One week in Islamabad and its clear being based in Pakistan as a project manager for Architects for Aid is an experience quite unlike any professional activity I have previously undertaken. My primary role here is to manage the implementation of a seismic resistant house building programme in the regions of Azzad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP – the acronym is king in Pakistan!), part of a larger reconstruction effort following the October 2005 earthquake that caused widespread damage and loss of life in the region. I am working alongside our partner NGO in the country, Muslim Aid (MA) in order to ensure that the houses constructed conform to guidelines set out by The Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) and National Engineering Services Pakistan (NESPAK). These guidelines outline simple construction techniques that once adopted and implemented successfully, will improve the ability of new housing to resist any future seismic activity.
I should add at this point the disclaimer that I am solely responsible for anything and everything that appears here, that this is a personal journal of my time in Pakistan and that the content which appears on these pages in no way represents the views of A4A as an organisation nor has it been edited by, or on behalf of, A4A at any time. It follows that any mistakes and/or inaccuracies are my own.
First a little background information about my current hometown. The city of Islamabad was built in the sixties after a masterplan drawn up by a firm of Greek Architects, Doxiadis Associates. Triangular in shape the city is based upon a grid system and divided into sectors. Now, to my mind, there was an excessive degree of rationality on display when it came to naming each of these sectors. As an example, I currently live in Sector F-10 (an important software industry sector apparently). On one side of Sector F-10 is Sector F-9; on the other side - and you’ll notice a pattern develop here - you find Sector F-11 and so on and so forth; half the alphabet entrapped within a grid of expansive, chaotic avenues that leave each sector feeling like a self contained island rather than part of a city whole. My hotel, The Hill Park – “With a wiew(sic) like heaven” - is located just off one of these avenues, tucked behind a petrol station, opposite a chair and a wall-propped mirror combo that provide the sole furnishings to a minimalist, open-air barber shop. The celebrated view is indeed not bad, giving onto a line of distant hills that border the city - just be sure to squint past the Shell signboard (see photo) and the man squatting to crap in the park across the road (for the reader’s benefit not shown in the photo)!
Intriguingly, the room service menu offers a dish identified as brain masala without feeling it necessary to specify where the brain comes from! Needless to say I’ve yet to pluck up the courage to attempt this particular delicacy…its early days yet and with an extensive menu to exhaust it’ll be a while before that little number raises it’s head, so to speak! Not only what, but when to eat is also an issue as we are some way into the holy month of Ramadan. For the large majority here (just over 96% of Pakistanis are Muslim) the month of Ramadan dictates the rhythm of daily life from before dawn, or Sahar, until sundown when the fast is broken with the Iftar meal. Out of perhaps a misplaced cultural sensitivity I initially found myself torn between eating as usual some days (only really possible in the privacy of my hotel room) or adopting my own, less exacting version of the fast - eating breakfast early and pushing through till the evening before breaking the fast with anything but brain! In my defence here I should say that’s it’s a long way from the MA office where I am working to a shop and with everyone else abstaining it didn’t seem polite to make a fuss. Fortunately my colleagues soon took pity and have kindly arranged, each day, a little takeaway to keep me going for the duration.
Islamabad itself has been on intermittent lockdown this last week with entry and exit from the city severely limited. These heavy handed measures are in response to a dicey political situation in which critics of General Pervez Musharraf challenged, in the Supreme Court, his authority to maintain dual office as president and army chief come the presidential elections on Oct 6th. The Judiciary eventually ruled in the General’s favour, much to the dismay and fury of the legal fraternity. These gentlemen are easily recognisable from their impeccable uniform of black suit, black shoes and black tie offset against a crisp, white shirt and they’ve taken to the streets in numbers to protest the decision, not entirely peacefully. It’s strange to watch these besuited, belligerent lawyer mobs wielding sticks and taking hits from riot police, fighting and bleeding and not once thinking to remove their ties! Unfortunately this political face-off has left me confined to the capital until further notice. Our only attempt at a site visit curtailed one hour out of town by a military roadblock that left us stranded behind dozens of gaudy, pimped-up haulage trucks. My colleagues from Muslim Aid quickly saw the futility of hanging around. We returned to the office for a day behind the laptop.
My evenings are usually quiet, I might read down in the hotel lobby or, for excitement, chase cockroaches around my hotel room (a classic case of winning the battle, losing the war!) I caught a commotion in the lobby the other night where a crowd of excited men had gathered by the television, jumping up and down and clapping sporadically. On occasion one or other of the group would punctuate these movements with a hopeful “INSHALLAH!” or the more universal, “YEAH!” as the Pakistan/India cricket match they were watching came to a dramatic climax. Now, I’ve only been here a short while and as a result my observations are more surface than depth but watching these men thrill to the match, whilst on a day to day basis inhabiting, (according to the always opinionated daily paper) “an increasingly beleaguered Pakistani civil society”, I found myself sharing their disappointment when India took the prize and ruefully imagining the party that must have come had it been a Pakistani success. No doubt a little post match celebration would have lifted the mood here and provided, for a while at least, a pleasant distraction from the turmoil of the upcoming presidential election and so many other serious issues facing this country.
