1. Relative Wisdom
By Sikeena Karmali
I have learnt through my self-aggrandizing attempts to save the world that wisdom is not
a delicate garment of silky asceticism that one slips on along with the proverbial long
white beard. Nor is it something that can be circumscribed within the intimidating pages
of some canonic text. For me, wisdom is dirty, its edges frayed, a cloth stained with the
blood and sweat of human experience.
Knowledge, often introduced as the Siamese twin of wisdom is even more elusive. There
are very few universal, inalterable rights and wrongs, facts and fictions. Everything is
relative, and depends entirely upon the subject or person that experiences it.
It is October and I spend my days at the Afghan/Pakistan border watching hordes of
refugees, mostly women, children and the elderly at the edge of survival bargaining with
border guards for their lives.
One woman has offered up her fourteen-year-old daughter for the pleasure of the guards
if the rest of the family can pass through. I interrupt this barter, screaming obscenities I
didn’t know I could speak in Urdu, at everyone including the mother and the guards.
The young girl, hidden behind a blue tent burka tugs at my side. She lifts the netting over
her head and exposes a face as luminous as the moon. Without batting an eyelid, she tells
me that she doesn’t mind servicing these men if it means that her little siblings and
cousins, her mother, her grandparents and her two aunts can cross the border. I stop still
in mid sentence. I don’t know what to do. What can I say to her? Where is my place
here?
A storm of conflicting questions crash into my mind: what in fact am I doing here?
Trying to save this girl? From what? What is this privilege that gives me the authority to
march across borders waving my diplomatic card and bringing ordinary humans to a
standstill? Who am I to stop this girl and her family from making their choices?
We are humans, after all – the only animals that kill our own in the pursuit of survival.
This Pushtun family stands hostage in their own ancient land at a boundary drawn on a
whim by Western armies, wielding their power for one last punch before withdrawal.
This consequent hard and fast national line, fighting against the mountainous geography
of the region, divides into two the land of the Pushtuns. On either side you find the same
people, the same language, the same culture, the same history. On one side they are
called Afghan Pushtuns and they form the majority ethnic group of Afghanistan. On the
other, they are called Pakistani Pushtuns and they form a minority ethnic group of
Pakistan.
I contemplate telling this girl that even if her family manages to cross into Pakistan they
are likely to wander the streets of Peshawar without food or shelter; that the process for

2. gaining access into refugee camps has become ridiculously bureaucratic requiring an
official stamp of refugee-dom from the UNHCR; that even if they make it into a refugee
camp, the conditions there are almost as brutal as what they have run away from in
Afghanistan. This is “knowledge” that I possess, but who am I to say this to her?
I tuck the diplomatic card I have been brandishing around back into my bag and turn
away, allowing them to finish their transaction.
But I could not forget the girl. When, how does one decide to surrender one’s life to save
another? How can she transcend her own biological instinct for survival, her instinct to
protect herself from violence for the sake of a greater good? Not even knowing whether
her sacrifice would lead to good. This was not some rogue sage who had lived life, seen
the world, come to terms with it and decided to surrender it. This was a fourteen year old
girl. Doing her duty? Submitting her right to higher duty?
The next day I am wandering around the market in Peshawar’s old city with my
colleague, searching for some technical gadget for the satellite telephone that we use to
communicate with our head office in New York. I feel like a ghost floating through the
alleys, bumping into peddlers and crashing into carefully arranged displays of precious
goods that are the source of someone’s livelihood. The heat and dust are oppressive and I
am suffocating behind my dupatta (scarf) that I have not only wrapped around my head
and shoulders but also across my face, leaving only my eyes exposed. My heart is numb
with rage and sadness, my mouth dry with a bitter disappointment that I cannot swallow.
My mind swims through a tumultuous sea of chaos and confusion as I try to make some
sense, to gain some understanding from the darkness that I behold here. I want out of this
game. I can not play anymore. The stakes are too high and they were always stacked
against us. My acute sense of justice has been slaughtered one time too many. God,
seems to me nothing more than a cruel jester.
As we amble through the market, waiting once again for 21st
century technology to
manifest in the midst of walls build in another millennia, we receive an urgent radio
message from UNHCR to appear at their office immediately. Since I speak Urdu and can
converse with the market people, I stay behind and wait for our gadget while my
colleague Peter jumps into a taxi that lurches off towards the UNHCR office.
I resign myself to return to the small electronics shop to wait for the replacement earpiece
of our satellite phone. A tall and handsome Pushtun man slants like a caged lion behind
the counter. He wears a crisp white kurta, over jeans and leather sandals. His expensive
Swiss watch sits like a jewel on the hands of a beast. He speaks to me in English, offering
me a stool to sit upon. He watches as I slump into it and smiles into his hands.
“What’s the matter he asks?” I look up, keeping my eyes away from his. This man is
clearly Afghan. Pushtun, no less and he is talking to me, a veiled woman sitting alone in
his shop. His English is without an accent except for a bit of an American twang. Should
I respond? I am not sure. I decide to take a chance, after all I have my diplomatic card

3. and this is Pakistan not Taliban controlled Kabul. I unwrap the dupatta from my face and
let it fall unto my shoulders, keeping my head covered.
“It’s a long story,” I tell him.
“We have a long wait.” He says. “The speaker for the satellite phone is coming from
Islamabad. My cousin is driving here with it.” He places a glass of tea and a tumbler of
sugar beside me.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Begin with the moment of pain.” He says.
“Oh, I don’t know…why do you speak English so well?”
“Why shouldn’t I? Just because I am a Pushtun. Come on, you’re not one of those are
you?” One of what I wonder, but say nothing. My silence pushes him to speak. “I went to
school in the States” he says, “then came back to help out my family.”
“Where did you go to school?”
“Yale, then Georgetown.”
“What did you study?”
“I’m an Afghan, I have only known war my whole life. I studied Political Science, what
else would I study?”
“You have a Masters in Political Science from Georgetown University?”
“A PhD. Yeah”
“What are you doing working in this shop in Peshawar?”
“Its my uncle’s shop. He doesn’t read or write English. All the technical brochures and
things are in English, so I come and help him out.”
“What about the PhD.?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I teach a class at Peshawar University. I suppose I could go overseas
and get a teaching position but…”
“But what?” You moron! I want to shout at him. You could be teaching at Harvard, or
Oxford or whatever, an Afghan Political Scientist! Hell, you could pick your university
and your department and probably have tenure in 5 years.

4. “But…this is where I belong. These are my people, my kin. This is my community. I was
born to serve them, not to live a lofty life somewhere far away. So what about you?
You’re not one of those are you? You are one of us. A refugee too. Where are you from?
Afghanistan, too, no. Kashmir? Pakistan? India?” He is no longer observing the proper
decorum of speaking in my general direction but is looking straight at me, right into me,
into my eyes, through my eyes, inside me.
“What is your pain Sakina?” He has read the name on the diplomatic card I presented to
him upon entering the shop. The card says Sikeena. Sakina, is my real name. No one
knows it anymore. It got lost in the shuffle of papers with which I became a Canadian
citizen.
“Well you don’t have to tell me, but you must confront it. You cannot run away from
pain and heartache and confusion anymore than I can run away from Afghanistan. It is in
your blood. You have to sit with it, open it up into the world, and from that, from your
pain, you will find your answer. It always comes.”
I look up again. At him this time and meet his gaze. This, from a woman, is a bold
gesture in this part of the world. He smiles. “It’s too bad I have been engaged to my
Afghan cousin in Washington. She is coming to Peshawar next month. I don’t know how
she will manage here…we’ll see I guess. Otherwise I would ask for you. You’re not
interested in being a second wife are you?” He is laughing now. Mocking me.
Our magical speaker arrives, on the hot wheels of a car that has defied the speed limit and
drove at break-neck velocity from Islamabad. His cousin is a short man with a round
belly and dainty moustache. He fits the stereotype of the spicy-sweaty bumbling South
Asian man. He carries in his hand a yellow manila envelope with such care that one
would imagine it held the miraculous potion for some holy alchemy, not the speaker for
our satellite phone – the entire world bending to our whim again, or perhaps to the whim
of Western technology.
I stand up and pull the dupatta that has fallen to my shoulders, over my head again and
take the speaker from him. Suleyman, introduces us from behind the counter. I pay his
cousin. I remember to include a generous tip and feel a little ashamed at his ebullient
gratitude. I stuff the envelope with the speaker into my large purse and he looks at me as
if I have committed a blasphemy. I leave my cell phone number with Suleyman and step
out into the heat of the afternoon.
During the walk through Peshawar’s magnificently disintegrating old town, to the
UNHCR office. I think about the fourteen-year-old girl, offering up her body and with it
her virginity and her honour to the border guards. I think about Suleyman, leaving aside
the possibility of an exceptional academic career to return to Peshawar and work at his
uncle’s software shop in the middle of the old city’s crumbling bazaar. I think of a man
handsome as a lion allowing himself to become engaged to his cousin from Washington.
And I see the truth of history. I comprehend the loyalty of belonging. Above all the

5. meaning of seva, selfless service – of putting the self aside for the sake of another –
dawns on me like the fiery sun.
Later that week, Suleyman takes me, unaccompanied and unveiled, to his family’s home
for supper. Family here means the whole clan. They are well off. They escaped from
Kabul twenty years ago, just when the Russians were marching in. In the last month
however, over 35 relatives have descended upon them. The house is choc full. He escorts
me towards the women. Presumably he has told them what I am doing here because they
welcome me like an angel. The grandmother matriarch gets up and bows to my feet, then
takes my hand and leads me to her side. Watching them, deciphering the ties that bind
them together, I begin to understand the decision of that fourteen year old girl: there is no
self here. There is no me, no I. There is only us, we, Our collective whole, unity, oneness,
and connectedness. This is how they have survived unimaginable tragedy, by being One.
By standing together.
An uncle has just arrived yesterday from the Afghan/Pakistan border with his wife and
two daughters. They walked for 5 and a half days over a mountain range carrying their
life’s possessions and seven loaves of bread, then waited two more days to be allowed
through the border. But look at them now: the women are chatting away in Pushtun,
drinking green tea and munching on small raw almonds. We are all seated in a circle
around several pots of tea, both green and black, a large round tray of fresh fruits, a high
pile of naan bread and dispersed plates of dried apricots, raisins and nuts.
The women form a semi-circle on one side and the men on the other. Children flitter in
from the courtyard outside to grab a chunk of naan or a handful of nuts. No one is veiled
except for the grandmother beside me. She has tossed a diaphanous white scarf loosely
over her head and shoulders. I can count the number of teeth in her mouth on one hand as
she smiles and takes my hand in hers. She places in my palm the four “brains” of a
freshly cracked walnut. As I sip my tea and munch on the nuts, I slip under the warmth of
the room and the gaze of Suleyman, into the chambers of my recently illuminated mind.
I am still recovering from the shock of encountering a young girl and a grown man who
have willingly given up those “rights”, those recipes for success that I have been taught
not only to hold dear but to fight for on behalf of myself and the world. A whole new
perspective emerges to me: facing up to the reality of your world alone is not enough.
Nor is taking refuge in an illusion of freedom or an illusion of non-attachment. The path
to wisdom is through seva. Wisdom comes from living in the world, from karma yoga.
When we can return to an uncomfortable place for the sake of another, for a good that is
not our own – this is the moment when humans become sages. This is the moment when
we come one breath short of becoming gods ourselves.