I wake in a foreign country to isolating silence.
I arrived in the early hours with little to no introduction or orientation. My host wanted me just to sleep and merely asked when I wanted breakfast. I tried to communicate that I didn’t want to be a bother and would eat when others ate.
“9am?”
“9am is fine.”
Here I am at 9am walking around a building that looks very different than when I arrived in the dark. I do not know whether I am expected and there is no one around to ask, not that I could if they were. I enter the kitchen that was pointed out to me in the early hours, assuming it was done as an invitation to help myself, and try to find food. I stop with the fridge open and ask myself,
“Am I allowed to eat this? Should I serve myself?”
Essentially I want to know what are the rules and am I allowed to be here?
It turns out I am both welcome and not welcome. I am welcome as a guest but not welcome in the way that I would want to be welcomed. I am definitely not welcome in the kitchen; the women have made that perfectly clear. I am discovered looking for bread to make toast and I am told (I presume) that they will make me breakfast but I do not know that. I patiently wait for bread to be brought not knowing if it will. After ten minutes it is and I happily make myself toast. Halfway through my toast a plate of croissants stuffed with egg appears on the table in front of me
“Shukriya (thank you)” I say
“Sorry.”
What is she apologising for? She looks embarrassed. I don’t know why.
I finish my toast and read my book. A man enters. I stand, as is the custom, I believe. I bow, hand on heart, and greet him in fumbling, unconfident Urdu. He makes himself a cup of tea and another woman comes in from the kitchen, the door having now been firmly closed, and takes the plate of croissant and egg and takes it over to the man. He looks over at me and looks confused.
“Nehain (No). I am sorry.” I find myself saying now realising I should have eaten it. I had thought the apology was that it was not for me. I didn’t eat it because I don’t like scrambled egg.
I have now been rude in multiple ways without knowing that I was being rude. Suddenly a question from one of the women early reminds me of another breaking of custom. I had arrived for breakfast without shoes on and was promptly asked,
“Where are your shoes?”
“In my room.”
I had rushed to put them on and now, having rejected the food they made for me, I feel terrible. I take my plate and cup into the kitchen to wash up; trying to make amends. The cook who had made my rejected breakfast is sat making lunch. She looks at me briefly and says nothing. She does not hold my gaze. I begin washing my cup and plate and she snaps.
“No. You must not.”
I stop immediately. I apologise, in English. I have tried different words for ‘sorry’ in Urdu but none of them seem to be right. Stupid phrase book! Stupid, Ned!
I have not done well on first impressions.
Reflecting on the many interactions of my first day, I am aware of the different customs, particularly around gender roles in this culture. In Pakistan, having not had a liberation movement, the sexes remain slightly segregated but not in the totally submissive way we Westerns would expect. The kitchen is not just ‘their place’ it is their domain, i.e. I am not allowed there and I must not operate within it. As a guest, and a male guest at that, I should not do anything. I am here to be served and if I am not, I am looked unfavourably upon.
Reading ‘Train to Pakistan’ by Khushwant Singh I am struck by the graphic and matter of fact depictions of sexual encounters between men and women. To my Western eyes, what is being described is rape; exploitation by men but it remains uncommented on and the women navigate it without resistance or horror. In a much less extreme way, I am forced to think about the structure of Pakistani culture and how I feel the sexes should exist together. As a guest I feel obligated to first inhabit the culture. I am not being invited to challenge it; that’s not my role. And yet, my culture does challenge it. I am, by being myself, an alien who disrupts.
This all, of course, is my experience growing up as a neurodiverse person. So far I am swamped by the same loneliness and paranoia without any moorings to soothe me. I return to my bed and sleep.
I wake to singing and head out of my room to explore. People pass me, greet me and walk on. No one seems to care I am there or do not know how to handle me. I get it. I question the rules I have read before coming and there’s no one around to guide me. I am happy on my own… and yet also, not happy. I am also lonely. I am foreign.
An English speaker approaches me and asks about my life. I attempt to return the favour in Urdu. He acts impressed and compliments my accent. I thank him for his graciousness, but I immediately remember that it is Pakistani culture to compliment. I characteristically reject the compliment internally. We have a nice, awkward conversation. Everything in me wants to cry. I need to soothe and groan as I do when I’m overwhelmed. I stifle my instincts to scream. I focus my attention, whilst he speaks, to standing still and controlling my more unsocial ticks. It takes all my energy, but I maintain the conversation and act normal. The problem, obviously, is I do not know what normal is here.
There are several games that share a categorical mechanic. I call this particular mechanic the ‘Spy Mechanic’. These games are based on the fundamental premise of dividing the players into spies and detectives. Spies must pretend to fit in and obey the rules, without knowing the rules. The detectives obey the rules, which they know, whilst trying to stop the odd person. You either win as a spy by hiding your ignorance or you win as a detective by discovering the fraud. I hate these games.
I hate them because it triggers such haunting and character shaping ‘trauma’ from my childhood. Times when I worked really hard to ‘be normal’. Sometimes I was successful and got no praise for it. Other times I was not successful and was punished for it. This is the root to my inner critic. An inner critic which uses the personal pronoun.
“I am a bad person.”
I want people to praise me for the times when I’m normal but why should they consider that praiseworthy? Here in Pakistan, I am pushing myself to face up to this issue in an extreme way. This morning is a great introduction to the challenge I face.
Pray for me.