Shafique-ur-Rehman in his famous book, Hamaqatain, has written a passage titled Neeli Jheel. For those of you who may not have read it yet, I just want to say only so much without triggering a spoiler alert, although I have read the book many times and wouldn’t mind reading again. Some books are not meant for one time reading. The passage is about human frailties told through an interesting tale of mental lethargy. We seek refuge from the harshness of the known through fantasies about the unknown frontier.
Something quite similar yet the opposite happened for the millions of Pakistanis who live overseas. Remember overseas Pakistanis are the ones who left their homeland, family members, friends and happiness in search of success through a much better utilisation of their talents and hard work. It was the other side’s fantasies of wealth and success which compelled them to make the journey. Many of those immigrants in foreign lands found the success they had heard and read about in their version of the Neeli Jheel. Once successful and wealthy, these overseas Pakistanis never abandoned the dream of going back to Pakistan one day and living among their own people. And so interestingly, the side they left in the first place to go to the other side to find success becomes the other side to find satisfaction. The ability to return somehow becomes a fantasy with time. And it is that fantasy, ladies and gentlemen, that has been snatched from them. As in Neeli Jheel, the other side the kids were daydreaming about was not beautiful and not peaceful. For the overseas Pakistanis, the other side, which is Pakistan now, is no more beautiful and no more peaceful.
Tariq bin Ziyad had burnt the boats in order to secure victory by killing the prospects of return. For the overseas Pakistanis, it is not the boats that have been burnt for some greater good but rather the fire is blazing where they came from. So, while the boats are still there, it is the charred Pakistan they would have to return to.
For a while, it had seemed that overseas Pakistanis were able to bring positive changes in Pakistan. They came home with their investment, with their ideas they were exposed to in their overseas lifestyles, with their energy to transform the lives of the people by bringing a change to institutions of the country. They are now the target of a system whose reach is invisible but its actions are not. They were the people who spent their lives overseas, always ready to fiercely defend the dignity and respect of their country against those foreigners who attempted to target Pakistan. Today, they are defending themselves from the draconian tendencies of that very state that they once so aggressively spoke and wrote for. Remember, we overseas Pakistanis were the ones that the system did not give any benefit to. We couldn’t even land a decent job. That is why we left. Yet, we still fought for this country in ways many of you would never even know. And today, somehow, the system labels us as the bad guys.
Almost every overseas Pakistani basically flees the country but they also become the people who eventually want to come back and save the country and live here. I am afraid that may have changed. In the great movie Interstellar, there is a conversation between a scientist and an astronaut where the scientist says that due to the irreversible damage caused by climate change, humanity’s mission is no more to save the earth but rather to leave it and find another home somewhere in another galaxy. About a million Pakistanis leave Pakistan every year. There are two things to understand about this fleeing batch: One, it is no more the Pakistanis who are not well educated. Two, they are not leaving with a desire to return someday. Pakistan is running out of Pakistanis who feel connected.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 4th, 2024.
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