Ethan Casey with Brig. (ret) Siraj and Aslam Mughal, Lahore Gymkhana, March 2009. Photo by Pete Sabo.

I’ve been writing and transcribing quite a bit lately, as I try to finish a draft of my new book by the end of the summer. I have a tentative title for the book (which I might divulge soon), and Pete Sabo and I are starting to talk about which of his many wonderful photos to use as an image for the cover.

On Tuesday I happened to be transcribing my conversation on March 21 in Lahore with Aslam Mughal, a very interesting man who, as it happens, has a professional background in housing and urban development. And it happened to be the day after Seattle, where I live, finally launched its long-awaited light rail line, which my Seattle friends Dennis and Eric and I discussed on and off throughout the day by email. (The three of us used to share an office; we’ve now moved our BS-and-procrastination sessions online.)

I sent them the following excerpt, which I think nicely illustrates how alike we all are - whether in Seattle or in Lahore - in our needs and aspirations:

“I came back in 2000, after eighteen years of just wandering around here and there, with the United Nations. And I’ve been trying to make certain changes in the system of Pakistan in my field, which is housing and urban development. But I failed. I mean, eighty percent of the population in urban areas, they cannot afford their own transport. Which necessitates that the public transport system should be strong. The pedestrians should be safe, the cyclists should be safe. They should be able to move very safely and securely and pleasantly. But a pedestrian cannot cross a road, even at the intersection, because the left turn is there. The people who have to travel on the buses, they cannot get the buses. And everything is being dictated by the car. I mean, where is the democracy?”

“Could there be a metro here, like in Delhi?” I asked.

“I don’t think we need a metro. I would go for a strong bus system, which we can afford and we can manage. Even that we are not managing properly.”

“Start with that.”

“Start with that! There is a very good model, where they have a bus system which is just like a railroad – two buses joined together. The infrastructure is changed and there are bus stations, proper bus stations like a metro.”

“Like light rail.”

“Yeah. But it’s very flexible, because you can shift the buses from here to there and there, and fix the road system. But first you have to make a decision that you plan and you do things for the majority of the public. This has not happened. So those eighty percent people – and housing also: eighty percent people cannot afford housing. But on the other hand, if you go out, there’s so much land subdivided, lying vacant, developed and semi-developed and fully developed, for speculative purposes.”

“In nearby suburban areas?”

“In nearby suburban areas of major cities: Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi. I’m talking about my field.”

“So you really have to have a political revolution, though, to …”

“To change things. And policy being formulated for the majority of the public. Once this decision is taken, everything will start working for the general masses.”

“Now, people speak highly of Shahbaz Sharif [Chief Minister of Punjab province and brother of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif] as an administrator.”

“Exactly. That’s the reason: because he’s hitting at the middle class, and the lower middle class, and the poor people. All his focus is on this segment of the population, which is really, really deprived.”

From my latest Dawn column, just published:

“The APPNA convention and my conversations with Todd [Shea] are likely to find their way into the new book I’m writing about Pakistan since 2004, to which this column is informally a companion. Above all, I wanted to hear from Todd about the situation in Mardan, where CDRS mobile teams are working.

“‘It’s not good,’ he said. ‘The monsoon rain season, people are not going back to their homes, they’ve been living in people’s homes for upwards of six-seven weeks, and in camps, and these places are not getting medical services. …’”

I had the pleasure of spending all last week with Todd Shea of CDRS Pakistan in Silicon Valley, Yosemite National Park (where we visited an annual Muslim summer camp), and San Francisco (where we both spoke at the annual APPNA conference). Here’s a picture of me and Todd at Yosemite, taken with my cell phone by some guy we met. If you haven’t already, be sure to read the recent New York Times article about Todd and his work in Pakistan.

Here’s the text of the talk I gave at the Sindh Medical College Alumni Association of North America dinner at the annual APPNA conference in San Francisco on Friday, July 3:

I’d like to tell you about what I do - and why.

When people ask me about my religion, I often say - only half in jest - that my religion is journalism. And I describe myself as a lapsed or recovering journalist. We all have ideas about what journalism should be and do, and all too often it doesn’t live up to those ideas. Journalism for me has been a useful vehicle for exploring the world, but it’s not adequate to understanding it properly.

More specifically, the Pakistan I hear about in the news is not the Pakistan I know from my own experience. That’s why, after a decade of traveling and living in Pakistan, I wrote a book not of hard or political journalism, but of human stories. I did the opposite of what most Western writing on Pakistan does: I put Pakistani people in the foreground, and politics in the background.

I first visited Pakistan in 1995, after spending many weeks on the ground in Indian-held Kashmir, because I wanted to understand the Pakistani point of view on the situation there. I got a stiff dose of politics on two long visits to Pakistan in 1999. Then, in 2003, I was able to deepen my experience of Pakistan by accepting an invitation to spend a semester teaching at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore.

The result of that experience was my book Alive and Well in Pakistan, published in 2004. Since then, as Pakistan has become more and more prominent in the American media, I’ve done more and more speaking to American audiences about the Pakistan I know. Like anyone, I need to make a living, and I want to do it in a way that’s honorable and useful, and one way I can be useful is by sharing my mostly positive experience of Pakistan with other Americans. I’m doing this in churches and living rooms and public meetings around America, and in my blog, which is online at www.aliveandwellinpakistan.com. I’m also writing a second book, covering events in Pakistan since 2004 and narrating a trip I made there earlier this year, and showing slides of my friend Pete Sabo’s wonderful photographs from our trip.

One question people ask me often about my work is why I do it. This is a very telling question, and it deserves a thoughtful answer. When I don’t have the time or patience to answer it properly, sometimes I joke that I’m actually with the CIA. I’m not, but the suspicion that I might be reveals the lack of trust between Pakistanis and Americans that we must overcome.

My real answer is that I write and speak to Americans about Pakistan because it’s necessary work that I’m in a position to do. The other aspect of the “Why?” question, though, is, “Why bother?” A Pakistani lady I met earlier this week asked me, “But does it do any good?” and, “What about the media?” The defeatism inherent in these questions is understandable, but very regrettable.

The answer to the first question is that we can’t know how much good it might do; we have to do the work faithfully, and let it do whatever good it’s going to do. The answer to the second question is that, these days, we can be the media. In his earlier remarks Dr. Suhail Sidiqui mentioned Mahatma Gandhi, and I’m reminded of something Gandhi said: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Instead of complaining about the media, I’m meeting the American public in its own living rooms and churches. And the Internet and changes in printing technology, and the general democratization of communications, allow us to speak to and influence each other in ways we couldn’t have done even a few years ago.

To me, the challenge we face is represented by the woman at a church in Seattle who asked me what a drone attack is. She and many others like her need more and better information, and they also need to be reminded that the people who suffer first and most whenever there’s violence in Pakistan are Pakistanis.

One of the kindest things said about my first book was when the reviewer in The Daily Telegraph called it “a search for common humanity.” I’m continuing that search in my new book, which I’ll be using to help promote what I believe is a crucially important conversation with mainstream America. I have a compulsion to bring it out quickly - by early next year - and to keep control of the project, so that it finds the public and meets the need it’s intended for.

There are a few things you can do to help me help Americans understand the real Pakistan:

• You can give my books to your American friends and colleagues.
• You can use your influence as community and professional leaders to create and find audiences for me to speak to.
• You can visit and promote my blog, online at www.aliveandwellinpakistan.com, and encourage people to be in touch with me.

Thank you very much for inviting me to be with you tonight, and Pakistan zindabad!