Discontent and Its Civilizations

Recently I was strolling along Amsterdam’s canals with a pair of Pakistani immigrant friends. They were

worried. The leader of the third-largest party in the Dutch Parliament had called for a ban on the Koran.

Attitudes toward Muslims were becoming toxic. A strange thought hung over me as we wandered by

marijuana-selling coffee shops and display windows for legal prostitutes: the thought that Anne Frank, as

a permanent reminder of intolerance gone mad, could be a guardian angel for Muslims in Amsterdam.

How sad that in this city, with its history, a religious minority could once again feel the need for such a

guardian.

Suspicion of Muslims is, of course, not confined to Europe. Earlier this year, on a trip from Pakistan

to New York with my wife and baby daughter, I had my usual lengthy encounter at JFK airport with an

American version of the same theme. Sent to secondary inspection, I waited my turn to be investigated.

Eventually it came, the officer questioning me about such things as whether I had ever been to Mexico or

received combat training.

As a result, we were the last passengers on our flight to claim our luggage, a lonely set of suitcases

and a foldable playpen on a now-stationary baggage carousel. And until we stepped out of the terminal,

my heart kept pounding in a way incongruent with my status as a visitor with papers in order.

When we returned to Pakistan, a shock wave from a suicide bombing, the latest deadly attack by

militants intent on destabilizing the country, passed through my sister’s office in Lahore. The blast killed

several people, but was far enough from the university where my sister teaches not to harm anyone on

campus or shatter her windows. It did open her office door, though, pushing it firmly ajar, like a ghost

exiting into the hallway outside.

Some might argue episodes such as these are signs of a clash of civilizations. But I think not.
Individuals have commonalities that cut across different countries, religions, and languages—and

differences that divide those who share a common country, religion, and language. The idea that we fall

into civilizations, plural, is merely a politically convenient myth.

Take two notional civilizations, namely those of “Muslims” and “Westerners.” To which do my

Pakistani friends in Amsterdam or I belong? They are secular and believe in equal rights irrespective of

gender or sexual orientation. And I, a citizen and resident of Pakistan, have spent seventeen years in

America, longer than the lifetimes of more than seventy million Americans born since 1993.

Westernized Muslims, Islamized Westerners: surely people like us can be disregarded as recent, tiny,

and unrepresentative minorities? Actually, no. Fly from Lahore to Madrid and you will find that the words

for “shirt” and “soap” are virtually the same in both places, linguistic testament to the fact that people

have always intermingled.

Yes, Pakistani murderers set off bombs that annually kill thousands. And yes, some Pakistanis fit the

stereotype of poor, radicalized, seminary-educated militants. But they live in a nation where under 10

percent vote for parties of the religious right, where a rapidly growing majority watches television.

Pakistani television programming is incredibly diverse for good reason: so is the country. The blast

wave that passed through my sister’s office doubtless passed through devout Muslims, atheist Muslims,

gay Muslims, funny Muslims, and lovestruck Muslims—not to mention Pakistani Christians, Chinese

engineers, American security contractors, and Indian Sikhs. What civilization, then, did the bomb target?

And from what civilization did it originate?

Civilizations are illusory. But they are useful illusions. They allow us to deny our common humanity,

to allocate power, resources, and rights in ways repugnantly discriminatory.

To maintain the effectiveness of these illusions, they must be associated with something undeniably

real. That something is violence. Our civilizations do not cause us to clash. No, our clashing allows us to

pretend we belong to civilizations.

In Pakistan, I live as part of an extended family. My parents built their house adjoining that of my

grandparents. My wife and I built our apartment above the house of my parents. Our daughter needed a
room. So we converted our balcony, adding a corrugated-metal, foam-insulated roof, and some well-

shaded, double-glazed windows.

The room was bright, inexpensive, energy efficient, and quick to build. All we wanted, in other

words. But then it occurred to us that our daughter’s windows faced in the direction of a main road. A

hundred yards away were offices, shops, banks. The kinds of places sometimes attacked in our city.

I decided to ask an architect friend whether I ought to consider blast-resistant film for my daughter’s

windows. Despite four generations of my family having lived in the same place, this was a question none

of us had ever posed before. I had no idea whether such films were effective, or how much they might

cost.

I did not wonder if they were made by factories in the West, by workers who were Muslim, by both,

or by neither. No, I wondered instead if such films were truly transparent. For outside my daughter’s

windows is a yellow-blooming amaltas tree, beautiful and mighty, and much older than us all.

I hoped not to dim my daughter’s view of it.

(2010)