18steps

“We are more than happy, to welcome you, the daughter of the nation of Karl Marx in our home.“

The elderly man said smiling, sitting in front of me on a table on which we just had shared a meal as I was visiting a fellow student that I knew from university in her hometown in Sindh.

I looked at him with intent gaze.

“What do you think about marxism?“

He asked me and unfolded a talk that would last several days between us.

To understand the setting, my honest surprise and the significance of this moment, one must know a bit more, where this took place.

The interior Sindh is a place, which is mostly rural. You drive through long planes of agriculture, water sides are accompanied with water buffalloes, which are huge, black beasts of animals, trotting by and not caring whether there's a car coming or not. In Sindh I was confronted with many women wearing the burka. And with places where there are no women at all to be seen, just men. I was escorted by police from one place to another. Also to the home of this special family.

“Communism is basically against religion as it considers it as the opium of the people that is keeping them away from rising up and gaining their strenght and their right. How do you think about that?“ I ask being not sure where this question will lead me to.

Pakistan is a state, which was created in the name of being a islamic state. A state in which everyone is a muslim. Although there are a lot of different islamic sects and their practice aswell as views are different, still most of the people living in Pakistan consider themselves muslim (despite the fact that there are other religious minorities like christians, hindus, etc to be found aswell)

“If you say, you are an agnostic or a deist, I'm with you.“ he smiles.

I know that he could never make this statement infront of other people in the public. The consequences would be severe. I also get to know further that he was the first in his village to send his girls for studying outside of his district, for letting them go out without wearing a headscarf, for letting them choose their husband independently, for letting them wear westernized clothes, for letting them selfresponsibly free.

In the evening, he invites me to a walk. He's a doctor and he knows what a person needs for good health. I decide to accompany him. We put on our shoes and start walking: in the courtyard. 18 steps forth, 18 steps back. In Europe I meet friends to go for a walk along nightly streets and through parks. Pakistan's different. At least in interior Sindh.

He says it is a good sign when he hears about the protests against G8 or NATO from Europe. It tells him that these people are not just nodding with their heads to the capitalist system and its wars, but that they are thinking and trying to change something. We talk for hours, walking from one side to the other in the courtyard. Communist ideals, real implantation in societies, socialism (oh how I wished he could have spoken with my friends from a certain shared flat in Berlin, he would have had equal partners!), capitalism, mysticism, religions, literature,...

As we say goodbye some days later, his whole family hugs me, gives me presents, saying they're going to miss me, grieve on both sides. I still have no idea how to thank them for what they gave to me. “You'll always be always the missing part of our family, which came to us from the country of Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg“ he said and looked as I walked out of the door.