I'd said that I had an issue trusting people in Pakistan. While this is still true, in some strange way, it's not either. I feel as though I can trust Pakistanis more than I can my fellow Americans when it comes to certain things. Yes, theft is definitely a concern, but that's a concern in the U.S. as well. I was thinking about how when my cousin took my sister and I out for dinner, her two year old son was bouncing around the restaurant, only to be held and tossed in the air by our waiter. This would be grounds for an altercation and perhaps legal action in the U.S. But in the Pakistani culture, this is kind of okay. The waiter had no ill intentions - he saw a cute kid and wanted to play with him.
I also thought back to our last evening, where my aunt decided to stop our car by a grilled corn vendor for a snack. We happened to run into an old friend of my father's who was on his way to the mosque. He insisted that the corn vendor take no money from us and give us cobs "on the house" because my family had known the street for 40 years.
I thought of all the relatives, immediate and extended, insisted on having my sister and I over, because no matter how far we sat on the family tree from them, we were still on the same tree nonetheless.
I thought of the jewelry shopkeeper that was run by three generations - a son, his father, and his father. The son said their business had been around for thirty years, and he used to walk to the shop after school everyday to help. He easily bent to all of our negotiations on price, and asked about life in America.
And then I thought of the airport workers from our first night, who seemed confused by our suspicions. They only wanted to make us comfortable, and move us away from a chaotic situation that could've involved muggers.
So yes, Karachi still makes me nervous. But it's still where my roots are...where many summers of my childhood were spent. And I will go back, just maybe not anytime soon :)
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