The sting of insignificance

I remember when I was a teenager, around 15 or 16 years old- definitely less than 17 years old, because the memory is of my Qatar years- there was a certain party I went to. There was always this uncle who would try to trap me into arguing with him, but he was all sorts of fun so many a times, we would duel it out. I would feel like an adult, and my dad would usually feel ashamed by the end of the night.

On this particular day, we got into a heated debate in the room. Not me per se, but the people in the room. I was just in the house to grab a drink but the ferocity of the words being exchanged caught my attention and I stood back and stayed. I disagreed with most of them, in fact all of them, at least in one way or the other. There was a moment of silence at one point, everyone taking stock of what had been said, family relations, professional ties made them stutter for a second.

I spoke up and went on a rant. Perhaps because they had already said too much, they didn't say much. I weaved a tale, and as my own thoughts progressed while I spoke, as they do usually while one is debating off the cufff, I reached a conclusion in my head which I could not ignore. I stuttered, I had to say it, but I didn't know the reaction I would get. I was young- and the emotions of others are usually a passing thought at that ago- so I gave it no heed and said what I thought was logical as per the thought process I had just laid out.

"... we will be lucky if Pakistan exists in five years time"

Out of nowhere, I felt a slap hit my face. My dad had gotten up at some point, had ended up next to me for some water and had listened standing next to me. I remember that slap stinging harder than many others- it had a force to it i had never felt from my dad. The elders in the room started talking amongst themselves, some of the younger kids that had been leaning into the room giggled and I walked away feeling miserable.

Eleven years on, my words still sting. But they are truer today than ever before. Somehow, I do not think I will be sidelined in that room again, or that my dad will admonish me in the same manner this time around.

Its funny that theoretical exercises carried out by foreign governments within the confines of their training rooms wake Pakistanis up more than the truth which is all around us (Link) - that we are disintegrating as a nation, with no one holding us back. There is no unity amongst us, we are Punjabis or Sindhis much before we are Pakistani. I hear Sawat, Parichnar, Hangu, Peshawar, Balochistan, Lahore, Karachi- I never hear Pakistan. I wouldn't have noticed it because I know these places, but ask an Indian or a Bengali or a Egyptian or a Syrian or an Iranian or a Filipino- they will never say Aleppo or Cairo or Kerala or Manila first. Pride has dissipated from our history.

The educated of our nation decide to leave the nation days after they first experience the winds of the West. Back home, these people are derided as having left for women, alcohol and general malaise- but thats not true. They leave because once they step out of Pakistan they see for the first time in their life, the whole world going one way and Pakistan descending into another. They equate themselves with the rest of the world, because just as the rest of the world, they too want to improve, become better. But when they picture themselves with this attitude within their own nation, they are left with no choice but to consider a parting of ways. And so it is that Pakistan has lost its most ambitious people, its most educated youngsters- its promise has left, leaving behind a wilting population too un/miseducated to understand the game being spun around them, too power-less to have their voice heard, and too stupid to realize that someone is stealing from them again and again and again.

Chaos is Pakistan. Even the best of days here is the saddest of days somewhere else in the world. And many Pakistanis realize now that it will become much worse, and no one profers a caveat of 'before it gets better" anymore.

For me personally, this collapse, when it comes - if it comes, because as a human i still do hold a sliver of blind hope- will be earth-shattering. It will siganl the end of everything that has defined four generations of my family. It will be the end of one part of my identity, no matter how many times I will scream it in people's faces, it will not make sense to them, I will be a refugee who got out while the going was good. My children will call themselves Canadian, they will hide the fact that once their families used to belong to a nation that chose to kill itself. 60 years on, we will be whittled down to a paragraph in a history book.

Insignificance- that is why those words stung so hard when they were uttered by a 16 year old to a group of grown men.

They sting me too, I swallow before I say them too, but the truth is we will wither away in history, a blimp in the cosmos, overtaken by time- insignificant in our existence and forgotten in the annals of history.