home

after a 34 hour tuesday, a hellish trip from islamabad to new york which included many a flight delay and luggage irregularity, an exhausting sprint through messy heathrow in order to miss a flight by 2 minutes that had already waited 20 and 3 missed flights between new york and kansas city, i'm home. and it's way too cold.

why are the people movers at newark liberty airport always broken in the direction i'm going? i swear. every single time i've been to that airport, no matter which terminal, which hallway, which airline. always in the direction i'm going. this became especially salient after the aforementioned trip back from islamabad (see above).

digressing, being home for the holidays means eating a lot, sleeping even more and, when everyone has decided to behave and isn't trying to kill one another, relaxing. there is also, of course, the incredible boredom of kansas city. i haven't had the chance to connect with any of my friends yet, so that's meant i've been spending the time i'm not spending with my family re-reading angels in america and watching it on dvd (which i bought in pakistan. let's hear it for the illegal pirating industry that allows gay movies to enter muslim countries, where i also bought flawless, a couple of almodóvar andmichael jackson number ones. i opted out of the will&grace box set for obvious reasons; namely i detest the show). i've also been trying to get some work done.

working backwards, that's been the at-times-unfortunate follow-up to a wonderful and exhausting preceding week and show. did i mention i'm back in the country?

the last week of rehearsals was quite the event. everyone vacillated between excitement and stress, which means people were moody as hell--at times very supportive and at other times just kind of nasty or standoffish. tech was a nightmare and dress rehearsal never happened; in fact, the performance was the first time we ran the show from beginning to end. regardless, everything turned out fine because, as Mickey always says, "everything, in the end, always turns out fine." in fact, it turned out more the fine; it turned out excellently. some highlights:

1. working with Sheema Kermani, pakistan's pre-eminent dance diva and a guest star in our show, was wonderful. she swept through like a hurricane on Saturday and helped out with, well, everything (from translation to lighting design to rehearsal direction to last-minute choreographic changes). she didn't actually turn out to be a diva at all; lucky for us, considering there were already so many involved. to boot, it was wonderful to watch her on-stage and even that much more fun and exciting to dance with her. everyone should be so patient, professional and dedicated. and she used to teach at the dance festival where i trained last summer. geez, i can't believe it's been 7 months since i graduated from college.

2. dance-wise, the performance went really well. in fact, it was the best run (of the individual sections) we'd had to date, which is always what you want. there is little more frustrating in performance than knowing you've rehearsed something better than you've performed it. in fact, a lot came together during the show that wasn't happening during rehearsal. there were some timing mishaps, specifically one which made a dancer miss a cue (not her fault) and another which had me running off a lighted stage when i was supposedly dead (also not my fault).

3. everyone loved it. many people expressed that we should have done a tour in pakistan or atleast a couple more shows in islamabad. actually, the original plan was to do more than one show. but because of the holiday schedule (ramadan/ramzan ending right before we started rehearsals; christmas happening right after we had the show), theatre restrictions and a variety of other factors, well, we couldn't do that. not this time anyway. i think we all want to go back at one point.

4. i personally feel the male dancers we had were the most important, even if the smallest, part of our show. it's not that their characters were essential nor that we couldn't have done with different dancers. they were, however, the people in the show (including the audience, maybe excepting their families) for which this was the most foreign. and that's important, especially considering mima's mission. mima's mission says that the purpose of its productions is, primarily, cultural exchange--hence, for example, setting an eastern narrative (the story of the persian mythological/historical figure Hamza) with a western medium (a contemporary story ballet). the purpose of this cultural exchange is to fuel dialogue among artists and audiences of different cultures. i oftentimes wondered where the cultural exchange was going on in this project for the pakistanis.

thing is, the audience was mostly upper-middle to upper class pakistanis, who may not get to see ballet on a regular basis but have access to the travel/opportunities/etc. to do so. the piece was performed in an exclusive country club auditorium and the show was by invite. the female dancers came from well-to-do families (Sophiya is a third generation fulbright scholar, for example). there were even talks at one point of performing for the american embassy--which fell through ultimately. these boys, however, don't fit into any of these groups; and i feel that with respect to learning new ideas, art forms and ways of thinking, this type of exposure was newest and most rare to them among us all. it was wonderful to see them so amazed and amused by ballet that they would, giggling and in earnest, try to imitate Marco's and my jumps, arabasques and pirouettes, to see them struggle and succeed at learning to dance to counts, to see them laugh and feel shy and then feel proud to see themselves in their make-up and somewhat silly somewhat orientalist costumes.

that was my favorite part of the show.

-+

the rest of the night was filled with good company and bitter-sweet goodbyes. after hitting up a sheesha bar with Sophiya and her friends, one of them drove us to the after-party at the house. the guy who drove us home was cool; and he used to live and study in new york. i've been meaning to email him. at the party, we mingled and chatted with the guests. the boys were there, and it fell on me to hand them their money for the performance (why, i'm not sure); one of the understudies had come, who was only paid for the rehearsals and not the performance. why did i have to be the one to explain to them that the money in the envelope was only for the three performers?

Sophiya and i retreated to the downstairs living room to dance salsa--i had promised her and her friends i would show them some basic moves and then ran out of time. she picked up quickly on it, and loved it. i promised her i would teach her more when she came to the u.s. Ali came, hung out a bit and then drove us to the tailor to pick up my last minute orders. among them were the christmas presents i had made for my family, which they all loved, and a gorgeous corduroy jacket i designed myself (and which disappeared from my luggage on the trip back home. grrrr). we then drove her home. saying "see you later" was hard; but she'll be in the u.s. soon. we went back to the house and Ali, Mickey and i decided we would go out for a late dinner (Mickey and i had resolved we wouldn't go to sleep since we had to head to the airport at 4am), which made me wish Ali had been in islamabad more of the time we'd been there and reinforced my impression of him as someone i would like to get to know better. Mickey and i are trying to convince him to come to new york soon.

that was the last night. then the trip home began.

(sigh)

the way i become and stay primarily connected to a place and what's going on there are through friends. now i have atleast a couple in islamabad. i still want to visit karachi and peshawar, go back to see the people i met and spend some serious, with-someone-who-knows-it time in lahore. i'm sure i'll keep abreast on the political happenings of pakistan; maybe one day i'll go back and start an organization that fends for the rights of those street kids. there are so many things about pakistan that could draw me back. i'll definitely be back, as much as Sophiya and her friends insist i won't.

for now, i'm back home.

--jcm

clarification

i should clarify one thing now that i'm back in the u.s. the post that seems to have stuck in the hearts and minds of my family and a number of my friends is the one in which i say i didn't feel safe posting certain details about our daily activities. even a month later, my grandmother still feels the need to interject with "yeah, but he didn't feel safe" when i'm telling someone about the trip.

the reason i posted it, and i do acknowledge it sounded quite cryptic, is because, for example, we were rehearsing at the american center, the cultural center in islamabad run by the u.s. embassy. the american center is a fortress, with tons of security guards and a number of pakistani military forces literally camped out in canvas tents outside its gates. on entering the complex, we were searched by metal detectors, had our bags searched, our cell phones (and anything else that could have a camera) confiscated and then were escorted into the building. this was pretty standard procedure, actually; in fact, minus the cell phone/camera confiscation, this was standard procedure for visiting foreigner-owned hotels. the sobering parts, however, were the glares and energy coming from the pakistani military camped outside the american center, staring us down.

it sounds like not-a-big-deal. i'm sure Sophiya will point out how she lives with it everyday and how i'm making something out of nothing; Emily has already tried to minimize the point on a comment. but it's fucking scary; i can't imagine it ever becoming not a big deal for me. it's feels intrusive and stuffy and demeaning.

anyway, in pakistan it's a liability to be associated with the u.s. in any official capacity--and being that neither marco nor i are american citizens, we wanted to capitalize on that distinction.

moving along, you can't help but think, "who exactly are these people? who's watching us?" it was made clear to us on several occasions, before we even made it to pakistan, that the americans were keeping an eye on us. i can't imagine they weren't collaborating with the isi, one of pakistan's intelligence divisions. that's why i didn't want to facilitate anyone else's trail on us by publishing on the internet, "hi, i'm that guy you see coming in and out of the american center;" "i'm the guy staying at the fulbright house. going to be in lahore this weekend!" etc. that's why i posted what i did.

--jcm

Sophiya

every once in a while, people enter my life who i hope and feel will be a part of it for time to come, and whom, though i might have gotten to know them relatively well in a small period of time, i look forward to getting to know truly. Sophiya is one of those people.

i met Sophiya at a lunch/dinner get-together my first week in Pakistan. i remember being introduced to her and wanting to talk to her. so i introduced myself and kind-of followed her into the house with this intention. to tell the truth, she was a bit stand-offish at first. but if you know me, well, you know i don't back down until someone makes it clear to me i'm making them uncomfortable. and so i persisted. we chatted, about school, about her upcoming trip to the US on a fulbright and where she might end up in art school. i suggested she apply to yale (the fulbright works differently in pakistan--people are placed by the commission after they get the scholarship) and told her i would forward her some relevant information, as she'd not heard much, if anything, about their grad program. i did and that is where it all began. this act of interest in and concern for her, a stranger (as she described it later, though i never thought of it as such, really, until she had pointed it out) is where our friendship really began.

what followed from that email was an amazing month of pakistan, and an amazing month of getting to know a wonderful, beautiful and captivating person. chalo...

where to begin? Sophiya is too many things...

to begin, she's gorgeous and sexy, and aware of it. she has incredible eyes, and eyelashes from islamabad to mecca, which she bats on command to get her way. she has a natural confidence and allure that comes through in how she clutches her shawl, holds her cigarette, smiles, dances (brilliantly).

despite her stated ambivalence about being so, she's caring, attentive and concerned. she stops to talk to begging kids, she always asks someone's name when addressing her/him, even when the act is onconsequential in any other way than letting the person know she/he's actually being heard, she treats people with respect irrespective of their social standing, background, etc. even though she says she's grown numb to it, she's angry about those things in her society/culture/country that are unfair and abusive to women, children, the poor, etc. she's also a loyal, intuitive friend and was always willing to provide a shoulder.

and she's smart. and we all know i love smarties. she's creative, she's passionate and she's talented. and we all know i love talent, too, maybe even above smarts. well, actually, maybe that's not true. i prefer both. back to her.

she's not perfect either, and she's knows it. as much as she's working it in so many respects, she's also working on it. and her awareness of her imperfections make her that much more real and lovely to be around.

aside all that, however, there is one thing i cherish most about Sophiya: her openness and honesty. it surfaced most clearly to me in the following couple of instances (and to those of you who grew up on the east coast of the u.s., "couple" means "two," not "a few." damn will you go get your dictionary?).

pretty much from go, Sophiya and i argue(d) a lot. now anyone who knows me knows that 1. i cannot really make friends with people who won't engage me in honest and necessary arguments and 2. of all the things i am, "laid back" is most definitely not one of them. the latter point is important and relevant because she, on the other hand, is very laid back, except about the fact that i'm not. this was the springboard for our first argument, from which i got my first taste of Sophiya's honesty. i'll never forget the shock and esteem i felt the time we went hiking in the margalla hills, only the third time we'd hung out outside of rehearsal, and she said to me, "you know, you might want to think about getting that stick out of your ass and stop worrying about everything so much." naturally, i thought, "you're full of shit" and said so in more diplomatic terms. naturally, she wasn't. not entirely anyway. either way, i loved it.

this openness manifest itself also in Sophiya's reaction to my tendency to be intense and (maybe too openly) giving with people i don't know very well--something from which most people shy away atleast initially (this includes some of my now-best friends). in fact, she not only handled it, she appreciated and embraced it. it translates(d) into acts of vulnerability rare (and even absent) among so many interpersonal relationships i've had as an adult. for example, Sophiya made it clear to me in no uncertain terms that she would miss me, and just how much she appreciated my new presence in her life. quoting her (about my initial email, as it were), "who does that [with] someone they just met?" not many people. now most of you probably know i excel in this arena. in fact, i'm a pretty miserable person to be around when i feel untrusting of anyone. unlike most people, however, this didn't scare Sophiya; instead, she returned it. that's a big deal to me.

this stands out to me particularly because i've spent the last few years constantly hearing people tell me that putting faith in people i don't know well is misguided, naive, fickle, etc--and even more time feeling hurt by people who've failed (read: refused) to return that faith. some might even accuse me, in enjoying this about Sophiya, of rationalizing a behavior of my own that i see in someone else. and maybe it is, to an extent, those things. but that's ok. first, because it still does it for me. and second, because i truly believe the following.

it's also honest. and it's faithful and hopeful in a way that puts aside the fear of being taken advantage of, a fear many people allow to distort everything else in their life--because fear, when one lets it control things, will not allow anything to be prioritized before it. ultimately, to me, it's void of cynicism in a world increasingly defined by cynicism and increasingly resistant to acts of trust in interpersonal relations.

it's also refreshing. and so i leave pakistan feeling excited about this new person in my life and good about, well, myself, life and love.

so who does that? for one, Sophiya does.

thank you, Sophiya. i miss you (and plan on seeing you soon).

--jcm

last leg

the end of this trip is quickly approaching. my performance will be over in less than 12 hours and i'll be gone in less than 24. of course, it has all flown by.

i'm ready for the show to be over; i've worked hard and want to see the outcome of my efforts.

i'm ready to be home and see my family and my friends. i've been receiving gentle and not-so-gentle reminders of why home is home. or atleast why i live in the same country as those about whom i care most.

i'm anxiously ready to go out dancing. anyone want to come along?

i'm truly ready not to be spending 16 hours a day with the same 2 people.

and yet, i'm still not ready to leave pakistan. Sophiya says i'll never come back; i certainly hope that's not true.

ay, ay, ay. writer's block.

this won't be my last post,

--jcm

(edited 5 minutes after posting.)

pictures

here are some pictures of our recent trip to pindi. my digital camera has terrible resolution, so i am posting some of Federico's (plus he's a good photographer). thanks to him, of course. i can't wait to get my film developed--and in b&w! i think these images will get larger if you click on them. i could be wrong.



with the kids i wrote about in pindi.




craziness, huh?




there are so many security guards with rifles everywhere we go.

weekend+monday, part 2

i've published two posts about this past weekend nearly simultaneously (though time-stamped differently). i figured i would break them up to save your eyes and mine. scroll down to "countdown" to read the first part.

-+-+

sunday we took a trip to lahore, which was, architecturally, a beautiful city.

the first place we stopped was a market called anarkali, which was, well, chaos. it wasn't like a pindi market. it was a crowded street market closed off to any vehicles except motorcycles. it was almost too crowded, certainly too crowded to take pictures. after the paris situation i described earlier, i've been very cautious of taking pictures of people in large crowds whose language i don't speak (when i'm not with a translator). we had no translator with us; S. was off having lunch and praying. Federico didn't feel comfortable taking pictures either.

the excitement in lahore ended early in the day. about an hour after getting there, i got brushed by a motorcycle. my first thought, after the shock, was that i might be hurt, so i checked to see if my clothing was at all torn and to come into full consciousness about my physical state of being. don't get me wrong; i didn't get run over or even knocked over. just brushed. after i checked in with myself, i looked up to see the driver (and passenger) of the motorcycle looking angrily at me, as if it was my fault that they'd driven from behind me and run into me. i tried to apologize in urdu and all i could think of in the moment was "shukriya," which actually means "thank you." so i just said, over and over, more and more intimidated by their glares, "i'm sorry, i'm sorry." finally they seemed to understand that i hadn't purposefully jumped in their way. the wrinkles on their forehead disappeared, they relaxed their eyebrows and at last said, "ok," before driving off. Federico declared that he didn't feel safe going any further into the market without someone who spoke urdu, and i kind said that though i didn't feel unsafe, i didn't necessarily feel comfortable. we headed back to where we'd told S. we would meet him, and Federico ended up going into a museum while Marco and i decided we'd wanted to walk around a different direction afterall. it was apparently my day to be brushed by motorcycles because it happened again, though not as hard; and this driver didn't even bat an eyelash.

we spent the a good part of the rest of the day figuring out where to eat and getting there since it was sunday, a lot closed earlier and since lahore is 4 hours+ from islamabad, and since we were only taking a day trip, we decided to head back after seeing not-much else (yes, we ended up taking those long day trips i expressed earlier i thought unfair to demand of a driver. i know, i know. we did tip him very well.).

oh, yeah, and we got pulled over by a cop over some made-up traffic violation (read: because we were clearly foreigners and didn't have embassy plates). i suspect the real reason he pulled us over is because he knew we'd reimburse S. for whatever he'd have to pay to cop to not give him a stamp in his license and take it away. bullshit. as Sophiya says, "it's always about a power trip." she added in "in pakistan," but i would say pakistan is certainly not unique in this respect.

the most exciting parts of the day, actually, were the trips to and from lahore. why? where do i begin?

there are a series of small cities along the highway between islamabad and lahore. i imagine they must have been villages along trade routes at one point (and still kind of are) that then grew into more proper cities. actually, they reminded me in a way of pindi. except in this case, they actuallly sat on the highway and the "chaos" of it all was spread out along four lanes and between strips of stores and businesses. there were more animal-drawn vehicles than in pindi, and navigating around them in a car was a task onto itself. they only stretched for, maybe, about a quarter of a mile. the most memorable one was called gujratwala. i made the following observations during the trip:

1. people in pakistan seem to know how to speed up while crossing the street just enough so as not to get hit. and cars know how to slow down just enough so as not to hit anyone/anything.

2. the road between islamabad and lahore is a war of the wills. people are constantly cutting each other off, or trying to prevent someone from cutting them off. you can just imagine if everyone had walkie talkies, theyd be saying to each other, "move the hell out of my way. i'm going to pass you if you don't." "no you won't." "yes i will." "no you won't." "oh watch me." "oh watch me this time." flash brights, flash brights, flash brights. "move!"

3. a large section of the highway between islamabad and lahore seems to be not two lanes of traffic going in opposing directions, but two and one half lanes. or atleast the width of what could be two and one half lanes. what is with that?

and the two and one half lane roads might not be a problem, if everyone wasn't trying to use that extra half-lane a third lane. traffic seems to move in unidirectional caravans here, with people constantly trying to move their way to the front of the caravan so they can go on ahead faster than the rest. this becomes particularly a problem when one caravan going one direction comes across another caravan going the other. people weave in and out of the oncoming traffic lane in oncoming traffic! first someone swings into oncoming traffic just to check whether the oncoming car is far enough to drive the latter's lane to pass someone in the former lane. oftentimes, they have to swing violently back into their lanes because they come to see that the oncoming traffic is actually really close. so you literally have this series of about 20 to 25 cars going each way, weaving in and out of two and half lanes facing each other! and then there are the people who feel those in the oncoming traffic lanes (though going their same direction) still aren't going fast enough, so they either try to make a third lane out of a non-existent (half or whole) lane on the other side of the oncoming traffic, then trying to weave back into their own lane. sound confusing? it certainly doesn't make any sense; it's also just hard to describe.

imagine this, the arrows as cars, trucks, etc., everyone going at a different speed:

>>>>___>>__< < <___>>>__ <<> > > >__
>______<< < <__>___ <<__<>____ < < <>

the arrows facing right should be in the top lane and vice versa. now imagine that the arrows in the top lane facing leftare trying to make their way around the arrows below them also facing left while the arrows in the top lane facing right are coming straight at them. reverse that explanation for the bottom lane, and add in that there is the undefined half lane in the middle in which people are also driving, trying to squeeze in between the craziness and that there are also people trying to go around the whole mess (off road) too--though this last phenom is somewhat more rare.

4. it really slows traffic down so much it really can't be any faster than just staying in the lane of offgoing traffic.

5. motorcyclists' shawls are gorgeous blowing in the wind.

6. there's something really nice about the highway at night, particularly when it winds its way through mountains. the nly times i've really driven through a moutainous region at night before going to california in october, i was really just too young to really appreciate them. pakistan sits at the footsteps of the himalayas and they are gorgeous. i remember being taken aback just by driving through the hollywood hills. then we went to palm springs, deeper into the rockies, and there was a sense of both calm and excitement (and even a good bit of fear) to be surrounded on all sides by them. i will always remember driving at 4am through palm springs (speeding, as it were) through the desert, surrounded by the mountains and the windmills, Jill Scott's words and sounds volume 1 on blast and thinking and saying to the other person in the car, Adam, "it's great to speed down this highway [and take it all in]."

7. S. is a good guy. and he really trucks along very well, considering the stress of his job, etc. he asked me whether women are allowed to drive in new york; i said "yes", and he told me they are not allowed to drive where he's from (arguably the most conservative and radically islamic part of pakistan--the border with afghanistan region called "the frontier"). i asked him if he thought it was good that women drove in new york and in islamabad; he said, yes, it's good. men drive good. women drive good. i asked if his wife (who still lives in the frontier) drove, and he responded that she (they) lived in a village where there are no cars. actually, women aren't really allowed much in public there. i wish S. and i could communicate more.

-+-+

monday was a better day than friday. i rehearsed on my own for a while. at first i was scatterbrained and couldn't focus. i sat down and did a proper warm up to Jill Scott's beautifully human (words and sounds volume 2)--i've been on (another) Jill Scott kick for about 3 months now. it was finally "i keep" that cleared my head. the rest of rehearsal went much better.

the part i struggled with so much on friday is looking a lot better, good even. it still needs work, but now we're all sure i'm ready for it.

i felt good about myself and my dancing yesterday. i'm feeling good about both today.

i can't believe the show is on monday; i can't believe we leave on tuesday.

i'll miss this place, though i am ready to be home.

--jcm

countdown

it's tuesday night. the countdown has begun; the show is in a week. damn. I can’t believe it.

and what a weekend+monday it was.

let me try to take it chronologically.

S., our driver, was in a mood on friday. i think we tested his patience by making demands of his time at scheduled prayer/mosque times. mosque attendance is of particular importance on fridays, from what i understand, and he was speeding and yelling at anyone who got in his way taking us places. at one point, he unprovokedly yelled at a security guard, who was doing nothing more than his job (inspecting under the hood of our car). he was in a much better mood when he picked us up in the afternoon to take us to rehearsal, and had been to the mosque to pray.

we skipped morning rehearsal and began afternoon rehearsal early. Marco choreographed a new piece, a solo for me. it was tough. i called Emily during a break, so frustrated with myself i was crying. it was 8am in new york, 6pm in islamabad.

my frustrations at rehearsal friday represented my biggest fear in accepting this gig, namely whether i was ready technique-wise to do it. that day, i really questioned whether i was. Marco showed me the piece, which i tried to emulate the best i could. it looked terrible. we ran it several times, and it really didn't begin to look any better. we both got increasingly frustrated. and he kept pushing harder and harder, because he thought i could do it and wasn't concentrating. partially, he was right; i was too caught up in feeling i wasn't ready for it. i coudn't keep my balance or flow on things i do all the time. partially, it was just hard; it really did push the limits of where i currently am in ballet. finally he said, "ok. we'll work on this on monday." i feigned shortness of breath to prevent myself from bursting into tears in the rehearsal room. he added, "also, we need to run it over and over for breath. you're totally out of breath and you still have another piece to do directly after this." great.

i went to the bathroom, called Emily, cried and came back to the rehearsal room after drying my face. we still had a few minutes to go in our break, so i sat down and journaled, hoping it would calm me down. the rest of the rehearsal went only slightly better; friday was simply not my day.

Sophiya drove me to the house and tried to calm me, but really to no success. i really needed and wanted just to be by myself (which didn't happen).

-+-+

saturday, on the other hand, was wonderful. we took a day trip to rawalpindi with Marco's assistant. it was Marco's assistant, Marco, Federico and me. why does everyone here have a name that begins with S.?

if i may be tangential for a moment (what i am i talking about? i'm always tangential), a quick explanation on the way i'm using names in my blog: i am trying not to mention by full name those who don't have or can't get access to my journal. hence, i will name my friends from the US, for example, because they can (and hopefully do) read this. S. (our driver), Marco's assistant (also an S.) and J. (our cook/housekeeper) couldn't read this, and hence can't know what i'm saying about them. accordingly, i don't think it's fair to use their names. i guess i could ask them if i could use their names, but i know neither S. nor J. would know what a weblog was (or even a vague grasp of what the internet is); i doubt Marco's assitant would know what one is (though i'm sure he knows technology well). there are other people here whose names i will use, because they can (and do/will) have access to my weblog. and me? well, i'm going by jcm because all of you know what my name is anyway. and because it's my blog, so i can do whatever i want. so there!

digressing, i fucking love pindi. it's nice to go somewhere the people are unaccustomed to tourists. is that patronizing? fetishizing? exoticizing? (not a rhetorical question)

the streets of pindi are apparently known all over pakistan; not only had several people at one point told us about them, i also found a postcard in islamabad that showed a street in pindi and read, "a street in rawalpindi," as if it were some tourist attraction. maybe it is so for pakistanis, because i've hardly seen anyone who didn't seem pakistani there. they are such a sight. like i'd said before, they're noisy and dusty and greasy and just plain grimy. truckart buses and delivery vehicles weave in and out of traffic with donkey-pulling carts on which men stand with reins with goats with traffic control buggies that look like tricycle golf carts (though there is no traffic control, and even the buggies nearly hit people left and right) with pedestrians with cars and motorcycles with peddlers with kids chasing one another with bycicles with street shoppers and keepers with people who facilitate finding parking and then wash your car while it's parked with me and him and her and you with...

it's really something i've never seen anywhere else. well, not until the road to lahore on sunday. but that's for later.

they're thin and oftentimes bumpy. street vendors sometimes have to move their goods out of the way when big trucks come through, and attempting to avoid being hit by something makes them feel like an obstacle course. many intersections have these crazy telephone/electricity poles with atleast 75 wires coming out of each one, all going to a different apartment/building. i am only scratching the surface of the experience. they're fantastic on so many levels, and speak volumes about the tenacity and resourcefulness of human beings. the latter point i can't really give voice to, atleast not at the moment.

pindi is great for taking pictures. the day was a bit overcast; so i opted out of using color film and instead went for black and white (for which an overcast day is ideal). since Marco's assistant was with us, we felt more at ease taking pictures. if we were to run into someone who got angry about being photographed, he would be there to explain that we were just tourists, etc. though i'm usually pretty good at feeling out who does and who doesn't want their picture taken, i had a scary experience in paris in march; i was taking pictures in a north african market and someone became really angry when he saw he fell within the snap of my lense. he yelled and started walking toward me. since i dont' speak french fluently, all i could make out in my nervousness was "sorry, sorry, sorry." i had to fetch a friend to explain that my pictures wouldn't be used for anything against him, at which point he told her he'd break my neck if i took another picture of him. that situation was different in that i didn't want to be walking around with my french-speaking friends, who both look white. i wanted to take advantage of the fact that i look north african so that people might be less suspecting of my picture-taking. alas...

anyway, we took pictures of everything. and several people asked us to take their pictures, excited to have a camera pointed at them. it was great. my favorite part of the day came when a few kids asked us to take their picture. we did, and they were really excited about it. i was using my 35mm film camera; Marco and Federico were using digitals. so they followed us for a bit after that, and kept laughing and smiling and gesturing at us that they wanted another. we took more and Marco and Federico kept moving. seeing a landscape shot i wanted to take, i kneeled down to get the best angle. one of the kids wanted to jump into the frame, and i asked him to wait. i took the shot without him and then took one with him, after which i invited him to come look through my view lense. this drove him, and a few of the other children who were standing around, nuts. before i knew it, a whole gang of little ones were crowding around me waiting anxiously to get a view through my view lense and to pretend to take a picture. Marco, turning to see this incredible moment, took a shot or two of the situation and before long, we were taking group shots of the all of us. one boy put his arm around my neck as i knelt to pose, and i melted. that was my favorite shot of the day.

they were especially tickled to see the instant results on Marco's and Federico's cameras. i had to disappoint one of them by showing him that my didn't have the fancy little screen on the back of mine.

three of them followed for us about 10 to 15 minutes more, all the way back to our car. naturally, we took more pictures of them. my first year photo teacher used to say that he didn't want to see pictures of children in our class; children, he said, were too easy. but that's only because they're so great.

i wonder how often they get to see an image of themselves, even a reflection in a mirror. i wish i could show them how they look in black and white.

maybe i still can.

--jcm

inflight food

for the first time since about 2 semesters ago, i've been spending a good amount of time on the aol instant messenger. i'm missing my friends and family quite a bit at this point. yeah for global communication.

(on the AOL instant messenger)

jcm: is paying 90 bucks extra worth taking lufthansa over united?

Emily: mmm. never taken either, so don't know

jcm: i mean, l is a 4 star and u is a 3 star airline. and the euros just know how to do things better than the americans.

E: it's so true. the food might even be food

jcm: yeah, the ba food was actually (more like) food.

E: and that was british food. imagine if it comes from people who actually make food. you shoulda had the air france food. damn. it was almost good.

loveliness

islamabad is lovely in many ways. it's pretty clear by now that i think that.

as with any place, it feels more intimate with time. when you like it, it's one of the great parts about living and working somewhere new v. visiting that place. it's nice to learn its backdoors and alleyways, the way the traffic flows and how to navigate a crowd, how to bargain, how to greet and how to eat and how to stop gawking. it's nice to recognize people and remember names. it's nice to routinize outings and form commitments. in a sense, it's great to get to know, and know well.

with this intimacy, however, also comes a less-surface understanding of its ugly realities. and, with enough attention and will (which, let's face it, means a modest amount of attention but a considerable amount of will--cynical much?), the whys and hows of those realities become innescapable. and then, though the act of getting to know is no less great and certainly as necessary, the knowledge churning that process is, frankly, depressing. i'm getting to that place.

let me be more specific.

let's talk, for example, about the begging children i mentioned in "markaz." i'd originally wrote about how begging children are especially hard to turn down, and how i had planned on always carrying something with me to give them. and damn they sure know now to look sad when they need to (though i have no doubt that their situations are truly sad, they definitely play up the face when they think they can get something from you).

as it turns out, they're actually working for someone. and by working, i mean being forced to work. there are, apparently, rings of individuals in pakistan who kidnap children (and oftentimes cut off a limb or two to make them look more pathetic) and force them to beg for money, which they then promptly take to live like the millionaires this "profession" makes them. meanwhile, they keep the kids nearly starving and without, say, shoes--so that their appeal will look that much more genuine. after some poking, a little boy Sophiya and i stopped to talk to this week told us his parents were dead--children don't make up these kinds of things--but refused to tell us who he was working for. he let me take this picture. i did, and then asked if i could take one of him smiling--he struggled to conjur a smile. i felt like an asshole for asking him to smile when it didn't come naturally (though seeing him smile was in a way comforting). i had already given him something, though i paid him an extra "modeling fee," knowing the entire time that he won't get to keep any it. what to do in such a situation?

i felt like an asshole for looking into his eyes and knowing that i shouldn't give him anything. i felt like an asshole for giving him something; i shouldn't be supporting criminals. but how do i know he won't get beat for not reaching a set quota? how can i justify thinking, "where would this child be without this pimp? at least someone's feeding him."? how do you look a shoeless, grimy, hungry, parentless child in the eyes and say "no, you can't have these 50 rupees (84 american cents) in my pocket."?

islamabad wasn't as lovely that day.

Sophiya says women, even wearing burqa, get stoned in parts of the frontier (the border with afghanistan) for leaving their homes--even if with a male family member. she tells of men who marry their daughters to the quran, in the name of islam but actually for the sake of keeping property in the family. i've heard of several accounts of women being raped by men avenging a transgression of a male family member of theirs. things are not (thank goodness) this extreme, but they are sobering.

i spoke tonight with a girl who recently broke up with her boyfriend. i asked if she'd liked him a lot and she replied, "well, we'd been together for 7 years and a half, so i would say 'yes.'" as it turns out, they broke up because his parents wouldn't allow him to marry her--she's of a different sect of islam than he. the only condition under which they would allow the marriage was if she'd agree to convert and then disown her own parents. after a whole debacle in which, among other things, his parents insulted hers on various occasions and the girl overheard the guy saying to his mother that he'd force her to convert after they got engaged, she broke it off.

islamabad wasn't as lovely tonight.

i recently came across a woman sort-of scrambling to get her hands on the two drops of brandy her doctor said would help her five-month old, who's too young for medicine, get better (alcohol is illegal in pakistan). she's already had atleast one baby daughter die of some sort of chest/cold/pneumonia type illness.

our driver (officially) makes a dismal amount of money and lives 200 km from his family, whom he gets to see every two months or so--there simply is more work in islamabad. there is no concept of a minimum wage, let alone a living wage, here.

many people allow or force their own kids to work in abusive conditions, for which they only get paid a meal or two a day; that way, they have to worry about feeding one less mouth.

hiv/aids is taking off in pakistan; the voices in islamabad making a fuss about it seem miniscule compared to silence resulting from the ambivalence and indifference about the matter.

...

islamabad isn't always so lovely.

--jcm

vanity

jcm: so, Sophiya, in islam, do people pray over their food?

S: man, in islam you're supposed to pray over everything.

j: really, like what?

S: you're supposed to pray over your food. you're supposed to pray before you go to the bathroom. you're even supposed to pray when you look in the mirror.

j: really? why? you pray that you'll like your reflection?

S: no, man. you're supposed to pray that you don't become vain. which is stupid in any case because it's not like muslims are all that goodlooking anyway.

old blue

so why am i in pakistan? several people have asked me lately how i got connected to this project, and how i ended up living and working for a month in pakistan of all places. even i ask myself this question, and would never have guessed before a few months ago that i would ever visit pakistan. what did i know about pakistan? what do i know about pakistan?

the earliest recollection i have of hearing anything about pakistan was when i was obsessed with population statistics as a kid. i remember that pakistan was among the most populous countries in the world, ranked right above méxico. at the time, when i was first discovering the internet, my favorite thing to do was to compare populations as listed in the world book encyclopedia with more current information i could find on the internet. i would scour websites looking for the most recent population data of the world's 25 most populous countries and make lists according to what i could find online. i would compare that to the world book list and get a kick out finding a change in the rank of countries; i knew something the world book didn't! i would spend hours on end doing this. i would wait anxiously to go to the library so i could compare notes with the encyclopedia. i think i may still have those lists stored away somewhere. yes, i'm serious. no, this was not a homework assignment.

so i'm a dork.

the next thing i remember were news stories about underground nuclear bomb testing, and the u.s.' nailbiting at the knowledge that two more countries (pakistan, and shortly before that india) had become nuclear powers. i have vague recollections of the mention of pakistan at high school model u.n. competitions (i didn't really pay attention to world news in any real way until college). and then there was, of course, 9/11 and the so-called war on terrorism.

so up until july, when Mickey proposed that i take a job doing organizational consulting work for a performance in islamabad, and more generally for his philanthropic ventures, pakistan only very abstractly registered on my radar. and that's how it all started.

still, why pakistan? and why dance? well, Mickey is this terribly generous guy who works a corporate job and then spends all of his free time doing good things for the world--supporting the arts, fundraising for social causes, etc.. over the summer, he met a choreographer, Marco, with whom he decided he would collaborate in his efforts to support the arts. shortly prior to that, a close friend of Mickey's, our host, received a position as a visiting scholar in pakistan. conversing with Mickey and Marco over dinner (after they'd gone to see bombay dreams on broadway, i believe), his friend proposed that he would host and co-sponsor a performance in islamabad if they were up for it. and so they decided to take this on as (effectively) their first project together. (subsequently, a performing arts production company, mima, was born of these efforts--but that is neither here nor there in that the pakistan project, which is now officially a mima project, was well underway before this formality was put into place).

i'd known mickey for almost three years when i called him in july asking if he knew of any job openings in new york that might be good for someone who was trying to balance pursuing professional dance and paying the bills. he's the alumni contact for some of the student organizing i did at yale; and we'd had a professional relationship over the time. we talked and he mentioned that he needed someone to help him out on the logistical end of all his non-profit, philanthropic projects. within a day, we agreed that he'd hire me as a consultant for those projects (pakistan, and what eventually would come to be mima, among them).

the idea for pakistan, which eventually came to be the idea for mima, was to have the performance be a cultural exchange. marco would choose an eastern narrative and set it to a western medium. in this case, ballet. the project would promote dialogue among different cultures, and the plan is still to tour the performance to atleast two other cities around the world (delhi and philly). pakistan is only the beginning. accordingly, Mickey and Marco decided they would hire mostly pakistani dancers. however, Marco wanted to be sure to bring at least one western trained dancer into the fold; otherwise, it might prove difficult to put any ballet in it as we were unsure what kind of training dancers here would have (and we've now learned there are no dancers here trained at all in ballet). originally, they hired former new york city ballet dancer (who pulled out at the last minute, opting for a job in france).

fast forward two months. deciding they wanted atleast one more ballet trained dancer, Mickey proposed to Marco that he invite me to be in the performance as well. and so Marco watched a class of mine and decided he would do so. at first, i was unsure. what business did i have in pakistan? what if i wasn't ready professionally? did i really want to be on stage with someone who used to dance with city ballet? did i really want to leave new york for another extended period of time when i'd just moved there, especially considering how much travelling i had (and have) done since graduating (by the time i come back after new year's, i'll have spent more time away from new york than in new york since since "moving" to brooklyn in may)? would i ever feel settled in?

then i said: can i really let this opportunity pass me by? (the answer, i think, is clear--though it wasn't to me until i got here.)

here's the funny part. i jokingly wrote in my bio for my first professonal performance in dc earlier this year, "Jesús currently lives in brooklyn, where he flaunts his poltical science degree from yale in hopes that it will give him an edge in dance auditions. it doesn't work." yet here i am in pakistan, with a dance job i effectively got through a yale connection, doing sautes in arabasque (and trying to learn about a country and people i'd never really stopped to consider). it really is all very funny.

amazing this life i've come to lead, huh?

a-mazing.

--jcm

truckart

the buses in islamabad are quite a sight (and also quite a site). they're tiny, maybe the size of those volkswagen vans popular in the 70s, and they look like delivery trucks--the old school delivery trucks from the Curious George books (with the rounded hoods), not square ups-type trucks. they probably seat about eight passengers inside (no seatbelts—no one uses seatbelts here). i haven't been in one. so maybe 12, max? then, on the remaining floor space, about 12 or more additional passengers smush up against each other. one to five people hang off the back of it, standing on the bumper and holding on to metal rails (that've been built specifically for this purpose).

the fact that people hang off them while they move at 50 km/hr or more (or at all) is craziness. though it's amazing to see how people make due with what they have. not even a brooklyn bus during rush hour holds a candle re: density. coming from a country largely defined by excess, it makes me think about how good we have it, and how many of our laws and ideas take all that for granted.

regardless, i hate driving behind them. you can imagine what would happen were someone to fall off.

anyway, equally striking is the way they're decorated. they're made to look almost like chinese dragon heads--am i making the right reference here? actually, they might look quite at home on a kiddie ride called "the chinatown express" or something similar (there is something decidedly appropriated about them--hence "chinatown" and not "beijing"). they're painted in different colors, and adorned with small mirrors, plastic trinkets and other hanging objects. they even have eyes, and sometimes a mouth, painted on their front. some have multi-color urdu (which is written in an persio-arabic script) on their splash-guards.

i'll have to post a picture.

Sophiya's eyes glow and her voice, full of pride and astonishment, lowers when she speaks about them. the owners enter them in competitions, she explains. blushing, S. (driver) struggles with the english to express his excitement about our curiousity. "decoration, decoration" he fumbles to say when he can't find another way to explain its purpose. it's called "truckart." and from the way they talk about it, you can tell they consider it a source of pakistani pride.

i have to say, i certainly thought they were novel at first (you should hear the noise their horns make). Mickey and i even poked fun at the fact that they sold little replicas as souvenirs. but after talking to the Ss about them, i can't help but see them as beautiful too.

--jcm

tarásh

this week has been all about auditions and rehearsal. have you ever been to a dance audition for people who aren't dancers? my goodness...i'm about to get mean.

on monday, we had an audition for two "dancers," by which i mean two non-dancers, one of whom happens to be taking a dance class now and then. we'd already told one he could be in the show, because he's a friend Ali's. up until the point we'd met this guy, Ali had been the only one to offer us anyone in the way of dancers. the other was a friend he brought, who thought she might be good for the show.

she was ok. she was somewhat graceful and coordinated, and had most of the combination down by the time the audition ended. she was akward and too insecure in her movements, though, and we couldn't hire her. the guy was unconvincing in every way. we ended up offering him a position as the musical director's assistant, at which point he told us he was going to be out of town for 12 days out of the time we're here. huh? had we picked him, we only have about 20 days for rehearsals. oops.

so that was audition number one.

audition number two. oh, audition number two... we were connected by the chamcha-type snob (see: Ali post) to a modeling agency called "tarásh." we went there last week hoping to find people who might be dancers-turned-models. ok. maybe not that much. but atleast somebody with a bit of dance training in their background. this doesn't sound too unreasonable, right?

to begin. you know those movies about mafia-type affairs where there's always some sketchy club-owner who also deals drugs, pimps women and has a secret obsession with, i don't know, bagels and locks and peppermint foot cream or something? half the time, their office for doing "business" (because they always have atleast one in addition to the one at the club) is in the back of some meat-packing warehouse, and the other half, tucked away in some quiet middle-class residential neighborhood where all the houses have long dramatic driveways that lead to a covered parking space, though not exactly a garage? ok, so maybe i'm projecting onto these movies the image i have of this house--because it was exactly like the latter description--but you get the idea, right? to boot, many of the houses in islamabad have a high fence blocking off the view into their frontyards. this one had a tiny sign that discreetly read "tarásh" on the gate.

on the inside, the house had been converted to look like a cave. i kid you not. the only non-candle light i remember inside the director's office was a small desk lamp. the package came complete, of course, with a gorgeous woman sitting quietly and classily on the black leather couch. she seemed to be his partner, because she would subtly interject every once in a while the way a micro-managing partner does.

well, apparently in pakistan, "choreographer" is understood to mean "runway choreographer." and Marco is neither technically nor professionally a runway choreographer. Marco did not understand the former point, and the director of the agency did not understand the latter. so here they were, talking about what they could do for each other, and the whole time neither of them understood that the other one didn't know to what he was referring. 20 minutes into the conversation, i finally interjected saying, "this isn't a runway show. this is a dance concert." he only became more confused when i further clarified that Marco was a ballet choreographer, not a belly dance choreographer. all the different accents in the room certainly didtn't facilitate matters. finally, we set up an audition for tuesday.

fastforward to tuesday.

we showed up to a lobby full of young, beautiful people waiting anxiously to show us their moves (though whether they quite understood what was happening is another question). the director escorted us to the audition room (through a badly lit, circular, verticle stairwell of course) where we cleared the rug and took auditionees two-by-one.

well, many of them were certainly fabulous. and some were even gorgeous.
they were also, it should not go unsaid, an auditioners nightmare. ok. so would i really have left that unsaid? i'm about to have a moment. feel free to hold my snobbery against me. it allowed me a good laugh...

first, off, none of them were dancers. it was, after all, a modeling agency, so it wasn't really their fault. but it sure was funny.

maybe two people had any kind of training. maybe. and even they were a mess. the most coordinated ones were the most akward ones. the most graceful and interesting ones were the least coordinated ones. and trust me, there were plenty who were akward and uncoordinated.

they came to the audition room one by two and, when we were running out of time, two by two. they flailed, they hunched, they hopped and skipped, they fell, they stopped, looked around and skipped some counts. except, the choreography didn't call for any hunching, any hopping or skipping, any falling, any looking "around," any flailing. and it most definitely didn't call for any skipping a count here and there. we (barely) held our laughter for the car.

some of them were very cute. and to be fair, some of them really tried and really wanted it. and more power to them (though they were still funny to watch). four people in particular deserved to be yelled at, though. two girls came in together and spent the whole time, even and especially when we were trying to teach them the phrase, sitting on the couch and talking. we told them they could leave if they weren't interested and they acted as if we'd offended them by suggesting such a thing. another girl would stop in the middle of the phrase and yell out, "i can't do this!" and then try to pick it up again. atleast she put in the effort, right? right? hmmm... the last girl was hell-bent on showing us how beautifully she could display her hands in a way that was out of line with the phrase, despite the fact that we had corrected her several times--at one point, she argued with us that we must not have been doing it the right way.

i don't know where any of them got the idea that they can show up to any casting call, whether it be for modeling, acting, dancing, etc., behaving like this. whoever taught them this should be fired. it was out. of. control.

the third, and last, audition went well--and it's from this audition that we hired the dancers we're using. we've hired Sophiya, who i mentioned in my previous post will be doing graduate work in art in the US next year and another girl whose name escapes me. they are gorgeous dancers, trained in classical Indian dance. then we hired three boys, who are kind of akward but who actually work really well for the part, and two understudies for the boys.

this all means we won't have to go to karachi. i'd originally wanted to go, but quickly changed my mind at being told several times by several people just how unsafe it is for foreigners.

so islamabad it is. yay for not being kidnapped for ransom. yay for peace of mind. and yay for laughs.

--jcm

honk

we began rehearsing yesterday. it made me want to get back to class. rehearsal wasn't bad; i just miss class. i've never found rehearsal to be as fun or as fulfilling as class. funny huh? unfortunately, there are no ballet or modern classes in pakistan. i ought to enroll in something they do have here. oh, and i am so sore. we had a pretty great rehearsal today, and i've picked up an extra part in the show (i am now the best friend and the bad guy, which i suggested to Marco he make the same person--he liked the idea and is contemplating how to tie it all up). there were some pretty painful lifts today, but we figured them out. as of this afternoon, Marco and I were the only ones rehearsing 'cause we hadn't finished selecting the rest of the dancers.

i've been chatting with S., our driver. he's a funny guy, and a hell-of-a driver. it's a-mazing. he's islamabad's equivalent of a new york city cab driver (everyone drives like nyc cabbies here--S. is that much crazier. he learned his skills in karachi, he told me, ). people use their horns very similarly here to the way they are used in new york: several people honk as soon as the light turns green, just in case someone is not paying attention; they honk at each other even when they're landlocked and their horns are, well, useless; etc. one other key use of the horn here, however, is that it's used to mean, "don't even think about coming into my lane. i'm coming through," and S. is oh-so-generous in spreading his horn's love. so when he's driving down the right lane (which is the passing lane here; people drive on the left side) and someone is about to merge and force him to slow down, he honks them back into their lane. he's also generous with this high beams--which mean, "move out of the passing lane; you're going too slow and i don't want to go around you." what else does he do? he turns around and drives against traffic to circumvent unforseen roadblocks and congestion. he oftentimes leads the way in turning two or three lane streets into three or four lane streets, respectively. and my personal favorite, he goes off road (in his honda civic, mind you) to get around traffic. we're not talking about a turn lane or some vast empty space (though he also drives through these); we're talking flower gardens, median "ditches" and unpaved, emergency stopping "lanes." i can't stop laughing just writing about it.

our host says he finds us very amusing. i can imagine.

he's also very pious. he goes to the mosque whenever he gets a chance; when he can't make it there, it's common to find him praying on his own.

he has tommorrow off.

getting back to this past week...

we spend a good part of it looking for dancers. and boy was that an experience. we had dinner with Ali, who introduced us to one potential dancer about whose moves (on the dance floor) he said he could vouch. then we had a meeting with a modeling agency to which we were referred by the Chamcha-type snob i wrote about in my "Ali" post; they set up an audition for us for today with a number of their models, among whom we figured there must be atleast one or two with dance training. after that, we set up a meeting with the most prominent and well-respected dance teacher in islamabad (the only other ones are students of hers), whose house we scheduled to visit on sunday for a lunch and greet with her, her guests and some of her dancers. we also looked for adequate alternative rehearsal spaces to the one we'd already found and secured. no luck there.

and lastly, we met with Sheema Kermani, pakistan's biggest name in dance. we've offered her a principal role in the piece, and so we discussed what she'd be doing for that. then we talked about the possibility of moving down to karachi to do a residency there before coming back up and doing the actual performance in islamabad. she offered us the opportunity to hire her dancers, among whom the men are very highly reputed. meh. i was too tired to be too engaged in the meeting. she was nice. enough. i wasn't too big a fan of her demeanor.

that rounded out our week proper.

we spent the weekend in rawalpindi, the closest "real" city (pindi for short). it was quite the scene. the shopping was great! geez, we've done way too much shopping since getting here. i mean, the shopping was great (i'm so spoiled). but who really wants to hear about that? not me (though apparenlty i do 'cause i've just told you about it). rawalpindi was exciting in other ways, though; it made quite an impression on me. it's much more lively than islamabad, and grimy too. there were all kinds of dark alleyways that hid live, chained-up goats and second-hand vendors. there was a row of about 200 car repair shops, grease and oil covering the streets. there was an "artillery and ammunition" store that displayed semi-automatic assault weapons (some of which i'm sure are illegal in the us) in the window. there was even a (catholic?) church, just down the street from a mosque! all of this, mind you, was in an area covered by about 16 square blocks. maybe less. i can't wait to go back. more to come when i get more of a feel for it.

so...sunday we headed to Indu's house for lunch. i must admit, i arrived thinking i would hate the whole thing. the first person we met was a snob of the worst kind--the kind who are uninterested in holding conversation with you until you can match the names and credentials they think impressive to drop. they are, of course, interested in engaging your ears--so that you know just how important they are (read: perceive themselves to be). even when you've decided to play the game, you can only get that critical name or accomplishment in edgewise (remember: they're not interested in hearing what you have to say). then they give you a look of acknowledgement, though they would never actually express impression about what you've said. ugh. i was just not up for it that day. he wasn't the only one, though luckily most of the people there weren't like this.

the day went on and i started feeling a bit more at ease. i started chatting with one of the dancers. she just graduated from an art school and will be heading to the US next year for grad school--pratt was among the schools she mentioned and i got very excited because, well, pratt is down the street. i told her i'd show her around new york if she ended up there. she was to audition for us today.

anyway, we chatted for a while. another of the dancers, and this fabulous lady named Natasha, arrived and we all sat around and had a fun and chill conversation about, among other things, Pakistani television and the pluses and minuses of state v. privately owned networks (how do discussions always come back to politics with me? hmmm, i wonder). we also spoke with Indu, the dance teacher. she's amazing. she's not a diva, which is a nice break (there are plenty involved in this project). she's more like an all-knowing matriarch whose energy, to boot, brings peace of mind. it's relaxing just to be around her. plus she's smart, and knows what she's talking about. and she made us wonderful food. mmhmmmm.

the evening ushered in our departure from Indu's house and we went on our way, exhausted and with 2 days of auditions ahead of us. and that was the weekend.

it's tuesday, and this entry has already gotten long. this week has been so jam-packed it merits its own entry. i'll get to that later.

--jcm

disclaimer?

it's monday morning. we've been in islamabad for over a week now. a lot has happened since i last posted.

i've taken notes and have memories of most of what has happened in the last few days. and i want to post all about it. but...

i'm having a difficult time deciding what i should or should not post. islamabad has been lovely up to this point, for the most part. but in several instances during the past few days, it has not felt the safest (though it is considered to be the safest place in pakistan). it's not that anything concrete has happened--there have been no bombings; we've not been pulled over and questioned at gun point, etc. nothing like this. but there have been some sobering reminders of the state of the world right , manifest mostly in the fact that islamabad is (in many ways literally) a fortress. the type of security checkpoints we're used to at airports are one thing. another is a security checkpoint with a few guards (or a hundred) staring you down, assault rifles at their side. you know?

i doubt there are too many living and working in islamabad right now. and though i'm certainly not under the impression that i don't stand out here as it is--i know i do--i don't know how much i want to publicly catalogue my whereabouts and migration habits. i could simply be extremely vague; but that would be annoying.

i also could have left this unmentioned. but it's been weighing heavily on my mind. and if my blog were to (or does) seem purposefully bland at times, especially to those of you who know me well, this is why.

let me try to navigate this carefully...

i hate that i feel the need to preface this entry, and therefore the rest of blog, like this. it feels like censorship, like i cannot be honest about all that i want to relate--atleast not until i leave pakistan. i hate being vague. i hate being cryptic. i hate being dramatic in this way (though i would be remiss to bypass the fact that i'm very dramatic, and fine with it, in other ways).

mostly, however, i hate that it feels so contradictory to what sticks most about islamabad to me: the people i have encountered here are among the nicest, most honest and most welcoming people i have ever met. everywhere we've gone, people have been generous with their time, their smiles, their hospitality. the contacts we've made in putting together the final details of this project have been completely willing to help in any capacity they can (all the pakistani ones, anyway). storefront employees and street peddlars, partially acting out of self-interest to be sure, are also willing to help in any way possible. in one store that did not have the calling cards we wanted, for example, the manager sent one of the employees to another a couple of fronts down to buy it. he then sold it to us at the price his employee paid for it. can you imagine this happening in the new york or anywhere else in the u.s.? i certainly can't.

there is also, i should note, a general aura of peacefulness to most of the people we've run across. i don't know if that sounds fetishizing or patronizing, but, well, it's true.. people here seem more relaxed, less hateful and cynical, more in-tune with the rhythms of the day and of each other. even the traffic, which is in many ways a scary disaster unnavigatable to someone used to the strict rules of lanes, speed signs and one way streets (none of which anyone seems to pay much mind here), is an exercise of communication and give-or-take. someone told us jokingly before coming, "pakistanis are the nicest people you'll meet, until they get behind the wheel." yes, traffic is a mess. yes, it's the only time i've seen our driver, who i'll refer to as "S.," aggressive or upset. and yet, people are more intuitive, communicative and forgiving here in their cars than anywhere i've been. it's a huge generalization, i know. but the difference is that stark, and the feel of it is that strong.

there are many problems, of course, that do not get treated at the surface. women largely stay in their homes--or atleast we're not seeing too many of them. we can't be open about certain things. fundamentalism is still a very real phenomenon. religious states are a problem in and of themselves. there are many problems i could list about this culture or society, and many i couldn't i'm sure. there are reasons, and not totally misguided ones, that islamabad is the fortress i mentioned. in fact, i read a really problematic editorial yesterday in islamabad's largest english daily about viewing Arafat as a role model. there were certain important points the article made, namely the point about how it's a problem that we look at money as opposed to principle as a proxy by which to measure role models. the author argued that Arafat was a principled man, and therefore worthy of a more legitimate role-modelization, if you will, than bill gates (i don't agree with this particular example (the Arafat side), and think the article was misguided; i do, however, agree with the thrust of it). the article became most disturbing, however, when he referred to Arafat as model of hope in a world of cynicism. that Arafat did at point provide a sense of hope to a cause that at many times has seemed hopeless is undeniable; that anyone could label the kind of violence Arafat condoned as "hopeful" and devoid of cynicism is truly bothersome.

digressing, the bigger picture is still more nuanced than this writer or the western media would have us believe.

it's a shame--yes, i said "shame," a word i don't use lightly--the way the western media portray muslim people and countries. (people here are aware, by the way, of the west's demonization of muslims and villification of islam in the american/western media--which does not make them happy or shed a good light on the "kind" of people many perceive "us" to be.) the problems the media communicate to us are, to varying degrees, real. yet so is the peacefulness, the hospitality, etc. the bigger picture, including all of these things, speaks of a goodness too oftentimes overlooked and purposefully ignored. it is a reality that would help "us" put a human face and feel on people "we" are so quick to condemn and judge. it would certainly make "us" stop to consider the senselessnes in the way "we" currently go about things. (by the way, i really enjoy the double entendre of "us" in this situation.)

i intended to write all about this week and have now spent my time on this piece. i will try to log on later and write more. we start rehearsals today (finally--we've found dancers in islamabad afterall). i have to go warm up.

--jcm

update

i've gone back and edited the posts i published most recently. i knew i was exhausted when i originally edited them. but some of the mistakes were really terrible (akward phrasing--not that i'll ever really get around this one--, missing words, etc.).

i tried not to make substantive changes.

it feels good to have this thing up-and-running.

cheers!

--jcm

ps: feel free to post comments. not that i need to tell you this. but it makes me really happy to see comments as it makes me feel more at home when i feel i'm conversing with you all.

Ali

we met Ali today, who works in journalism production. he's a friend of our host. it was nice to meet someone new and interesting, and who’s not a part of "the boys," as the the house staff has taken to calling us. he was a cool, smart guy. partially, also, he speaks the same language i do--that is, the language of academia.

let me get my snobbery and elitism all out in the open: he went to harvard. and though this shouldn't matter, it makes me feel more at home. he began speaking about identity politics and the such, and it made my day. we're supposed to get together with him at some point to hang out. i hope we can hang out one-on-one at some point. it’s important that i have the option and opportunity to separate myself from this job while i’m here, especially since dance is at times the last thing about which i want to talk or think. this is an impossibility with the boys.

we still haven't begun rehearsing. we still don't have dancers.

we had a couple of other meetings, including one with someone who's name or position i won't mention. he was a shitty, offensive old man—who thought himself to be very clever and accomplished to boot. i was not impressed. the highlight of the conversation with him was when he said, "the problem with islam is that in the 10th century, it stopped looking forward. christians kept looking forward, while muslims started looking back. And jews? when have they ever made a significant contribution to the history of the world?" i am tempted, but too tired, to dissect this statement. i also think it unnecessary and unmerited. suffice it to say that though his name was not chamchawala, and though he was not a character from salman rushdie's the satanic verses, he could have been.

oh, yes, one last thing. we found out we can, as non-muslim foreigners, acquire a license to hold and consume liquor in pakistan (pakistan is a "dry" country--and it is illegal for muslims in pakistan to drink/possess alcohol). i don't know if that'll happen. i've decided, though, that i'm staying sober while i'm here.

i'm exhausted...

--jcm

ps: about the language question. several of you have been wondering how i'm handling that. well, i don't speak urdu, the official language of pakistan. but that hasn't been a problem, because apparently, islamabad prefers english. in fact, 95% of signs are in english (street signs, shop displays, billboards, etc). and 95% of the english signs have no urdu translation. each shop has at least one nearly-conversational if not fluent english speaker, and all professionals are completely fluent. amazing huh? from what i keep hearing, islamabad is not representative of pakistan. i can believe that. we'll see if it becomes a problem in other cities.

whimsical

J. is completely irreverent. he flat-out laughs at us when we say or do something stupid. it's hilarious. when he cooked dinner tonight and set an extra setting, we were convinced he must have invited himself. actually he hadn't. but he has assumed a lot of comfort with us, which is nice. it makes me feel better about the servant-type situation.

let me try to articulate why this situation bothers me so much.

domestic labor does not bother me per se. and i can accept (conditionally) that it is a vital part of the south asian economy (and many other economies for that matter). i even will buy partially the argument that domestic labor is a good means by which to provide jobs in a country that suffers from such high rates of unemployment.

having said that, it should not go unmentioned that these are inevitably tied to the obvious institutional reasons why this type of labor is a problem: the skin color/caste/tribe/"race" element is fucked up; it’s tied up in a lack of upward socio-economic mobility for many; all life choices should spring from a meaningful set of choices, not lack-of an alternative; these types of jobs provide much less job security than more well-paying jobs; etc.

however, what bothers me most about the whole thing is the practical dehumanization that accompanies it, a phenomenon that is so engrained in the practice, culture and society that even many of those who are being dehumanized believe it's how things are meant to be. to me, it's manifest most clearly in the driver's inability to protest an order he is given (i'll use "driver" here for simplicity's sake, though "driver" is meant to refer to domestic laborers more generally). that is, he is completely subject to the whims of his employers (in this case, us). for example, our car/driver contract states that we can keep him 24 hours a day. what the fuck? he is supposed to take us *wherever* we want. we can ask him to take us on a five hour road trip, on a second's notice, just because we feel like it. admittedly, we have not been extreme with our driver and i don't know whether he would submit to any ridiculous demans we might put on him. and we tip him well every night before he goes home. but he even said to our host at one point, "sir, i respect you like my father and i want you to know that i would do anything for you and that you should consider me your slave" (i believe "slave" was the actual word he used; if not, servant). whoa.

this is why it makes me feel better that J. has assumed enough familiarity with us to argue with us and laugh at us. is this rationalization?

have to go,

--jcm

espresso

it's our second day here and people have taken to unsolicitedly waving at us. it's mostly bizarre, and great. it began today as we were driving down the street and passed a pick-up truck with a team of men sitting in the cab. we looked over at one of them and he just smiled and waved. we all started laughing and waved back, and then everyone in the truck started waving. it was hilarious. when we went to the market today, it happened a couple more times. we spend a lot of our time laughing.

inadvertently, it seems we make a scene wherever we go. i wonder whether it's offensive but we're unabashedly foreign in the less westernized parts--including the area where we live. the thing is, we don't mean to be. we make a scene wherever we go--be it pakistan, new york, london, etc, etc, etc. it does seem, however, to amuse people greatly. they smile, they laugh, the point, they wave, they offer us tea and/or "cold drinks" (soda). the kids next door love standing on their balcony and watching us walk between the house and car(s). it reminds me, actually, of the time the three of us were hiking in the mountains of palm springs. marco was wearing a silk scarf, Mickey a pair of gucci sneakers and i a shirt that didn't cover my belly-button. except in this case, no one is forthcoming (or rude) enough to poke fun at us flat out. in that situation, one lady walked by in her hiking gear smiling and laughing, and said mockingly, "the starbucks is right around the corner, boys." maybe it's only appropriate that on our second day in pakistan, Mickey and Marco felt the need to buy an espresso machine.

we've hired the official houskeeper, J., to take on the additional responsibility of cooking for us twice a week. we'll see how that turns out. today, he went to go buy the vegetables for our food. the thing is we've been told constantly by people who have lived here, pakistanis and non-pakistanis alike, that produce that cannot be peeled should be avoided raw--either that, or it has to be cleaned very thoroughly. J.'s solution? he bleached the vegetables he plans on using for tommorrow's dinner. i'm talking about the equivalent of clorox. you should have seen Marco's face when J. told us he had bleached the tomatoes and lettuce. and the first thing i did was grab the bottle and start reading it. J. has been a cook for years, and assures us that this is safe. Mickey says that some people also do this in other parts of the middle east. maybe i'm being ignorant, but, um. no. trying to prepare food here has already been such a drama.

on the dance front, we had several meetings today with people who are supposed to hook us up with dancers and who will help us secure the performance space we've been in talks to secure. we had planned on announcing and holding auditions once we had gotten here (part of the production company's mission is to hire local artists, promote their work, the profession, etc.). apparently, what we weren't clear on is how hard it would be to find dancers in islamabad. islamabad, as it turns out, is a planned city. for any of you who've ever been to cities that were planned in the 20th century (I believe isl. was built in the '50s), you may understand how lacking in "culture" they are. usually, these cities are designed to house a national government (like D.C., which was also at one point a planned city). accordingly, they are focused mostly on government, etc. and lack a strong dedication to cultural endeavors.

the real arts and "culture" scenes are in the larger cities, namely karachi and lahore. if it proves too difficult to find dancers here, we are discussing the possbility of holding a residency in karachi--where the dancers whom we’d originally hoped to get live--and bringing the performance to islamabad at the end. admittedly, the idea of this is really exciting to me; karachi is supposed to be a lot like new york. certainly, it would be fun to experience karachi--a port city in a warmer part of the country, to boot.

speaking of shopping, who knew islamabad would be such a shopping phenomenon? apparently, the big thing here is getting foreign goods copied by local craftsmen. that is, many people will bring to a local carpenter an ikea catalogue and have something made to resemble it exactly--at a much more reasonable price (though i don't consider ikea to be particularly unreasonable, it’s important to consider the cost of living here). the same goes for clothing. so we went to a tailor today to order tailor-made pants. including labor and materials, they were about $17 a piece. amazing, huh? it's possible to find people who make all kinds of clothing--so i plan on milking this as soon as i see how good a hand this particular tailor has. the stuff he has on display is good and clean. but i want to shop around more. i also want to find out whether this particular tailor uses child labor. i won't order any in that case.

the tailor kept speaking urdu to us even as we spoke english to him. it seemed he thought we were snobby pakistanis who refused to speak urdu. it probably has a lot to do with the fact that all of us could actually pass for pakistani. so far, people have guessed that i'm "arab," pakistani and egyptian. people confused as to where i might be from? no! never!

rehearsals should be beginning soon.

--jcm

markaz

we arrived in islamabad today to an airport full of smoking home-comers and visitors. easily half the plane were people who did not hold pakistani passports, and most of whom looked like westerners (we did fly in from london). i sat next to a pakistani engineer who was "taking a personal" trip to london, but who lives in islamabad. we made small talk about london, about his children and about islamabad and he expressed interest in coming to the performance and gave me his contact info. it felt welcoming to meet someone so friendly and hospitable right off. i should remember to email him. immigration didn't hassle us at all, and we were at the house less than an hour later. everyone at the airport spoke english. the immigration officers checking us in were women, which i found pleasantly surprising.

our host came to pick us up. he's also one of Mickey's best friends. Mickey, for those who don't know, is my boss, is one of the producers of the performance i'm doing here. he came to pakistan too, though he won’t be here the entire time. the other person with whom i'm travelling is Marco, the choreographer. he and Mickey (and techically I) founded the production company that's putting on this performance.

we are staying in a three story house with a "unit" on each floor, which means each floor has its own kitchen and (in theory) house staff. we have what i will call servants--not because i want to think of them as such, but because it emphasizes my discomfort with the labor system in this house (and presumably, in this country). the house has two guards, sometimes armed; i don't know their names. then there is Raheem (sp?), who our host calls his "butler" but who effectively serves as his butler, housekeeper and cook. there are also J., the official housekeeper, two drivers and a groundskeeper. i think that covers everyone.

we went shopping today for food, bottled water and (funnily enough) cds and books. we first went to the pharmacy and grocery. immediately, we looked for crappy american comfort food that, incidentally, we would never touch in new york. we're all very exageratedly paranoid about dysentary. Raheem cooked us a proper lunch, out of which Marco opted.

after lunch, we went to go see the theatre where we'll be performing. it was adequate, though lacking in some ways (ie. the lighting system, the capacity for draping scenery). there are other issues with the space too. i hate to be vague, but i’m going to leave it at that for now.

our host, Raheem and i went to the open market in the afternoon. Mickey and Marco napped. we didn't get frisked at the entrance, which our host says usually happens. though i was clearly dressed differently from most of the people at the market, we didn't attract much attention. people in islamabad seem to be pretty used to western clothing. in fact, most people thought i was pakistani, or atleast that i spoke a local language. several times, people simply began speaking either urdu or punjabi with me. and most understood what i said when i replied in english.

i would be remiss to fail to acknowledge that i had a lot of assumptions about pakistan coming in (eg. that people would find the clothing we wear foreign). i’m quickly finding out that most of those assumptions/beliefs were wrong.

digressing... the most impacting part of the market were the children begging for money. it's fucking heartbreaking. the last time i saw little kids begging for money was when i was in México in 1999. i've resolved to always have something to give them, especially since it means so much less to me than it does to them. it makes me think about begging in general. certainly, it's heartbreaking to see children begging; but why isn't it equally so to see adults doing it? what kind of judgments and assumptions about the concept and image of an adult “beggar” go unexamined--assignment of culpability (it's not a little kids's fault if s/he's poor--but adults, they should/could not have...), the (mis)conception that certain people aren't doing enough, or all they can (kids are so defenseless--but adults...), etc., etc., etc. should i always try to give something to all people who ask? the answer, it seems clear to me, is yes. will i? i don't know. it's so absurd that i would even say that.

we finished off the day by going to a "markaz," which are the commercial centers of every sector. islamabad is divided into "sectors," which are basically the technical name for neighborhoods. tonight, we went to jinna market (the other main markaz[es] are "supermarket" and "f-10 markaz"). they are basically outdoor malls, with small local shops. we went to a music store where i bought two cds. the first was western pop remixed with south asian music; it has an interesting and fun version of britney spears' otherwise unremarkable "me against the music." the other was an "arabic dance party" cd, with a ballerina doing a grand jete on the cover (what ballet has to do with arabic dance party music i don't know). they totaled about $3.

this posting feels very academic. .

--jcm

arrival

i'm now in islamabad. the weather is beautiful, the house in which we're staying is very nice (and very seventies--complete with plenty of wicker furniture) and i'm tired as all hell. we all are. the air seems thick here; the mountain ranges are breathtaking from a distance.

we spent half a day in london. that was exciting, if cold and wet. i got conned out of a good bit of money. i guess it was one of those situations you have to experience to "know better." but i'm already laughing about it. american airline companies could learn a thing or two from british airways.

i'm bothered about having house "helpers" and drivers. Marco thinks it's funny because it makes him feel like we're in the mafia; i don't know what Mickey thinks. something about it doesn't seem right.

much more to come later. dial-up is less-than-ideal. maybe i'll try to find an internet cafe after some sleep, and a pakistani sim and/or calling card.

maybe i'll try to write in more complex sentences after some sleep.

--jcm

welcome

originally, i had intended to write a proper introduction to this blog--an introduction, as it were, to what will be the next month.5 of my life. instead, i came to a conclusion-of-sorts: if an introduction is supposed to bring a certain degree of coherence to that which follows, attempting to do so for something that is yet to unfold would be futile. i suspect this is the reason so many people, myself included, write introductions to academic papers and the such after having written everything else. maybe i'll write one when i get back to new york...

so, where to begin?

partially, this blog is an event of practicality. it provides easy and quick access to what's going on with me in pakistan. it's my own personal newsletter.

it's also, however, an exercise in vulnerability.

it's been a while since i've written in a public forum. there was the brief stint on another blog-type site freshman year (of college) and the couple of writing classes i took at yale. then i tried to start a blog earlier this year, which never got off the ground because i got caught up in trying to qualify it in the four "introductions" i wrote for it. grrr. it is, admittedly, a bit intimidating. though i write to many of you on a regular basis, this somehow puts my writing up for display (and discussion, and judgment, and...) in a different way. maybe i don't stop to think about my writing when writing personal emails. here it seems inescapable, especially as i've come to appreciate writing more , and come more into consciousness about my own. i'm not sure how else to explain the difference.

there's also that i believe a person's behavior in new situations is highly instructive of the person they are. i fear what this blog--meant to a certain degree to record precisely that--will reveal about me. facing fears, however, has always been one of my fortes (proper use of the plural?); i am, afterall, here. moreover, i trust that you will share this experience with me. i trust that you will challenge me, compel me to examine and question, congratulate me when it's appropriate, console me, even, when it's necessary. in the end, i trust that you all (and i) will handle this opening in a critical and sensitive way. and of course, i welcome and invite you all to engage me (in all those ways) on what i write in this space.

i hope, also, to keep you amused if not entertained. i can already see the shit André will give me for calling my blog an "event," which it is. Emily will be unforgiving of split infinitives; at one point, just to spite her, maybe i'll use "grow" as a transitive verb. Júlio will be so tickled at seeing that i used his use of the word "opening," while Carolin (if she has time) will point out that this post is actually the qualification i was unsuccessful at avoiding in my last attempt at blogging.

which makes me think: did i just write an introduction? hmmm. i'd like to think of it as more of a "bienvenidos."

it is my pleasure to host your eyes, minds and hearts. welcome. and thank you for coming to read this.

--jcm

ps: i actually finished and published this post on thursday 25 november, early morning. i have tampered with the dates for the sake of chronological sense--it now reads the time my journey officially began (islamabad time), when my plane left the gate at jfk.