A safe place

How is it to be a child in the streets of Islamabad? To sell flowers or tissues or to beg, because you have nothing to sell?

I don't know it. I just saw it reflected in eyes that looked at me out of a body that was young. But the eyes were already old from what they had seen. Things I can only imagine. And some of them I don't want to picture. Being kicked into the mud from police officers, for example. Being asked to rub my nose into the mud while they take their share of the few Rupees strangers on the streets have given to you.

Who do you run to when the authorities that you should trust in, are partly the ones that scam you? Will you be able to trust after all?

I've been to a place of hope. A place where some of these children can come to and are welcomed as who they are. I had met Zeba Husain at a juggling workshop, which I had given in a dance-school in Islamabad and she had invited me to come to the school she has opend just a few months ago.

The streetchildren's school in the neighbourhood of Bari Imam in Islamabad (www.mashalschool.com) consists of several buildings she has rented to teach the children. She pays the teachers, the teaching materials, the small things that make four walls, a roof and a courtyard to a school. A place of learning and knowledge, of sharing and maybe of change.

“Most of the children that came here were even too afraid to talk to me. It took me several months until they were comfortable to trust and to be close to someone. Now they come and hug me. They wouldn't have done that in the beginning.“ she tells me, while walking through the school classes. Children of all ages sit together, paint on pieces of paper, stand up when we appear on the door steps and show their achievements.

“We teach them some religious knowledge aswell. It makes it easier to ask the families to bring them here, if we do it. But mostly they have learned to read, write, learn about hygienic and get to know one another. They learn to take care of each other, so they aren't alone on the streets, but they can organise themselves if some child gets missing or injustice happens to them.“

I watch the director Zeba Husain speaking with the children. She listens to them and takes them seriously. Her direct glance comes straight from the heart: “If we don't care for them, no one will do.“ she says, and I know she is right. She asks me to spread the word about her project to people that I know, to get support. Speaking with her, I realise, more than ever, that real change doesn't come structurally from above, but from many engaged individuals that dare to make a change.

“I have brought you today somebody from Germany, who will do a show for you“, she announces in the classrooms in Urdu. The kids surround me, some show me their pictures and ask, what I'll do. But most of them are too scared to approach me.

I feel weird, coming just to juggle for them, while they need support on so many other levels. “But nobody ever comes to perform for them.“ Zeba tells me. “With your performance you tell them that they are worth seeing something like this. That somebody comes just for them, to make a show for them. What you bring is joy. This can't be measured in marks or dollars.“

Encouraged by her words, I spin poi, laugh, share and teach some of the kids some tricks. The socks that I have bought on one of the nearby bazaars to build new juggling tools disperse into the crowd of kids in a flash. I am sweeped out of the school with two kids at each hand, clinging to my hands, asking me to come back. I promise to do so. To come back and volunteer as a teacher. Because these kids don't deserve any less: a school, an education, something to look forward to. Something more than the streets.

the house of women

The place where I live(d) in Pakistan is an artschool.

The family lives on the ground floor, the rooms of the art school are to be found in the first floor aswell as in the second floor. The roof is used aswell for working on bigger art projects. The art school serves three purposes. Kauser and Hijab first of all teach in the artschool (drawing, painting, sculptoring, welding...), further on they use it as a space for their own art projects. Events like discussions, exhibitions or installations/performances etc. are launched aswell. The household consists mainly of Kauser, her daughter Hijab and Fatimah's daughter Rastte, furtheron are some helpers and „good souls of the house“ living there.


The experience in living within the solo-women-household, might be better understood seen in the setting of the broader scale as Pakistan as a muslim state, which cultivates certain ideals. “In Islam, the family is seen as a basic unit of society, so that the creation of a good family is taken to mean the creation of a good society. The task of creating a good family is a woman's responsibility, and according to conservative opinion, women should, therefore, be confined to the home.“1 This ideal stand in contrast to the growing number of Pakistani women that take on jobs and are active in the public sphere. In more liberal educated parts of the society, it is also being acknowledged that “despite their conjugal and parental roles, women may also have occupational and other public responsibilities.“

How does it come that two women live independently in a household in Pakistan?
A biographical approach



After completing her highschool and her university degree as a fine artist, Kauser Jehan was married and worked at the local federal government college as a teacher and head of department. She originates from an upper middle class family, who could afford to build a house and give all of their children a good educational background. After just five months of marriage, her husband died and she, in the second month pregnant, was left alone. Her family in law proposed her to remarry with the family's third son, who was ten years younger than Kauser and her family asked her to abort the child. She refused both. After the birth of her child, Hijab, she lived together with her family, as her family in law didn't want to care for her (which was, as she stated, partly due to the fact that she had given birth to a girl). Her family consisted of her two younger brothers and her mother, as her father had died when she was young. After three years of living together, her family cut their support and told her that she had to move out. As she didn't have the financial means to rent a house, she decided to put away money, to sell her car and to buy a piece of land that was comparable cheap because it was a rocky terraine and didn't seem capable of constructing a house on it.

In 1987 she started building a first room and moved in as soon as the walls and the roof were constructed (without window glass and doors in it). Since then she has build the three storied house in a 14year long process, accompanied by working as a teacher and raising her child.
Her child, Hijab, has completed a highschool and a university degree from the National college of arts in Lahore, aswell. She is working as a teacher at the National college of arts and is in involved in several art projects. She got married in october 2004 and gave birth to her child Rastte.



When asked how the response from the outside was (towards the two women living alone in one household), they both point out the various difficulties that they had to face directly aswell as indirectly.



Directly, they had been thrown out of their families house, which doesn't only mean a change of places, but the difficulty to finance themselves aswell as to be without the moral and emotional support of their family. They gained a strong support through their friends, who respected their decisions and helped them in various situations, while their family refused to do so.
Indirectly they had to cope with the various ways relatives were showing them that they on the one hand respected them for their achievements in the field of their work, but showed them on the other hand that they thought them not capable of sustaining a stable relationship with a man, which showed in their view a lack in the character of a person.
Kauser, who sees herself as a practising muslim, pointed out repeatedly

„In Islam it is not meant to be, that a woman lives alone without a man.3 A widow should be remarried. But Pakistani society doesn't live the true Islam, it is changed through Hindu-influence from India. When a woman here becomes a widow she hasn't got any chance to marry again.“



Despite the fact that they had to cope with the family's refusal and with the general opinion of society and people, Kauser argues that she is still happy,that she took the choices she made. Even if she had the choice, she wouldn't re-marry.

“When a woman marries and is still working, she will have to bear two different works: the one in her job and the one in the household, next to the fact that she has to please her husband. I am happy without a man. I have my work, I go out, I enjoy myself and my family with my daughter and my grandchild.“

Both women are proud of their achievements and are managing their lives independently. Their contact to their family and relatives is existing, but sporadic and not very intense. Instead of a family in the traditional sense, they have established a well functioning network of friends and people that they consider their family by association.

Cramming...or: do you have summary XYZ?!

What does studying at a pakistani university look like?

You have courses that are supposed to be like seminars. You get texts. You read. You discuss. You write exams and express the learned. You write homeworks/essays, give talks and presentations about topics and conduct small field works.

So far the theory.

One of the most frequently asked questions when turning up at my institute was: „do you have the summary of text XYZ?“

I was surprised and asked back if we were supposed to hand in summaries of the texts we had written to the professors. Maybe this was an expected task that I hadn't done, because I didn't know about it. „Nonono! Not for the professors! For me!“ was the answer.

Silence on my side.

Every person learns different. When reading a text, I underline important aspects and if I feel like it, I make remarks at the side of the text. If I want to discuss the text or if I have to give a talk about it, I will structure the text and extract the important information on an extra sheed of paper.

This is what I was offering to them then. 'You can have my notes, if you like', I said. They didn't seem satisfied.

One of the girls with very poor english, who had ensured me as a 'friend' straight away in the first days of uni, instructed me: „You will write summaries about the texts and give them to me.“

I asked why.

„My english isn't good enough. I cannot understand the texts. I need your help.“

What this really meant just got more clear to me a day or two after, before I met her in preparation for an exam which should take part the day after. She sat over a summary of several university texts and learned them: by heart. Word by word.

What might explain it further, might be the fact that Pakistan is a country with a lot of different languages. Urdu is together with English the official language. But the students speak a lot of different languages at home with their families: Sindhi, Punjabi, Pathan,....

In university they are forced to express themselves in foreign language, which was introduced by the British in colonial times: english. It is the language in which they are measured and in which their exams will be marked. But a lot of students face mayor problems expressing themselves in this language and even in the courses, heated discussions are rather held in Urdu than in English.

Before the exams, a lot of students run before the exams to the copy shops to copy summaries about texts and cram them: learning them word by word so that they can express themselves in a scientific language, which ensures them points in the tests, although they might have no clue what they are actually writing about.

So far the praxis.

Friend or classfellow?

'Do you want to be my friend?'

This question was posed to me in the first weeks of my university time at the Quaid-I-Azam university. I was stunned, looking at the girl, same age as me, dressed in a suiting shalwar kamize, holding onto her shoulder bag. I am not used to making friends like this. In my world: you talk, in one way or another superficial or more personal, you might meet up for a tea together, you're doing sports or just happen to be in the same queue or in the same course or whatever: but a friendship is never such a conscious decision as a mobile phone contract: please sign here.

This is why I decided to investigate and understand what kind of conditions would follow by deciding for or against a friendship.

She explained:

Either you are a friend or a classfellow. A classfellow are all of the people that happen to be in your year of university or in your courses. You exchange information about the courses, about the professors or the research topics. But if you are friends with someone, then you share everything.

Ok, I thought, that doesn't sound too bad. Why not be friends with her.

BUT

(and then follows the big BUT)

being friend with someone means NOT to be a friend with someone else. There are different circles of friends that exclude each other. If you decide in being friends with one group, this also means to work exclusively with them together for university exams, to help and support them and to shun others.

A bit more complicated, mh?

Yes, especially when you get to a new place and you don't know the people and have to decide whom you belong to, without knowing who and how these people are.

My university semester turned out to be more of a social studies year, in which pakistani society and psyche was more reflected in a micro cosmos than I had expected to be. The tendency to gossip (even if you just explain the university homework to a male classfellow will not be unnoted), combined with the games the groups played with each other had found a perfect victim: me.

I found myself more than once in the position to revise decisions because my 'friends' had asked me to, torn between the different groups whom I had contact to all along. I learned. Not only from the studies but while studying with these people in the way they treated me. And if I have to be stripped down to honesty: I found great research topics, interesting information and classfellows. Friends were rare under the coditions of competition and the chosen time limited community that they formed. But still to be found if searched after ;-)

a bibliophile's dream

Pakistan is a bibliophile's dream. A country with a high illitricy rate, inhibits the most magical places of storing, selling and hiding books in catacomb like shops that are overcrowded with foliants until the very ceiling.

There are places for new books like the beautiful Saeed book bank in Islamabad: a two storey book shop with extra sections for books about Pakistan and Afghanistan, innumerous magazines of bridal-clothing, best-sellers and lonely planet books.

And then there are the 'Old book'-shops. Shops crammed full with old second hand books and reprints of the original version.

What both book shops have in common: cheap books to a minimum share of the european price. How can someone, who loves books, adores reading and melts away for the feeling of holding a book and turning the paper pages, say no to that?

Well....I couldn't. I bought, I read, I collected....and had to post 27kg books home to Germany. Two good friends of mine summed it up in: „You're lucky that it were JUST 27 kg and not more.“ and in the wish of „I hope that you might rent one of these cheap appartments in Berlin with a high ceiling to start your own private library.“

The picture shows the packing at the GPO (general post office), where the books (and other 13kg of belongings) were checked, sewed into clothes that got hand stitched and ceiled with red candle like drips onto the cloth, before I had to attach passport and visa copies (also sewed onto the package).

I'm still thinking I should have added an 'excuse me'-letter and some present for the post man who will have to carry it several stairs in the Berlin appartements of the friends who'll receive the huge packages. Would you have condemned me if you were the post (wo)man?

When and how does a new year begin?

One of the most important questions at the end of the year in Europe seems to be, where you celebrate with whom New Years, while wearing what and shooting how many christmas crackers in the air.

In Pakistan there are no dirty streets caused by new year's fire crackers, no drunken party guests stumbling over the left overs of yesterday's party: the islamic year has begun two weeks earlier, is regulated by the moon and not even a great cause of joy and partying: it is Muharram

In the first ten days of Muharram, the shiits are celebrating one of their biggest mourning festivities, the ashura rites, in which they remember the death of imam Al Husain in the battle of Kerbela.

I went for these celebrations to Lahore, the border city to India, where huge processions of people walked through the streets, chanting songs and cutting themselves with knives. With hurting themselves they demonstrate their belief and support for imam Husain and show the suffering he went through aswell. What seems strange to outsiders and even to Sunnis (the other main sect in Islam), is of essential base in the Shia belief. It reminded me of the self flagellation in the christian belief, which was mainly practiced in the 16^th century for getting rid of the worldly demands.

We watched it from above, sitting on the roof top of a house and were invited afterwards for some food and a chai by the people who had let us on the roof top of the houses. The festivity was filmed and observed closely as the days of Muharram seem to be riot prone or sectarian violence. Sad enough that a bomb, detonating in Karachi on the Muharram festivity, triggered such sectarian violence.

Our visit to Lahore, aswell as the New Years Evening in Islamabad stayed calm. No fire crackers, no acted or true violence. Two old and two new years. And more to come.

christmas cake

Pakistan is a country with a rather small population of a religious group, which is called christians. Christians follow a 2000 year old beliefsystem, which is based on a singel deity, whom they call “god“. They belief that he has send his “son“ onto a small and rather unimportant planet called “earth“ to rescue the people, spread some love and do a lot of wonders. Although the spreading of this religion hasn't always been as peaceful as the messages conveyed through the “son“ (whom they call Jesus), the arrival of him is still being celebrated in many places of the planet earth.

Despite the fact that there aren't so many christians living in a state which claims to inhibit mainly muslims, the date of the arrival of the son (christmas) was more than consciously in the minds of the people around me. And as they considered me a follower of christianity, tons of christmas-messages arrived on that day in my phone, wishing a happy christmas day. An electronic dancing Weihnachtsmann greeted me at the entrance of the bakery and the uni had a day off due to christmas. It made me a lot thinking how many german christians in my home country would be conscious about celebrations like Eid and would congratulate their muslim fellow citizens?!


As my pakistani family had never celebrated christmas before, they were eager to get to know how christmas was celebrated with my family in Germany. So we decided to make a christmas party and went out to buy loads of food. On the way we stopped at the bakery: I should decide on the christmas cake. Christmas cake?!? That was new to me! But the family was of the firm belief that a christmas cake would belong to a real christmas celebration.

If you want to picture our christmas party: take loads of food (a 'german' potato soup and a great feast of pakistani yummy food of the best pakistani cook I know (my pakistani mom)), the most different people that you can imagine (from an old army officer, a young guy who always pushes to his limits and learns the art of diplomacy by pulling back and an anti-drug officer) and let them meet in an art school somewhere in a war torn country as Pakistan is right now. No snow, no going to church, but friendship, laughter and christmas cake.