One thing on my mind lately is the project's title. Several people have challenged me about it, most recently in Chicago in early December, when a Pakistani man said that, to him, the title has a negative connotation, suggesting danger - along the lines of "Even though I went to Pakistan, I'm still alive and well."
My reply is that the title is intended to imply something that, to most Americans, is unexpectedly - even startlingly - positive. Many Pakistanis are quick to perceive slights and insults toward their country - so quick, I think, that often they take offense unnecessarily and unhelpfully. While those of us who know Pakistan well love the country with very good reason and despite its undeniable flaws, we all know that many, many people out there in America have a very, very negative impression of Pakistan. That impression needs to change, for everyone's sake. The book's title is directed first at those prospective readers - and mainstream Americans are the first people any Pakistani should hope will read the book.
Fawad and I find the title a conversation-starter. It seems so unlikely to many Americans that "one of us" could go to Pakistan and not only return alive and well, but want to go there again, that they're intrigued. And once a conversation has started, the potential exists for real communication, real dialogue, real respect, even real friendship. Such a conversation is a secondhand version of my own experience: I went to Pakistan, I met people there, I listened to and learned from them, I recorded my education in an affectionate book whose subtitle is "A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time". Not a dangerous place, mind you, a dangerous time.
So I urge Pakistanis not to read in the title any implication that's not there, but to see it as a tool for starting a conversation with well-meaning, but understandably cautious, mainstream Americans who should - and often do - want to learn more about Pakistan and Pakistanis.
A similar issue that's come up is the very occasional appearance of some rude words in the text, perhaps because one particular word appears a couple of times on the first page. Frankly, in nearly five years since the book was published, I've been asked about this exactly twice. If I had thought it might have kept anyone from reading the book, I might have rethought the opening scene - because of course I want people to read the book! But by the same token, I hope no one will find such words (again, used very sparingly, and always in dialogue, i.e. spoken not by me but by people I met) obstacles to reading and justly assessing the book as a whole.
Book publishing has changed since Norman Mailer was forced to change the many instances of a certain word to "fug" throughout his World War II novel, The Naked and the Dead. I don't know whether that change has been for better or for worse. I do know that such words are part of the language people - including Pakistanis - use out there in the world I travel in. I never use such words gratuitously. The opening scene of Alive and Well in Pakistan takes place on a PIA flight from London to Lahore, and the word in question is spoken by Pakistanis. My role in that scene is as an innocent bystander. Should I have whitewashed the scene? I don't think so. Indeed, as I say to open the scene and the book: "It was as if I was already in Pakistan."
Can anyone seriously argue that the only appropriate, or even the most effective, way to counter negative stereotypes about Pakistan is to write only positive things about it? I love Pakistan - warts and all. And I think it's important to show the warts. As my friend Zahyd Hamead replied to one of his students at the Islamic University in Islamabad, who asked him if I was "a good American": "There are 290 million Americans. Not all of them are like Bush. Now let me ask you something: There are one billion Muslims in the world. Can you tell me that they're all good?"
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