Nizar bhai told me was that the decision of who will take their daughter was not made through a court but by the Ismaili National Council. This is quite practical influence of religion in one’s life that people can actually accept such big decisions from a religious organization.

            Nizar is happy with what he is doing and he is very passionate about his work. He says that honesty in his work gives him respect and his aim is to serve as many people as possible with full dedication. I asked him in a discussion about what would be the ideal life for him and what would his dream house look like. He denied both of my questions by saying that he is just happy with whatever he has and houses are just meant to give you  shelter. For the first few hours while I was reflecting on this, I thought that how he has not set any dreams and that he is a person with no future plans. After reflecting for a day, I started realizing that how much I am personally effected by the market and modernity that I looked at Nizar’s life from a total neo-liberal perspective. Why should we have dreams or why should we always care about the future? This idea is imposed on us by the market through the invisible hands, like the advertisement of Pepsi: “Dil hae to Mangae aur” or Bahria Town: “The dream place to live” or even Habib University’s motto of “Shaping Futures”. This is very fascinating that how as a researcher I was being very biased, but now I think that Nizar is so lucky that he has protected himself from the waves of modernity and from the overtaking of the market language.

            It is impossible to put Nizar’s life into few pages as he himself said that he is like an open book, and some books never end. Nevertheless, I am really glad that I got to sightsee his life and to find a common person in the society who is actually breaking many stereotypes, like flipping the gender roles or going against the market influence. He says that the only responsibility he has left is the marriage of his daughter and then he will be free. This is again attention-grabbing that he is thinking like a father and a mother at the same time, but it is also the society that levies on him that he must take the responsibility of his daughter’s marriage. In other cultures like in the USA, parents are no more accountable for their kids after they are sixteen year old, but the Pakistani culture is different and this difference makes our world a diverse and beautiful place to live. Nizar does not care about being judged that why he did not marry again or why would someone dedicate his whole life to his daughter. He says: “Koi mere barae mae kia sochta hae mujae kuch farq nehe parta, bohat qesem ke log hain dunya mae.” Although we live in a complexly webbed society, we can still have your own identity which nobody can ever share with us. We do not exist as an individual person who is cut off of the socio-cultural and economic system, but we can always break these social construct and live the life that we really want. If Nizar is happy with his life and does not want to compare his life with anyone else, everyone else can also strive to free themselves from the societal constructs. The comparison of lives should never be the objective of ethnography because each person is a whole word in himself/herself, but the aim is to understand how society frames every one of us in a certain way. I conclude my paper with what I started with; the beautiful poem of Baba Fareed who has very well explained the life of Nizar. Roughly translated it means:

“Eat your own dry Roti (Bread) and drink the cold water, but do not feel bad by looking at the Chopri (oiled Roti) of others”.

Bibliography

Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. New York: Basic Books.

Miller, B. (2002). Cultural anthropology (2nd Ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Levine, R., Sato, S., Hashimoto, T., &Verma, J. (1995). Love and Marriage in Eleven Cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 554-571.