Why I Love Being in Pakistan…

I was going to title this entry “Why I Love Pakistan,” but I thought that was too sweeping a sentiment for someone who is still in the first blush of a romance. I know if I lived here for a long time I’d see sides of this country that, for now, are hidden to me.  I imagine I’d develop complicated feelings for Islamabad just as I have developed (a few) complicated feelings for Saint Paul.  I know I’d be challenged and I’d get frustrated and I’d say things in the heat of the moment that I do NOT want chiseled on my tombstone. My actual self would take up residence here and I’d fall into routines and I’d worry about running out of dental floss and I’d take life in Islamabad for granted. I’d send sardonic emails. So, for now, I’m swooning a bit.  Thank you, Pakistan.  Here’s why:

I get to work with wonderful, engaged, earnest, funny students.  I’ve taught classes for the past five days and it has been exhilarating.  Theatre Wallay has hosted me for three train-the-trainer workshops as a way for them to take improv into the community here in Islamabad.  Last night we worked on an Improv and Mental Health class; we were in the courtyard of the theater while huge flashes of lightning crept closer and closer to Bani Gala, the suburb of Islamabad where Theatre Wallay keeps its performance space.   The previous night I had coffee and almond cake with three cast members at a fancy nearby restaurant and they said, “why don’t we do some scenes in Urdu?”  Huh. Why not?  And so we did.

I conducted an improvised directed story in Urdu called “The Shy Mango,” a tale that was, I learned in an after-the-fact translation, about a mango with limited social skills and a wide-ranging libido. It got some good laughs.  In a directed story, the host (me) sits in front of the performers and gestures to them when it’s each person’s turn to continue the narrative. It’s fun to break up sentences mid-word and to let each improviser have his or her turn at exploding the plot, but in this case I had no idea what the performers were saying and so I had to rely on my linguistic intuition, which, it seems, is lacking.  Urdu, to my western ears, sounds staccato and endlessly emphatic.  I had no idea when a sentence or a thought or an emotion had run its course.  And so I kept changing narrators in the middle of a syllable and the performers got more and more frantic as they tried to finish a word before I interrupted.  From what I gathered, this accelerated pace caused the shy mango to cover a tremendous amount of romantic ground in a few short minutes, and that was why the story was such a success. The shy mango, as one might say, even in Urdu, was all that and then some AND he had it going on, as it were.

I love this about improv: the impediment usually becomes the ingredient that makes the scenes surprising and genuine and vital.  I may have butchered the language, but the performers (and the shy mango) rose to the occasion.

We also played a warm-up called “In-Out” where the words (in, out, up, down, diagonal) don’t match the actions we’re using.  It’s a mind-annihilator in a native tongue, but we played this game in Punjabi, a language that none of us spoke with ease.  I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.  Again, this is what can be so liberating about improv: we were all struggling, but we were also saying “yes” to the moment and to each other, and so our ensemble was united in its quest to destroy both the game and the foreign language.  All joking aside, it’s hard to focus on differences when everyone is laughing WITH each other.

I was invited to teach at two other schools during the day, both of them training centers for psychologists.  One of these events was supposed to be at the school itself, but because of security issues (nothing dramatic; there was no way to monitor who took the class) the six-hour workshop was moved to the Fulbright office at the last minute.  I freaked out a bit, but the students handled it with equanimity, as if they were seasoned improvisers who didn’t really need a six-hour workshop.  Fulbright fed us the spiciest pizza I’ve ever eaten (“are you okay?” was the most common question of the entire afternoon, followed by “are you sure you’re okay?” and “honestly, are you really okay?”) and provided an air-conditioned space where we had a wonderful time. I’m wary of coming up with facile explanations, but it seems that the Pakistanis I’ve worked with have a unique ability to process and apply psychological theory.  I wonder if this ability to articulate emotional nuance has to do with a more guarded sensibility.  I’ve always felt welcome here, and I’ve also felt appraised. Our societies have fostered a lot of mutual mistrust, and  there are understandable reasons why this marauding American may be met with a healthy dose of curiosity mingled with skepticism.  I am, after all, asking them to tell stories about a shy but randy mango.  But this also could be cultural. Maybe Pakistanis have to learn to read subtleties in ways that many Americans don’t. We like to “tell it like it is,” or at least we might aspire to that. Much of Pakistan is, literally, covered.

Here’s an example of what I mean: we ended the (sweaty, for me) workshop with a game called “Convergence,” a word game where two participants count to three and then say the first word that comes to mind.  From that point on the group continues this process (“one, two, three,  first word!”) until two people say the same word at the same time (this morning we began with “bread” and “potato” and, ten minutes later, converged on “Hamlet” by way of “werewolf” and “galaxy.” Perhaps you had to be there).  There’s always a moment of happy catharsis when the group FINALLY converges on the same word, and I use this as a chance to talk about tolerating ambiguity and trusting the process and supporting one another through chaotic times.  I love this game. My Pakistani therapists must have loved it too, because they talked about “Convergence” in minute and discerning detail for nearly 20 minutes.

Their discussion of “Convergence” looked at the subtle ways therapists and clients will often be at cross-purposes and how identifying these points of contention in the therapeutic setting can be fodder for growth, how these points of contention that arise between therapist and client also must arise in the client’s other significant relationships. They had no problem extending this metaphor and finding ways to apply the improv game to outside circumstances, about how circling around a difficult issue was necessary if we’re trying to make “werewolf” and “galaxy” converge. They seemed particularly adept at deciphering coded interactions in other exercises, in this case ones that were contained in an improv game (“it’s like we’re being x-rayed” someone said. “You can find out so much about someone by how they play the game!”).

I did have an uncomfortable moment, one that did justice to the underlying tensions of being an American in Pakistan. An administrator came in to greet me.  He was direct and gracious, and then he said to me, “look at these students.  Not a terrorist among them.” Everyone laughed, but I could feel myself grimace. He chided me about the negative coverage of Pakistan on CNN and Fox News, and then he asked me, “is this what Pakistan is like? Has this been your experience?”

Of course it hasn’t been. The Pakistanis I’ve met are warm and humane and trying, like all of us, to balance the contradictory demands of life (school and family; expectations and personal desires; imposed stereotypes and national pride…the list goes on). Yes, there is violence and nationalism and fundamentalism here. It’s real. I’d be (even more) naive to say that these things don’t, in part, shape the way people live here, specifically here. But the United States, a place I love and have very complicated feelings for, is not entirely the place the Pakistanis hear about through their media, either. I hold my breath when I’m asked about gun violence and bigotry and the jokes (some of) our leaders make at the expense of women who have come forward about sexual assault. Being an American means living with these realities, finding a way to acknowledge these sick elements without denying our responsibility or letting them override our decency. If I can access my inner-Pakistani and extend this metaphor perhaps to the breaking point, Americans (and Pakistanis) can only converge for a second before all our contradictions demand that we jump back into the chaos and try to work it out, over and over and over.

Truly, it’s fascinating to hear these students talk about improv games and their connections to Gestalt therapy and neuroscience and Irvin Yalom and the limitations of the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, all in one discussion and largely unprompted by me.  Humbling.

This sounds like I’ve had an entirely rarified experience here. Maybe that’s true.  But I also have spent a lot of time with Adeel, one of the Fulbright drivers, and he has convinced me we should form a crime-stopping cinematic duo called “Boot and Bonnet” after the trunk and the hood of the car (this idea came to the both of us when the guards at the Fulbright office–who have to check under the chassis, the hood, and the trunk whenever anyone enters or leaves the compound–were a bit gruff with Adeel’s car. “They are bad to my boot and bonnet,” he said, and movie history was born). Now we begin each trip with Adeel saying, “Let’s roll!” and end each trip with a fist bump.  Here’s a copy of a text I sent Adeel that will work its way into our screenplay; it will give you an idea of the tone we want to pursue:

Adeel wants Mel Gibson to direct (see: Hamlet; see: Convergence) and Nicolas Cage to be the villain. Fine with me.  I also spent most of the day with a Joan Jett song stuck in my head, so while Adeel was scripting our fight scenes I couldn’t stop hearing “I love rock-‘n’-roll, so put another dime in the jukebox, baby.” I don’t particularly like this song, but it was lodged in my brain while I rode shotgun with my vigilante partner, Adeel the Boot.

A few more reasons why I love being in Pakistan.  The food is great. I had “lobia,” a variation of red beans and rice with ginger and turmeric (?) twice today. Incredible. Every morning I get apples and grapes mixed in yogurt. We had rice with walnut gravy and dumplings on Monday night.  Heaven.

USEFP (United States Educational Foundation for Pakistan) had a buffet on the lawn for some visitors the other night.  They covered the front yard with a bunch of huge carpets and then put lights in all the trees and served dinner outside. I was in rehearsal, but made it home in time to eat with the staff. The air was warm and smelled like flowers and diesel fumes and saag paneer and roti.  Not bad.

We had a slow down on the Kashmir Highway (heading south, away from Kashmir) (much less romantic than it sounds) on the way to school today.  A donkey cart was in the fast lane. Everyone took this in stride.

One of my students tried to explain the rules of cricket to me.  He may as well have  been speaking Urdu.

There are cryptic messages everywhere:

Good night.