This past Halloween weekend, my cousin and I had planned a trip up to Islamabad and the flood affected areas which is the KPK region, formerly the NWFP of Pakistan. I had decided that since I am a filmmaker, and I am traveling to Pakistan to visit my parents, I should get active and at least visit the area that was affected by the floods, film it, and try to put something together to raise awareness in the states. That’s how this whole thing started.
It hit me one morning when I was listening to NPR in my California condo. I heard the host say this this was the worst disaster in recent history… worse than the Haitian Earthquake, the Pakistan Earthquake and the Indonesian Tsunami combined. He said that 20 million people have been immediately affected and the media coverage is minimal.
Now I, being an American of Pakistani descent, was immediately infuriated as well as embarrassed. How can I get angry at the media when I myself didn’t even bother to find out how bad it was. That was when I decided that I had to do something. I had the resources, I just needed the conviction, and the statistics I heard that morning gave that to me.
I didn’t know what I was going to do or how I was going to do it but I knew I was going. That was it. So after many vague emails to my cousin Sahar about what I wanted to do, we planned a trip to the KPK region to witness the devastation for ourselves.
After a long bus ride from Lahore to Rawalpindi, and a short cab ride from Rawalpindi to Islamabad, we were ready to begin out journey to the KPK.
The KPK was about an hour and a half drive from Islamabad, but it seemed like a world away in my eyes. As we neared a small town of Mardan, we pulled off the highway and waited for our guide who was supposed to meet us at this particular landmark. Our driver pulled off the side of the road as all three of us ladies, Sahar, Valentina, and myself, sat in the back of the car with our heads covered and doors locked.
I noticed all around me that every single woman had not only her head covered, but her face covered as well. Even eerier was the fact that every little girl had her head covered too. I had never seen a little girl covered up before. It was such a strange sight considering that only an hour and a half away, in Islamabad, women can be seen wearing jeans and tshirts if not tank tops.
At this strange sight, I started feeling more somber. Warnings from my relatives kept playing in my head. Phrases like “Taliban Territory” and “Don’t Say You’re American” would not stop echoing. At that moment, i realized that I have just put my life in danger; a weird eery calmness came over me. This calmness came along with the sense that the “law” as I know it does not apply here and I am in a jungle of sorts. If the Taliban wanted to cause trouble with me, there would be nothing I could do about it.
In the interest of full disclosure, my fear was dramatically exaggerated- perhaps for the excitement it would add when I told the story later or perhaps because I wanted to feel the danger and prove that I had braved it. In all honesty, there was a greater risk of my being bitten by a Dengue mosquito than attacked by the Taliban for being an American Infidel.
After 10 minutes of waiting, our guide finally arrived. He was a slight bearded man with kind eyes. His name was Sadiq. As he entered the car, he handed Sahar a box of local sweets for us to have as a token of welcome. With this gesture, all my fears were immediately relaxed and the excitement of the journey set in again. We began the drive to the flood affected areas a mere 10 minutes away.
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