A Personal Reminiscence: As Pakistan Approaches 50, The Changes Are All for the Good

by Richard H. Curtiss

My first visit to Pakistan was in 1951, only four years after the new nation was created amidst scenes of carnage that seemed almost a continuation of World War II, which had ended only two years before Pakistan’s birth. The propeller-driven Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) Lockheed Constellation which was taking my bride of one year and me half-way around the world to Indonesia, our first foreign service post, had to stop at least twice a day for fuel. Passengers disembarked for a meal at each stop, usually spending the night at the second stop. Our hegira had begun in Washington with a flight to New York, a change of planes and then on to Gander, Newfoundland, where fog had closed in, grounding us for 24 hours.Then Prestwick, Scotland for dinner on the ground, and on to Amsterdam where the trans-Atlantic flight was completed two days after it had begun.

We spent 10 days in Europe and then resumed our eastward journey from Rome. The first stop was Basra, in southern Iraq, baking in blinding June sunshine, and the second was Karachi, where we arrived well after dark. After a meal at the KLM hotel we were taken in this pre-air conditioning era to tiny rooms where hot, sultry air was churned through the mosquito netting shrouding the beds by slowly rotating overhead punkha fans.

My most vivid memory of that long night was of the shower arrangement, since I used it both before going to sleep and again at dawn in a desperate effort to get cool. Each room had its own shower stall containing a wide-mouthed earthenware pot, perhaps four feet high, full of water.There was an aluminum container with which the bather could dip into the pot and splash what seemed like ice-cold water over the body while trying to work the soap up into a lather.

It certainly wasn’t my first cold shower, but I would have been shocked if I had known that there would be no more warm showers during my next two years in tropical Asia. The next morning we took off early over the sprawling city of low buildings and headed east into the rising sun toward our next stop, and breakfast, in Calcutta.

In Indonesia we were largely preoccupied with familiarizing ourselves with the language, people and culture of that scenic and exotic country. By chance, however, we got to know two young Pakistani diplomats who, like us, were on their first foreign service assignments. One, Iqbal Chaudry, had been a young soldier in a British military unit that surrendered to the Japanese at the fall of Singapore in 1942. Like many young men from the subcontinent, he became intoxicated by the dream of independence from British colonial rule and went to work for the Japanese military government, broadcasting from Singapore to India.

Repatriated from Southeast Asia at the end of the war, he had returned only six years later as press attaché, my opposite number, in the newly opened Pakistani embassy in Djakarta. (By chance we served together again nearly 25 years later when he arrived in Beirut as Pakistani chargé d’affaires in 1975, during the first year of the civil war there.)

The other diplomat, Aftab Khan, a dashing young political officer and “man about town,” was Chaudry’s good friend, but the two could not have been more different. Chaudry was an earnest and sometimes morose intellectual who had learned most of his English the hard way, in military service and prison camp. Khan’s impeccable British English clearly had been learned at expensive English-curriculum schools. He was given to the grand gesture, arriving at parties with a joke on his lips and a box of duty-free chocolates for the hostess.

In those benighted days, everyone seemed to smoke and I recall that when Khan proffered a cigarette it generally would be an unusual foreign brand—perhaps with a gold filter and brightly colored paper. If you expressed interest he would insist you keep the pack. A decade later I served again with him in Baghdad, where he was his embassy’s chief political officer, married and a father by then, but just as debonair.

Because of their fluent English and extensive exposure to the culture that went with it, these two young Pakistani diplomats represented a most welcome bridge between the West, as personified by ill-prepared and naive young members of the save-the-world World War II generation like us, and the East, represented by deeply suspicious young Indonesians, already scarred by Dutch colonialism, a brutal Japanese military occupation, and finally a victorious but vicious war of liberation from the Dutch. Dutch-funded Islamic guerrillas still were resisting the nationalist government in the hills and rice paddies just outside the capital.

Although they were all Muslims, a relaxed evening with our Pakistani friends was a sharp contrast to an evening spent with wary Indonesian journalists and teachers, many of whom already had been invited for tours and indoctrination in Communist China.

Both the Palestine problem and the Kashmir problem remained to bedevil the world after the tumultuous events of 1947. From Indonesia the Palestine problem seemed far away, although it was of deep concern both to Muslim and Christian Indonesian intellectuals. Kashmir, on the other hand, was closer.The subject arose repeatedly in a country with a large community from the subcontinent, now suddenly fractured between Hindus and Muslims whose personal places of origin and family ties did not neatly fit the political lines that had carved mostly Muslim West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) out of largely Hindu India.

On a vacation spent on Dutch tramp steamers calling at Bali and the lesser Sunda islands, we found one of our fellow passengers was from Kashmir. He took us ashore to visit his home in Dili, in then-Portuguese Timor, and as he drove us to a mountain peak to look out toward New Guinea some 400 miles away, I earnestly broached the question: “When you have your choice, as you’re supposed to under the United Nations plebiscite, will you, personally, vote for assession to India or to Pakistan?”

He looked at me with astonishment. “Why, neither, of course,” he said.“The only solution is an independent Kashmir.” It was the first time I’d heard of what suddenly seemed the only possible way out of the unbreakable deadlock that subsequently has triggered two of the three Indo-Pakistani wars, and which keeps the defense expenditures of both countries at intolerable levels.

Our two years of cold showers ended in August 1953, when we boarded an American ship in Singapore for a seven-week return journey to New York. Karachi was the fifth of its 10 ports of call, and this time we had a much better look at what by then was a rapidly growing but still unprepossessing port city, not too different from the previous stops in Sri Lanka and India, but incomparable more luxurious than still-war-ravaged Indonesia.

We had American friends who had been reassigned from Djakarta to Karachi, and they were greatly enjoying what was a considerably more sophisticated intellectual life in a country where the entire ruling class seemed to speak excellent English. Gone, I noted, were the earthern jars, replaced by hot- and cold-water taps. The punkha fans were still in place. But by now it was September, which in Karachi is not as hot as June, and there also were window room air conditioners to be turned on as needed.

The only purely negative impression of that visit were flies in the port area. As the ship pulled out of Karachi on a hot, sticky mid-afternoon, every inch of the deck seemed covered with them. No more than 5 or 10 miles out to sea, however, we suddenly were hit with a cool sea breeze and, to my astonishment, the flies simply folded their wings and died, en masse, and all in a space of a few minutes. Until long after dark the lights on deck revealed windows of thousands of dead flies tumbling along the deck, eddying and swirling in corners, then rolling back across the deck. By morning they were gone, swept into a choppy sea by the brisk winds that followed us to Aden, our next port of call.

My third visit to Pakistan occurred suddenly in January of 1959. A cable arrived in Ankara where I was Embassy press attaché, requiring me to present myself two days later in Karachi to help with the press side of a Central Treaty Organization meeting being held there. A visa was issued the next day by the Pakistani embassy in Turkey and in the late afternoon I caught a bumpy ride in a Turkish Airlines turbo-jet to Istanbul. From there I flew overnight to Karachi on Pan American’s round-the-world flight.

This time I found myself among many friends, since I already knew the Pakistani chairman of the CENTO press division and his four Iranian, Turkish, British and U.S. aides, all of whom were based at CENTO headquarters in Ankara. I stayed in the home of the American press attaché.

We worked very hard throughout the five-day meeting, but errands took me around the now-sprawling city. I had to remember to look to the right when starting to cross the street, since Pakistanis drive on the left, and as I raced around in taxis I admired the vast, white-painted government buildings set among green lawns, inherited and carefully preserved from the expansive days of British colonial administration.

Pakistan was having difficulties absorbing all of the Muslim refugees who had arrived from India. Although many of them had been middle-class merchants in India, they were having a hard time re-establishing themselves, and many were living in squalor in Karachi.

I’d been warned to be very careful about food in this overcrowded city, and I was until the last night of the conference. Although alcohol is no longer available in Pakistan, in those days it was served liberally by the various CENTO delegations at a series of celebratory cocktail parties. Relieved that the 18-hour days were finished, I must have imbibed too freely. As a result, I forgot the warnings and tried many of the exotic hors d’oevres being offered by the different delegations.

The next morning I was very sick. My host and hostess were philosophical. “We all get it at least once here,” they said. “It will take you a few days to recover so you’d better cancel your return flight.” Feeling like the lead character in the play “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” I spent an extra week at their home in Karachi. As I began to feel better, I was much taken by the relaxed and informal way of life.

The telephones seldom worked, so servants were dispatched and returned with “chitties,” little notes mostly containing invitations or asking when it would be convenient to visit. It seemed that Pakistani guests dropped in every afternoon or evening that my host and hostess were not out themselves, and night and day cool sea breezes wafted through the perennially open doors and windows of the stately, high-ceiling house.

By then, with military service and a stint of foreign study added to my foreign service, I’d spent more than a decade in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, but never had I lived in a foreign country where so many people seemed to speak such good English by choice. It was all insidiously beguiling, and I began seriously thinking about requesting a South Asian post myself.

The charm was only heightened by a trip to one of Karachi’s broad white sand beaches. There had been snow on the ground when I left Ankara, but in Karachi I spent the day cavorting in the surf with my host and hostess’s children, and accompanying them on expeditions to collect marvelous tropical sea shells. They in turn showed me the mounds made by sea turtles who came ashore at night to lay their eggs. There also were holes dug by wild dogs seeking the eggs, which now are protected by the government of Pakistan.

The beach trip marked the end of my 10-day stay and, at the airport, I told my host that I had been surprised and pleased at the delightful weather. “You should be pleased,” he said with a smile. “You’ve been here for our entire winter.”

It was a sobering thought, and certainly influenced my subsequent decision to stay in the Middle East. However, it was not really accurate, as I discovered 37 years later when I returned in May 1996 as a guest of Pakistan’s Ministry of Information. Although the weather in Islamabad was very much like the weather in Southern California, only a half-day’s drive away in Kashmir I saw snow that never melts on the mountain peaks. In low-lying Lahore and Karachi, the weather was warm and humid, but it was not the high humidity of the nearby Arabian Gulf or the blast-furnace dry heat of the Saudi or Iraqi deserts.

Gone were the clouds of flies of 36 years earlier, but the stately buildings of the provincial governments were still in place and in excellent repair. During a visit to the mansion of the governor of the North West Frontier Province I was greeted with a red-jacketed spit-and-polish honor guard that would have done credit to the British Raj of Kipling’s day. In all the major cities, the tall modern buildings of 20th century urban life are scattered among the great buildings and vast green parks of the colonial era.

In fact the proliferation of tall office buildings and residential apartments recently moved the city fathers of Islamabad, Pakistan’s carefully planned national capital which was started from scratch in 1959, to ban buildings over 10 stories high, although those already under construction were permitted to be completed.

Everywhere I took my camera, Pakistani children, men and even many women halted whatever they were doing to have their pictures taken, patiently and with much laughter following my directions to face the light or look natural while posing before an interesting backdrop. After a trip up the Khyber Pass and down again to the Afghan border, escorted by a pickup truck full of Pathan tribal militiamen, I asked the Pakistani and Pathan border authorities if I could take some photos.

“Yes,” they said with a smile, “but do it before you read that sign.” I took the pictures and then read the sign, which said “no photographs.” When I asked if it would be safe to step a few feet into Afghanistan, they patiently pointed out that there literally was no government on the other side of the gateway, through which a steady stream of people were carrying manufactured goods from all over the world from Afghanistan into Pakistan, and food and daily necessities from Pakistan into Afghanistan. I ended up photographing the large “Welcome to Pakistan” sign, but from a safe six feet inside that hospitable country.

In the comfortable Pakistani International Airways aircraft that took me from New York to Pakistan and back again, and traveling around the country, I noted that Pakistani women’s clothing must be the most becoming in the world. Nor was I alone in making that observation. Pakistan is one of the few Asian countries I know where a large number of the Western women residents unselfconsciously wear the local shalwar kameez and gauzy color-coordinated scarves. “God’s gift to middle-aged women,” remarked an American diplomat’s wife.

Although a lovely place to visit, Pakistan has its serious problems. In fact, its people and its free and almost overly critical press discuss them openly, unsparingly and endlessly. Despite day-to-day obstacles that make life for Pakistan’s citizens an unending series of major frustrations and small triumphs, the gentle and light-hearted way of life that so impressed me all those years ago continues. Like most people living in hot climates, Pakistanis are night people. Shops are slow to open in the morning and some close for a siesta, but from late afternoon on the streets bustle well into the night. A vast outdoor rock concert outside my luxury hotel in Karachi continued well into the wee hours of the morning, long after I, also a night person, had fallen asleep.

A visit to Pakistan today is a joy for visitors, whether they seek the solitude of the foothills of the Hindu Kush (Hindu Killer) and Himalaya mountains, where 40 of the world’s 50 highest mountains lie in Pakistan, the awesome ruins of Mohenjodaro, perhaps as old as any metropolis in the world, or the splendid Indian Ocean beaches. The people are universally friendly, relaxed and hospitable. The climate is generally inviting except, perhaps, for the hottest months of June and July, English is the second language of most and seemingly the first language of some Pakistanis, and there are comfortable accommodations in all of the big cities.

Said a taxi driver in Lahore who took me sightseeing from the Pearl Continental Hotel, part of a splendid, Pakistani-owned national hotel chain: “In Pakistan everything is very cheap but the hotels.” He was right but, with a little bit of time, less expensive temporary accommodations can be found as well. In Islamabad I stayed in one of a chain of guest houses which are almost on a par with the many four-star hotels, but with low prices to match those in the rest of the economy. Such low prices extend to the marvelous embroidered material, jewelry of semi-precious stones, and rugs, leather and onyx work that make gift buying both fun and inexpensive.

After two and a half weeks in the new Pakistan, I left with two thoughts. It truly is one of the world’s most fascinating countries, whether judged by its 5,000 years of recorded history, its multi-faceted culture, or its outdoor hiking, climbing, surfing and river rafting opportunities. And, based both upon my impressions of Karachi of two generations ago and all of Pakistan today, had I yielded to the temptation to center a foreign service career on the Indian subcontinentof which Pakistan is an integral and particularly historical part—it could have been an extremely pleasant and interesting life.