Taalib-e-Ilm. South Asian history
@Columbia
. Always reading, occasionally writing, and eternally suffering from being emotionally invested in Pakistan cricket.
Speaking about female mobility, and this is going to be a long thread:
I’ve been wondering since a while why my newfound love for photography emerged in New York. Why do I find so much worth capturing here and why did I never find much worth capturing in Lahore?
“Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of Western interests. Palestinians have been paying for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience for more than 30 years.”
(Baldwin dates injustice to 1948, not 1967)
There's something so deeply beautiful and uniquely heartmelting about seeing
@Malala
grow and thrive and mark all of these wonderful, happy milestones in her life 🧿💓
All-women panel but what an absolutely trash topic. Wanting a bit of sense and decency from Pakistan's media can be too great an expectation sometimes.
Father visited the Golden Temple around 2011 and while he was there, he realized it was time for namaz too. Upon inquiring for a suitable space nearby to offer it, he was told by Sikhs that he could offer it in the very space. And he did, without any interference or problem.
In some personal news: I have finally finished the most arduous labor of my past two years & submitted my thesis on the interplay of racialized martial masculinities with the exercise of sexual violence on Bengali women in 1971. Officially a Master of Arts in South Asian Studies!
As much as many are gutted for how this is a massive blow to the youth who had voted for Imran Khan with a lot of hope, I think in some ways it is also important that a lot have now gained a harsh but necessary education in the role and engineering of the Big Boys in Pakistan.
Seeing the disgraceful remarks by Waqar Younis, the awein ka phadda between Nauman Niaz & Shoaib Akhtar while seated among international guests, and the Amir-Harbhajan blaady-why-you, I'm just feeling extra grateful that our current crop of players is beyond this. Knock on wood!
My heart is absolutely crushed. Abdul Hadi was a student of mine. He was a genuinely sweet, good kid.
He was hit and killed on the roads of DHA Phase 7 by 17 year old Mujtaba Waqas who was driving at the speed of 130 and immediately fled.
Told my Ammi about the latest visa restrictions issued by Trump; how they adversely impact the possibility of my visit back home until I graduate next year and
For those harping on about "only undocumented Afghans are being deported."
Knowing the corrupt state and unjust system in Pakistan, I'm surprised how you are just taking their word for what they're doing. But guess the state is trustworthy if you're just as xenophobic and cruel.
This Afghan refugee is showing his POR cards to the local journalist and saying “These all are original card issued by Nadra, we are not leaving voluntarily we are forced to leave. Police raided our house I sold my house on the half price.”
When a PIA flight was hijacked in May 1998 to prevent Pakistan's nuclear tests in Balochistan; and how the pilot made the Baloch hijackers believe he had landed in India when he had actually landed in Sindh:
- Refused to take oath under PCO of Nov 3 in 2007
- Cleared backlog of criminal cases: deciding over 10,000 cases of criminal nature since 2014
- Upheld Mumtaz Qadri's death sentence
- Highlighted discrepancies in Aasia Bibi's case, leading to acquittal
Kaepernick’s truth has cost him a year of his NFL career. But still, it is his truth. He has not wavered from it. He does not regret it. He has caused millions of people to examine it. And, quietly, he has donated nearly a million dollars to support it.
Thinking about how I gave my family boys ONE job on my wedding; get Maahi Ve (Highway) to play when I enter...but they had its concert version played so while I made my way, you heard A.R. Rahman sing AND also hype the audience & go "beautiful, this has been so memorable for me."
Now that I am done marking 254 final exams, I have officially completed (my very first) one whole academic year of teaching history and political science to undergrads.
7 courses. 100+ classes. 413 students.
With the Dam Fund and other ridiculousness prevailing, times like these make the void she has left behind so painfully pronounced. The guts, the scathing wit. Asma Jahangir, you are missed.
"Young Jinnah fell in love with theatre while living in London. His secret ambition was to play the role of Romeo at the Old Vic."
Jinnah wrote to his parents to ask for their blessings for his stage career, only for his father to reply with "Do not be a traitor to the family."
@NidaKirmani
I don't think most people are celebrating this as the "ultimate achievement" of Malala's life though? It is just joy at her marking what she is clearly quite happy about; and joy at her having survived so much, and thriving in every way.
Partition, paradox, 9/11, sufi, subcontinent, India, unite, borders.
Throw them all together and you get your average piece of international cultural writing on Pakistan.
Might as well throw in a mango too.
Cannot express how draining putting up a fight against certain parental rules and restrictions can be. Even trying to offer a rationale to have them lifted is considered and is as exhausting as a fight. Especially for a girl.
I saw this and decided to do the same (thank you for the idea
@janna_e_haider
!) in the Pakistan Studies class I teach which covers the 1940s and onwards to contemporary thematic debates. Besides being a very fun activity, my students made hilarious memes, some of which are below:
every quarter i give my students an extra credit assignment to make a meme about something we covered in class. this quarter i taught US History from approx 1815-1920(ish), and the kids had some spicy takes (thread of memes)
All this mention of Salman Toor here has reminded me to post some of the photos I took back in April 2021 of his exquisite work from his first museum solo exhibition at The Whitney Museum
No one:
Not a single soul in NYC:
My Pakistani professor who happens to cross my path while I'm actually headed to the campus: "aap kidhar awaaragardi karnay ja rahi hain?"
I have so so so much respect and admiration for senior professors who have had to completely transition to online modes of teaching in a couple of months and are still trying their very, earnest best.
"Pakistan is a nuclear power." Okay and? Staple of all international analysis even without reason, just put it anywhere and it's good to go.
"Pakistan has great mangoes. And it is a nuclear power."
What’s happening right now in Pakistan is truly scary. Don’t forget, Pakistan is a nuclear power. And Imran Khan won the last election. It’s a tinderbox.
Lahore main ghar kay upar walay portion main rehnay walon kay liye jannat kay sab se upar walay portion ka intezaam hona chahiye kyunke jahanum main stint tau hum poora kar chukay hain.
From being annoyed by the 4-5 different students who would speak in every class during my undergrad, to now teaching undergrads and thanking God everyday for the 4-5 students that always speak in my Zoom classes-- it has been quite the well-well-how-the-turntables for me.
Honestly what a phenomenal show by the PTI. Leader imprisoned, party stripped of its symbol, bans and crackdowns on party workers and mobilizing activities, every organ of the state out to dismantle them into defeat and disappearance, and yet they emerge strong and victorious.
Of all the student types I have identified while invigilating the final exam for one of my courses today, I think my favorite is the “cameo:” the student you’ve never seen once during the entire semester but who makes their brief surprise appearance at the end.
I've been reading through Ayub Khan's autobiography and his later-published personal diaries for my thesis which is on the war of 1971, and just wanted to share some excerpts from it as a reminder and mirror of what Pakistani rulers thought of Bengalis
"For the past 4 years, Lenny Maughan has been turning his routes into art. So far he’s made 53 works – including, most recently, an unmistakable image of the artist Frida Kahlo." "If you’re as fit as Maughan, it will take you six hours and eight minutes."
Always wondered if Pakistan would ever escape the deep and pervasive pro-army indoctrination, and it's incredible how this military has brought down 70+ years of carefully cultivated and controlled propaganda within just two years owing to its own stupidity and audacity.
Scenes from outside GHQ in Rawalpindi where .
@PTIofficial
women supporters lead the protest, a lone woman shakes the gate of the GHQ_ unprecedented events for even Pakistan
It is tragically comical for my mother that she was married into a family from Gujranwala & then vowed that she'd rather die than marry me into a family from that city & yet I decided to marry a man whose family turned out to have roots there....since 7 generations.
Super happy to see all the creeps and pervs here being exposed. There's a limit to what you can say and do behind the mask of a screen. Let it be known that it won't allowed to stay hidden for long.
Today I learnt that the International War Crimes Tribunal which was privately set up by Bertrand Russell in 1967 to investigate American crimes in Vietnam had included, among others, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Stokely Carmichael, Tariq Ali, James Baldwin, and even Mahmud Ali Kasuri.
"Dark lipstick laga kar tumhari bohat aurat-aurat wali look aati hai, larkiyon wali nahi."
I'm a 23 year old woman, what else am I supposed to look like if not an aurat? A chihuahua?
Imagine how vulgar and condemnable the concept of female mobility is in our society, which actively constricts and polices it, that this became a gaali. :)
On Fatima Jinnah's 125th birth anniversary, let us remember that even Pakistan's "Mother of the Nation" was not spared the label of an "Indian and American agent" and it was dictator Ayub Khan, now looked upon with misplaced fondness, who promoted it .
Me sitting in my Zoom class waiting for the class to answer a basic question I have posed while knowing damn well none of the students have done the reading
Throwback to the 2.5 years I worked as a research assistant & editor for a Pakistani author/journalist after I was promised to be paid, except I wasn't paid a dime and nearing my graduation, they offered me a job for 30K at a place notorious for not paying employees :)
Look at the pathetic state of this colonial, genocidal state. Truly desperate to grasp any shred of evidence of "solidarity" for their monstrous evil and their indefensible and inhumane violence.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
We were really moved by Indian friends showing their solidarity with Israel 🇮🇱
We are happy that India🇮🇳emerged victorious in the
#INDvsPAK
match at
#CWC23
and that Pakistan was unable to attribute its victory to the terrorists of
#Hamas
.
Me, seeing a call from my younger brother, (who hardly calls me) ring on my phone today: aww maybe he remembered my engagement anniversary or he is going to wish me Siblings Day or something
Him, the moment I picked up the call: Netflix ka password kia hai?
Today I’m thinking about how difficult Pakistan makes it for a person to belong, survive and thrive at the same time. How it makes all of these fundamental and necessary life conditions mutually exclusive.
Queen’s speech was exemplary. Pakistanis can be proud of the fact that she was once Pakistan’s head of state from 1952 to 1956. Long live the Queen of England Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland.
[Thread on confronting anti-blackness in Pakistan]
A “word of caution” I was frequently offered by people in Pakistan before I moved to New York was that I should steer clear of Harlem because of how “dangerous” it is and that I should avoid black people for the same reason.
Not sure why the Government of Punjab isn't advertising this to promote the city but you can get a completely free of cost sauna bath in Lahore these days in under a minute. All you have to do is open the tap. Or go outside. Or breathe.
Disgusting to see many of those for whom our voices were raised on multiple occasions morph into gutter humans, especially during this moment of unthinkable tragedy.
Looking at Cyril and Salman Haider.
Do people who keep calling Lahore "small" and "incestuous" realize that the city probably/also seems like that to them because they keep frequenting & inhabiting the same spaces and vicinities which are equally frequented by people from the same circles *cough* the same class? ☕️
Literally just said "Allah meri khataiyaan maaf karna" instead of "khatayein maaf karna" in dua.
God damn those Khalifa Bakers' promotional texts I've been getting.
This "dude" is a married man and an INCREDIBLE professor and human, who has imparted so much learning and love among countless students.
But clearly you've never had the chance to learn (aagay jumlay ki zaroorat nahi) from such professors & it truly shows everytime you tweet :)