Observations in the park                              

                                                 Surrayya Jabeen,

 Zamzama Park is in the neighborhood of Karachi called Defense where the rich people have houses. It’s a stone’s throw from the famous residence known to Pakistanis as 70 Clifton.  But the park admin doesn’t differentiate between the rich visitors and the poor thank God. They allow in people from all walks of life; rich ones from Defence, middle class ones from the other side of the Clifton bridge from various localities of this huge metropolis spanning five districts. They bring their children to play on the slides and swings and some go on the skating area to skate. I am told that on the weekends it’s usually the poorer ones who come in huge numbers.

 Sunday is usually a resting day; Kararchiites basically don’t cook their usual breakfast of paratha (with potato or minced meat or simply plain paratha), omelet and tea on this day but mostly prefer to go out to eat hot aaloo bhujia with puri and halva. It’s a sort of a, luxury breakfast if you will. The 20 million people of the city don’t appear on the roads at day break on Sundays as they do on other days, so there are hardly any cars outside on the street. The sun rose over the horizon and I could see it outside of the window rising over the towering buildings on the side of the beech, overlooking the tomb of the wali Abdullah Shah Ghazi.

 We pay the fee to enter the park and a sea of faces representing all walks of life greets me as soon as I get off the car. First thing I see is a team of cricketers using an empty space in front of the park as a cricket ground, loudly talking to each other in Sindhi, all dressed in the national dress of the ‘land of the pure’.

As I begin my round on the walking track in the park, I see ladies with western attire as well as shalvar kameez and also some who observe the Islamic injunction of wearing a full length outer garment or abaaya as the Saudis call it, and then there are those who choose to cover their faces in public with a niqab all walking along with me. I keep thinking they won’t be allowed to walk like this if they dared to step out of the house in the land of the free called United States. Frankly I am impressed with the abaaya clad ladies, and smile at them as they walk past me in small groups. They smile back not knowing why I just smiled at them. I smile to show my approval of their stand, and also smile is charity.  

The most noticeable presence is that of kids; well because they tend to be noisy. There are kids everywhere with their parents, going up and down the slides. I know that this is my own country and I am the same skin color as the rest of the country but still I sometimes feel alien. No one calls me foreign here though, but somehow it feels a little odd, I have been to many clubs like this in quite a few countries with a colonial outlook but never in my own country.  I don’t quite know how to talk to the locals; I feel.  

As I continue my round observing the well maintained lush green lawns in front of me, I am speechless at the Nature’s view. The flowers impress me the most; they look especially beautiful in this time of the year. Spring lasts a very short while but it brings all the colors of nature and reminds you of the glory of the Creator.   I hear all the languages existent in the land, English, Sindhi, Balochi & Pashto as people are walking past me in clusters. I hear English more often because the denizens of this neighborhood think Urdu is a language spoken by the ‘illiterates’ living on the other side of the Clifton bridge, English is spoken by the educated ones!  Walking past some buildings in the middle, architecture reminds me of the English presence on our soil and I feel repulsed. I contrast it in my minds eye with the Faiz palace’s architecture in Khairpur and I am genuinely concerned about our tastes’ deterioration under the occupation. European architecture uses secondary colors and dull ones at that, the buildings have no feeling they are stony and cold looking. The so called masterpieces of European paintings tend to full of ugliness compared to the breathtaking calligraphy of the Eastern artisans and the lapis lazuli work. 

 I finish my round and go and sit on one of the benches, two ladies come and start speaking to me, and they are from Sukkur. This brings fond memories as I had been to Sukkur as a child. One of them points subtly to a woman sitting a few feet away on a bench wearing something that didn’t cover her calves, and say ‘look at what people are wearing these days!’ I didn’t want to answer her because I knew the discussion would be long since I have issues with this kind of attire being introduced into our country in the name of civilization. It was in the pre-Islamic times that Quraish ladies used to dress like this and we have shunned this for the last 1400 years, going back in time is not in anyone’s interest.  

Right now my priority was to get back home for Maghrib, so I ask her the time but just then my eyes catch the glimpse of the digital clock in the distance reading 6.20 PM so I get up and bid her goodbye. Walking past multitudes sitting on the grass to what looked like a picnic; I began moving towards the ramp leading to the gate. There were some foreign ladies walking also and they had a track suit bottom on covering them but this Muslim was wearing a calf length pants. 

 My mind drifts to the news channels announcing the death of at least 50 to 100 Muslims per day in Afghanistan, Iraq or Northern Pakistan. I kept thinking back to the times when every Wednesday the mosque in the US used to run a class for new Muslim ladies. Ladies in America are turning to Islam and throwing their un- Islamic clothing away in the bin. There are reports that number of people reverting to Islam in the US is the magical 100 per day on average; so President Bush has decided to kill at least the same number in the Muslim countries per day! When I was a child my grandmother used to say ‘there will come a time when the non Muslims will accept our faith and all born Muslims will die off’. And it’s happening in my lifetime.  

I perform maghrib and recite the surah yasin in which God’s words stand out warning about pride and vanity of humans. When the TV channel is switched on the news bulletin announces that forty people had died today in a bomb blast in Dara Adam Khel and I know that Bush has begun what his Bible calls the Armageddon i.e. the war between good and evil in which ¼ of human population will perish. That ¼ of the human population is of course us.

Sadness overcomes me as I walk towards the kitchen to make some tea and I come back into the room and start writing what I had observed today. Let this be a warning to all of us including me who take life as a sport.