Monthly Archive for June, 2007

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Day 021 – Electricity is down

Published on June 21, 2007 in Thinking mood. 0 Comments

It happens here quite often, too many people in Karachi/Pakistan, not enough sources of energy. What it made me realize is how cut off we are from world…

At the moment when electricity went down, the fan stopped turning and my skin started to pour droplets of sweat. With the white noise of fan-turning gone, I have started to notice the sounds of city around, wind in streets, cars honking, people shouting.

I went to the bathroom, the most hot and damp plate in the flat, and for a while just stood and felt my body water leaking from every pore of my skin.

After a while the electricity came back, I took a shower and went back to the room where everything was back in normal… what a pity.

God is in the rain, not the thunder

Published on June 21, 2007 in Taken from others. 0 Comments

Plenty of people shout that God talks to them and tells them how to vote. But Leonard Pitts Jr. introduces a man who heard God whispering _ about how to live.

Leonard Pitts, Jr.

It has become axiomatic that just about anyone who invokes God in public these days is seeking to hijack either your pocket or your politics.

We have created God in our own image, endowed him with our characteristics. Small wonder that when people come before us claiming to speak with his voice, what we hear usually speaks only of human frailties and fears. God wants a yes vote on Proposition A! God wants you to send $100 to Rev. Jim! God wants you to elect a new school board!

They say they speak with the voice of God, but they don’t. This isn’t the voice that whispers when raindrops fall. Rather, it’s a thunder of insecurity, a roar of self-righteousness, a clamoring racket of religious and political hacks all claiming a hotline to heaven.

I guess that’s why Chris Carrier’s story resonates. I guess it’s why I’m struggling to conceive what seems inconceivable.

You see, Carrier, of Coral Gables, Fla., was abducted in 1974, when he was 10. His captor burned him with cigarettes, punctured his skin with an ice pick, shot him in the head and left him to die in the Everglades. The boy survived, though he lost sight in one eye. No one was ever arrested.

Then, recently, a man confessed to the crime and Carrier went to see him. He found David McAllister, a 77-year-old ex-con, frail, blind and living in a North Miami Beach nursing home that reeks of excrement. And Carrier befriended him. Began dropping by every day to visit, read to him from the Bible and pray with him.

No arrest is forthcoming; the statute of limitations on the crime is long past. Carrier says that’s fine with him. “When I look at him,” he told a reporter, “I don’t stare at my abductor and potential murderer. I stare at a man, very old, very alone and scared.”

First thought: Is Carrier crazy? Maybe. But if so, it’s a good crazy. Or at least, a crazy that gives pause.

The man is serious about God. I don’t say that because he has a master’s degree in divinity and until recently was the director of youth ministries at his church. Nor because by the time you read this, he will have moved to Texas, where he and his wife and two daughters plan to open a Christian bookstore.

I say it because he bowed alongside a man who tried to kill him.

I know I couldn’t do it. The same probably goes for any number of TV preachers and pious politicians. We lack the humility, I think. We haven’t the guts or the conviction.

Yet at the same time, those same sellers of sanctimony fill our political and social arenas, preying like hawks upon troubled minds that just want to reach a state of grace.

It’s worth noting that Chris Carrier didn’t stump for money, a vote, or “family values.” Instead he tried against all logic to redeem one weak and dirty little scrap of man. His deed reminds me of something I heard once in a gospel song: “Maybe God is trying to tell you something”.

It’s a quaint notion, I’ll grant you. Does anyone still believe the deity speaks in a voice that fills the stillnesses? Isn’t that just a conceit we wished up one day out of loneliness, a way of avoiding the idea that we might be unaccompanied in the universe?

I don’t offer an answer, only an observation: believing gets hard sometimes. Because we have created God in our own image, and it’s not a pretty sight.

So I’m glad Carrier did this crazy deed. It strikes me as an affirmation of things I’d like to believe. That the highest work of a lifetime is to become a truly human being. That courage sometimes disguises itself in unconventional forms. And that divinity often speaks not in the crash of thunder, but in the soft murmur of rain.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald

Sunday, September 29, 1996

Day 016 – Trip to the public beach

Published on June 16, 2007 in At the sea. 0 Comments

It was a weird Saturday, after working we agreed to meet at the office and decide where to go… It took us one hour and lots of phonecalls to make a list of possibilities (as You might see at picture below, there is not at all many, Karachi is quite a boring city!).

…btw, its Emad, he is not frustrated (not too much), just posing…

We have picked to go to the beach and than watch a movie. I am adding pictures from the beach, it was surelly beautiful, in my kind of perception. For some others it could have been only lots of people on a piece of sand with the colour and softness of concrete. Some say that it is a result of a eco disaster – oil tank crash – that happened in 2003 (others claim it was like this always).

It was amazing to see all the sellers of: roasted corn, bread, sweets, cigarettes, icecream. As attraction You can buy: ride on camel or horse, that a guy takes out a snake out of his sack and lets it dance by flute… In fact if You pay enough, he will let the cobra fight a weasel, but thats a dirty business, because the snake or the weasel dies in it… Dirty business.

And I have finally been flying a kite… In the city of wind, the temptation to fly a kite was huge, but I couldnt find it anywhere. And now there it is – sellers with a plastic aeroplane made out of trash. I have to admit that the design is amazingly simple and efficient.

Day 012 – The new generation of Pakistanis might…

Published on June 12, 2007 in Thinking mood. 0 Comments

…not be up to the challenge to be the change the country needs.

As this “new generation” You have a good life here. You start from a high standard, Your family can finance Your studies and You meet only people of Your class . Your family servant drives You to school and prepairs Your food. You dont go to other parts of town except of Yours, go for holidays to Europe and fly to other places in Pakistan (which have Your standards of living). After You get a quality university education, multinational corporations target You and take You and give You a job. The state doesnt give a sh*t about You (no state-run pension system or social support exists in Pakistan) and only thing that it wants from You is Your tax, on the other hand, the company You work for is offering You free training, allows You to travel abroad and gives You paid holidays.

A lot of Young Pakistanis are proud to be Pakistanis, but have never traveled their own country and dont have problem to leave the country, heading for USA or UK, as soon as they get the needed years of practical experience in Pakistan.

There is also one more factor. In Slovakia the brain drain from the whole country leads talents to the capital. Most (80%) of my uni ex-classmates work in Bratislava, life is comfortable and acceptably safe there, jobs are always available, wages are higher. In here, there is not such a place, no city is safe enough (only parts are), thus people with potential dont have where to go… except of abroad.

NGOs wont save the country, they will just help those at bottom survive. Governemt is selfconcerned and only wants to bring foreign investments (without the need of bringing also foreigners and their “wild” ideas of free thinking, that would bring “instability”). The needed drive is in the hands of Young people and the slowly rising ammount of middle class…

“Be the change You want to see in the world” Mahatma Gandhi

Day 011- If You can read these lines, You are lucky… Thats how World is!

Published on June 11, 2007 in Thinking mood. 0 Comments

Like the previous post, also this one is based on my chats with people at the beach house.

The problem of this country (and developing countries in general) is illiteracy. 70% of population cannot write or read and also among those 30% are also such that can only sign themselves. As I come from country where education is obligatory by law and illiteracy is under 3%, its hard to think of the consequences…

The most frightening result is terorism… You have to accept the fact that most of the “holy” fighters – mujahedins – have never read Koran, simply because they can not read.

The person who made me realize this has given me a simple equation – if You cant read, You get no education, if You dont get education Your mindset and thinking is very “straightforward” and simple minded , thus You believe what You are told. Pakistanis have culturally one weak spot – they are not used to question what they are told, when You combine it with their inborn emotional nature, its a potential (bomb) waiting for a person to use it… in good and bad.

To make the picture complete, You should know that most of population of Pakistan lives from less than 2 USD per day (e.g. are considered to be “officially” poor). The scissors are opening more and more. Pakistan doesnt have a clear middle class. There are people who are extremely poor, people extremely rich and people MEGA extremely rich (and some people somewhere in between). The low class is fighting for a better life, seeing the rich ones, they get frustrated and thus are also very easily to be manipulated. Btw this fight is visible, phone snatches or robbery is frequent (mostly foreigners are targets).

You should know that You are a lucky person, if You can read this lines, You can read and write, have electricity, PC/notebook, internet, freedom of what You read, knowledge of English, free time for Yourself… You are on top of the iceberg, just think how many people are under You (and how many people are out of Your sight, under the sea level, lost, where they get from only if something BIG happens. Lets hope that the iceberg doesnt turn.)

Day 010 – Short term thinking of Pakistanis…

Published on June 10, 2007 in Thinking mood. 0 Comments

The content of this post is based on the discussions I had during the Barbeque on beach yesterday. I had a talk with some four people and each of this chats has left me amazed how different and interesting the country is… I will try to make You understand the opinions and my feelings while listening to these people.

The first thing is Pakistanis have a short term thinking. If You look carefully, You will see the proofs everywhere. There were two moments that made this clear during this trip. The beach house was rather dump and had visible steps of decay, when I asked about it I was told that its one of the best ones on the beach, why? “It was not built to last, its just some companies or rich people building them so they have where to spend a weekend from time to time.” The other moment was when it was desert time, the desert was a traditional thing, something like sweet milk-rice in a clayware shell (shaped like UFO). After they ate the (delicious) content, they just threw away (literally, practicing “target shooting”) the shells in the trash can. When I asked about this, I was told that there is not other use for them and they are cheap anyways.

After You accept this fact, You can see it in the political system, where the goal is to get there and get “bundled up”, in their custom to throw the trash out of window (birds or poor people will take about it), on the streets, where everything looks old and not taken care about (once You build something, You stop thinking about it, why clean it? it anyways gets dirty by dust…).

Why is this so interesting? Example: At the shells issue, I was asked what would we (Slovaks) do with them (as they have no other usage). Well, we would not even make this kind of disposable package on first place. Mostly because Slovaks are tought on exactly the opposite: “spare, care, dont throw away” The reason? I think Slovaks have been tought to be like this because they never had enough to waste (poor since the birth of the nation), we have never been our own masters untill 1993. (Most) Pakistanis are very poor even now so why dont they behave similar? Why are they concerned only with what they personally need and the rest, bye… Well, Pakistanis are very proud and before the British came, they were the ultimate masters of whole Indian subcontiment. Might be this difference that cause this antimony?

What it brings? One of the very visible impacts of this is that You can see 100 or 200 years old buildings fall apart. You see that the national museum has not changed since it was built and only thing they do is wash away the dust (sometimes)… I have a serious concern that this country will not have a single remembrance of the last 200 years, it will just all fall into ash. They even have an explanation – we want to get rid of our colonial heritage (proud people, as I said before). But in a country where English often is second native language its quite ridicolous. No NGO or GO that would aim on preserving Pakistani heritage was known to the people I have talked to. To finish it up, TV and media show only the dark side of Pakistan, nobody makes picture of the beautiful places (that are slowly dissappearing).

What kind of record will have children of the todays children of the world we live in?