People of no one on foreign soil

I am not quite sure of the fact that the years I spent as a producer in Pakistan TV, benefited me something, but it did give me a gift, a new power of look or vision - A new eye.

There is a common saying that man changes with the passage of time. This saying can be right or wrong, but if a person's environment is changed then his eyes indeed will change. Sometimes a man's profession plays a crucial and significant role in such change.

When a person becomes a police officer or a judge, his way of looking at other human beings also changes. We can say that his eyes change.

My eyes also changed, when I joined Pakistan Television as a producer in 1973. Despite having other things which influenced my eye, it was my viewpoint at famous and so-called VIP personalities. When actors, actresses, singers and other performers who can mesmerise the viewers perform, a viewer can be easily trapped by the magical charm of performer with his personality and performance. He can easily become his idol.

This mesmerised man tries himself to imitate them. He converts himself to this performer in fantasy. He keeps collecting information about them through the media. If he has luck and by chance he meets them, he would like to be photographed with them. This photo can be his great pride. He will acquire autographs and preserve it like treasure. He will celebrate this encounter with very loud joy. Of many people who imitate them, some make this imitation way of their life.

Before joining TV, I was also a patient of such obsessive disorder. After entering the TV world, these celebrities were exposed. They were neither so beautiful nor charming in real life as they appear on screen. Make up transforms them into some other persons. The rest of faults are removed by the studio lights, and final retouching is done by the camera man. He puts on a veil of Makeup, studio lights and camera tricks, all his faults are removed; otherwise there is nothing special. They are psychological patient, boot lickers, sycophant, liar, greedy, cheater, thieve and penniless like other common people.

TV stripped away the curtain and they were naked in front of me. They were not special persons anymore for me. On the contrary, those men became special for me, who are dumped by the society. Such garbage pieces are excessively found in foreign countries. When someone visits popular tourist places, he meets everywhere such people.

Spain is full of such people. Majority of them are black African. They do everything to make some money. Some of them are "shopkeepers". A sheet of cloth is their total shop. They spread it on the ground and decorate with fake things. They claim these things are genuine.

There are two prices of everything, first price is very high, then they reduce it through bargain to half price. The beach near my apartment in Spain is full of such shops. According to Spanish law, they cannot put their shops on the beach. From time to time, police raid their shops and arrest them and take away their merchandise. With slightest doubt of police they gather their things and run away.

One day, I went to such a shopkeeper and sat down beside him. He was very delighted by my visit and he said: "I have been in Spain for 10 years now, it is for the first time a European man came to me and join me".

When I slightly dug him, he told me that his name is Mahmado and he is from Senegal, his family lives in a remote village. When his family grew up in numbers and the income sank down, his family was attacked by starvation. In order to feed his family he planned to come to Spain. He sold his piece of land, paid money to a human trafficker, and entered Spain illegally. After several years of poverty and humiliation, he reached to business. He sells fake lady bags made of China. All day he flatters customers. His face is almost deflected. He hardly makes 20 Euro at the end of day. He lives in a room with five other persons, his monthly rent is 55 Euro.

The seven persons with empty belies in Senegal are always waiting for, to be fed. He has to send 150 Euro to feed them every month. Sometimes he does not have 150 Euros and in that case he has to borrow money. He lives a very poor life, almost at the edge of starvation; he suppresses every desire.

Tourists enjoy around him but he looks miserably with hungry stomach to them. He dreams of returning to Senegal every day but pocket with not enough money gives him just sigh. Even if he had enough money for a ticket, he has no extra money in that case. He cannot go either.

Every time when he is capable of going to Senegal, and when he lands and puts first step on the soil of Senegal, he becomes a victim. Every person is clinging to him like leech - Friends, relatives, government servants and all of them. He has to pay a heavy price to breathe in his birth street and to show his European pump and show. Everybody is sitting with a trap to cheat him. When he returns to Spain and his condition seems like a naked bird who has lost every feather and wing and his skin is left behind.

Then there was a long silence.

After a while, he said: "I am a slave." The slavery is written as our fate, first white man from the United States came and made us slaves, now we are coming ourselves to the Whiteman to be enchained. We are such slaves who are clung by leeches - the leeches of our lands and people.”

When I looked around, I saw hundreds of thousands of slaves like this black man, who have been clung with enormous leeches. Millions are serving slavery like punishment in prosperous countries. Thousands and thousands slave like Mohammdo travel to their motherlands by the magnetism of the soil, childhood memories. They also want to exhibit their European life style and prosperity. Oversees habitant is not human being in his motherland but a prey a victim. Everyone is prepared to slaughter him. He is being slaughtered every, everywhere, every moment. This is the kingdom of leeches. If someone cries in despair, no one listens to him as he belongs to no one.

Many of these slaves are Punjabis, Bangladeshis, Indians, Africans, Latin Americans etc. Most of them are Punjabis in these unclaimed non-Muslims. Sometimes it feels like the mothers of these slaves do not give birth to them but these mothers are slave manufacturing factories.

* Syed Asif Shahkar is a former president of Pakistan Students’ Federation in 1971 and he had faced repression at that time for supporting the cause of Bangladesh’s liberation war