Back-tracking to Pakistan

I really wanted to write about my five day experience in Pakistan in April, but time did not permit. I went as part of a Fulbright meeting to provide orientation for 200-300 Pakistani graduate students and faculty who are U.S.-bound as scholars for the coming year. Since there are no American academics in Pakistan at present, the Fulbright organization brought in many of us from India and Nepal. Overall my interactions with the Pakistani scholars were positive--they are thrilled at the opportunities that await them outside of the constraints of Pakistan's academic milieu. A few graduate students, both male and a few female, had some very "indoctrinated" views of America's imperialist political agenda, our behavior "just like the terrorists" in Afghanistan and Iraq, and quite distressingly, some of the young men were convinced that the 9/11 attacks were self-inflicted by the American government as an excuse to launch an new world order. Those were long and heated discusssions!

The living atmosphere in Islamabad was tense and high-security. We travelled only by State Department vehicle with appointed drivers. We couldn't step outside the home in which we were housed. Everything was on high alert. Islamabad itself had wide streets with amazingly free-flowing traffic, something I hadn't seen anywhere in India. There were large private homes, too. Make that enormous private homes. The house next to ours housed a man, his four wives, and 43 children! Apparently government officials, centered in Islamabad, make a fine living at government expense. That type of spacious private housing I also never saw in India.

The photos below show sculptures at the new National Art Museum of women in burqas; it's uncertain whether the sculptures will be allowed to stay on exhibit. Next, a colorful market in Islamabad--all the men in "Muslim" attire, quite different from the diversity of attire in India. Then, the wildly colorful trucks of Pakistan, surely the descendents of the gypsy wagon! Finally, some Fulbright friends.