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Culture clash in CATHERINE PORTER Asim Bukhari hasn't gone with
his sisters to see any prospective brides since he returned home to He's been too sick. His stomach is clenched with
diarrhea, propelling him in and out of the toilet like a yo-yo. He's been
taking four cold showers a day to cool a melting fever. This morning, the black needle
on the bathroom scale barely nudged past 140 — 10 pounds less than he weighed
when he left Pearson airport with two suitcases bulging with presents for his
family and his wedding clothes. Asim, 31, has come back to "Aapi, I think we have to
cancel today. I feel too weak," he tells his older sister, lounging
across from him on a mattress laid down on the flagstone floor of a darkened
room in her home. The electricity has just cut out
again, stilling the overhead fan and exposing their damp flesh to the
onslaught of flies. Aapi reaches over and tenderly
pats his arm. She's used to his sensitive ways. That's why his future wife
will have to be mature. "He needs someone who will
take care of him like a baby," Aapi laughs, revealing a toothpick-sized
gap between her front teeth. Tonight, they have a date to see
Mavish in her home. She is one of the five young women Asim's sisters have
selected as his "bride-may-be's." But so far they have jostled
through traffic for the initial interviews with the first three alone, while
he fans himself at home in a dark corner. It's been nearly five years
since Asim left He can't believe what he sees. The monsoon hit They pulse and swarm with
traffic. Three-wheeled motorized rickshaws buzz between large, multi-coloured
buses and cars, sputtering white exhaust. Whole families of five squish
aboard motorcycles; children in front and behind father at the controls,
mother sitting side-saddle behind them, holding baby on her lap. No one wears
helmets. On rusty, oversized bicycles,
children pedal in plastic sandals around potholes that can swallow a car. Horns blare like car alarms. Sidewalks? Forget it. The edges
of the roads drift into a moat of mud, where men in white cotton shirts and
flowing pants called shalwar kameez sell mangoes from wooden carts. Women navigate the perilous edge
of traffic in long black robes, looking out at the world through small slits
in their masks. Days before he left "It's a totally different
world," he says. "I'm no longer used to this." Instead of strip malls, tall
apartment buildings with barred windows crowd the roads, their white paint
blackened by pollution and camouflaged beneath advertisements for Lux soap
and Go-Go Pan Masala. Small shops sell auto parts and cellphones beneath
rusty awnings. This isn't downtown either. It's
the Pickering of Karachi — a middle-class suburb in the northwest of the city
called Gulshan-e-Iqbal. Aapi lives here on a muddy,
narrow street lined with white-barked eucalyptus trees. There is a small
tailor's shop, the "Perfect Body Building Gym" where men lift
weights beneath a corrugated tin ceiling, the rusted husks of cars hammered
on by mechanics in grease-stained pyjamas, and a mosque with four burgundy
minarets that broadcast their low, melodious calls to prayer through her
windows five times a day. At the end is her family's
white, two-storey home, which like all the houses on the street is separated
from the road by a thick wall topped with metal spikes. Step through the peach-coloured
gate and it smells like frying hot peppers, exhaust fumes, ripening mangoes
and, when their white blooms open at night, jasmine. She lives in the ground-floor
apartment with her husband Ghulam, their three sons, two daughters and her
eldest sister Rizvana, who has never married. The eight share three bedrooms,
two sitting rooms and one small computer room. Sound squished? It's palatial
compared to the house Asim and Aapi grew up in with their eight other
siblings, a 10-minute drive away. That one measured only 6 metres across.
Most nights Asim slept on the roof, even in the rain. In a country where one in three
lives below the poverty line, Aapi's family is squarely middle-class. Her husband Ghulam works as a
professor of literature at a local college. Their eldest son is an engineer
at Yamaha, and his younger brother has just finished his residency as a dental
surgeon. They have a cook, a laundress
and Azra, a 9-year-old servant whom they rescued from an abusive father. They
have a 13-year-old Suzuki Khyber they squeeze into like puppies,
and which only the men know how to drive. But they've never had air-conditioning.
The only solace from the scorching summers comes from overhead fans, and
that's when they work — they can't afford a generator to combat the city's
permanent rolling blackouts. All three of the boys sleep on the couches in
the front room and on mattresses on the floor. They use a closet to change. Every month for the past 15
years, the family has received an envelope of money from Canada to help make
ends meet — first from Asim's elder brother Faheem who has started a small
chain of electronics stores around Toronto, and recently from Asim. For the
past five months, he has set aside $400 from his paycheques. Everyone in the family is
educated. Their father emphasized schooling, tutoring his children at night
after returning home from his job at the Pakistan Railway. Aapi received her
master's degree in political science after her five children were born, and
her two daughters graduated with B.A.s. The youngest son, just finishing high
school, can take apart the family desktop with a screwdriver and chats late
into the night with friends on MSN. Like most families in They thank God for their good
fortunes and pray for forgiveness when struck by the bad. After an eye
infection passed around the house, one daughter racked her mind for what she
had done to deserve such punishment from God. But she also used the
medication her brother brought from a pharmacy. Since their parents died, this
house has become home for the extended family. Ghulam has become their father
figure, and Aapi — an endearment which means older sister in Urdu — their
mother. So, when Asim stepped through
the front gate for the first time a week ago, all six of his sisters in And they have stayed ever since,
crawling into places at night to sleep like cats — a couch, a corner of a
bed, the floor. During the days, they cook,
shop, laugh and talk about his marriage prospects. "We don't have parents. So
it's our responsibility to see him married," says Shahina, the thinnest
of Asim's sisters, setting down a plate of green fennel seeds that taste like
licorice on the mattress beside him. Marriages in South Asian culture
are arranged by families. Even in "In Pakistani culture, a
marriage is not between two people. It's between two families," explains
Mubeen Quereshi, a matchmaker in the Pakistani-Canadian community in Usually, they find other Canadian-Pakistani
families in the area. But new immigrants with shallow networks like Asim
often retreat "back home" to find a spouse. That's what both Asim's
older brother and younger brother have done. The bridal candidates his
sisters have lined up for him are all educated and from the same economic and
religious background. So far, they've visited a
medical student, a girl who lives with her family on the She's the one they all think is
best suited to Asim. She's beautiful, finishing her M.A. in international
relations but, most importantly, they know she comes from a good family. Her
mother and Aapi were childhood friends. Nida's the only one Asim has
seen. Aapi sent him her photo by e-mail before he left At 22, she's confident and
patient, critical qualities for any prospective mate of Asim's. Although professionally he
breezes through computer programs and accounting ledgers, on a personal level
Asim runs on emotion, not reason. He feels things intensely. When his mother was dying of
cancer four years ago, he held constant vigil during her weeks in hospital.
When she died, he was admitted for two days and put on an intravenous drip. And now, back in "I used to think love was
just lust; that nobody cares about anyone," he says. "But when she
started taking care of me, I saw differently. When I had a migraine, I would
call her, and she would say, `I am with you. I am putting my hand on your
forehead. Let me kiss your forehead and all the pain will go away.' And it
really worked." He wanted to marry her and twice
had his family put forward a proposal to her parents, who are also Pakistani
Canadian. Both times they didn't agree to their "love marriage." He still harbours a hope Farah
will somehow change their mind, which might explain why he hasn't made it to
any of the interviews. His reluctance is becoming a
problem. Both of Aapi's daughters will be married in a little over three
weeks and the family is hoping to hold his wedding reception the same night
in one giant celebration. That doesn't leave much time for lolling about in
bed. At 6 in the evening, Aapi emerges
from a bedroom in a freshly pressed yellow shalwar kameez with a long
flowing scarf, a dupetta, over her shoulders. She has lightened her
face with powder and applied red lipstick. Shahina follows, pulling on a
black burka. It's too late to cancel the date
with Mavish's family. This time, Asim will have to come. He steps out of a cold shower,
pulls on a shirt and, when the front buzzer signals the arrival of a cab,
emerges with his sisters into the graying evening. From the passenger seat, Asim
looks out the window. On every other block there are
small schools, flashing signs for " "Nothing has changed,"
Asim says. "It's exactly like when I left." But he has changed. Outdoor wedding halls sparkle by
like fairgrounds, their names blazing in red and purple lights. A few blocks
from home is the Sham-e-Mehran, "The Evening of
the As he watches it pass, Asim
wonders about Mavish and her family. "What will they be
like?" he says. "What are they going to ask me?" |
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