After Ten Years, Walking Forward Together
I was asked to write the following article for the newsletter of the New York-New Jersey chapter of APPNA, to mark the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. An installment of my weekly Dawn column, “A long 10 years,” also marks the anniversary.
In 2004 I had the privilege of spending several days in Haiti with Dr. Paul Farmer, the celebrated Harvard Medical School professor and co-founder of Partners in Health. He told me then what an illiterate Haitian peasant woman had said to him in his apartment in Boston on September 11, 2001: “Poor [Americans], now you’re going to have to eat your own misery too.”
“I thought a lot about what she said,” Farmer told me, “and there are many ways to interpret it. It was obviously sincere sympathy for us, but the point she was making was that this is the way the rest of the world is: always subject to hazard and danger and violence, and your country’s been largely spared that. … I never asked her, ‘Is this what you meant?’ I know that’s what she meant.”
Aung Zaw, an exiled Burmese journalist living in Thailand, had said much the same thing days after the attacks, in an article I reprinted in a book. “If Americans want to feel safe again in their own country,” he wrote,
they must begin to understand the insecurity many feel in theirs. More importantly, they must examine their nation’s policies vis-a-vis the rest of the world, and ask themselves honestly if these policies have contributed in some way to this insecurity. Now that its own worst fears have been realized, America can no longer afford to ignore the fears of others.
The kindest, and also the most helpful, way to understand the anger, bigotry and confusion in post-9/11 America is to say that white Americans are on a steep learning curve about the world and our place in it. I use that line often in my writing and public speaking. Truth be told, all people are on a learning curve – learning to respect and make allowances for each other, learning to lay aside bitterness and a victim mentality, however justified these might be. Sometimes, what’s justified and what’s useful are not the same.
Pakistanis understand the point that Aung Zaw and the Haitian woman were making, because you and your country of origin have lived its truth. And this elucidates something else I’ve been saying for a while: that Pakistanis and other Muslims are in a position to play a valuable leadership role in today’s America. To be sure, APPNA members especially are already leaders within the Pakistani-American community; but what I mean is that your leadership is needed even more urgently in the wider American society. Kindly see my articles “Muslims in America: Time for a Movement?”, published last October on my own www.ethancasey.com website, and “Pakistan & America Both Need APPNA’s Leadership,” in the summer 2011 APPNA Journal.
I was asked to write this article to mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and I prefer to do so by looking more ahead than back. What can we do now, after a decade of damage has been done? This is where you come in, as Pakistanis who are also Americans, and as Pakistani-American community leaders who are also respected professionals responsible for the health of Americans of all backgrounds. It really is true, as a teenager told us at a mosque in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey last October, that the principles of sharia and the principles on which the United States was founded are compatible to the point of being nearly identical. To say this in so many words might frighten Americans who are ignorant and fearful of Islam and Muslims, but there are other ways to say it. And the prescription for what ails America is a heavy dosage of such principles.
Many Pakistani-Americans I know talk about how they feel a need to “give back” to Pakistan out of duty and gratitude, and similarly to “give back” to America as the country that has welcomed them and allowed them to thrive. I would go beyond that and say that America needs you. My friend Dr. Farzana Naqvi of Irvine, California put it well when I asked what had prompted her to lead one of the first groups of volunteer medical professionals (from a range of ethnic and religious backgrounds) to Haiti after the earthquake: “I got a call, and I was told they needed a physician, and would I go. So the fact that I was needed was, I think, the reason I went. If somebody needs you to do what you are able to do, I think that’s reason enough to do it!”
I’ll end by reiterating something I said in my APPNA Journal article: that, inshallah, I will continue walking the walk with you. I know it’s helpful to Pakistani-Americans to have outspoken and/or well-positioned gora allies, and this is one way I’m trying to make myself useful. On September 11, I’m scheduled to be in Milwaukee. I’m sure that, very appropriately, there will be a moment of silence at the Brewers-Phillies baseball game I’ll be attending that day with teenagers from the Pakistani community. More interesting to me, though – because it’s forward-looking and constructive – is that I’ll be in Milwaukee at the invitation of the local APPNA chapter, to speak to non-Pakistani Wisconsinites at a bookstore and a high school.
ETHAN CASEY is the author of Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004) and Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip (2010). He is currently writing Bearing the Bruise: A Life in the Context of Haiti. Web:www.ethancasey.com or www.facebook.com/ethancaseyfans
What does Pakistan have to do with Haiti?
Port-au-Prince, September 2 – Haiti is, as a friend of mine put it years ago, a place for big questions. I’ve been trying to understand it for nearly thirty years, and its politics, history and culture have many twists and turns that are still opaque to me. At the same time, it’s a place whose truths and foibles are different from those of your country or mine only in being more obvious, more in your face. Anything that’s true of Haiti is true of the world as a whole – and that’s a truth that’s not complicated at all, only hard to swallow.
Ethan Casey, Ben Owen, and Haitian friends at Saut Mathurin waterfall, southern Haiti, August 2010. Photo by Pete Sabo.
For me personally Haiti feels like home, because I was sixteen years old the first time I set foot here. It has taught me much, if not most, of whatever I now know about the world, and my early experience of Haiti suffused my later responses to very different countries, particularly during the five years I lived in Asia in the 1990s. I saw chronically desperate Cambodia, and tortured Burma, and deforested Thailand, with the eyes of one who had seen Haiti. In a phone conversation in 2004 Tracy Kidder, author of the celebrated book Mountains Beyond Mountains, told me something I implicitly understand and relate to: “I’ve learned so much about the world from Haiti – some of which I almost wish I hadn’t learned.”
Two things have been on my mind since Ben Owen, Pete Sabo and I arrived here on August 25. One is how, not quite eight months after the January 12 earthquake that killed perhaps 300,000 people, life here seems to have returned to something like normal. I hasten to add that that doesn’t mean everything’s fine – it’s not. Normal in Haiti is far from fine.
But my friend Gerald Oriol Jr., of Fondation J’Aime Haiti, notes how the tent cities that have taken over virtually all open spaces in Port-au-Prince have settled into a version of regular neighborhood life, with cyber cafes and hair salons. “It’s funny how an abnormal situation can be normal,” says Gerald, who belongs to Haiti’s elite class. “The only people who are truly shocked right now are people like me. But for the poor, things were so hard for them already that it’s just another way to organize themselves. Maybe it’s even better for them now.”
“The other difference is that many of them lost family and friends,” I pointed out.
“Yes, of course,” agreed Gerald. “I know a guy who lost his five children and his wife. But materially they are no worse off.”
Saut Mathurin waterfall, southern Haiti. Photo by Pete Sabo.
The other thing I’ve been thinking about is the disturbingly weird coincidence of the two countries that are most important to me personally being struck in the same year by appalling disasters. The outpouring of generosity towards Haiti after the earthquake was extraordinary and welcome, but it will remain meaningful only if Americans continue noticing Haiti and, beyond giving money, make the effort to understand its situation. The earthquake was a natural disaster, but it didn’t happen in a geopolitical vacuum. This country, these people, that we cared so deeply about circa January and February – who are they, and what are they all about? Haitians are more and other than charity cases. They’re human beings with a culture and a politics and a national history closely intertwined with our own. We owe it to them and to ourselves to know them.
I came here because I share the human tendency to forget, and I want to do my part to work against it. But just as I was preparing for this trip in late July and early August, I was distracted by the floods in Pakistan, about which suffice it to say that they’re proving as devastating in every way as the Haitian earthquake, with the difference that Pakistan is a nation of not 8 million but 170 million people. It’s also a Muslim nation with nuclear weapons, but that’s not the point. The point – which I fear many Americans have ignored or denied – is that Pakistanis are people who are suffering and will continue to suffer, as food shortages caused by the destruction of crops ramify through Pakistani society over the coming months and beyond.
My question for Americans is: If we failed or refused to understand at the time it happened that the flooding was not some divine comeuppance safely distant from us, but an immense human tragedy, will we understand a year from now when, God forbid, the ricochets from it hit us closer to home?
On the road outside Les Cayes, Haiti, August 2010. Photo by Pete Sabo.
Many Pakistani friends of mine responded immediately and with real sympathy, concretely expressed, after the Haitian earthquake. Todd Shea claims that, of the 200 or so physicians from North America who volunteered with him in Haiti, most were Pakistani. We have a golden opportunity to show similar human concern for Pakistanis, now and later.
An August 23 note from Uzma Shah is typical of the many messages I’ve received since publishing my previous article “Pakistan Floods: Why Should We Care?”: “It’s hard to see pictures from Pakistan, and I can’t help but choke back tears when I see all that desperation. And amidst all the furor about all things bad and hard about Pakistan and ‘Islam,’ it’s comforting to read your article. Because at the end of the day, we are all human, living in one world, sharing the same life.”
It’s dismaying to me that I’ve gotten very few such messages from non-Muslims.
ETHAN CASEY is the author of the travel books Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004) and Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip (2010). He is currently writing Bearing the Bruise: A Lifetime in Haiti for publication in spring 2011. He can be emailed at ethan@ethancasey.com and his books and articles are available online at www.ethancasey.com/books/ and www.facebook.com/ethancaseyfans. Until further notice, he is donating 20% of profits from sales of his Pakistan books to flood relief in Pakistan, and from his Haiti book to Fondation J’Aime Haiti and the Colorado Haiti Project.
Haiti: Building a stronger and more accessible society
The following is an interview with Gerald Oriol Jr., founder of Fondation J’aime Haiti and an advocate for disabled people in Haiti. The purpose of Fondation J’aime Haiti (I Love Haiti Foundation) is to implement a profound change in Haitian society by creating individual social and economic opportunities for Haitian youth, by removing barriers to individual choice. Gerald asserts that as many as 10 percent of Haitians are disabled, and that disabled people’s talents and skills are a great untapped resource for national development.
Gerald Oriol Jr. and Ethan Casey, Port-au-Prince, March 2010
During our three-week trip to Haiti from August 24 to September 13, we will be visiting Fondation J’aime Haiti programs and having further conversations with Gerald. These will be incorporated into Ethan’s new book about Haiti, Bearing the Bruise: A Lifetime in Haiti, and the video footage Ben will be producing on our return.
Watch Fondation J’aime Haiti’s four-minute video “Timoun Ke Kontan” (Children with Happy Hearts) on Facebook.
- Ethan Casey and Ben Owen
What is it like for you yourself, as a disabled person, to get around and do work daily in Haiti?
It is certainly a very challenging environment. The needs of people with disabilities are rarely considered in public works and construction. Most buildings lack ramps, the sidewalks are usually occupied with street vendors trying to make a living, there are very few parking spots reserved for people with disabilities – to cite a few examples. However, I must admit that I am very much fortunate. I have been able to overcome these barriers and participate actively in economic and social activities. I view these barriers in my life as an adventure, and I take it as a duty to fight to annihilate their impact in order to allow people with disabilities to have an active and fulfilling life.
Describe the work that Fondation J’Aime Haiti does.
Fondation J’Aime Haiti strives to provide development opportunities to disadvantaged youths. Furthermore, we aim to foster cooperation and understanding among communities in order to contribute to the emergence of a much stronger and more cohesive society. With that mission in place, we have implemented several programs, including a basketball and scholarship initiative. In regards to disability, we firmly believe that disability is first and foremost a social issue. If, as a society, we consider the needs of people with disabilities, there is no reason that this marginalized group of people can’t be productive and autonomous. To help raise consciousness, we have developed a radio and awareness program called The Voice of People with Disabilities in Action.
What sorts of programs would you like to see implemented, by either the government or NGOs or both, for disabled people in Haiti?
It is imperative that we develop an accessible environment. It is not acceptable, for instance, that a wheelchair-bound person must pay double fare for transportation (i.e. for himself/herself and the wheelchair) or that he/she can’t attend school because the sidewalks and buildings do not have ramps. Furthermore, I believe it is important that we put in place training and work placement programs. The vast majority of people with disabilities are living in abject poverty and do not have the professional experience to find adequate employment, nor the training to participate in income-generating activities. In addition, I cannot stress too much the importance of an inclusive educational system. Although specialized schooling might be needed in certain cases, the vast majority of people with disabilities can be integrated in regular schools with a minimum of arrangements and training for teachers. This will open doors to many, many people with disabilities and offer a positive experience to non-disabled children.
How can disabled people contribute to Haiti’s rebuilding and economy?
Under current conditions, Haiti does not have the resources to meet the needs of people with disabilities. Although this is a serious problem, it represents an opportunity to find alternative, out of the box, and sustainable opportunities. Indeed, the difficult economic situation makes the case for integration from a competitiveness point of view, as assistive services are extremely limited and underfunded. People with disabilities can be as effective as non-disabled people in the workplace, and in many instances even more effective. Furthermore, the integration of people with disabilities can offer a positive image of the country and even help reinforce solidarity in the country. Disability affects families from all backgrounds, rich and poor, and can offer an opportunity to build a better and stronger society, based on inclusive principles.
Seattle TV interview on Pakistan floods
This morning at 7:30 I went to the studios of KIRO 7 TV in downtown Seattle to be interviewed by satellite by BBC World about the floods in Pakistan. The KIRO producer, Bridget Turrell – whom I’d like to thank and congratulate for her initiative in helping bring awareness of the floods to Americans – asked me to give them an interview too. Anchor Chris Egert did the 6 1/2-minute interview, and they played a short part of it on the TV news at noon. The full interview is online here.
Pakistani-led group returns from Haiti
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!
Dr. Shahnaz Khan: Two nations, two earthquakes, one humanity
Dr. Shahnaz Khan (center), a family practice physician in Zephyrhills, Florida and co-chair of the Human Development Foundation, with Ethan Casey at an HDF location at Kharol War outside Lahore, April 2009
Dr. Shahnaz Khan, co-chair of the Human Development Foundation, has sent me this message:
Pakistanis all over the world were mobilized into action. I decided that sitting in front of the TV and watching the disaster and crying was not the way I wanted to contribute.
Two nations, two earthquakes, one humanity
I have been thinking about the earthquake in Haiti. It reminded me of October 8, 2005, when a similar disaster hit Pakistan. I watched the images on the television of the crumbling buildings, people trying to dig out their loved ones from under the rubble with their bare hands, children buried under school buildings and crying for help, people in shock and disbelief. The disaster unfolded slowly, and the number of dead, injured, maimed and homeless kept creeping up slowly.
I kept thinking: How will this poor nation cope with it? How will life be ever normal again? But then I also saw the images of the rest of the nation jumping into action. Peeple all over the country collecting food, clothing, blankets, tents and money. Trucks filled with supplies lining the roads and almost chocking the entry and exit points. True, it was chaotic and disorganized, but it was also how the nation found a way to heal itself. People coming together; victims feeling they were not alone. If nature had been cruel, human beings were kind and generous.
Pakistanis all over the world were mobilized into action. I decided that sitting in front of the TV and watching the disaster and crying was not the way I wanted to contribute. So, as the co-chair of the Human Development Foundation, I called an emergency conference call. Everyone pretty much had the same feeling. There were some initial reservations. HDF is not a relief organization; its charter is sustainable development. But then I said, “When the house is on fire, you put out the fire first before you decorate it.” So HDF officially became a part of the community of organizations and individuals who were trying to help the victims.
My heart goes out to the people of Haiti. But I take comfort in the fact that the rest of the world is not going to stand by and leave them feeling alone. And yes, there is chaos and disorganization as is almost expected in a third world country, but still people are better off with it than without it. I also hope that people of Pakistani origin are feeling the pain and doing their best to help out.
I think back to the Pakistan earthquake and know that life is not and perhaps never will be normal again for some of the victims. But what frustrates me is that the same people who get all energized during the acute stage of a natural disaster are mostly indifferent to what happens to these people in the longer run. Children who lost their parents, families who lost their breadwinners – what is happening to them? Perhaps there are neighbors and some charitable people who are still supporting them, but no one really knows. There is no systematic follow-up or data available. Pakistan does not have an organized welfare system.
I am afraid the same will happen to Haitians. Hundreds of NGOs who are there, and without whose help Haiti will have a difficult time getting over the acute stage of this disaster, will move on in a few months, because people stop donating after a while and the resources dry out.
When history hits home
Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip (to be published in March 2010). Cover design by Jason Kopec: http://www.jkgd.biz/
Interim update: The Haiti earthquake is compelling me to kick into higher gear on all my work. For a bit of updated information (which I’ll supplement with fuller info here soon), kindly see the Books page of this site.
When history happens in a place you know personally, it messes with your head. I visited Haiti for the first of many times in 1982, as a teenager; when the crisis over Aristide and the Haitian boat people hijacked the world’s front pages during the excruciating early months of the Clinton administration, I endured an agony of helplessness far away, in Bangkok. The place name Guantanamo Bay took on personal meaning for me then, as the place the U.S. Coast Guard took Haitians they intercepted fleeing to Florida. When the semi-revolution came to Kathmandu in 1990, it hit home because I had lived there as a student in the mid-1980s.
Those early experiences reinforced a predilection for taking history personally. Much water had yet to flow beneath the bridge in Haiti and Nepal, and in other places I traveled inflicting experience on myself: Burma, Cambodia, Zimbabwe, Detroit. During the later Bush years, I returned full circle and saw truths I had learned elsewhere at play in my own country. You keep going back to places where you’ve experienced history because you feel that, somehow, there’s sense to be made of it. But when a place has been your home and something terrible happens there in your absence—well, it hits home.
So the feeling was familiar when Kurien walked into his flat in Mumbai and told Pete and me about the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore.
Todd and Ethan on Haiti on Chicago radio station
Haiti relief led by Todd Shea of CDRS Pakistan needs urgent help
Todd Shea of CDRS Pakistan is on the ground in Haiti leading what is, as far as I can tell, the single most intelligent relief initiative since the earthquake last Tuesday. (Read the joint statement from Todd and me titled “How Pakistanis Can Help Haiti – and Why”.) He has opened a supply route for medical and relief supplies across the border from Santo Domingo, capital of the neighboring Dominican Republic. Todd’s latest email tells why his effort needs your support NOW – even if you’ve already, and admirably, donated to the Red Cross or Partners in Health or Medecins sans Frontieres:
I’m sad to report that the situation in Haiti is acute and worsening. People are beginning to get even more desperate and frustrated. The leadership of the Government of the U.S. and its partner nations are ”forming up” great things that will take shape in a week or so down the road, but they really need to quickly work through the current paralyzing logistical challenges. Many large agencies are failing to think selflessly and share their financial, operational resources with smaller but super-effective agencies. This attitude is not helping anyone. Quite frankly, I would have thought some of them would have learned an important lesson from other disasters where some of the same mistakes were made.
Here’s the bottom line: If things don’t start improving very rapidly, then life and limb-threatening infections and deadly dehydration and unnecessary conflict will likely emerge on a scale that has the potential of becoming rampant and widespread. The correct option would be to stage multiple and overwhelmingly robust and well-managed multi-national supply lines and helicopter sorties using locations and bases other than Port au Prince airport, particularly from the Dominican Republic through the border near Jumani. It’s a darn good road compared to the roads in the Pakistan earthquake-affected areas that I’ve been traveling on for the past four years. Distributing aid from several points over a more widespread area can reach far more people far more quickly.
Why should Pakistanis in particular be doing this? There are several good reasons, including your experience of a similarly devastating earthquake in 2005 and the fact that many of you in the U.S. are highly skilled physicians. The Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) answered the “Why?” question best, though, when he said, “He who sleeps on a full stomach whilst his neighbor goes hungry is not one of us” and “A believer wants for his brother what he wants for himself.”
I’m proud to say that quite a few Pakistanis of my personal acquaintance are already responding. Dr. Salman Naqvi, Laila Karamally and others are taking the lead in Southern California. Tahmena Bokhari in Toronto is leveraging her new position as Mrs. Pakistan World to recruit volunteers and raise funds and awareness for a relief trip from Canada soon. Speaking of Canada, my friends at the Pakistan-Canada Association in Vancouver have launched a fundraising initiative locally and on their website. In an email exchange Raza Mirani, the PCA’s general secretary, told me: “This Haiti situation has really hit home, and this is what I see myself doing community work for. Not putting on events or having dinners. If we can’t help out in this type of situation, then what are we good for?”
What should you be doing, right now? For starters please, now, give money through this link – any small or larger amount – to support the relief convoy Todd Shea of CDRS Pakistan has established from Santo Domingo. Time is of the essence.
And in the weeks and months ahead, Haitians will continue to need our help and attention and active human sympathy – just as Pakistanis need and deserve the human sympathy from Americans that is the purpose of this blog and my books. You can be sure that as I continue to write and speak around North America, I’ll be continuing to call Haiti to your attention – beginning later this week in Detroit and Ann Arbor, where I’ll be covering for Todd on several speaking engagements. Batool Raza of the South Asian Awareness Network at the University of Michigan told me by phone last night how proud she and others at SAAN felt of Todd when they learned he was dropping everything – including his commitment to speak at their annual conference – to go to Haiti. Let’s all express our pride in Todd by supporting his crucial relief convoy concretely with money, supplies, and our volunteer time.
Postscript: I’m planning to set aside a portion of the proceeds from sales of my books in a fund to make donations to the Pakistani nonprofit organizations whose work in Pakistan I support. For now, because of the urgency of the Haiti situation, I’ll be donating 20% of the retail price of all sales of Alive and Well in Pakistan and Overtaken By Events to Todd Shea’s emergency relief work in Haiti.
