For most desis, an encounter with a gora (foreigner, usually of Caucasian descent) is nothing short of an honor. It’s spun into a thrilling dinner-table tale or it is weaved into an accomplishment to be repeated to generations down the line. Interestingly, everyone puts on a show in front of foreigners; somehow, the element of national pride seeps in and collectively, Pakistanis attempt to appear to be the best of people. To achieve this state of apparent-perfection, we would embellish the most minuscule of beauties of Pakistan and brush off even the largest of problems under the rug.
Sameer was therefore not surprised that his family suddenly became the epitome of family-life for Blake. You may be wondering who this god-forsaken fellow is. Here goes Blake’s story: born and raised in Arizona, he was the same age as Sameer. But that’s where the similarities ended. Blake had been raised in a single-parent household; his father had abandoned him and his mother a few years after Blake had been born. Struggling to support the two of them, his mother worked two jobs. Being the only child in the family, Blake had learned independence the way no child in urban Karachi can. After several years of rebellious behavior, Blake had ended up at college with Aamir on full-scholarship. Blake considered himself an artist and we’ll see how this is relevant later.
Aamir, in a wild epiphany, decided to fly Blake to Pakistan during their Summer Break. While Sameer had heard many of Blake’s eccentric tales from Aamir, he was still excited to see how Blake would react to the heat of mid-summer Karachi, digest the spicy food of Burns Road and survive the noisy Shahra-e-Faisal.
Upon landing at Aamir’s residence, Sameer fidgeted, wondering whether to greet Blake with a handshake or a bro-hug. He recalled reading somewhere that Americans did not like intruders of personal space (and he remembered Aamir mentioning that Blake rarely showered) so he decided to stick with the handshake. But he was in for a surprise. Blake greeted him with an overwhelming hug, smelling incredibly of 5 different scents. Sameer figured that Aamir’s mother had probably attacked Blake as soon as he had stepped into the house and ordered him to take a long shower.
Blake’s phase of being Pakistani-ized was the height of hilarity for Aamir and Sameer. Blake was intent on learning Urdu swear words until he was travelling in the bus, abusing the conductor to much amusement of the other passengers. He was also intent on trying the local chars and declared it to be of the finest quality he had ever had. Aamir and Sameer fed Blake with road-side bun-kebabs and pakoray. They made him have malai-boti with parathas and the infamous Student’s Biryani. Blake’s stomach could not tolerate such an attack and he got food poisoning in the very first week.
What was funnier for Sameer and Aamir were the mistakes Blake made, from drinking beer on Aamir’s chath (rooftop) for the entire neighborhood to see to extending his arms for a handshake with Sameer’s sisters. However, the point where even Sameer and Aamir stopped laughing was when Blake declared Sameer’s mother to be one of the most beautiful women he had seen and asked her to be his muse for a portrait. Aamir, taking one look at Sameer’s father, realized that the situation could blow up in an instant and started explaining the rasm-o-rivaaj (customs) of male-female encounters in society to Blake. Blake decided to, instead, paint his version of Karachi.
At the airport, a slightly thinner and a tad more serious Blake handed Sameer the painting he had so diligently worked on for 3 consecutive nights. It was of Pakistanis through Blake’s eyes and it showed a cracked and dusty windowpane that was decorated with light bulbs and streamers. Sameer, being quite dense, did not understand it at all but Blake explained. Blake said that like the windowpane, Pakistanis were celebrating life, despite having had a cracked past and a dusty future and the glitz and glam were hiding the miseries within. Sameer realized in that instant that Blake wasn’t as dense as he pretended since he had seen through every act they had put up in front of him.
