My Sunni Regrets (a Pakistani Sunni reflects on the Sunni-Shia divide)

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reproduced in full, this is a good read.

My Sunni regrets

Zahra Sabri | 3 hours ago 5

I remember a moment from 2006 when it had hardly been a few days since a European friend moved to Pakistan. “And there’s no problem in your friendship?”, perhaps she was thinking aloud when she asked this question in mingled pleasure and wonderment, you being Shia and I being Sunni. We exchanged a quick, laughing glance to get over any awkwardness created by a question that underlined a difference we preferred to take for granted after all these years of knowing each other.

Then I remember when the bomb went off in Iraq – I think it was Samarra that time, and the mosque with the glittering dome – you came down the hostel stairs and confided in a half-amused, half-sheepish tone that one of our mutual friends had reacted to the news by cursing Sunnis in general. So I said of course, of course, just look at the scale of destruction and at such a place as that. The fear was expressed that the conflict in Iraq may have a domino effect in Pakistan. That was naive perhaps. When did we ever stand in need of a domino effect?

I remember taking you along on a visit to my relatives. In some completely unrelated context, a name was mentioned, a typical name, and my relative asked in a dramatically lowered tone, “Shia hain?” This was accompanied with an arch look, and I was thrown into a panic and strove to gloss over the moment and change the subject with speed. Must I now warn people in advance as I do in Ramazan when I’m bringing Shia friends over? They’ll open their roza 10 minutes later alright, so please don’t be surprised or ask them awkward questions.

I remember one day I had to leave your majlis rather early though you pressed me to stay on. Then later you told me you were actually relieved that I had left when I did since the zaakira made some remarks at the end about the way Sunnis prayed. We laughed about that. I understood your discomfort; I was your guest. But I told you that I wouldn’t have minded even if I’d been present, since it was a practical point after all.

There were other similar moments. Wry, rueful confidences about tactless, or outright nutcase, friends and relatives; about words none of us was ever intended to hear. Sometimes there were indignant diatribes. I told you about the khatmal jokes cracked in front of me one Muharram day, and the ensuing fight. None of it was new for you and you continued to be civil to those relatives of mine, people I’d been angry enough with to identify to you by name.

This week I feel more tired than angry. When we meet, things are as comfortable as always. Yet, I feel shifty-eyed, as if I’m skirting the topic even while addressing it. Like much of the city, you and I have been smacked in the face. Why then, do I feel that it would be in bad taste for me to talk of my own state of mind? For your grief is surely deeper than mine, tinged as it also is with fear. A very real fear, and an exclusive one. And my grief is run through with embarrassment, and bitterness at having to suffer this embarrassment.

At majlis this past Muharram, the zaakira started talking about how the community was essentially prepared to be killed in this of all months, prepared for their own death and that of their loved ones. I just sat there and listened in bitter, listless silence. Later we spoke of other things, what else? I refuse to offer sympathy. As if grief at the destruction of strangers applies more to you than me. And I think it’s sick to offer my regrets. As if you and your entire community were guests in my home. I may not have done anything, and neither am I being accused. Yet I am fearful that my grief, if voiced, may ring hollow. And my inquiries after so and so’s welfare hypocritical, and so four years ago…

I have no fears about you and me, I’m thankful to say. I know we’ve come a long way since our school days in the 90s, when I had asked you – or was it another friend? – If you were Shia, and you had responded with a rather wary, questioning ‘Yes’. These things were going to become obvious soon enough anyway, when some of us would be given the option to skip lessons on certain topics in early Islamic history.

Now as people seek to rehabilitate themselves and set up their own guards and make their own arrangements, we all observe and discuss the various pros and cons, the whys and wherefore. The little you say is said with an insider’s knowledge. And I listen. For how can I begin to enter into the enormity of your experience of insecurity? Also, truth be told, I don’t want you to have so many experiences I can’t enter into. And I’m not talking as much as I usually do, because I fear it may be crass to try to enter into your feelings. As crass as writing this piece, will you think?

Perhaps I’ll just take it all out by lashing with words those around me who I see as being accessory to all this, if only through the words they speak. The business of expressing solidarity with you, in private or public — to save your skin or my face, I’m not really sure.

I’m silent now; I’ll talk when they announce a moment of silence. We’ve been at it for a while now.

I vaguely recall hearing of a person who changed his name to a Hebrew one in protest against the murder of a Pakistani Jew. My own name is one I could hardly make more conspicuous; so much for another symbolic gesture.

The writer is a Karachi-based researcher and literary translator. She works at the Herald.