dear edhi sahib
i am right now a little worrid on where you are taking us. maybe this is the way you work. where you are not sure in the beginning or you sway after your first initial thoughts. i don’t know what to say. i believe you are the man that i have read about, that i have dreamed of meeting and working side by side with. i believe it, even after our conversation today.
so let me start from the top and lets see what we can get to.
omar and i get out of the rickshaw. we have made it to mitadhar, one of the oldest areas of Karachi. it is said the memons run this joint. we dont know much about it. just that it is difficult for any four wheel car to make it through the narrow passageways. your best bet is to grab a rickshaw, donkey, or just walk your way inside. of course, we had no choice but to take a rickshaw. our equipment was with us and it makes us stick out. we hide it on our way there because we’re afraid of what it would look like.
we finally make it to mitadhar. our rickshaw driver had to ask a couple of people to find it. i would easily get lost in the mess. but here we were again. our second time here, ready for our third rendezvous two months later.
i get out of the rickshaw look at the fading sign and the countless ambulance drivers idly sitting around. i look back towards omar and say, ‘round three.”
he nods.
we walk in, take a deep breath. see the row of women sitting around outside of Edhi-sahib’s office. We go in and sit down in Edhi-sahib’s office and wait for him.
edhi sahib comes in and we get up. say Salams to him.
“do you remember us?” i ask him jokingly.
“yea, but there’s no result!” he responds back with some fervor.
i try to make up for coming in empty-handed. we had forgotten to bring the bilquise photo that we framed and wanted to give edhi-sahib. i mention it to him, but he doesnt care. he sits down across from us.
“i told kazmi-sahib to not send any americans to me”
“good, cos we’re pakistani” omar jokes.
this is an awkward moment. this man had met us in the states close to a year ago and said to us that we can follow him even if he went to swat.
but whatever. we continue to assert our pakistaniat. which just wasn’t enough for him.
“so what do you want now?” he asks.
“two days with you. we wont be in your way. you wont notice us. we will be quiet.”
“no.”
he moves his hands like he was unscrewing light bulbs as they do in bhangra. this, of course, would be a fitting metaphor if edhi-sahib was punjabi. but it is what it is. and it was a little sad. but we didnt flinch. this was an expected answer. but we didnt stop.
“acha.” i say.
silence fills the room, again.
he continues on a spiel about the uselessness of our work. omar makes his plea and tlaks about how his mother talks about his work. i talk about the man that i read in the book. he dismisses us.
in a final plea, omar mentions how our work is like his. it is small, it is change you cant see, but it is worth it. all this penny pinching days, all this blogging, email writing, boom mic holding, 5d wearing is worth it. we know it and inside somewhere, i have to believe he knows it.
he looks at us “ok, come back in two days. im not feeling so well right now.”
we nod and try to make a little more small talk. he doesnt want to hear it. he gets up.
the nicest way i think he could have told us to “get the fuck out.”
we leave. i smile at the pathan girls. they dont smile back. we continue our way out and share a hug. the second dance is over but the adrenaline rush is just hitting me. we step outside of mitahdar and see a slew of people staring at us with all our equipment in our hand.
i flaunt it, not giving a shit. im ready to kick some ass with my boom stick. a surge of energy that maybe i havent felt in a while has hit me. and any asshole in mitadhar that’s gonna get in my way, will have his face buried with the back of my boomstick. not cos i dont want you to fuck with my equipment. i just dont want you to ruin this one fleeting moment of joy and energy that i haven’t felt in awhile.
