Category: Published Work

Lahore, Published Features, Published Work, The Friday Times, Women's rightsLeave a comment

Utopia for a day

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The Friday Times | Jan 19, 2007 Imaduddin Ahmed’s  week Regular readers will know that my luck runs short when I enter public spaces in Lahore. Ironically enough, I’ve never had trouble at protests or elections. Yet I found myself to be the proverbial moth to the incandescent flame last Sunday as Annie Aunty, Sarah and Julia came to pick Amme (I now live with my repatriated mother) for the Lahore marathon. I’ve had too much fun revelling in Berkeley and San Francisco street festivals and open air concerts to be deterred by a couple of ugly incidents. Besides, last … Continue reading Utopia for a day

Pakistan, Published Features, Published Work, The Friday TimesLeave a comment

Swatting about

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The Friday Times | Nov 10, 2006 Imaduddin Ahmed finds a good holiday in off-season Swat   As a resident of Turkey, where they have faith in the science of astrology, Bade was able to pinpoint that the Eid holidays would come at the end of October. Perfect timing for an off-season break to northern Pakistan. We’d avoid the summer rush of tourists escaping the heat and we’d avoid the winter rush of ski tourists. We’d also avoid their litter and noxious car fumes. A five day trip, our travel agent – Himalayan Holidays – recommended, would be adequate for … Continue reading Swatting about

Pakistan, Published Features, Published Work, The Friday TimesLeave a comment

Eid Mubarak, Balakot

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The Friday Times | Oct 6, 2006 Imaduddin Ahmed On my second visit to Balakot – the first was made three weeks before the October 8th earthquake – I found the city levelled. The shop where my father had bought his cigarettes, on the left side of the bridge across the bank, was gone. If I could have imagined the horror of Dresden and Coventry after British and German bombers had had their way, the sights, sounds and smells of Balakot would not have been that different. An estimated 7,000 of the 30,000 inhabitants died according to the Red Cross. I was here … Continue reading Eid Mubarak, Balakot

Lahore, Published Features, Published Work, The Friday TimesLeave a comment

Alcoholics Anonymous

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Imaduddin Ahmed | The Friday Times Sadaqat clinics fill a neglected niche in the medical world “Why are you running ads on curing alcoholism when alcohol is banned in the Land of the Pure,” wrote in one inquisitive reader. Why indeed? I decide to set up an appointment with Dr Sadaqat Ali, project director of the Sadaqat Clinic, to find out. I am invited to the flagship institution of Sadaqat Clinic, Willing Ways, in Gulberg, Lahore. Formally dressed and sitting in an upright manner, Dr Sadaqat looks every bit the sober professional. And it appears that the impression has truth … Continue reading Alcoholics Anonymous

Lahore, Pakistan, Published Features, Published Work, The Friday TimesLeave a comment

Degrees of mediocrity

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Imaduddin Ahmed | The Friday Times Pakistan’s newest university has a campus in cyber space Mention ‘online university’ and conjure up images of illiterate Pakistani politicians with degrees worth as much as their rhetoric, earned by exercising a MasterCard. This is an image that Universitas21Global will fast overcome. New marketing challenges, however, await the online graduate university, entering the “ripe and promising” Pakistani market (words Dr Murkesh Aghi, “CEO” of Universitas21Global). A stream of examinations can ease readers’ minds that paying one’s way won’t be enough to earn a certificate with this university, whose flagship courses are its MBA and … Continue reading Degrees of mediocrity

Diaspora Identity, Pakistan, Published Features, Published Work, The Friday TimesLeave a comment

Playing to the homesick crowd

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by Imaduddin Ahmed The Friday Times | 24 March, 2006 For expatriates, cricket represents a tangible symbol of being Pakistani and gives hope that better times lie ahead [newer version] I grew up in England, yet I never felt ‘English’. I was born in Lahore but emigrated months after via San Francisco to England, where I would live the next 18 years, before returning to the San Francisco Bay Area for university. “To be born English is to win first prize in the lottery of life,” colonialist Cecil Rhodes once asserted. Not born English, but naturalised as a Brit at … Continue reading Playing to the homesick crowd

Islam, Published Features, Published Work, The Friday TimesLeave a comment

Questions are never indiscreet: answers sometimes are

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The Friday Times | Feb 22, 2006 Imaduddin Ahmed “Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim” By Ziauddin Sardar; Granta Books (2004); Pp 356; Rs 445  Islam is all the rage. The charade Hudood laws debate continues in parliament as I write, taking prime media space. Scholars and politicos are discussing how Islamic the Hudood laws are. The Islamist politicos in favour of the Hudood laws say they are defending the Shariah. Yet how often do you hear ‘the Shariah’ being questioned as a valid basis for law?. . . I thought so. Want to see how it is questioned? In his book … Continue reading Questions are never indiscreet: answers sometimes are