A Sense of History

Abstract

The images and stories you see here are of families of Pakistani men who remain imprisoned without charge, without evidence and without recourse of legal rights in the American black hole of Bagram.1 These are not images or stories of victims of the war on terror-they are far more than that. They are images of individuals with histories, stories, loves, faults, proclivities, dreams, fears, doubts, and flaws. They are not stories of victimhood but vignettes of lives lived through tremendous acts of courage, determination, and resolve in the face of overwhelming odds. They are images of complete individuals, sovereign and unique.The stories shown here focus on the families of the dozens of men who have been effectively abandoned by their own government-some of whom were most likely sold to the Americans by the Pakistanis to appease America's appetite for terrorists.2 They are first and foremost stories of the citizens of a sovereign nation who, though beyond the concern of its leaders and bureaucrats, continue a relentless struggle to undo the wrongs done to them, snatching from the state a modicum of justice and rights. Their experiences, their voices, and their individuality are the basis of a larger project that connects the predicaments of the individual citizen to the historical choices of states. That this project is one of the first such projects done in Pakistan is an indictment of the callousness and indifference with which the people of this nation have been documented and reported on.I have been a strong critic of journalists, both foreign and Pakistani, who depict Pakistan as a singular pathology by erasing its political history, its post-colonial continuities, and its rich legacy of social struggles. For them, the country reveals itself only when seen through the lens of the imperial security state or pointed out on a map drawn by hysteria. It is as if the nation, complete with all its issues-social, political, and religious-simply fell into the present, in complete isolation from the broader currents of regional politics and history. It is as if there were and are no inter-relationships, collusions, collaborations and entanglements between us and them.One of the great failures of modern journalism is its forgetfulness. This is not only structural-it is in the nature of journalism to chase the new and present the shocking-but is also about ignorance. Nations like Pakistan are never permitted their history, and their citizens are certainly not permitted their individual stories. The country is almost always seen through sweeping political generalizations, collective pathologies and cultural simplicities. It is, for the excited journalist attempting to make a career, a treasure trove of the alien, freakish, artificial, corrupt, broken, failed and imploding. It is beyond history and beyond rationality. To write about any country, let alone Pakistan, in this fashion, is to sow hopelessness and despair. It is also to obfuscate and disconnect what happens here from what has been decided elsewhere.Away from the tiresome hysteria of journalists and pundits who find financial and individual gain in mouthing predictions of the demise and destruction of the Pakistani state or sowing mind-numbing fear with narratives of the arrival of the Taliban at the gates of Islamabad and other such nonsense, are other stories that most people seem not to hear or know about. These are the individual stories, and they almost always speak upwards, offering a trenchant critique of Pakistani structures and institutions of power and challenging them for their venal exploitation, indifference and oppression. These ordinary stories of ordinary people reveal their deep commitment to a secular, worldly idea of life and living. They also reveal voices who understand their rights and what has been denied them for so long. These stories may lack the glamor and sensationalism of those framed around radical Islam or the nuclear threat, but they are actually about what the bureaucracy and military elite of the country really fear-calls for social justice, social equality, and full judicial and political rights. …