Subcontinental Drift

Dress Code

Dress Code
My mobile phone rang in the middle of a busy Karachi street. I could hardly hear. "Aryn, I forgot to tell you, you can�t wear jeans as there is a dress code." I was halfway to the Sindh Club, Pakistan�s most elite establishment (only a thousand members, none of them women, and until 1960, none of them Pakistani, either. Now it�s where Pakistan�s presidents, prime ministers, bankers, tycoons, and the landed gentry meet for dinner and talk about how the economy is booming for the top 2% of the country. The rest is still mired in third-world poverty). I was going to meet my first feudal lord for lunch. ("Only a small feudal lord," he chuckled, when I told him that. "I only have about 200,000 people on my lands"). I was wearing my typical outfit for Pakistan: the traditional knee-length, long sleeved tunic and a dupatta � the large, billowing scarf that no decent Pakistani woman would be seen without. A typical Pakistani woman would wear the brightly colored ensemble over similarly bright Hammer pants. I wore mine over jeans most of the time. I�m not a slave to fashion, but I don�t do Hammer pants. Unless the dress code requires. I returned to the hotel and reemerged in a full salwar kameeze, to the evident approval of the entire lobby staff. "Yes, much better that way miss," the doorman told me, "Those jeans you wear are very unladylike." I returned to the Sindh club in a blaze of turquoise glory, and passed through the hallowed doors into a tranquil oasis of green lawns, tulips and bearers in starched uniforms. As I drank homemade ginger ale and worked my way through a plate of white asparagus and Dover sole, my small feudal lord told me about jirgas in the rural interior. "The court system simply doesn�t work for Pakistanis out in the rural areas," he explained, "The process is so slow, so corrupt. And the courts are too far. A field worker doesn�t have time to make the long journey to the courts. He has to get the crop in, sow the wheat, cut the rice. If he has a problem, it is much more efficient to call a jirga or a faisela." A jirga, or faisella in Sindhi, is a council of elders, usually led by the local feudal lord who dispenses justice like Solomon after a few hours of consultation. Most cases are settled by paying a fine � a small fee for a stolen buffalo, blood money for a murder (average rate is $6000), or sometimes a daughter, though that practice is said to be dying out. My small feudal lord cited the recent case of two feuding families, the Jenejos and the Kehers. Over the course of a long, hot summer, and over a tiff no one can even remember, four men from each family had been killed in a cycle of murder, retaliation and counter retaliation. In December, the leaders had had enough and called together a jirga, bring all male members of each family together to present their case. Within three hours a decision had been reached. Because each family had lost four men each, they would be called even. But because the Jenejos had in the process harmed one of the young Keher girls, even slightly, the Jenejos owed the Kehers compensation. The tribal elders agreed, the feudal lords agreed, and most importantly, the Junejos and the Kehers agreed, bringing peace to the traumatized villages. At least that was the theory. In Shikarpur I would see the reality on the ground.

One Night in Karachi

I flew into Karachi to meet my fixer and guide, Iqbal, who will be taking me into the interior of Sindh Province and who will introduce me to some feudal lords, tribal leaders and the realities of the Pakistani court system. If all goes as planned we will sit in on a Jirga, which is a council of elders, as they decide local cases. We may or may not see men walk across a bed of coals to prove their innocence. ("You should have called me earlier," Iqbal said when I first telephoned, "I just got back from a trial by fire.")

The first time I was ever in Karachi, the massive southern capital seethed with imagined menace. It was not long after the gruesome videotaped beheading of Danny Pearl, who was last seen not far from my hotel. Somebody tried to break into my room in the middle of the night. I was not pre-disposed to like the place. This time around it�s different. I know Pakistan now. I�m confident. I know how to talk to taxi drivers, how to get dinner, how to order beer in my hotel. Or at least I thought so. Pakistan is a dry country, but it does have one brewery, Murree, to provide refreshment for thirsty non-Muslims, provided they are willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money for average beer. After a day roaming Karachi�s streets, I was ready to shell out my eight bucks. I called room service from my hotel room. The conversation went something like this:
"I am afraid that is impossible, madam," said the very contrite-sounding desk clerk, "Pakistanis cannot drink beer."
"I understand that," I replied, "but I am not Pakistani."
"Oh but I am afraid you are," she answered, still contritely, "It says so on your hotel registration form."
"Well clearly it�s wrong. I am American. Please send up a Murree."
"You can�t be American, it says here you are Pakistani, and Pakistanis are not allowed to drink beer."
I was starting to get a little angry. And when I get angry in Pakistan, I tend to adopt a British accent. It�s ugly, I know, but the clipped accent of an angry colonial memsahib has proved useful in the past. Even if I�m trying to prove that I am American.
"Well it�s a mistake, I have an American passport. I am an American."
"You don�t have a Pakistani passport?"
"No, only an American passport."
"And you are the only person in your room?" She sounded suspicious, as if I was hiding a beer-guzzling, infidel Pakistani under my bed.
"Yes, I am alone."
"Your are alone and you want a beer?"
I chose to ignore the implication. "Yes please, with peanuts."
Cheers.

Justice delayed....

�In Pakistan, justice is only for those who can afford it.� The Supreme Court lawyer leaned across his vast, empty desk and began counting off, finger by finger, starting with his bejeweled pinky. �First you have to file a report to the police. Maybe they take it, maybe they don�t.� A couple of hundred rupees may do the trick, that is of course if someone else � the someone responsible for the crime perhaps � doesn�t pay the cops even more not to register the case. �Second,� the lawyer continued, �the police have to do an investigation. And they might need some incentive to do a thorough investigation.� He raised his eyebrow suggestively. �Third, the court secretary needs a little tea money to push the papers through and place the case on the docket.� At that point, if you are lucky, and the opposition isn�t better funded, you may have a chance. But then again maybe not. And it depends on how long you are willing to wait for your day in court. Simple land disputes in Pakistan have been known to last for generations. �Thirty years,� says the lawyer, �If we close the docket today, and take no new cases, at the current rate it will take us at least thirty years to get every case through the system.� A couple thousand rupees may push court papers to the top of the pile, but is it worth it? What if the judge is corrupt? What if the opposition buys him off? And what if the opposition�s lawyer files a retaliatory appeal? The case could bounce through the system for years, never reaching a resolution, eating up time and lawyers� fees and tea money.

Saying that Pakistan has a messed up justice system is like saying India has bad water. It�s so glaringly obvious, and so pervasive, that it doesn�t even merit mention any more. I�ve spent the last couple of weeks interviewing lawyers and judges and human rights activists and experts from an alphabet soup�s worth of acronyms � ICG, ADB, HRCP, ALRC (that would be International Crisis Group, Asian Development Bank, Human Rights Commission Pakistan, Asian Legal Rights Center). I have yet to find a single person who will defend the justice system, though they all point fingers in different directions: Musharraf�s military reign, the feudal system (for those who left feudalism back in their 10th grade European history class, it�s still alive and kicking in Pakistan, and feudal lords are happy to be called such), police corruption, the education system, the US (it always goes back to the US, mostly because we gleefully support a military dictatorship, no matter the deleterious effects on what�s left of Pakistan�s shredded democratic system). The only person I haven�t talked to is the Law Minister. I�m hoping he will stand up for Pakistani justice. Not because it deserves it, but because I am so curious as to how he will do it. But before I talk to the Law Minister, I am heading to Pakistan�s deep, dark interior to learn about another system of justice � that of the tribes that dominate most of rural Pakistan. Care to walk across a bed of hot coals anyone?

heading out

I just had lunch with my friend Ayesha, an expert on Pakistan's military who is in DC to work on a new book on the subject. We were talking about how Pakistan has the potential to be a fantastic tourist destination, if only it could get its act together. "If you were to have a conversation with Musharraf," she said, "and he asked you what he could do to get the country on track, what would you say?"

It's only been a year since I started paying attention to Pakistan. I went for the first time in December 2003, to sit in for Time's bureau chief, Tim McGirk, who was on holiday. I've been back three times for the same reason. I call it "osama watch." I've read lots of books about the place, and during my time here in DC on my fellowship I've been talking to every single person I can find who knows something about Pakistan. But still, it feels strange to be telling a Pakistani woman what I think should be done to fix the country. The arrogance, right? To my mind, one of the biggest problems facing Pakistan today is the crumbling justice system. Without rule of law, how can you have a functioning society, let alone a real democracy? Take Thursday's aquittal of Mukhtaran Bibi's rapists. What does that mean about justice in Pakistan? Adl, in the Koran, means justice. And Akbar Ahmed, a Pakistani anthropologist and Muslim scholar, tells me that justice is the basis of Islam.

So here I am, heading out tomorrow for five weeks in Pakistan in search of justice. I am armed with a long list of contacts, a stack of notebooks and a microphone. I'll keep you posted on what I find.