Any details or customs I relate reflect my experiences and my knowledge at the time I was in Pakistan, in 1968. I confess that memories have faded and some details are not as sharp as I'd like. I tell the story as accurately as I possibly can given the 41 years that have elapsed.
As I introduce members of Abid's family, I should let you know that it is not customary to call relatives, particularly older relatives, simply by their first names. Brothers would be addressed as "bhai" and sisters as "bhabi," as marks of respect, for example, "bhai Tajammul" and "bhabi Aijaz." I have eliminated those titles in this narrative, but the respect remains, all the same.
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Abid comes from a family of ten children: four sisters and six brothers, not to mention an unbelievable amount of aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins. I'd been hearing about all the brothers and sisters before we left the States. Now it was time to put faces to names and hope to heck I could keep them all straight.Luckily I didn't have to learn all nine at once. Three of his sisters and their families lived in outlying towns, so I would meet Jamilah in Lahore, Razia in Multan and Taj in Peshawar later in our stay.
Of course, I'd met Abid's sister, Safia, as soon as we reached Britto Road. I'll write much more about her later because, of all the family members, I probably became closest to her over the months we stayed in Pakistan and throughout the balance of my marriage. She and her husband, Nayyir, even attended Farida's wedding in 2001, after I separated from Abid and moved to Bass Lake.
That left the brothers:
- Akhtar, the oldest. This picture is of sister Safia, Akhtar's wife (whose name I don't remember), Akhtar, and his mother. I can't remember ever visiting his home. He'd always come to visit us at his mother's home.
- Tajammul, who is a doctor and the owner of several hospitals in the Karachi area. He married Aijaz, who is also a doctor. She is the daughter of Dr.Sir Ziauddin Ahmed, a prominent, well-respected physician and educator, for whom Tajammul and Aijaz named their first hospital and the teaching university the family operates. They raised four children, Asim (not in the photo) and Rubina (here standing between her mother and father), who are also doctors and well-known in their fields. As you can see, they were children at the time Abid and I visited. Sabina (in front of Aijaz) and Arif (in arms) are the youngest of their children.
At the time of our arrival in Karachi, Tajammul and Aijaz were in the process of building a new residence in the suburb of North Nazimabad, a new development where some of the most prosperous Pakistani citizens of that era lived. The home was large, open and airy, two stories, with a spiral staircase connecting the floors. When complete, it would be a house to rival United States mansions. That wouldn't happen for a long time.
Construction in Pakistan takes place over years, not months, so the house was nowhere near complete when we first saw it. A rudimentary kitchen had been installed upstairs in what would later become a bedroom as the modern, efficient "official" kitchen took shape downstairs. The servants prepared meals upstairs, carried them downstairs to serve and then transported dishes and utensils back upstairs to be washed. It was not an easy process, made more challenging by the work schedules both Tajammul and Aijaz observed. It seemed like there was never a time of day when one meal or another wasn't fin preparation.
The situation would probably have been unbearable if it hadn't been for the quiet, moderating temperaments of both Tajammul and Aijaz. They brought calm to what would otherwise have been a tempestuous existence.
As I recall, the downstairs kitchen finally became serviceable shortly before our departure.
No matter the chaos that sometimes reigned over Tajammul's house, it was always a haven for us, particularly during the last month of our stay. And best of all, it had western plumbing.
Next Episode: The Homeboys
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