DAY 3 PAKISTAN- KARACHI
Hello friends and family,
Thank you again for the amazing responses! I’ve added a few more names to the list since it’s getting passed around! I’m LOVING the interest and your patience to sit through my ramblings..Again, please don’t mind the mistakes and run-on sentences! I will put a disclaimer on every entry I send out!
So Day 3 was a little less hectic as Zach and I spent the morning working on busy stuff–sending over visas and passport information to the potential fixers in Lebanon and Egypt where we head tuesday….A “fixer” for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term is the person who fixes up all the interviews you need with government officials, technocrats and intelligencia in the area, is your translator, and your lifeline to the city…
While we were doing that, we sent Andrew, our DP out with two of Ali’s bodyguards to shoot some B-roll (scenery) in and around Karachi…We thought he’d be gone for a good three to four hours but he came back in two…he sat down looking a little dazed and I crossly asked him why he had returned so quickly and that he was on the clock (you know, trying to be all producer-like…) He replied that he was filming near a bank from across the street and all of a sudden he was swarmed by five uniformed men with machine guns who all yelled at him and took the camera away as Ali’s bodyguards tried to sort out the situation…He then remembered that Zach had had the great idea of inserting a blank tape in the camera (since we use another format to capture the footage (digital information stored onto memory cards as opposed to tape)…So he ran after them, told them that they could have the “tape” and gave them the blank dummy one inserted inside while the memory cards with the actual footage were still in the back of the camera! To make a long story short (or longer), the camera was returned successfully to him and he ended up having coffee with the head of security of the bank who turned out to be a really nice guy…We think everyone is still spooked from the Mumbai attacks and security and suspicion are on a high…
Speaking of security, we learned that today, Pakistan announced that all their military forces on the west side of Pakistan would be moved to the east, to the Indian border and they would officially no longer be fighting the Taliban so long as their Indian border was not safe and needed to be more heavily defended…Made me sad to think that the terrorists won despite their deaths and that they had accomplished their task of scaring the two countries into continuing to be at odds….
After that little “incident” with Andrew, we went to meet an accomplished documentary filmmaker, Sharmeen, 29, whose self assured, vibrant personality and unabashed honesty about her feelings towards America and our attempt to “export democracy” to a country that wasn’t ready for it yet proved to be very interesting conversation. It left me thinking about all the contradictions that exist in politics…She said that she had many discussions with her friends about the rest of the world outside the US getting half a vote in an American election since the whole world was affected by American policy and politics, yet she said in her next breath that we were imposing our ideas and government practices onto the rest of the world and thought that we had no right to do that despite our best intentions…Well which is it then? If everyone wants to participate in our election, shouldn’t we be welcomed to participate in helping every country achieve a similar kind of “democracy”? It’s of course more complicated than that with culture and traditions often at odds with state and government ideals, but I certainly walked out of that meeting feeling more confused than ever about our mission…If Pakistan wasn’t ready for a democracy we were trying to “export”, then what was the answer?
She noted that she went to university in the US and was taught on US soil about philosophy and politics only to use the very education she received from the US to determine that what the US was doing around the world wasn’t the best solution to solve the world problems. There is so much more to add here, and so many more specific contradictions to highlight–but all good fodder for the film’s thesis statement…”is there a better approach?”
Afterwards, we quickly changed at the hotel and went to a dinner gala at the most gorgeous museum and grounds hosted by Ali and his family that they had restored and opened for the public. The gala was for the Acumen Fund, where we met once again with Jacqueline Novagratz the founder of the fund where they were doing a fundraising push in Pakistan to raise money for the different projects they were working on–microdrip irrigation farming project, housing developments etc. etc. There were dancers juggling ten foot poles on their chin with a clay pot at the other end in vibrant red turbans and tunics and a traditional Sindhi band complete with male dancers dressed up as females, traditional drums (tabla), string instruments (sitar) and with one of only three double flutist’s left in the world…(two flutes fused together)… Another incredible gathering of community leaders and inspired individuals..
It gives Zach and I hope that there is an audience for this film.
I can’t keep my eyes open…hitting the hay.
Love Radha
