i should know - i am one of them.my stories inevitably begin with "when i was in america..."
so this is one of them stories. *these*
when i was in america, at my college, we would have a weekly assembly, where people from various countries would mark their country's independence day with a presentation about their country, they would play their music and dress in their native clothes, and talk about their country in general.
now firstly 14th august fell during the summer vacations, so i didn't have an option for that. but in my second year me and my first year country mate did do something for 23rd march.
back in 2002, pakistan was a country not many people knew about, and almost no one gave a shit about. in essence, the good old days.
we forsook the talking about our country for a two minute video. the first slide began with the claim that pakistan was a country that was the bomb.that was followed by a montage of pictures of beautiful pakistani women, and those of our nuclear missiles, played over salman ahmed's version of the national anthem.
as i recalled that incident now, the first thing that struck me was how incredibly misogynist it was. but i also recalled it as a deliberate attempt by us about making people know where and what pakistan was by making obvious the two most shocking things about our country - that we had women who were not wearing burkhas, and that we had a far more naked nuclear obsession.
my friends were genuinely surprised, perhaps because at age 16-18 kids are not as politically inclined.regardless, the prinicpal was aghast - she summoned us and lectured us about the inappropriateness of the message we were putting out about our country. she was almost weeping when she spoke about how much she would hate someone portraying her native Colombia in such a manner.
thinking about it now, i wonder why i decided to present pakistan in such a manner. instinctively, the first response i recall was wanting people to realise what and where pakistan was - i mean before the epicenter of terrorism stuff most people thought of us as somewhere between saddam and apu.
i also remember that at that time i found our nuclear pride a bit hilarious - i didn't know whether to laugh or cry when the people of our bum fucked nation were distributing sweets in public to celebrate the nuclear tests.
yet, i am still not sure if my eventual message was as genuinely satirical as i recall. because eventually, i was projecting the two things pakistan the nation, the construct and the state love doing - brandying off our nuclear power, and exploiting our women.essentially, both impulses arise out of the strenuously patriarchal nature of our society. the phallic missiles aside, the nuclear bomb is a blatant display of geopolitical machismo.
it is perhaps the IR equivalent of wearing one of these.
as for women, i don't know if i really need to qualify anything here. women in pakistan exist in a surreal reality.
they are upheld as the barometer of our morality and values, and are hence punished barbarically if they stray even in the slightest from the standards we uphold for ourselves......yet at the same time, it is a national pastime to ogle at women, to fantasize about women, to poke women's private parts in public places, to fornicate with women with or without their consent.
for many young pakistani males, getting together to bang a hooker is an acceptable weekend activity. if my former driver is to be believed, in rural areas getting together to gang bang any woman is acceptable weekend activity.
we have found ways to make sleeping with nine year olds religiously acceptable, and if we feel that we must protect their honor, we have found justifications for marrying them off to the Holy Book.essentially then, the interplay between women and nukes was so vital in my presentation (even though i didn't realise it) because it represents the pakistani psyche, with both elements representing integral parts of our masculinity - with the nukes being the national penis, and the women being the national penis receptacle.
put in such a context one can understand why just about every problem in pakistan is inevitably attributed to a foreign ploy designed to steal our nukes. in essence, we are afraid of being castrated by the big white man. we are afraid they will take away our penises.
so even though we are largely poor and illiterate as a nation, and remarkably fucking corrupt and lest we forget, in the eye of the global shitstorm, our primary obsession is the nukes and their planned theft.
because, as i just said, without the nukes we would be chakkay, heejray, na-mard.
so imagine the delightful irony of this delightful situation, described here in the words of my colleague"The entire national security doctrine is based on the revenge of a lover..."
it appears that a couple of pakistani nuke scientists - oh those epitomes of our nation's valor - were willing to fucking sell out the nation's grassy diet for a little bit of cash. if we extend our analogy here in, some pakistani males were willing to castrate our national lun to buy some rolexes or what not. to make these guys even more scum of the earth, one of these fuckers had an office romance (which i find abhorrent) and then decided to jilt his lover.
motha-fucka.
in essence, the pakistani male is willing to chop off his own cock for the sake of some money, which he would probably spend on getting a hooker upon which he would realise that he no longer has a dick and thus the money and his penis would both go to waste.
now, as my fiance reminded me, it was a woman however, who helped us retain our luns, and thus through perverted pakistani logic, our murdangi.
and what makes this woman, who was also a nuclear scientist by the way, even more impressive, is that she did not do it for the national cock, but rather out of the fury generated by a love betrayed.
now if there is one thing we can do right, it's love. love is a good enough reason to do anything, and if someone fucks with your love, being delivered to the ISI is a pretty easy let off.so next time you bitch and moan about the fact that the foreigners are looking to castrate the nation and run off with the nukes, remind yourself that those who rule, those who obsess about their phalluses the most, are the ones that are most willing to sell them off for some money.
like every other problem in pakistan, it seems that only those who are getting fucked will be around to save the country (and it's penis) when it needs them.