Entry 2:
Since I've been in Pakistan, one of my daily rituals has been talking to myself in the shower in Urdu. I try to remember words I picked up the day before and to sound out new sentences: "My friend's car is the red car"; "Can I have some warm milk with my tea?"; "Honest, sir, I'm Canadian." Stuff like that. This morning, as the fog cleared from around my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I sounded out a brand new sentence: "Who is that guy?"
To wit: My beard. When I arrived here, I was clean-shaven. Six weeks later, I'm more heavily bearded than the Phyllis Cates-era Rock Hudson. The beard passed the scruffy stage a month ago and zoomed beyond experimental-twentysomething status a couple of weeks later. So far, of course, I haven't had a chance to impress the Taliban with the beard. But today, as I bounced through interviews around town in search of news and gossip from various retired mover-and-shaker types, it provided a fascinating barometer of my Pakistani sources' moods.
The courtly retired ambassador, whose own moustache narrows almost to a Gilbert-and-Sullivan-caliber curlicue at the end, looked disappointed with what had grown since last we spoke. "That'll be going out of style soon, you know," he said, clicking his tongue. But the thirtysomething Pashtun fixer who works for a colleague positively howled about it. "I'm going to go to the Taliban myself," he said, tugging on the beard. "I'll tell them I've recruited them another!"
The issue of what's nice ethnic sensitivity and cheesy tourist affectation has been in play ever since the pith helmet went out of style. But as to the semiotics of my beard, I think it's a little more complicated than the question of whether those henna-handed Berkeley kids on the Indian railway look like dorks or not. Sensitivity to one guy's Pakistan—the one where people make a political statement via not shaving—insults the feelings of another person's Pakistan in ways that go beyond mere matters of facial-hair aesthetics. It's the sense I've gotten again and again from my secularist friends here, who mutter between sips of bootleg scotch and fervently hope that this war will turn the tide in their own country: I can't believe it's come to this. Even the sappy-foreigner types are sucking up to them.
One person who hasn't cared much either way about my beard is Miriam. Miriam was my babysitter during the three years my family lived in Pakistan when I was a toddler. In the South Asian style, she sort of became part of the family. A couple of weeks ago, full of a self-conscious angst that had nothing to do with my sensitive beard and everything to do with having taken too many post-Colonial studies classes in college, I went to find her. She and her husband, Ghulam, are retired now and rent a small servants' room from a family in one of Islamabad's tony neighborhoods. Since they don't have a phone, and since Miriam is illiterate, I just showed up.
I'd love to say that in five years my most vivid image of this time in Pakistan will be some dramatic moment of war or protest. (And it may yet be, with word of Kabul's fall.) But for now, the sight of Ghulam's face as I explained who I was will top everything else. I was standing in a muddy back yard and he was atop the flight of stairs to the apartment. One of the other residents called him from behind the curtain that serves as their door. I said my name once and then again, and his face lighted up behind thick glasses and a haji beard. He bounded down and hugged me. "Miriam is praying now," he said. "She'll be done in a minute."
Later, they took me inside and sat me on the room's single chair. They made tea and broke out an envelope of the family pictures my parents had sent them over the years: My younger brother, who was born in Islamabad, and me—in Pakistan, in Yosemite Park, graduating from high school, and on up the line. "Michael is a Sahib now," Ghulam declared. "We will call you Michael Sahib," said Miriam. I wanted to wince uncomfortably at the language of social stature, but all I could do is feel happy. I told them I'd be in town for a while and might go toward Afghanistan. They insisted that I take a box of biscuits for the trip. At the door, they hugged me and kissed me, one for me, one for my brother, one each for my parents. And they kept rubbing my beard.
When I left, we were all misty-eyed. Even my cabbie, a normally jovial guy named Riaz, was moved. "You are a great man," he said. "You must go back and give them some money later." (I will, with a box of biscuits.) One of the things about growing up with parents whose jobs yank you from place to place is that whole chunks of your past just disappear, with no one there later in life to say they knew you way back when. Over and over again, though, little chunks of that past have come back to me since I've been here—helping fill in the holes of a "who is that guy" question that perplexed me long before I grew a beard.
