A FEELING of relief surges through the self the moment one steps out of Pakistan: you are escaping a make-shift system of injustice, even if it is for a short while. But that does not last long. Anguish returns in no time and that quickly takes an intense turn, particularly when you come across experiences of loneliness to misery of many people who are forced to live away for home to earn a livelihood.

Relatively affluent segments are not really hard-pressed. The pull of home is strong for them, too, but they can manage their lives better; the homeland can be visited at a decent frequency. People straining to remain above sinking level and living virtually on a pittance represent another world, a dark dispensation sans hope. Continuous, unending struggle marks their efforts for earning a livelihood in places far away from home, the shrinking of the world because of increasing communication facilities notwithstanding.

That incomparable facility of being driven around in Pakistan whenever you leave base is not available to Pakistanis during visits abroad, not because the spirit of hospitality is dented in the hosts, but as pressures on them are of a different nature. They are required to observe strict schedules. One has to rely on public transport in the Gulf region. That stands for taxis.

A brief trip to UAE last week exposed me to a number of taxi drivers, incidentally all but one of them from Pakistan. The majority was from the NWFP, but there was one each from Punjab and Sindh, the former from Chakwal and the latter, a Karachiite. Their tales were of distress linked with problems back home that had driven them abroad in search of resources for survival.

Each one of them had been in Dubai or Sharjah for a period of at least 10 years. One of them said: “I came here as a young man. They call me uncle now.” He wasn’t old, in his mid-40s at the best, the corners of his eyes slightly but cheerfully wrinkled, forced humour and suppressed self-pity indecipherable in his manner and conversation. He was moving in a circle for there was apparently no option.

They all had families at home and carried familiar burdens; the difference was of scale, not content. The hardest decision was the use of meagre savings: whether to visit home or send an extra amount for the children’s education, arrange dowry for a sister or daughter of marriageable age, for the construction of roof of an under-construction (for years) house, treatment of an ailing elder and if these and other such problems had been resolved, finance Umra or Hajj for parents.

The Karachiite driver had been in Sharjah for a decade-and-a-half. He shared a room with a fellow driver and sent home almost every penny that he could save, because his eldest son had reached college and, besides other expenses, the tutor for the boy and other children charged Rs3,000 per month. “Education at the college is useless,” he said. He had sent money for a computer for the boy, instead of joining the family for a few days.

That wasn’t as bad as his apprehensions of the present and future. What if the son fell in wrong company? What would he do after completing education, say graduation or even Masters. I did not have the heart to play humour with him, and suggested that his son could be his family’s fortune by contesting the next elections after graduation. He should look for a master instead of going for the Master’s degree. He had a premonition that life did not hold much for him, but was resigned to whatever was or could be and remained undaunted by identified and unknown, concrete or imagined odds.

The question haunting the man from Punjab was the prospects on return. This wasn’t a specific problem; many people think of what awaits them on return. Gone are the times when they could save enough to survive when their working years or the job were over. The boom of the 70s and 80s are a thing of the past. The realities of today are stark and unrelenting. There is no escape from them.

He was not old but getting on in years, and knew that while the going was fair, it was not meant to last beyond the present and the present was rapidly speeding past him. A lot had been accomplished during his nearly two decades’ stay in Dubai, much remained to be done and that perhaps would have to be postponed to the next generation. He was trying to get his eldest son a job to secure his future, but was simply passing on the burden of misery to the next generation.

The only one who sounded relatively satisfied was a driver from Peshawar. He had good reason to be in that frame. His family, wife and children were living with him in Sharjah, and he wasn’t required to support his parents. They were apparently well-off as his father had 30 children! I failed to check if he was one of the 30 or he had not counted himself, and that how many women his father had wed. But that is not really important. One more sibling in such a family should be neither here nor there. He may be feeling lonely with one wife and two children, as he had been brought up as a member of so large a family. He was, however, clear that he would not emulate the example of his father for the size of his family.

They had different experiences and many of them of a frustrating nature. I needed to visit the diplomatic area one day. On the way to that place, the driver pointed in one direction, showing me Pakistan’s flag and informing me of the location of the Pakistani Council office. What kind of interaction took place between immigrants like him and that office, I asked. He said that they were unaware of each other’s existence most of the time.

Most of them had their disappointments and frustrations, but only a few of them were linked with the UAE government. They, in fact, admired the local administration’s concern for its citizens and regretted that back home, they were far more deprived than they could ever be in Dubai or Sharjah. Educated locals had no problems getting jobs, while in Pakistan, even low-level jobs were for people with patronage of the privileged. They had close relatives with university degrees who could not find an appointment even as a peon or naib qasid, as the position has come to be called.

Despite their financially stringent circumstances, everyone offered me a free ride on learning that I was from Pakistan. I appreciated their generosity and declined their gesture, but that just went to show their attitude towards countrymen and large-heartedness.

Everyone had some reportable comment to make, but two one-liners are worth recalling. There was one man from Dera Ismael Khan. I congratulated him that a political party from his hometown had won, and was now presiding over provincial affairs. He laughed, folded his hands in the manner of an apology and looked heavenwards. “I know what that means for us,” he said. When I pressed him to elaborate his statement, he said that as I was a journalist, I should have no problem understanding his meaning.

The other quote is from a taxi driver from Kerala, India’s most literate state. Politics was one of the issues I tried to discuss with him. He proudly stated that “the BJP had never won a seat from Kerala.”