A Test of Faith

One of my core values is standing up for the rights of the oppressed. But it is not always easy, especially if doing so involves living in a hot dusty village in the Third World, at the mercy of bureaucratic red tape....

For several decades now, Pakistan has hosted a very large Afghan refugee population. This has helped the Afghans to survive the perpetual destruction of their county by the various superpowers. Unfortunately, it has also placed a tremendous drain on the Pakistan economy, creating deep-rooted resentment among many Pakistanis for the Afghan refugees. The treatment of Afghan refugees by Pakistani society may be likened to that of migrant workers by the U.S.

Asif, my ex-husband, was among those Afghans who fled to Pakistan when the war came to their country. He and his family lived in a hot, dusty sprawling refugee camp called Camp Munda Pul, near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. In writing my book on the effects of war on Afghan refugee women, I stayed in this and other refugee camps. Every so often, Asif and I left the camp to travel into town (Peshawar), to buy groceries, toiletries and other supplies for his family, or to meet with various officials whom I wanted to interview. Frequently, we were stopped and harassed by Pakistani police, who resented seeing a Pakistani woman (which I appeared to be, in my native dress) with a lowly Afghan. They feigned concern for my safety: Perhaps I was being held against my will? Most of the time, the underpaid Paki cops just wanted a bribe. Since we generally refused to succumb to the bribe demand, Asif would periodically be marched off to the local police station and held for a few hours, until the cops realized he wasn’t going to pay up, and the Chief of Police showed up and demanded to know what his underlings were doing holding an innocent man.

But that was not the worst of it. Paki police frequently harassed refugee families, tearing down their tents, in clear violation of Qur'anic injunctions to support those who have performed hijarat. Asif’s family was relatively fortunate to have a mud hut in Camp Munda Pul, remote enough that it seemed to escape most of that negative attention. Asif’s female relatives rarely left the camp, and he was their liason with the outside world. Every time he went into town, I worried that he would be harassed. His brothers, tall, lanky, and bearded—clearly Afghan in their style of dress—were also frequently harassed by the authorities. For Asif and his brothers, getting a job in Pakistan, without the recommendation of a U.S. or European national, was nearly out of the question.

By this time, Asif and I were married, and I had filed for an immigrant visa for him. Originally, I’d planned to return to the States, and wait for him to follow me after his papers became available. Although I was teaching him to read and write English in our spare moments, I worried that his inability to understand follow-up paperwork through the lengthy immigration process would lay my efforts to waste, and that he would continue to suffer harassment at the hands of the Pakistani authorities while awaiting processing. A few weeks into the application process, I decided I would wait for my beloved husband to get immigration, and that we would return to the States together—or not at all.

I was worried that Asif’s immigration papers might not be delivered easily to a refugee camp address, and so taking a gamble, I took him to the house of my Aunt Shima (really my great aunt), just outside Lahore, Pakistan’s largest and oldest city. The U.S. Consulate was also in Lahore. Aunt Shima had never met Asif, and had not seen me in years. She disliked him instantly, and, it seemed, me--for my selection of a lowly Afghan, and that too, without first consulting her. But fortunately for Asif and I, Muslim customs dictate that one take in visitors even if one can’t stand them, and Aunt Shima extended us her hospitality.

My great aunt was a towering figure in her village. Her father had been a big land owner in the area, so much of the village property was now hers, although she occasionally gifted small plots of land to a villager getting married, starting a new business or some such. Her house was one of the few permanent structures in the village, the walls of its compound rising high over the smaller clay houses like a castle. It was probably the only house around for miles with marble floors, AC (albeit old fashioned), modern plumbing, and (cheesy, Pakistani) TV. The villagers were like her serfs, bringing her offerings of food, and requesting audiences of her, to seek resolution of their problems. And she, being a school teacher at heart (she had an MA in education from the University of WI), reciprocated by running a school—the only one around for miles—for their children in one wing of her compound.

So, our new abode was considerably more comfortable than Camp Munda Pul. But the puny efforts of the feeble, old-fashioned AC unit against the 110°F heat, and the periodic “load-shedding” (scheduled rolling power outages, common in India and Pakistan) made me long for home. The months rolled by, and the U.S. Consulate was taking its time in sending Asif’s paperwork. I called and badgered them periodically, to no avail. A Pakistani friend, who worked for the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, told me they were probably checking us out, to make sure ours was not one of the many “paper marriages” between Pakistani/Afghans and U.S. citizens. Or that Asif wasn’t the sterotypical Afghan heroin smuggler. Ah well.

It hadn’t rained in weeks, dust was everywhere, and some parts of my aunt’s village were afflicted with TB. I was running out of money, patience, and time--as I was pregnant, with our first child. Common sense told me I should go home before my due date, so that I could be around my family and modern health facilities when the time came. But, my promise to my husband came first.

To preserve my sanity, I determined to maintain a regimen. For several hours each morning, I gave Asif his English lesson. Then, we would play badminton in the sweltering heat for an hour. After that, we had lunch, sometimes with my great aunt, if she had finished her teaching for the afternoon. After lunch, I tutored selected pupils from her school, and then washed clothes (by hand), since clothing tended to get sweaty very quickly in the heat.

Asif left for a visit to the refugee camp, to make sure his family was doing okay. I was even more miserable alone, tortured by thoughts of returning home. Shakespeare had it all wrong: To stay or not to stay—that was the question. Asif returned from the village and shortly thereafter, I delivered our first child in a clinic in Lahore. I stayed there for about a week, recuperating. My aunt and other relatives were incredibly kind and supportive, and even seemed to have developed a semblance of liking for Asif by this point. Yet, the whole experience was surreal, for I had never imagined I would birth a child in a “foreign” country.

After I felt strong enough, I paid the U.S. Consulate another visit, this time with my infant son, for whom I was requesting a U.S. passport. Incredibly, the U.S. authorities were very cooperative, delivering my son’s passport to me in a matter of days, and Asif’s papers shortly thereafter. The three of us returned to the U.S. to live happily ever after.