The Road to Paradise

Leaving behind my third world problems has been mildly challenging. In a country where there are no power failures, availability of safe public transport and where life is not threatened on regular intervals, you begin to lose the sense of familiar meaning in your every day existence. As my daily struggles of being a Pakistani woman have been replaced by the trials of being a new immigrant, I am having to step out of my comfort zone of strife, which can be a little disorienting at times.

In such a state of disarray, when I found out about a play in Toronto, the description of which began with the words 'A child suicide bomber in Pakistan...', I got intrigued; almost tempted to go back into my comfort zone where I dismayingly but avidly used to discuss bomb threats and daily deaths. And so, I willingly parted with $20 [or so] and my unemployment self-pity to watch 'The Road to Paradise'.

Reality is always more complex with many layers unseen and unheeded. Often that reality has to be simplified as fiction for the comprehension of the human kind who has the tendency to be one dimensional in processing feelings, especially when it comes to war and devastation. And so, this play endeavours to present a very complex reality into a simplified 2-hour performance with limited cast and crew. A child suicide bomber in Pakistan; a Canadian soldier in Kandahar; and an Afghan refugee in Toronto represent the three intertwined worlds depicted in this emotional saga. Three parallel worlds, fighting and suffering from one meaningless war.

The play kept me engaged for all of the two hours even if the storyline was not a revelation for me as a Pakistani. You see, there was a time when I would only read about terrorism acts and lament about the deaths of those unknown. I would sit amongst friends and the faraway war would feed our intellectual discussions on religion and politics. And then came a time when I narrowly escaped a bomb blast in Lahore. There came a time, when I received anonymous threats for my anti-religion blog. There came a time when my good friend's parents were brutally murdered because of their faith. There came a time when I almost lost my daughter because I was a woman not scrupulous enough for my religion. There came a time when the war became close and real. I have stood on the spot in Swat where the Taliban would hang or behead liberals for everyone to witness and have heard stories from the survivors. I have mourned the death of an amazing female activist who was senselessly murdered for being a forward thinker. I have feared sending my child to school in the aftermath of the Peshawar carnage.

So the war and its interconnected devastation depicted in this play was not a revelation for me. But it still made me cringe. It still made me weep. And it made me nostalgic of the tragedies that I have left behind, but my family and friends are still living.

With the narrative on refugees and war-on-terror  drastically altering in the wake of the tragedy in Paris, this play is a good reminder to the Western audience of the true cost of humanity on ALL sides of the war. It is an attempt to prevent the narrative from reverting to its one-dimensionality.

Christopher Morris and his team need to be commended for bringing together actors from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Canada to depict stories that are not only true but also well-researched. Years have been spent to explore those stories and bring the real characters on stage. The emotional investment of the team was evident. Art is a painful process; it takes so much from the artist, and the returns are rarely lucrative. And yet for the storyteller, all that matters is that the story is told and heard.

A Human Cargo Production, The Road to Paradise will be on stage at Buddies in Bad times theatre until November 28th, 2015. It should be a consideration for those whose minds are confined to and fed by traditional media. It is also for those who think Pakistan is in the middle east.

The Poppies We Breed

I was seeing red everywhere. Those lovely little red flowers being flaunted on so many lapels. And my ignorance led me to believe that it may be an innocent donation drive that has gained popularity. The Marketer in me thought, how clever is the charity that is giving people an opportunity to feel part of a larger movement by giving out these flowers. In the past couple of months, my rigorous (and desperate) job hunt in the not-for-profit sector has made me realise how many 3rd world causes Canada is trying to champion. The poppies, in my assumption, were probably a representation of another such cause emanating from a poor country like mine. I was inclined to donate and earn my red poppy in an attempt to feel more Canadian. But before committing, I needed to research the cause. That is when I discovered that the red poppy was a symbol for Remembrance Day, when the 'Common Wealth' commemorates the lives lost in wars of the worlds (a.k.a. World Wars). The donations collected against the poppies are in support of current and former military personnel. Lest we forget is the beautiful phrase of the campaign.

This new knowledge allayed my curiosity but it did nothing to make me less ignorant. Back home we celebrated some wars we thought we had won. We sang songs and held military parades. And then there is the war we were living; the war against and with terrorism. This war does not need to be comemorated as it is ever so much alive and an every day part of lives. This is the war that says to us 'lest you forget' with every new terrorist attack or military operation. The sides are blurred and the relentless damage is making dead soldiers out of innocent children. Fearful when alive, revered and glorified when dead. 

As I ramble about the two perspectives on war that I have encountered, I realise that there are at least 10 wars going on in the world today with more than 1000 battle related deaths in a year per war. If you account for the non-battle deaths, civilian attacks and other armed conflicts, the number goes significantly higher. According to a study (2014), out of the 162 countries of the world, only 11 are not involved, directly or indirectly, in an armed conflict.

The developed world comemorates a bygone war and continues to fund the current out-of-sight ones; the developing world is almost anesthetised with the ongoing wars; the under developed world is unaware of any state of being that is not war; and the recently shattered world is desperately trying to escape from the inexplicable war and drowning in the process. So many worlds, so many wars, so many perspectives. Red poppies or white or none, I remain confused. I remain ignorant.

In all this confusion, the fact remains that soldiers and civilians are still dying every day in real or converted battlefields, for causes unknown, contexts unsure. Lest we forget.