I.
My Pakistani passport is the most Pakistani thing about me. When I clutch it approaching the border agents, I carefully keep the seal facing downwards. No need to scare off the grandmother next to me. Yet the green does seep out of my palm. My expiring passport was the older variety — not readable by machines. The ticketing agent and the border agent had to laboriously decode the trilingual (Arabic, English, Urdu) categories to hunt for my date of birth or the expiration date. Eagerly, I would try and point them to the right pages. This digital intrusion into their domains was rarely met with a smile.
I needed to get a "Machine-Readable" passport.
My father who got his in 1967, once spoke to me about passports. He had won a scholarship to go study Engineering in Ankara. He recalled it taking a laboriously long time to acquire. He had kept it - as he had kept all of his passports. When I took hold of it, I carefully went through its yellowed pages, filled with strange looking stamps and hand-scribbled notations of entries and exits.
The passport is in English, Urdu and French. The hard cover simply states: Pakistan Passport. The visa stamps are from the Turkish Embassy (Rawalpindi) and the Royal Afghan Embassy (Rawalpindi). This must have been the transitional phase when the Pakistani capital moved from Karachi to Islamabad via Rawalpindi. My father looks dapper in his photograph - a slim black tie, oil-sleaked black hair. His profession "Engineer" is crossed out and someone has scribbled "Senior Electrician Fitted". The difference between his first and second visa to not-Dubai - the difference between his worth and his work.
On the second page, there is a list of countries to which it is valid, hand-written in a flowery cursive. The first country is United States of America. The Passport is in Urdu, English and Bangla.
His 1974 passport also contains Bangla. The script had lingered even if the people who could read that script were brutally excised. In the 1980 passport Arabic had replaced Bangla. The front proclaimed "The Islamic Republic of Pakistan". It opened left to right. This was the passport of the Zia ul Haq regime.
II.
To get a Passport required a trip to the Passport office. Model Town used to be a suburb. F.I. Chaudhry who lived in and photographed Lahore since the 1930s writes about the hard-to-reach, leafy roads of Model Town in his memoir Ab Who Lahore Kahan? (Where is that Lahore Now?). There was the route along the Canal, through gardens and mansions and over agrarian fields. Model Town now is almost the center of Lahore, which has grown remarkably to the south. The road is crowded at 7 in the morning. The Lahore office of the Pakistan Passport Authority seems to be in a residential building.
As our car nears the Machine Readable Passport and Visa Office, a young man steps swiftly in front. Passport? He has a clip board in his hand and pegged precariously to his lips is a lit cigarette. He puts a possessive hand on the side-view mirror as the car slowly drifts through the lane and towards a parking spot. We get out. You want Urgent? Because non-Urgent passports are currently not being issued. I mean, they will tell you that you can submit fees for it, but just don't even wait for it. Something is wrong with the system. He sighs. I tell him that I do need it urgently. Great. You will need to submit the 1400 Rupees fee plus the 250 for our man who will stand in line for you. Five thousand total and we will get you the full treatment. I ask what the full treatment might be. Well, first we have to stand in line at the bank and deposit the fee and get the receipt. Then, you fill out the form, attach the receipt (he points towards a small wood desk by the side of the road, on which is another clip board and one solitary stapler) and go to the Passport office. There, you will have to get into another line to deposit the application and get a number. That number allows you to wait into another line to get inside the building. Once inside, you have your picture taken (it is highly computerized now, he notes with some satisfaction) and then you wait for a spot on a machine which has your computerized data. You have had a computerized passport, yes? I shrug. He grabs my old passport and looks at it. This looks odd. I tell him that I got it from Chicago. Well, than it must be computerized data. The database is in Islamabad and sometimes they lose the connection, and then you just have to wait. The connection was out for nearly 3 days last week. We lost a lot of money. But, I have heard that this week the connection is solid. What happens after that? I ask. You just have to sign and make sure your name is exact and correct. Then they will interview you, have you sign some more forms, and give you the receipt with a delivery date. You will be done in 2 hours. He smacks his cigarette on the clipboard. I consult with my companion. Should we just do this ourselves? Doesn't seem like it is worth hiring an “Agent”. He waits patiently while we consult. Then interrupts. This is out of your league. Just let us do it. We don't make a whole lot of money. It's all 'jaiz (legal).
I give him five thousand rupees. It did go as he predicted.
III.
I went inside, and waited for my number to be called -- a process at the end of which I was to receive a "Nothing adverse in our Record against the applicant" stamp.
Next to me was a man who told me why he found himself here: I work at the garment factory on Patuki Road. We do 12 hour shifts - I am the eldest and I just want my brothers to get their education, you know. I work and work and I have to pay their tuition and it is over 5,000 rupees every month. I specialize in shirt-making. The factory is brutal, man, they kill us if we try to ask for a raise, or even an extra chicken once a month for our meals. They have contracts from foreign and we are replaceable. I am hoping with passport I can get a job in Gulf. I do not want to leave my brothers but I have to get out of here. I been working for 12 years -daily - see these pants? I made them. I am a great tailor. I think I can get a job doing tailoring in Saudi. I heard they take off people's heads there. What savages man? They have the Kali Kamli Wala (The Prophet) and instead of love, they go around taking people's heads off? I was scared because people said that you can get caught in fake drug scams. It is hard being there. But I have to take the risk. I am so good at making clothes - I am sure I can get enough money to send back for my brothers. I never married. I never went to school. I only know work. But I want this for them. You know?
I did not know. Rather, I did not how the ways in which he knew. I did know what it meant to be his younger siblings - one of those who will be dependent on his hard labor; one who will wait for the return of the migrant laborer; one who will continuously try to think through the distance between worth and work.
IV.
When my number was called for my picture to be taken, I was asked to sign a paper that guaranteed I believed in the finality of the Prophet. I clutched the paper, and sat down with it. The man looked at me quizzically. To be a passport holder, to claim that one most Pakistani thing that I claimed, I had to deny it to the other Pakistanis. If I did not sign, I was a man without a passport. What civil resistance is possible? I imagined scratching away the clause and signing against it. I imagined it, but I did not do it, because I needed my passport to leave the country and to be admitted to another country. So I signed the condition of the finality of the Prophethood.
When I came out, he was there, and I walked up to him in some hurry. Can we get the passport if we do not sign the anti-Ahmadi statement? I asked him? How big is the bribe? He looked at me quizzically, and walked away. I understood my impoliteness, my aggression - the taboo cannot be broken in broad day light. I am sure there are ways, but I would need to come back to find them. I would need to learn as a different me.
COMMENTS
jetude | January 30, 2015
that was very powerful. thank you
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james | January 31, 2015
How the hell was it powerful?? Interesting? Yes. Powerful? Bit of an exaggeration.
mathieu | January 31, 2015
Merci beaucoup pour la histoire. Très vivante et intéressant !
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Asif | February 03, 2015
Good story. But missed out the humiliation. You cant get a passport without being humiliated by the system, the staff and even the agents outside the building.
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