Tag Archives: mowgli

Into Culture: Into Pakistan VIII

“Why do you say it is a chapel?”

I am being met with a palpable air of suspicion and restraint. My curiosity is causing private glances between the six people who sit around the table. The meeting had been organised after a brief enquiry about a lost chapel built by Akhbar the Great for his Catholic, Portuguese wife, Julia Magallanes, during the Moghul Empire. A search on the internet had brought up a site within Lahore Fort now called, Seh Dora, where Christian imagery has been found and is now being restored as part of an ‘interfaith harmony’ project by the Walled City of Lahore Authority. I had called it a chapel because that is, before seeing it for myself, what I believed it to be. There are records of a chapel existing, and I thought that this was what had been discovered.

“It certainly is not orientated towards the east and there is, as yet, no depiction of Jesus or a cross, and so it being a place of worship is, as yet, not seen.” I admit.

“It was never a place of worship. Say it.”

“So what is it?”

“A pavilion. Jahangir was interested in Christian paintings and so had them put there.”

“Why the uncommon amount of female saints, particularly at the front as you face out into the courtyard?”

“It was never a chapel.”

This is the first time that I have experienced this kind of intimidation whilst being in Pakistan. It is not a nice experience. I steel myself and force myself to be curious and open. I try to find the common ground. I suggest they connect with the Christian community to help them decipher the defaced images and to help uncover the purpose of the building. More silent exchange of glances.

“We are not that far into the project. We cannot tell what we will do or need.”

The project, funded in part by the US embassy, was, as I say, a project exploring ‘interfaith harmony’. This response to my suggestion that the Authority dialogue with interfaith partners undermines their declaration of openness. I cannot put my finger on why I feel so threatened. Questions as to my background, my ‘interest’ in this work, my presence in Pakistan, all make me feel unnecessarily scrutinised.

I acknowledge that it looks, at this moment, as a pavilion. Their research and current interpretation seem right but I am left wondering why they are restoring this building and the Christian iconography. Obviously, they want to celebrate the Moghul heritage of multifaith (possibly even, interfaith) relations in the Punjab. No one can deny that this co-existence of different religious convictions is long standing and pre-dates the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Anything that rediscovers and recaptures this historic narrative of the land and people is welcome. There is, however, this reticence and caution that betrays this, in my Western mind, positive move in the right direction.

I had not asked for this interrogation. I had not even asked for a meeting. The meeting had been suggested and I had agreed. The ambush has thrown me and I feel unsafe. All my jokes before leaving the UK about kidnapping flash into my head. I hope my wife has the ransom money ready. I admit that reading Declan Walsh’s book, ‘The Nine Lives of Pakistan’, that explores the reasons why he was deported from Pakistan is making me paranoid. I breathe and try to remember the many positive interactions with Pakistanis over the last week.

I have just come from an extremely exciting and hopeful discussion with Refi Peer Theatre Workshop, for example. We discussed art, culture, faith and heritage. Their almost 50 years of experience, particularly in Sufi cultural work, has seen through many changes in Pakistan’s history. The current leadership is globally minded and sanguine about their place within Lahore and the wider Pakistan. It seems to me you need to be agile to navigate the religio-political life of Pakistan, particularly when working in the Sufi tradition.

The Sufi culture is, in my mind, what gives many ‘common’ Pakistanis (i.e. the general population) their openness to other faiths. The peaceful co-existence which the Pakistanis I have engaged with are keen to impress upon me is rooted, I think, in this Sufi heritage. The Punjab region, before British colonial rule, was clearly a place of interfaith harmony. All desires towards this are written on the landscape and architecture. There is, however, a ‘but’ lingering on my lips.

I dare not write what I am about to write, due to the experience of Declan Walsh, but there is a ‘contradiction’ within the Pakistani mentality. The paradox at the heart of this beautiful people must be a result of a shambolic and rushed process called, the Partition. I see the scars in the issues Pakistan still has and I fear that it is not unique to this place/people. The inherent puzzle was created by British diplomatic but religiously ignorant forces that did not invest the time to ask, ‘how would a religiously defined political entity, a nation, embrace and encourage difference to flourish within its borders?’ This, again, remains a question for us all not just Pakistan.

The obvious Sufi influence on the instinct of Punjabis, at least, is, at the same time, treated with suspicion and caution. The double speak of condemning attacks on Christians whilst maintaining a reluctance to expand the blasphemy laws to ensure those same victims are protected under law. This ‘contradiction’ weighs heavy on my heart and when this question is publicly raised, my new found friends struggle to answer it.

I conclude my time in Pakistan asking the same question of Britain. Is ‘multiculturalism dead’? What are the paradoxes within the psyche of the English or wider British people? How do we bring these contradictions out into the open and have the bravery to own them and find some synthesis between the two seemingly incompatible truths of our own identity. At this time of increasing polarisation and extremism there is a fight to avoid the opposition we experience at our very core. No wonder that we are so anxious as a people and defensive to any who might raise a question over our own self identification whether it is race, sexuality or gender.

My own journey ‘into the woods’, that is my trip to Pakistan, now leads me back home. This calls me to try and allow the Mowgli identity narrative, the elixir I fought to find here, to be a gift for those I call ‘my pack’. If I can be brave enough to name my own personal contradictions and paradoxes and to externalise them, vulnerably opening them to scrutiny in the hope of healing and synthesis, then God may use me to encourage others to find the same redemption in the same path. How can I, to quote Martin Luther, be simultaneously justified and a sinner? Accepted yet in need of transformation? Oh, how many people I know who need to the courage to admit their need of Jesus! But, as Tim Keller wrote,

You don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.

Tim Keller, ‘Walking With God Through Pain And Suffering’ (London: Penguin Books, 2015) p.5

Into Culture: Into Pakistan V

I have given up on trying to sort my internal body clock and I lie in my bed attempting instead to consolidate my reflections. Putting aside the theological/missiological questions that have emerged during my conversations with Pakistani Christians, I return to my personal navigation in a foreign culture.

I am finding the lack of language a serious barrier. I walk around silently, loitering in the corners, creepily waiting to be approached. When someone does engage me in conversation, speaking beautiful English, I feel the need to respond in kind; in embarrassingly limited Urdu. I thus present as aloof. When I do speak English with them their understanding is not as full as I first believe and they look at me with such awkwardness and, worst of all, some form of humiliating deference. I just want to say “sorry” all the time.

I find social interactions challenging in my own culture with my own language and it takes me a huge effort to overcome that. I often overcompensate and feel as though I make people feel uncomfortable. I have no gauge as to the tone of conversations and have had so many painful experiences of misreading situations that, as I think of them now, my stomach scrunches up as though it were trying to hide itself further inside of me.

I have decided to make something of the day and attend some local classes for trainee clergy. I arrive, in my mind, just in time for Morning Prayer. No one is here. Pakistani’s, like other nationalities, do not have the same interest in time keeping as us Northern Europeans do. I sit on the opposite side of where I sat last time because, unknown to me, that time I sat on the women’s side. No one said anything, no one pointed this out to me. Why would they? Why wouldn’t they? Thinking back, I assume they were all laughing at my cultural naivety. Today I will do better.

The students who are leading prayers whisper together and look in my direction. I try to ignore them. When one stands up, he speaks in English to introduce the service. I shrink inside. Stupid English man can’t cope… I think about the practice I have adopted back home of saying “welcome” in any different languages that I know of spoken by guests. Is this what they feel? I am trying to make them feel welcomed and cross the barrier but here, on the receiving end, I feel an imposition.

Hello, paranoia, my old friend. I appreciate that you are trying to protect me and that you were invited to take your place inside my head after I realised that people don’t always mean what they say and that anyone, even trusted friends, can be hypocrites. They can pretend to be kind but they will soon disown you or abandon you when someone easier, more charismatic, less problematic comes along. I have tried to listen to you but, today you seem to have a lot to say.

I am now sat in an English language class. It is strangely comforting to hear my own language. Although I am perfectly happy to be in a place and just listen to people talk to each other in Urdu with me not following a single word, it is nice to relax a little and be part of the community for a bit. I am embarrassed afresh as the exercises they are doing are at quite an advance level and I doubt many of us Brits would be able to do them. They begin to read ‘The Fir Tree’ by Hand Christian Anderson. Even those who seem to be struggling with English read it well, the teacher correcting mispronunciation. No one, however, notes my presence. When I make eye contact, people avert their eyes. I remember Mowgli in ‘The Jungle Book’ and remember that I am not one of them.

I haven’t had breakfast yet but they’re all going straight into Urdu class. Obviously, I need this class more than English but I am also unsure as to what is expected of me, so I go for food. The Urdu teacher asks where I am going.

“Naashtaa (breakfast). I am sorry.”

“Will you come back after breakfast?”

I don’t know. I imagine walking into the class halfway through and feel the eyes already burning into my soul.

“What are you doing here, Ned? You’re not learning anything, and you don’t understand a single word they are saying. At any moment they will ask you questions in Urdu and you’ll stutter and look pathetic.”

I say “yes” but have no intention of doing so. I hate my cowardice and leave.

Breakfast is sausage. The other guest has an egg on his plate. The hospitality team have clearly learnt.

As I eat I think about this blog and feel the self-enforced pressure to write something for today. I note my paranoid voice still wittering on in my head and then the voice that always drowns him out.

“I am a bad person.”

I call him, Neddyplod.

He is the voice of my younger self who was always so lost and confused as a child. The vulnerable boy who, no matter how much he tried, never quite fitted in. He has remained buried for many years, decades even, but, recently, since I discovered him on a walk, he has found some courage to be vocal. I am simultaneously grateful for his ‘bravery’ and yet burdened by his wounds. He carries so many accidental cuts and bruises from others who would be horrified to know what they did to him. He knew, even from the earliest days that they did not intend to hurt him but he had no language to express or ask for different treatment.

Here, in this new place, I am becoming Neddyplod again.

Writing this makes me cry. This is too raw. I need to write this, but does anyone need to read it?

“Attention seeking again, Ned, Neddyplod, whoever you are. You are going to post this though, aren’t you? Why? Because you want the affirmation. You want the prestige of being ‘brave’. You want to justify that ache inside you that craves what you missed out on as a child: acceptance.”

I am now thinking about plot structure. I am reading John Yorke’s excellent book, ‘Into the Woods’ which explores the nature of stories and how and why they work. All good stories have a ‘midpoint’.

…the midpoint is the moment something profoundly significant occurs…A new ‘truth’ dawns on our hero for the first time; the protagonist has captured the treasure or found the ‘elixir’ to heal their flaw. But there’s an important caveat… At this stage in the story they don’t quite know how to handle it correctly.

John Yorke, ‘Into the Woods: how stories work and why we tell them’(London: Penguin Books, 2014)p.37 and 58

I am at the midpoint of my trip and, although real life never fits story structure, might there be some treasure today?

Mowgli. A ‘man-cub’ brought up in the wolf pack as their own. He tries to pretend that he is not a human but a part of the pack but the book tracks his acceptance that he is different from the other animals and belongs elsewhere. The only trouble is that when he returns to humankind they do not accept him either. He is caught between. The story concludes with him making peace with his solitary existence as not neither one or the other but both.

In this place where I am different I am being made more aware of how different I am at home. Here, where there are clearer demarcations of difference (language, custom, clothes), I am tempted to long for home but, then, there’s the rub. There, where those differences are not present, I am still not the same. Where do I flee to?

I am tempted to say ‘my people’ are not here but nor are they there but, maybe, ‘my people’ are, somehow both.

I am comforted by Mowgli’s dislocation; his successes of adaptation; even his final torment at the in between place. This might be my elixir. I just don’t quite know how to handle it yet.