I am Pigeon
I am so profoundly moved right now by some intangible string in the life stream. It may be the picture in today’s paper of starving ill babies in hospitals waiting for fuel to run out and mothers fighting for bread in Gaza, or it may be Death & Taxes playing my ear, or the cloudy skies outside, or the lack of what I think is rightfully- deserved appreciation. May be it is the lack of human connection in this pigeonholed existence or just shutting up and not talking. Either way, I am feeling it.
Pathetic fallacy, Shakespeare called it. When the atmosphere and nature reflect your mood. I think mine is completely in tune. (Many puns … … I am laughing to myself).
I wrote something recently in hopes of sending it to TFT. I live in hope that I might still send it. Till I do: I’ll let it rest here instead of the deep dark recesses of my computer:
To Buy into the Dream (or Not)
As one of those Pakistanis who ventured to Dubai for work I was more than enthusiastic about our new residence. Welcome to the new world —what the US was for early immigrants, the Middle East is for South Asians — a land of opportunity (no Thanksgiving for us though). In comparison, the country has stability, high-rise towers, six-lane ‘streets’, buzzing entertainment and nightlife, secular society, no suicidal tendencies — and the added bonus of rendering home rosier because of distance. What more can one ask for?
The initial enthusiasm for the city is infectious. At every South Asian gathering talk focuses on property and real estate. This tower vs another. “A community off Shaikh Zayed Road with definite profit on investment” — Buy into the cache is the message. Concerts, parties, dinners, charities … socialising, everything is rendered the gloss of good living. The Middle Eastern white-collared worker’s life is the pin up poster for people vying to get on the export list out of Pakistan.
But everything comes at a price. At a time when one would want to be a voice in the many that have finally woken up to protest against oppression, Elton John at Emirates Palace and shopping festivals beckon. Such is the dodgy game of sidestepping and distraction. When the threat of a bomb blast near a sibling’s school or parent’s car en route the Mall is more tangible and real that anything else, what is one to do?
But we are here for work, right.
Yeah, you keep telling your self that.
The guilt of having got away is something one lives with on a daily basis. It’s almost like the defector who enjoys the comforts and security of his new country but cant get away from the familiarity and comfort of the old one. These “borrowed robes” come at a price. Outside of a few industries like banking, Pakistanis are placed at the bottom end of the professional food chain. As labourers working on roads, buildings and driving trucks with “Deekho Magar Piyar Say” written in Urdu, things are good, we are acceptable. But try breaking into the media, education or health care industry and racial profiling is subtly rampant. Taking ads in the leading daily newspaper Gulf News to be the voice of the hiring management, companies seeking “Crème de La Crème Executive Assistance” or “Western Educated/ Native English Teachers” doesn’t bode well for us olive skinned, educated, competent and professionally sound South Asians.
But if stubbornness was ever a virtue it is now — we persevere and come many months of trying to break into the market land a job reporting into a Lebanese beauty who dresses for the runway but speaks and writes poorer English than you. So? Cest la vie. Suck it up.
Though I realise things are hardly any better back home with so-and-so ministers relative getting a job over you, it somehow hackles more here. Go figure.
People have mortgaged the last hair on their back for the dream villa or apartment that is supposed to give them the security that their home country failed to. Every social event is popularised.
The comparison is drawn not with other expatriates but with people back home. Your life seems so much richer. And though it is richer (financially) it is without the grounding and realness that comes from home and in being in touch with realities. This city’s lights are its biggest smoke screen behind which lie the many stories of ghetto labour camps, flawed infrastructure and familial discord. Though familiar to most of us, its just another safety net broken. We can’t go back and we don’t want to live here.
With fewer and fewer openings at higher positions in Pakistan and security in the country at an all time low we are resigned to be abroad for a long time.
But the truth is that the sub-urban, Mercedes driving, Buddha Bar partying expatriate dream begins to wear thin very fast.
Pathetic fallacy, Shakespeare called it. When the atmosphere and nature reflect your mood. I think mine is completely in tune. (Many puns … … I am laughing to myself).
I wrote something recently in hopes of sending it to TFT. I live in hope that I might still send it. Till I do: I’ll let it rest here instead of the deep dark recesses of my computer:
To Buy into the Dream (or Not)
As one of those Pakistanis who ventured to Dubai for work I was more than enthusiastic about our new residence. Welcome to the new world —what the US was for early immigrants, the Middle East is for South Asians — a land of opportunity (no Thanksgiving for us though). In comparison, the country has stability, high-rise towers, six-lane ‘streets’, buzzing entertainment and nightlife, secular society, no suicidal tendencies — and the added bonus of rendering home rosier because of distance. What more can one ask for?
The initial enthusiasm for the city is infectious. At every South Asian gathering talk focuses on property and real estate. This tower vs another. “A community off Shaikh Zayed Road with definite profit on investment” — Buy into the cache is the message. Concerts, parties, dinners, charities … socialising, everything is rendered the gloss of good living. The Middle Eastern white-collared worker’s life is the pin up poster for people vying to get on the export list out of Pakistan.
But everything comes at a price. At a time when one would want to be a voice in the many that have finally woken up to protest against oppression, Elton John at Emirates Palace and shopping festivals beckon. Such is the dodgy game of sidestepping and distraction. When the threat of a bomb blast near a sibling’s school or parent’s car en route the Mall is more tangible and real that anything else, what is one to do?
But we are here for work, right.
Yeah, you keep telling your self that.
The guilt of having got away is something one lives with on a daily basis. It’s almost like the defector who enjoys the comforts and security of his new country but cant get away from the familiarity and comfort of the old one. These “borrowed robes” come at a price. Outside of a few industries like banking, Pakistanis are placed at the bottom end of the professional food chain. As labourers working on roads, buildings and driving trucks with “Deekho Magar Piyar Say” written in Urdu, things are good, we are acceptable. But try breaking into the media, education or health care industry and racial profiling is subtly rampant. Taking ads in the leading daily newspaper Gulf News to be the voice of the hiring management, companies seeking “Crème de La Crème Executive Assistance” or “Western Educated/ Native English Teachers” doesn’t bode well for us olive skinned, educated, competent and professionally sound South Asians.
But if stubbornness was ever a virtue it is now — we persevere and come many months of trying to break into the market land a job reporting into a Lebanese beauty who dresses for the runway but speaks and writes poorer English than you. So? Cest la vie. Suck it up.
Though I realise things are hardly any better back home with so-and-so ministers relative getting a job over you, it somehow hackles more here. Go figure.
People have mortgaged the last hair on their back for the dream villa or apartment that is supposed to give them the security that their home country failed to. Every social event is popularised.
The comparison is drawn not with other expatriates but with people back home. Your life seems so much richer. And though it is richer (financially) it is without the grounding and realness that comes from home and in being in touch with realities. This city’s lights are its biggest smoke screen behind which lie the many stories of ghetto labour camps, flawed infrastructure and familial discord. Though familiar to most of us, its just another safety net broken. We can’t go back and we don’t want to live here.
With fewer and fewer openings at higher positions in Pakistan and security in the country at an all time low we are resigned to be abroad for a long time.
But the truth is that the sub-urban, Mercedes driving, Buddha Bar partying expatriate dream begins to wear thin very fast.
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