A Slumdog in the New World

Ear­ly in the morn­ing I was stand­ing before the stat­ue of Abra­ham Lin­coln whose life, I believe, is still a source of inspi­ra­tion for mil­lions of peo­ple around the world. I kept silent, closed my eyes for a few min­utes and imag­ined all the movies, books and anec­dotes I has known about this great man. There were few African Amer­i­can boys and girls who were stand­ing behind me, just look­ing at him with­out say­ing a word, eye­balled at his grandeur.

It was tru­ly a dream come true. In US I vis­it­ed White House, Eisen­how­er House, Pen­ta­gon, Capi­tol Build­ing, USAID office, Mar­tin Luther King Cen­ter and many oth­er amaz­ing places. As a part of del­e­ga­tion of 15 Emerg­ing Young Lead­ers of Pak­istan, I had meet­ings with dif­fer­ent tires of Amer­i­can lead­er­ship. But look­ing back at my past espe­cial­ly my child­hood, who could guess that one day I would be able to avail such an oppor­tu­ni­ty.

I was born in a gyp­sy fam­i­ly in Depalpur, a small town in Pun­jab where my father worked as a fruit hawk­er and my moth­er as a farm labor­er with oth­er peas­ant women. As a stray child, I spent time with oth­er gyp­sy chil­dren play­ing and roam­ing in the streets.

My family’s migra­tion to Lahore at my ear­ly age opened up a new world for me; big city full of cars, big roads, green parks and so many cousins to play with. In Lahore, my father began work­ing as a labor­er at con­struc­tion sites, while my moth­er as house maid. Even though my par­ents worked day and night, they still could not earn enough mon­ey to sus­tain a decent liv­ing because of which in order to help them, I start­ed garbage pick­ing like oth­er gyp­sy chil­dren. Under the unbear­able sun of sum­mer, I used to walk around bus stops and traf­fic sig­nals sell­ing drink­ing water and news­pa­pers. While in win­ters, I would sell a dozen or two boiled eggs cir­cling around tea shops, hotels and mar­kets. I would return to the slum late at night when my par­ents would be asleep but my younger broth­ers and sis­ters would be wait­ing for me to fin­ish their home­work. We used to fin­ish our home­work in can­dle­light and sleep togeth­er on a floor mat.

Sum­mers used to be extreme­ly tough for us due to mon­soon rains and wind storms. Our huts would blow away from the foun­da­tion, leav­ing us under bare sky. How­ev­er my biggest con­cern dur­ing this ordeal would be to save my uni­form, books and school bag from the wast­ing away. As if uproot­ing of huts was not enough, the accu­mu­la­tion of the down­pour right in front of our huts would nat­u­ral­ly become an ide­al home for mos­qui­toes and insects.

After the for­tu­nate day when my father got me enrolled in a high school, I had to live with a tougher rou­tine. I would wake up ear­ly in the morn­ing, pick up my garbage bag and stroll around dif­fer­ent places in the entire city. I would then come back home, per­form my ablu­tions and go to the madras­sa where I was taught how to read the Holy Quran. After return­ing back to my slum, I would fin­ish my break­fast, put on my uni­form and head to school.

Ini­tial­ly going to school in the morn­ing was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. But unfor­tu­nate­ly, the image of a gyp­sy child dressed up in untidy, clum­sy shal­war qameez, and car­ry­ing dirty, stained school bag attract­ed unwant­ed atten­tion. Most­ly we went to school on foot but some­times we would be car­ried by a don­key-cart. The peo­ple in the street would look down upon us, give us spite­ful names, and make sar­cas­tic and insen­si­tive com­ments. I clear­ly remem­ber how not only elders but also chil­dren would thrash us just because we were gyp­sies and they knew very well that we were help­less, unable to fight back. Every sin­gle moment passed in such sit­u­a­tions was extreme­ly wound­ing but I grad­u­al­ly became accus­tomed to it. What else could I do? Instead, I made myself a com­mit­ment to study hard and prove all these unkind, heart­less peo­ple wrong.

I think and believe that one per­forms bet­ter when he is chal­lenged to his lim­its. I would spend my days work­ing and read­ing. Read­ing was like an intox­i­cat­ing drug. Through books, I would trav­el across the world in a few hours with­out leav­ing my hut. While read­ing Great Expec­ta­tions by Charles Dick­ens, some­how it occurred to me, through the imag­i­na­tion, that even in that poor, clum­sy and shab­by sur­round­ings which con­sti­tut­ed my life, I still had the free­dom: free­dom to think, dream, work, change myself and inspire the peo­ple who dis­liked me. Lat­er this devel­oped in me that free thought means a world of pos­si­bil­i­ties. The choice I make, between free­dom and being vic­tim of my cir­cum­stances, would become the sto­ry of my life.

Books gave me a total­ly nov­el world­view. They gave me a sense to think and feel the pain of oth­ers in soci­ety. I start­ed par­tic­i­pat­ing in dif­fer­ent social and polit­i­cal activ­i­ties in Lahore. With oth­er like­mind­ed com­rades I began spread­ing aware­ness in the soci­ety about press­ing issues like ter­ror­ism, dic­ta­tor­ship, and the rights of minori­ties and oth­er mar­gin­al­ized groups. At a social meet­ing, I met Kathryne Kiser, an offi­cial of US Con­sulate, who encour­aged me to apply for a fel­low­ship for Atlantic Coun­cil for emerg­ing young lead­ers of Pak­istan. This is how I came to vis­it US and gath­er a great wealth of explo­ration.

My fam­i­ly was so much sur­prised to know that I was going to US for a two week vis­it, they could not believe it. My moth­er, over­whelmed with joy and pride, shared this news with every house where she worked as a maid.

Win­ning a fel­low­ship and trav­el­ling to US may not be the great­est goal in life. But at least I may say that while liv­ing in a slum I dared to dream high­er and tried my best to real­ize them. And the jour­ney still goes on…

—Writ­ten By Sabir Arif

(Pub­lished in The Laal­tain — Issue 6)