She Mourns the Loss of Pakistan’s Vision
“I love Pakistan,” she said, tears welling up. She took the edge of her duputta and wiped them away. “I was born there and every part of me has memories of it.”
My mother-in-law lives with me. We sat this week in the living room, just the two of us. Her heart breaking, she lamented the lack of assistance being given to the flood victims who are being crushed by a system that exploits poverty.
“If the wealthy in Pakistan gave Zakat as they should,” she said angrily, “we wouldn’t even need assistance from outside. This isn’t the vision of Quaid-e-Azam.”
I watch her sit sullenly in America day after day, alienated from everything she loves: her friends and family, the sights and smells and culture of the land of her birth. She watches the destruction of the dream of Pakistan on the internet and simultaneously denounces and longs for her home.
And it makes me angry.
Not just the injustice that is inherent to Pakistani society: the extremes of wealth and poverty, tax evasion and corruption which blatantly rejects the Islam I’ve come to know and love. The same conditions, (albeit with less extremes), exist here in America and in every country in the world: preference is given to the wealthy and powerful who continue to accumulate wealth at the expense of the basic human rights of others.
No, what makes me angry is watching the disillusion of an innocent love.
As a Generation X born-and-bred American, I experience cynicism on a cellular level. It’s pretty much impossible for me to give my heart and soul over to any cause or ideology, because there’s always some skepticism that holds me back.
But that’s not true for my mother-in-law. She was raised by parents who left everything they had in India and set out to make the “Pure Land”- the ideal country based on both secular ideals and Islamic principles. They loved Pakistan with all their hearts, and so does she. Now she is watching it fall apart because the people who run the place don’t love it at all. They love only money and power. And the only ones who seem willing to fight for it want to erase the culture and replace it with a tribal, barbaric interpretation of Islam.
What Pakistan needs is people who are willing to give their heart and soul (and time and money) to nurturing the humanity on which it was founded. But once you reject love and devotion that was freely given, is it possible to ever have it back again the way it was?
For Ammi’s sake, I hope it is.
About The Author
Amanda Quraishi
Amanda Quraishi is a freelance writer, blogger and community activist living in Austin, Texas with her husband and seven-year-old twins. She is an American-born convert to Islam since 1999 and has been involved with interfaith dialogue for more than ten years
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For humanity’s sake… I hope so too.
The worst part is the system has decayed SO much that it’s even hard or almost impossible for normal individuals to come forwards and help.
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Salaam,
Part of the problem Pakistan faces is due to the heavy migration of professionals from that country to the West in the late 70s to early 90s. When all the Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, businessmen, etc etc ditch the country and don’t work to help it develop, so they can have a better life for themselves, the country has to fail. Foolish politicians came into power because the country was “brain drained” and now we have the current state of Pakistan. A country succeeds when people sacrifice, not when people run away to the West.
Now these same professionals sit in their mansions in the West and criticize the country and it’s people as if they are any better.
Wasalaam
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Very well written. Voice of all of us. It si very sad indeed.
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Very nicely written Amanda…I am also a Pakistani and I love my country dearly…I have seen it become from good to better to worse in a matter of a few years,first it was just corruption,then corruption and terrorism,then corruption, terrorism and lawlessness and now corruption,terrorism,lawlessness and these floods…Watching my country like this is heartbreaking
…it always has been 
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oh, Q. i hurt not only for your dear mother-in-law and all of the Pakastanis devastated by the flooding and corruption, but also for something else you said: the disillusionment of an innocent love. i send much Love to you and your family, here and in Pakistan, as well as to the countless thousands who no longer have homes to return to. may the greedy find it in their hearts to help those less fortunate than they.
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