A primer for travellers

Many Pakistani citizens travelling abroad are invariably singled out and interrogated as if they were criminals.

When Air Marshal Nur Khan took over the national airline for the first time, it was not uncommon to see Pakistani passengers carrying their own food and water when they boarded a flight. Or to turn up at a British airport in midwinter dressed in the flimsiest of apparel. A booklet was, therefore, produced in Urdu and Bengali, which explained what an air traveller was entitled to in the price of the ticket, how the passenger was expected to behave in the aircraft and weather conditions in different countries. The endeavour met with limited success. However, the need for such a manual popped up again a couple of decades later when Mr Rafiq Saigol, a Lahore industrialist, was given the task of managing the affairs of the Pakistan International Airline. He was a nobly despairing figure who seemed curiously incapable of abandoning his dangerously high expectations of others. “Mister Bhutto,” he said to me one morning, “has asked me to find someone who can do a booklet for Pakistanis travelling abroad for the very first time. You know a sort of do’s and don’ts.” He then plunged into certain unsavoury details which had a rather primeval significance and added a few endearing fables involving the hygienic rituals of some of our countrymen which had apparently embarrassed the prime minister on many an occasion. “And make sure you mention the bit about the water on the floor.” The last sentence was concluded with an exclamation mark and a raising of the eyebrows. He then asked me if I could write a few chapters which would be translated into Urdu before being circulated. Friends were quite helpful and gave me a few tips. The most useful was centered on cuisine. Cabbage, when cooked, holds the world record for wafting odours. So, if you have a strong sadistic streak and want to depress the value of real estate in a strong Anglo-Saxon neighbourhood, cook a cabbage curry. You might succeed in getting the area evacuated.



A couple of weeks later, the translator and I lunched under an umbrella by the pool at KLM’s Midway House (thus named as it was roughly midway on the flying route between Amsterdam and Djakarta). Off-duty crew, anonymous behind sunglasses and sunblock, roasted in the afternoon heat. The translator took the file and flicked through the pages. He stopped at the odd paragraph and produced a sound which passes for laughter in certain quarters that was in between a falsetto in the Great Awakening in the US South and a Wildebeest caught by a crocodile crossing a river on the Serengeti. I never saw the translator again. And nor for that matter did Mr Saigol or anybody else in PIA. Not even the ministry of information that had recommended the chap.

In those days, customs officers were primarily concerned with the smuggling of gold, precious stones and drugs — and not weapons. These days, for obvious reasons, things have now gotten much worse and many citizens of the Islamic republic travelling to foreign destinations are invariably singled out at foreign immigration or customs counters and interrogated as if they were criminals. The feedback that I have received, however, is rather mixed and suggests that the airport cross-examination is to a large extent a cultural thing and does not have racial undertones. It has a lot to do with class and appearance and manners. Many Pakistani senior citizens travelling abroad stated they received courteous treatment at airports in the United States, Britain, Sri Lanka and in the Asean countries. One can only hope things will improve.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 2^nd, 2014.

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