Shehla Anjum
A SCOOP OF GENEROSITY One taste of pink ice cream on that navy ship and I was smitten; in thrall with a place where people got ice cream of a different color than the white and brown we had in our fairly new country. I was about six or seven when I first tasted strawberry ice cream. It was aboard a foreign navy ship on a port call in Karachi, Pakistan. It was the late-1950s, the height of the cold war. I knew little about the world, but our house was near the shore and ships from faraway lands often glided on their way to the nearby port. I believe the ship with the strawberry ice cream came to Karachi as part of the American plan to firm up allies in the region. Pakistan, then a young nation with a strategic location still sorting out its role in the world, looked like an attractive partner to America. I don't know whether the American navy routinely held ice cream socials as part of its policy of spreading goodwill or gaining allies. But a group of Pakistani naval officers, including my lieutenant father, and their children were invited onto that ship to meet its sailors and officers. In those early years, not long after the 1947 Partition of India that created Pakistan, ice cream was a novelty-served on special days, such as birthdays. That afternoon, when the sailors served ice cream, my limited knowledge of it expanded. We initially received brown edible containers-the sailors called them "cones"- filled with either vanilla or chocolate. But when my turn came I got something different-pink and laced with little bits of red. It came in a cup of paper along with a small, flat spoon of wood! I could barely contain my excitement about those cones and eating my pink ice cream-I'd never seen either before. That was my initial introduction to the country we called Amreeka, and my first experience with the wonders of that faraway land. That childhood encounter marks the shift of my focus of the world from England to the United States. Until then, the only foreigners I'd met were British naval officers who had stayed on to help the Pakistani navy at its base in Manora, near Karachi, where I lived. England still beckoned us; the place where Pakistanis went for education, medical attention, or vacation. I, like other Pakistanis, knew quite a lot about that little faraway island that had conquered our country. But we knew little about Amreeka except that Columbus, who discovered it, believed he'd arrived in India and that is why it had "Indians" who looked nothing like us, former residents of India. In Karachi, we dwelled amidst the relics of the Raj and our recent colonial past. The British legacy included several splendid Gothic buildings; the stately Empress Market that honored Queen Victoria; massive statues of English queens, kings and viceroys in our parks; and streets bearing names such as Mansfield, Elphinstone, Napier, McLeod, and Somerset. Although we had booted out the English, Pakistanis continued to respect many of their institutions, especially education. In my extended family, several older cousins went to England for graduate degrees, and it was assumed that some of the younger generation would too. My mother often told me that if I studied hard, I might too someday go to Vilayat, the Urdu term for Great Britain. I never doubted that I wouldn't. Pakistanis were not yet attuned to America. It stayed distant, mysterious, and too foreign. We maintained our ties with England, but its influence would soon weaken as Pakistan sought new partners for both its military and economic needs. The timing was perfect. The country's location was strategic to the Americans, then nearly a decade into the Cold War with the communist Soviet Union. I remember my elders discussing politics, talking about Russia, which they called Roos, and its fight with America. My family read Urdu and English newspapers, regularly listened to news on the radio, and discussed local and international politics, including the enmity between those two countries. By the early 1960s, three or four years after my visit to that American ship, when I was about eleven or twelve, Amreeka began seeping into our lives. Pakistan now received more aid from its new Amreekan friends and coverage of the country increased in our local newspapers and magazines. Our gaze began shifting farther west, across the Atlantic, to an almost unknown land of greater opportunity and openness. We also liked Amreeka because it had never been our master and because it seemed sympathetic to our needs. Pakistanis, including my family, liked to talk about the modern American way of life; people living in homes with televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, and dishwashers, items that few Pakistanis had seen or possessed. They not only admired the material comforts America offered its people but also its education, democracy and modernity. I remember the awe at meeting the son of family friends who was headed out to somewhere there, perhaps New York or California, for his Ph.D. At school my teachers spoke about Russia's Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space and wondered when the Americans would get there. We were not crazy about the Russians. My mother didn't like them because she'd heard they didn't allow any religion. At least the Americans were one of the ahl-e-kitab, the people of the book, mentioned in the Quran. By the mid-60s we became used to Americans on our streets, at the beaches, and in the bazaars. When my mother or sisters took me shopping in the narrow streets of Bohri Bazaar, then Karachi's main shopping area, we'd often see American women in the fabric shops. They liked to bargain, and looked triumphant and pleased when the shopkeepers accepted their suggested price. The Americans women smiled and looked friendly, unlike the wives of British officers I had met in Manora before they all departed. I'd stare at these American women, longing for another taste of that pink ice cream I'd eaten on the ship from their country. Americans seemed accessible and willing to help. Pakistanis, especially students, flocked to the Pakistan American Cultural Center in Karachi and other cities, to learn English, to hear lectures, and for a chance to meet and interact with Americans. My introduction to American literature came through the center's library, a favorite haunt when I was in my teens. Sadly, I never had a chance to go to any of the evening cultural programs because our home was far from the center. But American cultural ambassadors-Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck-began arriving in the late 50s, around the time of my first encounter with Americans, and continued visiting Karachi for a couple of decades. For a while all of us were so in love with America, an affair that carried on through the 1960s. We lapped up every detail of Jackie Kennedy's 1962 visit to Pakistan-her clothes, her hair, her camel ride in Karachi. I was thirteen when JFK was assassinated, the year after Jackie's visit. As I headed out to school on that morning in November 1963, the words "President" and "shot" assaulted my ears from the radio. One of my sisters turned up the radio. President Kennedy had died in Texas. We wept. That afternoon I bought an aerogramme-one of those blue, thin, pre-stamped foldable papers that are both letter and envelope-and wrote a condolence letter to Mrs. Kennedy. For days I clipped every news item about the Kennedys, pasting them into a notebook. Our love for the Kennedys intensified when we heard that Black Jack, the riderless horse following JFK's coffin was Sardar, a horse given to Jackie by Pakistan's president the previous year. The American press cleared up that confusion, but no Pakistani newspaper reported that the riderless horse, born in Oklahoma, belonged to the American army. We wanted to believe that we mattered to the Americans. We must have. A couple of months later I got a thank you note on White House stationery. It was not a personal note from Jackie, but someone there had tried to make it special-the words "Karachi, Pakistan" were in Urdu script. Such feelings continued through the 1960s, through the time when Robert Kennedy was gunned down in 1968, the year when I left Karachi for college in America. A palpable sadness settled over our house when the news of his death crackled over the radio. I recorded my sadness in my diary noting that I admired him and beseeching God to not let him die. It seemed our love and admiration for Amreeka would never end. But it did. It would not last forever. American policy shifts and a resurgence of religious fervor in Pakistan would eventually pull the two countries apart. But the memories it left behind still haunt me. I think often of my first glimpse of Amreeka aboard that navy ship. I remember the innocence of Pakistan's ties with the U.S. and our gratitude for its assistance to our country. Much of that day has slipped into the depths of memory, but several moments remain sharp. I can't recall how I go onto the ship, whether it was by a ferry or by walking onto it by gangplank, from where it was berthed at the port. Yet I can see myself on a deck along with about twenty children, each clinging nervously to a father during our introduction to the American sailors. We must have been a colorful bunch. Fathers smart in dress whites; arrays of buttons, medals and other insignia glistening in the late afternoon sun. Boys prim in pressed slacks, starched shirts and ties. Girls radiant in bright frocks adorned with embroidery, lace, frills, and bows. Many were my classmates or neighbors. We skittered around the deck, tried not to run too much, and attempted to contain our excitement. Our hosts were friendly, smiled at our wonderment and tried to make sure we didn't get hurt. While the sea was calm, we were not. This was a different world for us-people with white faces and light hair; everything well scrubbed as in a hospital. Soon the sailors corralled us into a corner of the deck, to be entertained, calmed down, and introduced to an all-American sing-a-long. A sailor appeared with a guitar, and a couple more joined him. Alas, it was not much of a sing-a-long for us. We didn't have a clue about the songs. A skipping Lou (whatever that was), something called a weasel that went pop. And who was Jimmy and what was a crack corn? But it was enticing, it was magical, it was different. The sailors clapped to the beat of the songs, waved their arms, and urged us to sing along. We struggled to understand the slurred, nasal American accent that was difficult to understand; yet we found ourselves drawn to our hosts. We felt giddy from anticipation of wonders yet to come. As for me, I got my first taste of American largesse on that ship and discovered that those strangers were kind, caring and, what mattered most to me, able to take care of our needs. But before I felt good about my hosts, I had to suffer a minor trauma. After the music hour we were herded to another area to savor Amreekan food from a table laden with lemonade, biscuits (or cookies as the sailors called them), and at one end the biggest delight of all-ice cream dished out in neat round balls and scooped atop those strange, light-brown holders-the "cones." We didn't know what to make of this new way to serve ice cream. The only way we ate ice cream was in a regular bowl with special shovel-shaped spoons. One sailor must have noticed that we children gobbled up the ice cream but threw the cones in the trash bin. He got our attention, got his own ice cream filled cone, and polished off not only the ice cream but also the cone. Standing nearly at the end of the ice cream line, I fidgeted and watched other children savoring their ice cream, and once they'd been shown how, their cones. We whispered about how we'd like to able to get those cones in Karachi. The line moved slowly. I grew impatient and apprehensive that either the ice cream or the cones would run out before my turn. I'd seen the sailors remove one empty container. Sure enough, when my turn came the cones were gone and the server scraped the bottom of the nearly empty container. I looked at the other kids, smug smiles across their faces, finishing off their ice creams or cones. I began to cry, convinced of getting neither ice cream nor cone. I felt crushed. My father consoled me and promised to buy me ice cream on our next visit to Karachi. Then a sailor appeared with more ice cream (but no cones) and small paper containers. He scooped me a portion. It was not white or brown, but pink flecked with pieces of something red, and he slid it into one of those containers, with a squiggly design and the word "Dixie" on them. He also handed me a small spoon of wood and made a motion of eating from the cup. I took my first spoonful and forgot all about the cone. I found the taste perplexing, but I loved that ice cream, especially the crunch of those red pieces that appeared to have tiny seeds. "That is strawberry ice cream," the sailor told me. I tasted a flavor unknown to me or to most of the other children. And I felt amazed that my Dixie cup of paper did not leak or fall apart from the ice cream. I became the center of attention. Kids surrounded me, clamoring for a taste. We tried to figure out why the ice cream was pink, and what were those red spots anyway? Strawberries, we were told. We looked askance. We shook our heads. Whoever heard of berries of straw? They were not cultivated in Pakistan or imported from elsewhere at that time (though they are now grown in the northern areas and available throughout the country.) Amreeka was truly a marvelous place. Full of wonderment, kind people, lots of ice cream and strawberries. Seven years after that shipboard encounter, I obtained a U.S. State Department scholarship to attend the Karachi American School. My classmates were mostly the sons and daughters of American embassy and corporate officials. Others were from other countries, and included a couple dozen Pakistani, mostly from wealthy families and a few scholarship students like me, from middle-class families. Our curriculum mirrored that of schools in America, and our teachers were mostly Americans. The American teachers and students reinforced my warm feelings about America. I had little in common with either the American or the other Pakistani students, mostly from rich families, but I felt more at ease with the Americans. My color or accent didn't matter and I felt appreciated and accepted. My foreign friends did not care that I didn't arrive at school in a chauffeur-driven car, or wear the latest style clothes, or live in an affluent part of Karachi. My American friends often invited me to their homes. Some visited my home in a not-so-posh area of Karachi. They invited me to their parties, which my family wouldn't allow me to attend. They didn't judge me, or try to influence me, or tell me to make a fib to spend a weekend and attend a party. In my four years at that school I made numerous American friends, but only two Pakistani girls befriended me. During my junior year of high school at the American School, the Karachi school board decreed that its Pakistani students couldn't get admission into a Pakistani college without taking and passing the exams that local students took. I panicked because it meant repeating at least two years in the Pakistani school system before I could enter college. I then resolved to go to college in the United States. The counselor at the American School, aware that my family couldn't afford to pay for my education in the States, helped me look for colleges that offered full scholarships. I was accepted at a small college in South Dakota where I would arrive, in 1968, with little money, save for an envelope that contained about three hundred dollars, a graduation gift from my teachers. * I had moved permanently to the land of myriad flavors of ice cream and other coveted things such as the choice to live my life as I chose. * The bad feelings toward Amreeka and Amreekans started around 1980, when I began my annual visits to Pakistan to see my family. It coincided with the growing influence of religion in the country and a perception that American foreign policy hurt Muslims. That change in feeling began when the cold war ended, Pakistan's strategic importance diminished, and the U.S. abruptly left the region. It worsened when America slashed its aid and development programs in Pakistan. It hurts me to see banners, graffiti, and pamphlets in Karachi proclaiming the bad feelings Pakistanis have for America, a place that I now call home. The openness I witnessed in the 1960s is gone. There are no more American-sponsored events, no more American cultural centers, and no more Americans who interact with common Pakistanis. American sightings in Pakistan are as rare as those of the snow leopards that live in northern Pakistan. Did we—Americans—squander that goodwill that we built during the 1960s and the 1970s? How did we allow this to happen? Will there be a change again, another era of friendliness? I hope so. We should at least try. And we should start soon. We don't need pink ice cream to win over people, but we need the generosity that ice cream once represented to a little child.
Shehla Anjum, a writer and editor in Anchorage, Alaska, has lived in the
United States since 1968. Originally from Karachi, Pakistan, she began her
undergraduate studies in the cold climes of South Dakota when she received a
scholarship to study at Mount Marty College in Yankton. She finished her
undergraduate studies with a B.S. in biology from the University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis. Her life in Alaska began in 1977 in Barrow, on
Alaska¹s North Slope, where she lived for two and a half years before moving
to Anchorage to work for the North Slope Borough, the local government in
Alaska's Arctic. In her position as the borough’s liaison with oil
companies, and federal and state agencies she often traveled to Barrow and
other Inupiat Eskimo villages. Shehla also holds a Masters in Public
Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and
a Masters of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction from the University of Alaska
Anchorage. She also visits Pakistan annually. In spring 2012 she traveled to
Swat valley and stayed with Malala Yousafzai's family. Shehla is a regular
contributor to First Alaskans, a Native Alaskan magazine, writing profiles
of Alaska Native leaders and stories on Alaska Native arts and craft and
traditional way of life. She also writes for, and edits, the Alaska
Legislative Digest and the Alaska Economic Report, two family-owned
newsletters.
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