Ethan Casey with Todd Shea, Dr. Farzana Naqvi (front row, second from left), Dr. Salman Naqvi (back row, next to Todd), and other members of a Pakistani-led group that provided medical relief after the earthquake in Haiti, at a reunion in Irvine, California, February 28, 2010.

If I haven’t posted a blog entry in more than two weeks, it’s because - as usual - I’ve been busy with other things. I spent a successful week in Colorado in early February, speaking at two churches and three colleges, including the Air Force Academy. And I just returned from a busy weekend in Orange County, California, whose main event was a fundraiser for Todd Shea’s organization SHINE Humanity (see its excellent new website). The short speech I was able to give there was very gratifying, because I’m very proud of and grateful to Todd as well as Pakistani friends for responding so promptly, intelligently and compassionately to the earthquake in Haiti. Haiti is a very old friend of mine, so my gratitude is personal. Here’s a short excerpt:

Todd is not the only American in this room who has worked in Haiti since the earthquake. I want to single out two others: Dr. Farzana Naqvi and Dr. Salman Naqvi. The story of how Farzana, Salman and others have stepped up as physicians, as Muslims, as Pakistanis who know the devastation an earthquake can cause, and not least as Americans, is a powerful message that the American public needs to hear.

I’ve published the full speech on this website under the “Speaking” tab, along with some photos that I showed that evening.

My new book Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip is at the printer and will (inshallah) be published later this month. I’m looking forward to introducing it at events in Chicago on March 27 and Tampa on March 28. More on those, and other travel and promotion, as the publication date nears. If you haven’t yet purchased your copy, now is a great time to ensure that your copy comes signed and with a personal letter from me by pre-ordering it from this website. I’ll be sitting down in early April to send out all pre-ordered copies.

More soon!

Some of the impressive children of the Pakistani-American community mentioned in the blog entry below - volunteers at a fundraising dinner for Todd Shea's organization CDRS Pakistan at the Islamic Association of Greater Detroit, Troy, Michigan, January 23, 2010.

The shock waves of the earthquake in Haiti reached as far as Seattle, where my life and plans have been thrown out of whack. Whenever I feel especially depressed or overwhelmed, though, I put my problems in perspective by reminding myself how much more disruptive, to put it mildly, the earthquake has been to Haitians.

Why have I been so affected? Any sensitive person would be, but for me it’s directly personal. Haiti was the first place I ever traveled outside the United States, at age 16 in 1982 with my father. How and why that happened, what it led to in my life, and what it means to me now in the earthquake’s aftermath is a long story - so long that I’m now planning to spend the rest of 2010 writing a book about it.

(You can support my independent reporting and public speaking by pre-purchasing that book and/or my other book Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip, which will be published this March. See this site’s Books page. Until further notice I will donate 20% of all proceeds to the relief work Todd Shea of CDRS Pakistan is doing in Pakistan and Haiti.)

The earthquake is affecting the conversations I’m having with both the Pakistani-American community and mainstream America, in powerful and poignant ways. In Michigan, where I went January 20-24 to fill in for Todd Shea (who is still in Haiti as I write this), I found myself thanking a Pakistani audience for contributing not only its talents and material resources, but also its impressive children, to help build the new, improved America we all desperately need and yearn for in the 21st century, and invoking the Haitian Creole phrase Tout moun se moun - “All people are people” - to support my contention that Haiti means a great deal to all of us, that we’re all in this together. In Colorado, where I am now, I’m seeing old friends with whom I visited Haiti many years ago and telling audiences at talks arranged months ago about how, for me, the long and winding road to Pakistan ran through - indeed began in - Haiti.

But what does Haiti really have to do with Pakistan? Well, you tell me. This blog entry is an appeal to all Pakistanis, and others, to share your stories of the October 8, 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. Please post comments, or email me, telling where you were when that earthquake happened, what it meant to you - whether as a Pakistani, as a Muslim, or as a human being - how you felt about Pakistan’s and the world’s response to it, its longer-term significance, and similarities or differences you see between it and the earthquake in Haiti. Your stories will help shape and inform the book I’m writing. We’re all in this together. Tout moun se moun.

Bahut shukriya and Mesi ampil,

Ethan

Fauzia Minallah (left) with her sister-in-law Ghazala Minallah, Islamabad, March 2009. Both women figure in Ethan Casey's books Alive and Well in Pakistan and Overtaken By Events. Photo by Pete Sabo.

My friend Fauzia Minallah in Islamabad just sent me a moving short video that she’s made titled “The Multi-Colored Scarf of Peace.” She wrote: “Hi Ethan, how are you?Things are not very good in Pakistan infact it is a nightmare now. You must watch the video … This is how I am feeling these days, all the best and GOODLUCK to you for coming back to Pakistan.”