Every culture prepares its youth for a rite of passage, a process of initiation to celebrate a new phase of growth. In Pakistan, there are many such rituals embedded in religion with deep historical roots. However, I like to focus on the rites of passage that are not identified as such but are just as poignant. Learning how to drive a car, for instance, is one such rite of passage. It’s not just learning how to drive. One learns to navigate the “jungle” so to speak and how to work around crazy drivers (i.e. predators). One learns how to follow the rules of the “jungle” and when to break those rules.
I was 16 years old when I first expressed an interest in learning how to drive in Karachi. Paperwork was irrelevant in the 1980s. If you wanted to drive, you just drove. My father took some sticky red tape and shaped it into an “L” for “learner” and placed it on the front windshield and the back window, just to warn other drivers that there was a new driver at the wheels. He had successfully taught my older sister to drive and felt a certain sense of pride in being our teacher.
We started out in the back alley. He patiently explained what would happen next. I would have to press the clutch down as I started the car and then gently release it as I pressed down on the accelerator. I was determined not to let the car stall. I had seen my sister stall many, many times and I had promised myself I would master this fine art in the very first go. The car started and we moved forward slowly but without stalling! However, I was so pleased with myself that I stopped paying attention and before I knew it, my father was shouting “careful, careful!” as we drove into a large open garbage dump. To make matters worse, instead of pressing the brake, I quickly put both my feet up on the driver’s seat, covered my eyes with my hands and let out a very sudden, loud scream. Luckily we weren’t going very fast and a large cardboard box helped us roll to a complete stop.
I casually looked over at my father and was surprised to see him sweating profusely. He wiped his forehead with one of his many plaid handkerchiefs and muttered something to himself. I thought I heard him say “I am too old for this” but I dared not ask. He got out of the car and motioned for me to get back into the passenger seat. He reversed out of the garbage dump without saying a word and we headed back home. Later that evening, my parents asked me if I would like to enroll in a driving school. I was a little shocked, “are you saying my driving is so scary that my own father can’t teach me how to drive?” I asked. They assured me that the driving school would do a much better job than my father could do and that I could always practice my driving with him on the side.
A Learner’s Permit was obtained for me miraculously from somewhere. I never went inside a DMV and don’t even know what such a place would be called in Karachi. I attended an “informational” class where a very animated man explained how cars worked. None of us listened. We were all teenagers. Who wanted to learn how a car worked? We just wanted to drive! Some of us doodled, some played tic-tac-toe with friends and others closed their eyes for a much needed nap in the sweltering afternoon heat of Karachi. The hour went by remarkably fast.
And then I started my first day of driving. A lady came to pick me up in a small, red Suzuki car with the name of the driving school printed importantly on one of the doors. She got out of her car and asked me if I was “Anjum.” She said my name very slowly and deliberately. I nodded. She told me to call her “Aunty Shazia” and got into the passenger seat. I quickly got into the driver’s side and looked at Aunty Shazia expectantly. She was busy putting on very bright, red lipstick using the rearview mirror for help. “First lesson, “ she said “Adjust the rearview mirror and your seat, look off your shoulder and be off!” I quickly realized English was not her first language.
She showed me how she had a clutch and brake on the passenger side too and that she would only use them for “imera-jency.” It took me a minute to realize that she meant “emergency” and then I started the car and proceeded to drive, narrowly missing a pedestrian who thought I would stop for her when she tried to cross the street. I hadn’t quite mastered the brakes yet. That pedestrian shouted something angrily at me, but Aunty Shazia rolled down her window and let out the most wonderful string of curse words in Urdu as she gesticulated wildly and made an awful face. I realized she was well practiced in cursing. She had obviously done this before, many times. She rolled her window back up again and said, matter of factly, “she is stoopid fool!”
On our very first lesson, she took me out to a busy part of the city and we promptly got stuck in a traffic jam. People just sat in their cars, waiting in the awful heat for something to happen and then suddenly the traffic started to move forward even though the light was still red. I didn’t move. It was clear to me that a red light meant “stop.” Cars started to honk angrily at me and Aunty Shazia screamed “what are you doing? Move it!” I looked over at her, “but the light is red,” I said adamantly. “No, you stoopid girl, you move when the traffic moves. Now MOVE!” and I suddenly shot forward with all the other crazy, rule-breaking drivers. Aunty Shazia explained to me “in Karachi, rules are only there for fun. If others break rules, you break them too or you will get into accident.” I stared at her, dumbfounded. Unfortunately she was right. It was the law of this jungle and one had to abide by it.
And thus began my driving initiation. In the 1980s in Karachi, the roads were not as congested as they are today. They were also not built very well so negotiating sudden bumps and dips was commonplace. Japanese cars of all sizes dominated the traffic, accompanied by scooters, motorcycles and rickshaws. I loved how a tiny motorcycle would often seat an entire family of five, complete with mom sitting side saddle behind her husband, cradling a newborn baby. Buses were vibrant with bright colors and designs. And then there were the nasty yellow passenger vans that we called “yellow devils” because they drove with little care for safety. Every now and then a Victorian style horse cart would be trotting along delicately in traffic, a remnant of British colonial times, and donkey carts carrying laundry or building supplies would slouch through with their heavy loads. Rickshaw drivers were amazingly talented at squeezing into the tightest spaces and sometimes they were so close to the cars that you couldn’t even open your car door while stuck in traffic.
Aunty Shazia would pick me up from my home every morning for two weeks and we’d drive for two hours. She was a short woman with untidy dark hair and big sunglasses that she always wore, even indoors. She would swing her one arm really wide when she walked while her other arm protected her shiny fake leather handbag. She liked to pick her teeth with a toothpick and then flick the food debris out of the car window. She especially loved to scream at other drivers if they dared to honk at our car. She would say “you have to show them who is boss” as she ate piping hot chanas (roasted chick peas) she had purchased from a street vendor. She would eat with her mouth open and then demand that we stop and get a cold drink from a nearby shop. She sometimes bought me a small bottle of 7-up. As we noisily slurped our drinks, she told me “the sugar will make you more powerful and you will drive fast.”
And that’s how I spent my time driving with Aunty Shazia. I started to feel more like a chauffeur than a student. She would have a whole route planned out for us that might, for instance, involve stopping at the tailor’s shop so that she could pick up her new shalwar kameez, stopping at a friend’s house to drop off some spicy kebabs she had made the night before and then always picking up something small to eat from a street vendor. But she included me in her activities so I never felt like I was being used, even though essentially I was. When she delivered the kebabs, she would pop a whole kebab into my mouth before I could say anything and smile when the spiciness brought tears to my eyes. “Good, na?” she would say. I would nod, my mouth too full to speak. When she picked up new clothes from the tailor, she would ask me if I liked the fabric and would always say “be honest, Anjum. Be honest.” I didn’t dare tell her that I found her color choices to be very loud and gaudy. That’s how she dressed. It was who she was. And all the while, I was driving her around, feeling very grown up and important.
Finally, the lessons ended. Aunty Shazia said “you are good driver. Just be more bold in traffic” which I considered to be high praise. I was excited to show off my new driving skills to my father and one weekend morning, he kindly suggested I drive him to a hotel where we would have our favorite French Onion soup and then could head back home. I confidently started the car and it immediately stalled. He looked at me, puzzled. I tried again. No luck. I was surprised. Stalling had never been one of my problems. Finally after three tries, I took off feeling happy with myself again.
After a few minutes, I looked over at my dad. His dark skin was very pale and he was holding onto the door handle for dear life. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with one of his handkerchiefs and said in a remarkably calm voice, “please don’t drive so fast.” I tried to slow down but couldn’t change the gears quickly enough and the car rumbled slightly and started to stall. “Pull over, pull over” he shouted. I pulled over to the side and tried to start the car back up and stalled again. Finally I was able to get back into traffic and a few minutes into my driving, my father exclaimed impatiently, “you’re going too fast again.” Once again I tried to slow down and the same thing started to happen. It became painfully obvious to him and me that I simply didn’t know how to drive slowly. Aunty Shazia had always enjoyed driving fast and being “powerful” as she put it.
My father patiently worked with me so that we could get to a point where I was driving at a reasonable speed. Finally, we got to the hotel where I accidentally locked the keys in the car. I thought my father was going to have a heart attack. My father looked around the hotel parking lot and pointed to a man standing nearby watching us and said, “he looks like a car thief. Come over here, sir!” and he beckoned the man over. Sure enough, the man was suspiciously good at prying the door open with a long wire he pulled out of nowhere. My father was an unusually good judge of character.
I let my father drive us home. I figured I had given him enough stress for the day. That evening I called Aunty Shazia and explained to her that the car kept stalling when I drove with my dad. She paused for a minute and then said “please don’t mind, but I wanted you to be strong driver so I helped you with the clutch.” She explained how she always controlled the clutch when I was driving, unbeknownst to me. So much for my driving lessons, I thought with a sigh.
Years later, I met my future husband and he asked me if I knew how to drive. I thought of Aunty Shazia. I thought of my dad’s pale face on that difficult drive to the hotel and I simply shook my head, “I never learnt,” I said. And that was that.
And so I go back to the rites of passage and the laws of the jungle. One learns how to survive in the jungle but sometimes our worst predators are the ones we trust. They reel us in, unsuspectingly, but in the end all they want is to feel good about themselves. So be careful out there, dear friends. The jungle isn’t always exactly the way it appears…
