Village Life
Everyone is in search nowadays for an ‘authentic’ experience while travelling. I think, in a small village in the eastern Punjab in Pakistan, one was handed to me. Staying with a family for two days in Gujranwala, north of Lahore, I was informed I would see village life and meet the people living there. As always, it’s the people who make the difference.
The Pakistanis I met and stayed with in Lahore prided themselves on their generosity, giving me salwar suits and buying excessive amounts of mangos since the first Urdu phrase I learned was ‘Mujhe aam bohot achay lagay‘ (i.e. – I like mangos A LOT). In the village, the generosity of the people seemed so spontaneous, inherent. Perhaps the language barrier meant the only thing they could share was their hospitality. The tradition of hosting a guest, it was told to me later, extends even to one’s enemies. If an enemy has committed some kind of crime and seeks refuge as a guest in the north of Pakistan, the hosts will not turn the person into the police as long as they are their guest.
Off one road to another bumpy road, to another and yet another, our car, seemingly without shock absorbers, made its way farther into the green lands being farmed by the villagers. For a country with a population of 132 million, a village of 2000 people is quite small. As we entered the area most heavily dense with houses, which took two minutes to drive through, our car tenuously made its way through a puddle a foot deep and 20 feet long and over potholes the size of small sedans. My host pointed out the freely growing marijuana plants that villagers use for medications.
We parked our car at the ‘restaurant’ – a two walled shack with a ledge, a goat and a buffalo – and walked to our first family. I was introduced and immediately given a Pepsi (Pepsi has a presence even in rural Pakistan) and my hostess began to sit and fan me with a large hand-held fan in the heat. Every family I visited fanned me upon arrival and offered me tea, or in richer houses, a cold drink (Pepsi). I visited 20 families altogether. If I had stayed to talk with each one I would have been there until October.
The same questions were asked everywhere – “Are you married?” “You’re not travelling alone, are you?”, “How many brothers and sisters?” The look of surprise when I said my parents were happy with two girls and never tried for a boy. Everyone in Pakistan and India does even if it means 10 daughters before a son.
But usually conversations would be shorter – my name, my country and then an invitation to live with whoever I was visiting at the time, for a long stay. No one wanted me to leave.
I began to be overwhelmed at the first family’s house. Fanned and handed a glass of buffalo milk, freshly boiled, I was introduced to the family. The mother was alone, her husband electrocuted by an electric fan. Her daughters sew soccer balls for adidas and brought their work out to show me. They each make 7 or 8 soccer balls a day, stitching them in a group, getting together where children run in the dirt around the house as they sew.
Suddenly I felt like I was in an infomercial for foster parents plan or world vision, watching women sewing soccer balls with needle and thread in 40 degree heat. To cool off they can drink water from the water pump and when not sewing they cook chapatis in a clay oven outside, milk the buffaloes or sort rice.
As we sat and talked, the courtyard filled with about 30 people, mostly children, who stared at my skin, smiled and laughed as I pulled faces and tried to learn all of their names. As we moved from village house to village house, the children followed me in a good-spirited curious pack. I was brought to another house where a woman made my hand a work of art with henna. As she applied the brown paste, all the women and children stood around fanning me and touching my white skin. Suddenly my host appeared, telling me we were late and that the henna had taken too long and we had to visit more families. The woman who had henna-ed my hand said, “Will you remember me?” as I was leaving.
We arrived back at the first village family’s house – the aunt of my host, hence the relative wealth – where her daughter Shanila brought out a pink and blue salwar kameez as a gift. And then silver bangles for my wrists. And then a pair of dangly earrings. And then a hair clip. As I walked onto the terrace decked out in my gifts, everyone remarked how I could be mistaken for a Pakistani woman.
And as we left to move on, Shanila asked, “Will you remember me?”
To both women who asked, I answered, “Absolutely.”
The children followed our car down the dirt road for a mile, running, waving, and yelling “Allah Hafiz!”
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