A friend and his family

This post is about a colleague and a friend, whom I'll call Salman.

Yesterday Salman had to bury his wife and their newborn child. Women dying in childbirth, although I know a far too common occurrence in many parts of the world, are not something I have ever had to give much thought to. Until two days ago, I had no concept of the desperate worry some face with the arrival of a baby. Not the kind of first world worry about becoming parents, but worry that rather than creating a life, you may be about to lose one.

The first I knew of any serious problems was a week ago, when Salman came in to work looking terrible. After he struggled through an office meeting holding his head in his hands and looking misty-eyed, I finally asked him what was wrong. He told me he was suffering from high blood pressure and migraines brought on by stress. His heavily pregnant wife was suffering complications and had been scheduled for a C-section the following week. I gave him some of my migraine tablets and tried to calm his nerves. I said this time next week he'd be a dad. I couldn't really understand why he seemed so worried.

Later, I mentioned to another colleague that I was concerned about Salman's health. He said immediately, "well I expect he's worrying about how he'll pay for his wife's operation." My naive NHS-accustomed self was surprised by this: "Really? How much will it cost?!" Of course, the cost would depend on how good the hospital was. Naturally. Because richer women need better caesareans than poor women. I made some enquiries and found out it would cost the equivalent of about 150-200 UK pounds at a decent enough hospital. At About 2 months salary for Salman, it wasn't surprising he was worried. I suggested to a few of my better-off colleagues that if we clubbed together we could easily help him with that money. I just wanted to put his mind at ease. As I handed over the cash, I felt that awful smug benefactor's satisfaction that now his worries were over.

A bit about Salman, because I'm sorry to say I never knew his wife, Shazia. I've got to know him quite well whilst doing some investigation work together. He is without question the kindest and gentlest person I've met in Lahore. Which is strange because he is also a convicted murderer and spent nearly 15 years on death row. He told me once that he was wrongly convicted, although I never asked, and it would make no difference to me either way. If a person is a sum of their acts, then Salman has proved himself to me.

He is the kind of person who would do anything to help anyone. When, during our work, we have frequently come in to contact with people who cannot afford to eat, he always reaches in his own pocket, even though, I know, he has next to nothing. For me, going out and about in Lahore on appointments could be a risky business if I wasn't with a colleague I could trust. Recently, we left one appointment to find that the car that was meant to drive me back to the office had disappeared. It's dangerous for me to stand around in the street or get in a rickshaw on my own. Although Salman had his motorbike and another important meeting to get to, he abandoned his plans, without complaint, and rode his bike alongside me in the rickshaw all the way to the office, not leaving its side, no matter how crazy the traffic got. Most importantly, when I leave here, Salman is the person at the office who I know I can rely on to feed my stray cat, Isis, just because I've asked him to.

On Monday Salman was giddy with excitement and nerves. On Tuesday he went off work. He told me the plan was to be at the hospital on Tuesday, with the operation scheduled for Wednesday. By Thursday I hadn't heard anything, but I'm only a colleague after all, so I just assumed he was busy enjoying his new family. If only.

Piecing things together now, it seems that Shazia had got scared - scared of the operation, the needles, the hospital - so they did not go to the hospital on Tuesday or Wednesday as planned but Thursday instead. By this time her blood pressure was already through the roof and her health very fragile. She had a panic attack before they could begin the surgery. The panic attack brought on a heart attack, which she survived. The hospital attempted to get her to another hospital that had the expertise to deal with the precarious situation. Only, the ambulance meant for her got stuck in traffic and never arrived. They had no choice but to rush her into theatre for the operation. She suffered a second heart attack and haemorrhaging that neither she nor their baby survived.

Shazia had waited for Salman for 15 years whilst he was in prison. His life has certainly been tough; it doesn't get much tougher than the torture and suffering that accompanies a death sentence in Pakistan. I imagine Shazia's life was tough too - she was poor after all. They had not been on speaking terms with her family for years, due to his lengthy prison term and her decision to stand by him. He has almost no family alive making them, very unusually for Pakistan, a unit of only two (and almost three).

Before we went to the funeral yesterday, some of the people in the office recounted their experiences of childbirth gone wrong. All of the poorer people spoke of someone in their lives/extended families who had died in childbirth and even some of the richer ones too. Although upsetting for everyone, this grave turn of events was nowhere near as shocking as it should have been.

Would they have lived in a better hospital? Would they have lived if they'd not delayed? It does no good for me to comment now on the quality of their medical care. I am no doctor or nurse and I do not really know what happened that day. It does no good to suppose that, had they been British, things would have turned out differently.

Pakistan holds many firsts for me. I don't think I've ever seen a grown man break down and weep uncontrollably from grief. When I saw Salman yesterday, I wanted to say something to bring solace, but of course I could not do that. You are left with only platitudes. I hope that Salman will find some comfort in his God. I will not try to write something meaningful here; I have nothing to write. I will have to turn to Dylan Thomas for that, and for my comfort:

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

Performance and cocktails

My outbound bag to Pakistan consisted mainly of my own travelling pharmacy and the baggiest, most unflattering clothes I could find.  It took me about a week to realise that whilst my phenomonal pharmacy was a good idea, my wardrobe was not. 

The rules of dressing are complicated in Lahore, and I do not pretend even now to understand them.  However, when it comes to the self-termed 'elite' of society (the powerful, the connected, the richest of the rich) the only rule is that you should be glamorous and beautiful, or at least stylishly clever if beauty is not within your grasp.And so I realised quickly that my quest for modesty was both mistaken and bizarre. 

In the early days, the extent of my misunderstanding of this section of Pakistani society became clear.  Sitting in an icily air conditioned restaurant eating faux French food with friends of my boss, I was invited to a cocktail party.  I thanked the inviter, and explained that unfortunately I didn't have clothes to wear to that type of thing.  "You didn't bring a cocktail dress?"  I was asked incredulously.  I thought I could make a joke of it so I explained: "you see the thing is, my frame of reference when planning my trip was a Palestinian refugee camp....".  Everyone looked confused so I continued quickly, 'I know how stupid that seems now, but you know, I worked in Palestine a couple of years ago and..."  I dried up with the looks of incomprehension/pity/concern. "Right, so anyway..." said the person next to me and they quickly moved the conversation on in a damage-limitation kind of way.

Luckily, none of this was held against me and I have been invited to a handful of cocktail parties since.  The grandest of these occurred recently.  The beautiful lawns of the garden were cooled by strategically placed fans, whilst alcohol flowed freely from professional looking bars.  Exotic flowers lined the numerous lawns.  When I complimented them to the host, he proudly explained that he had imported flowers from every corner in the world.  These all came with complex maintenance routines which his staff had to learn. Glamorous young people kissed cheeks, puffed on cigarettes and sipped vodka tonics.  The house peered down on the gardens haughtily, with dozens of well dressed servants standing to attention by its side, almost outnumbering the guests. 

If you discount the odd Cambridge University Ball, I had never been to a party as glamorous as this one.  I imagine some Londoners in Chelsea or Kensington throw this kind of bash, but certainly not anyone I know.  And yet strangely, even with my awful wardrobe and my embarrassing habit of trying to chat to the servants, I am still one of the elite here.

People, for the most part, in this crowd are friendly and accommodating.  They take an interest in the work we do and ask me about my impressions of Pakistan.  As my boss introduces me to her friends, she complains about everybody knowing everybody, families being too close and the incestuousness of relationships within the group.  "The thing you'll learn, Liana," she says, " is that Lahore is sooooooo small."

(Not long before this party, my boss had taken me to her husband's hunting ranch in the low salt range mountains.  About 3 hours outside of Lahore, the flat landscape of the Punjab changed completely in to a green ledge of mountains. 

The ranch itself surprised me in being quite understated.  Without the usual ostentation, it blended in to its surroundings and made me feel like I was camping, albeit in luxury (and with a few servants).  In the evening, we sat out in the slightly cooler mountain air and ate dinner from a round stone table in the centre of the site.  The party consisted of only a few close friends of the family and me.  As dinner was coming to a close and we all tucked into some green tea our host said, "I think we should come here every weekend.  I hate those big parties...the people who go there really think they are something, when actually only a handful of us are from really good families." Clearly, small incestuous Lahore was not small enough.)

At around 1am the cocktail party was swiftly broken up.  There were hushed whispers as the music stopped and the news spread that the police had been to the house.  I was told that they'd been paid off, but that we had to leave as they could come back any time.  One woman was incensed.  "What is Lahore coming to?" she asked incredulously, "when the police think they can come and intimidate people like us!" People mumbled that the police were getting above themselves by thinking that they could close down a party like this. 

This reminder of the country we were in was brief.  Our huge car purred up the drive to whisk us away from this tiny glimpse of larger Lahore.  Before I came here, lots of friends and family expressed concern about my safety in dangerous Pakistan.  It seems, however, that the protection of powerful people keeps me safe. The only threat to these partygoers will be from the 'forgotten' Pakistanis, if and when they cannot feed their families and have nothing to lose.  And, nothing to lose will make for dangerous people.

Careless people and good intentions

Since I've been here, I've often been reminded of the 'carelessness'  of Gatsby's Tom and Daisy: "They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into the money of their vast carelessness.”

It's not that Pakistanis are more careless than the British.  It's just that the people with money hold so much power and the people without are so vulnerable that carelessness can cause great harm.  I witness it, in one way or another, all the time.  One evening, a poor colleague is told he needs to go to Kashmir the next day for a case; there's no car to take him, he's told, he can get there by bus or bike.  When I see him next, he tells me he had to ride his motorbike all the way through the night to get there on time and all night afterwards to get back for work the next day.  Or a graver example:  a servant borrows money and does not repay it on time so, to be taught a lesson, is accused of a ridiculously unsubstantiated crime. He is then tortured so badly by the police that he can no longer walk.

Carelessness is an easy trap to fall in to, as no-one ever points it out, or tells you to pack it in. Even if they can't afford to eat.  For over two weeks we didn't pay the family that lives with us as we thought someone else had and in that time they could not afford to buy food or send the children to school.

However, despite some failures like these, I have really tried to avoid Tom and Daisy behaviour.  In my relationship with the family that live with us, I have always erred on the side of being over-generous and making it clear that I would help with anything that was needed. 

In this way, we have lived happily side by side.   It is hard for me to believe now that there was a time when I was opposed to them living with us (or being cooked for, or having my clothes ironed). In the beginning, at least, it was a fairly lonely life here, and they did a great deal to make me feel at home.  They have come to feel to me like family.  My Pakistani family.

The children are as lovely as children can be.  They seem to be easily pleased and enjoy whatever game I come up with, however unsuccessful.  “Duck, duck, goose”, I know now, does not work unless you are able to explain the point of the game.  Hide and seek requires less explanation, as if all else fails, you can just run around chasing each other. They call me 'mamaji', meaning mumma, and Sameena jokes that I’m their second mother.

Sameena and I have developed a particularly close relationship.  She and I chat over dinner happily in our respective languages.  At times neither of us has any clue what the other is saying, but imagine a line of conversation and reply to it. Recently, we have started reciprocal English/Urdu lessons. She does, however, have zero tact or respect for privacy.  She will look me up and down in the morning and say “Liana madam, what are you wearing?” and each day she reminds me that if I drank lemon tea and not tea tea, I would be as slim as she is.  And I must add that Sameena is slim. And beautiful.  And 25.

Then, a few days ago, I found out she had been stealing from us.

The information about this was relatively conclusive, given that the informant was her husband. He told my colleague and his friend, Zahid, that Sameena had been taking more money than she needed for things and keeping the extra.  I had given her some money to take the children to the doctor that day, which she had pocketed. All this was told to me fairly reluctantly, and only because I could tell something was wrong and was worried that one of the children was ill.

I wasn't angry, just surprised and sad.  Zahid told us to leave it to him to sort out. He spent hours and hours with the family and afterwards he told me that the matter was resolved and that Sameena now understood that she shouldn't have stolen.  I wanted to know more.  I was indignant and had lots of questions: Had it been happening right from the beginning?  Why had she done it?  I wanted us to sit down and talk about it.  Zahid sighed at my request in a world weary way.  Yes it had happened for some time and he could give me a thousand possible reasons why she’d done it, but the real reason was for her and God.  “Look, she is very young, she is silly, she is from a family as poor as I doubt you can imagine, Liana.  She has lived in a small village all her life and this is her first time in the city.  She will never have seen a real bed, let alone a white person.”  He said that we could talk about it and Sameena apologise, if I really wanted, but what would that really mean?  She knew now that what she’d done was wrong and that should be enough.  Yes, I agreed, a bit reluctantly, it was enough.

I wasn't at all sure that it was enough though, and only when I saw Sameena did I know that it was.  She looked dishevelled, embarrassed and sad.  The following day, when we were in my room she broke down in tears. She said she felt so awful as we were like her sisters and asked if we could ever forgive her.  I cried too and said 'bas' - enough - and we hugged.  For really, I do care for like a sister.

I can understand why she did it, I just wish she hadn’t.  I thought I could prove the others wrong, and create a relationship of trust between us all based on mutual respect.  I was wrong. 

I worry for her also.  As in not long, the bizarre English people will be gone.  If she stole from a Pakistani family things would be different.  It is likely that her whole family would be on the streets within 24 hours.  Even worse, her brother and her husband could be arrested.  And as poor Christians, it's best not to think about what would happen to them then.

I think, on reflection, our generosity created this problem.  In a society based on status, unequal relationships and mistrust, by giving money freely we must have created a great deal of confusion and, I suspect, a feeling that we would not miss dents in our never ending reserves of money.

There's also the problem that soon I'll be gone and then they'll be back to bare survival again, only now with expectations of a slightly less hard life.

So I'm learning that good intentions in an environment you don't understand can be the most dangerous thing of all. So much hardship is needlessly caused here by carelessness. But this episode has reminded me that all the care in the world does not make you get things right.

The great British legal tradition

The legal community of Lahore is very proud of its High Court.  In a network of sprawling buildings, it is reminiscent of a Cambridge college, with green lawns and beautiful flower beds. 

The 'lawyers' uniform' is a black suit, white shirt and highly polished shoes. I must add that, so far, I have not adhered to this uniform.  I didn't think that my one smart suit would be appropriate attire for the famous 50 degree heat of the Lahori summer.  This view, it seems, is shared by every non-lawyer in Lahore.  But lawyers, especially around the High Court complex, waddle bravely around like self-important penguins.

My first trip to the High Court found me being introduced to the Lord Chief Justice.  I had been told that he was an impressive figure, and so I was interested and slightly intimidated to meet him.  He sat us down in his large leather armchairs and quizzed me on why I was in Pakistan.  I felt as if I was being interviewed and responded with nervous hyperbolic clichés.  He was educated and engaging, with a perfect upper class English accent. He was open to discussing some of the challenges currently faced by the judiciary and receptive to our request to hold judicial training in mental health at the High Court.

At this point, being a busy man, he handed us over to his less senior colleagues to plan the training.  And thus begun our day-long tour of judges' offices.  First we were directed to an office belonging to another helpful man, who once again took an interest in our ideas.  After a short discussion, he introduced us to more junior colleague to finalise the details.

From the outset of shaking hands with this old-school judge, it was clear that he did not like the presumption of 3 young women that they might be able to organise training for learned judges such as himself.  My valiant colleague entered in to a debate about whether judges needed to have an understanding of mental health problems.  "You don't tell doctors to be judges, so don't tell judges to be doctors" was his stock retort.

After a few moments of this, he smiled in an entirely unconvinced way and invited us to his office to discuss the matter further.  He, too, lived in a large office and had many staff attending to his every biscuit and beverage requirement.  We were offered tea, which we politely accepted and then we waited.  We were offered books to glance through, on the pretext of being relevant to the training discussion.  The book I politely looked through was called 'Guide of Rules and Orders of the High Court'.  I tried to find something interesting to say about the procedural orders I was looking at.  I failed. And so we waited some more.

Finally the judge asked why we were so concerned with the conditions in Pakistani prisons, a subject which we hadn't mentioned at all.  He added that he knew them to be very good, and American prisons to be much worse.  My (Pakistani) colleague quietly replied that our clients would likely disagree about the conditions of prisons here, and that as a Pakistani she could not do much about the condition of American prisons.  So he continued, "you see it in all these Hollywood movies, how awful their prisons are." My quick-witted colleague retorted, "Yes and in Bollywood movies the star goes flying off into the rain and we all know that is an accurate representation of Pakistani society".  Silence.

As our discomfort grew, the judge grew happier.  He gave orders to his staff and left us to wait for our tea.  We all understood that until we had drunk our tea, we were captive in this room.  And in this room, the judge was king.  Eventually, after nearly an hour of crawling time passed, our tea arrived.  We gulped and gulped and burned our mouths, hoping to get away. "What is the rush?" These were the first words he had uttered in a good half hour.  He answered himself with a sneery, "I am sure ladies like you have time for a cup of tea." 

Finally, once every drop of tea had been drunk, we were invited to see the hall we could use for the training. Thankful, for this is what we had come for, we accepted.  We piled in to a car to cross the 200 meters across the High Court and then out of it, only to be led, with sinking hearts, into another office, and not into the hall. 

We were introduced to an elderly, smiley, ex-Supreme Court judge.  We were offered tea, which we refused on the basis that we had just had some. "Coffee then - ladies like you must have time for coffee.”  We were asked where we were from.  London, I replied. Ah, I know London well, I spent many excellent years there studying.  We discussed universities.  Cambridge is very good but my college not famous enough.  Law degrees.  How could I possibly have studied politics as my first degree and still be a lawyer? This could not be good for the excellence of the English legal system.  Chambers in London.  The best in the world.  Buses.  Wonderful value for money.  English weather.  Too cold but nice cool summers.  English tea.  Strange, but drinkable. The state of British society.  Much better 45 years ago.  Going downhill now. 

This old Judge was ostensibly proud of his time spent in England and his ability to talk about the country knowledgeably.  It is often clear how much influence, thanks to colonialism, Britain has had here, and no more so than within the legal system.  I felt struck then, as I often have over the last few weeks, how much ongoing damage this has done.  How can such a system possibly work when it is built from an alien value-system and operates, still, in a foreign language?

The contrast between the 'ordinary' streets or police stations of Lahore and the world of the High Court has to be seen to be believed.  It seems as though the two have just completely forgotten each other. 

We finally get to see the hall, and it was just as impressive as we expected it to be.  In this hall, we will probably get to hold our training, and possibly even make some small difference. All that I know for sure, though, is that we will all sit around in comfort, drinking tea and swapping tales about the great British legal tradition.