February 22, 2004

According to Edward Said’s The World, the Text, and the Critic, Foucault defined discourse as the language of supremacy, which masquerades as the language of integrity, self-restraint, righteousness, and erudition. Said, as well as Foucault, was fascinated with how cultures try to exclude and thereby assert their authority over each other. For the former. ‘Orientalism’, a discipline with a tarnished history, was for the most part a poorly disguised attempt to dismiss non-European cultures and religions as inferior to European civilization and Christianity and thus justify Western colonialism.

Jill Worrall in her book, A Blonde in the Bazaar, distances herself from this tradition, which is nowadays carried on by the w estern media. A journalist who undertook four trips to Pakistan, largely at her own expense, she is quite different from those of her fellow members of the foreign press who were sent by their news agencies or newspapers to the country in the months following September 11, 2001 to cover the war on terror that was being waged in neighbouring Afghanistan. Western journalists supported their political leaders’ propaganda through their presentations of Pakistan as a seething mass of lawless freedom-hating religious fanatics with repressive attitudes towards women and minorities, but Worrall focuses on the non-terrorists. They are the people who do not fit into the stereotypes created by the language of supremacy.

Blonde, therefore, is far from a New Zealand journalist’s attempt to cash in on America and Europe’s renewed interest in the Middle East and other Muslim-majority parts of the world. Describing the length and breadth of Worrall’s journeys since 1984 from Murree to the Khyber Pass, the Balochistan desert, and Hunza, then south to Lahore and the plains of Punjab, this travelogue is a skillful blend of wit, journalistic objectivity, and a tourist’s curiosity and sense of wonder. Although the author is fully conscious of Pakistani shortcomings, a glaring example of which is the misconception that white women are easy, she appreciates and ceaselessly draws attention to the many positive aspects of the country she considers her second home. In fact, her description of the jingoistic ceremony of the opening and closing of the gates at the India-Pakistan border crossing of Wagah is indulgent rather than deprecating.

One of this otherwise well-written and entertaining book’s flaws lies in the fact that the author takes no notice of the difference between the treatment she receives and that which is meted out to local women. Empathizing with the many Pakistani women who, in obedience to cultural dictates, put their men folk’s needs before their own, she makes too much of the one time she finds herself in the role of a subservient woman. She remains silent with regard to the occasions where this is certainly not the case. In Hunza, she dines with her host whereas his wife and children eat after they have finished.

Moreover, since she is exempt from Muslim conventions that require many Pakistani women to travel in the company of their husband or a male relative, Worrall is able to travel with men who do not satisfy such criteria and even share sleeping quarters with them.

In her desire to understand Pakistanis without pitting their beliefs against western mores, Worrall ignores the variety of ways in which people here react to the presence of western visitors. Her wish to blend in with Pakistanis by adopting their dress and language causes her to overlook the many motivating factors involved in their interactions with her and how these differ from those that might have come into play had she been a Pakistani woman.

A Blonde in the Bazaar
By Jill Worrall
New Holland Publishers (NZ) Ltd. Available with Liberty Books (Pvt) Ltd, 3 Rafiq Plaza, M.R. Kayani Road, Saddar, Karachi
Tel: 021-5683026
E-mail: libooks@cyber.net.pk
Website: www.libertybooks.com
ISBN 1-86966-030-7
228pp. Rs595

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