Questions and stigma

I did rebel in my own way. I would not be an electrical engineer like my other engineering friends; I was going into computer science. For some reason, the distinction seemed more significant in my head than it later seemed to others.

My father once called me in the middle of a rather annoying debugging session, only to later ask, “Does all this coding thing help you?” Over break, my mother asked me to forget all this computer science nonsense, just study journalism and music and be done with it. “I thought I was the hippie,” I thought to myself. “This is supposed to be the other way around.” This is no normal desi, or South Asian, family.

But my reasoning never had anything to do with money. I chose to study computer science because my heroes were the legends of the technology world, and that is still true. I enjoy computer science, and I probably won’t get a job anyway, so why bother studying something I don’t enjoy? At least I continue to live up to the stereotype.

However, the question is no longer about what I want to do. It is about what the world needs me to do. After the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, people ask whether similar things may happen in Pakistan. I always say that I’m skeptical about it. But it’s not the possibility of a revolt that occupies my concern; it is the widely acknowledged need for change.

I’m hardly the only one to have this epiphany. Many have actively tried to bring about change, and in little pockets or sometimes on massive scales, they have moved things in Pakistan toward the better. Yet many still choose to emigrate because throughout their lifetimes they have seen the country go downhill.

Now, many have given up, some continue to work to better the country using their old methods and others are trying to find fresh methods and fresh faces. With the way things are, Pakistanis are the ones who will have to work things out. When the world chooses to not even play a sport in Pakistan for fear of being shot down, Pakistanis will have to step up to the plate — because they cannot decide to avoid their own country.

But Pakistani students studying abroad can choose to remain abroad. And there is no longer a stigma attached to choosing to live outside the country. I can choose to not go back to Pakistan and that will be that.

Yet I doubt that it will be the end. Even if I do decide to settle down outside Pakistan, I will remain a representative for my homeland — albeit a reluctant one at times — I will remain one nonetheless. Questions will be asked, and silent responses will say something anyway.

Even Pakistanis who realize that they have little in common with the Pakistani identity often act as representatives. I am friends with many Pakistani atheists and agnostics, and while some choose to distance themselves from the “religious craziness,” others believe that, even in their current capacity, they remain in some way connected to a Muslim culture and often step up to defend it where needed.

And as all of this comes together, I realize that my association with my country need not be about ideals — in fact, it isn’t. It may not be about common goals, or even common beliefs. I am Pakistani simply through my geographical location, but this realization still does not relieve me of my responsibility to my nation.

I thought I was someone who could help bring about change, and others thought so, too. But they feared that I, too, would be numbed by a rigorous education. They hoped that if I studied the humanities, I might be able to keep my emotions intact, keep asking questions, keep the ambition. As I left for college, my coach took his last unsuccessful shot to pull me from computer science: “Just don’t become a technician.”

I assured him I would remain a dreamer, no matter what I did. But is college finally forcing out the dreamer? Am I an emigrant? Am I responsible?