Provo’s mountains and the languid lake are sights to behold. Competing with them in sheer beauty are the buildings that are well planned and lovingly cared
I LAND at Salt Lake City airport close to midnight almost 30 hours (and four aircraft) after leaving Karachi. A kind lady offers me her cell phone to contact the man who has come to receive me, and leads me to the lost baggage counter. My two suitcases had decided to spend the night at the Dallas International Airport, where I had my first taste of an American in America.
The immigration officer, unlike most others that I had come across in several countries, including mine, had a smile on his face. When I told him that after the conference I plan to stay for a fortnight with my daughter, who I had not seen for three years, he remarked, “That’s too short a period. As far as we are concerned, you can stay in the US for three months. I hope you’ll extend your stay with her.” He handed me my passport, sporting yet another smile. He was a refreshing change from the American airline security man at Gatwick (London) who had asked me some dumb, and some not-so-dumb, questions before allowing me to go to the counter to take my boarding pass. It was fine to ask me who had packed my bags (I told him my wife did), but quite odd to query how long was I married.
An hour’s drive from the Salt Lake City airport takes me to Provo (population 110,690), a fast asleep university town. The man who drives me and two delegates from Trinidad to our hotel is a genial security man who doubles as a driver. We are welcomed by Dr Scott Lovelace, the executive director of World Family Policy Center, which is hosting the conference. He is also on the faculty of the prestigious J. Reuben Clark School of Law. Normally, one doesn’t expect the second, or even the third, most important person to welcome you at an unearthly hour, a job left for the juniors to do.
The law school is affiliated with Brigham Young University, which is named after a Mormon leader. The Mormons, who form a sizable population of the state of Utah, are the followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They are in some ways similar to us. They believe in strong family bonds, are opposed to alcohol, and condemn adultery and abortion. They go a step ahead and disapprove of tea and coffee. Until 1890 when the US government banned polygamy, they practised it for they believe that all the prophets of the Old and New Testaments had more than one wives. Theirs is the fastest growing religion in the world — in 32 years they have grown from 1.2 million to 13 million and are no longer confined to Utah in the US. In fact, they are far more in South America now.
A good night’s sleep refreshes me, but the jet-lag takes a week to taper off. The conference begins a day later with Prof Richard Wilkins, Managing Director of the World Family Policy Center and a professor of law, chairing the first of the three-day proceedings and the former prime minister of Finland, Esko Aho, being the opening speaker. There are a large number of delegates from the Islamic countries’ missions in the UN. Syed Shahid Husain, a Pakistani with the OIC mission at the UN, is one of the speakers, so is a Muslim scholar Sheikha K.A. Cader from South Africa, who only exposes her eyes to everybody except at lunch and dinner time. The organizers of the conference have reserved a room for the Muslim delegates to offer their prayers. The Mormons start their meals with prayers, and on one occasion Sheikha Cader is requested to recite from the Holy Quran.
In the evening, we drive to Timponogos mountain on the outskirts of Provo, which is about 7,000 feet above the sea level and 2,500 above Provo. Kyla and Brenda Powell host a dinner for the delegates in their 20-year-old holiday home in idyllic surroundings. There has been a drought in the region, but the streams from the mountain top keep the area lush green.
On the second evening a dinner is hosted in the foyer of the Museum of Art in Provo, where 56 significant American artists’ works are on display chronologically. Exhibited in one corner of the lounge is a farm wagon, which was used by a Danish American artist, CCA Christensen to take 23 large paintings done by Mormon painters to show it in churches at Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Arizona.
On the third evening, we are driven to Salt Lake City (population 175,000). A dinner is hosted for us on the top floor of the imposing Joseph Smith Memorial Building, which was once a hotel, but now accommodates delegates, who come on official work to the neighbouring office building of the church.
The conference is over, but most people decide to stay back and take the sightseeing tour. In the morning we are taken to the Welfare Square, where there are food processing and canning sections. Working there are poor and volunteers from among the well-to-do Mormons. The poor are given food to take home. In one of the rooms they are packing special food meant for drought-stricken children in Ethiopia, whose digestive system is not ready for normal food.
We then move to a warehouse where the old clothes received by way of donation are washed and then sorted out on the basis of the age and the gender of the prospective users. Among the poor women working there are four Afghan refugees. One of them, young Fatima tells me that what binds these women together is the common traumatic experience — their husbands were killed by the Taliban and they escaped to Pakistan with their children from where they somehow came to the US.
The management of the Welfare Centre has arranged for their children’s education also. These women can’t speak Urdu and their command over English is very limited, so there is not much that they can communicate to me. One question, which I frame in both languages, is if their parents or siblings know they are now in the US, but it doesn’t draw a comprehensible answer. Perhaps my query is not understood.
In this section as well as in those dealing with medical supplies and educational equipment, there are lists of charities in different countries (Pakistan included) which have benefited from them. The stupendous scale of their work can be gauged from the fact that as many as 40,000 wheelchairs were shipped in the last one year. There is a lot our missionaries can learn from them.
One of the last places that we visit in Salt Lake City is the Temple Square, which is spread over 35 acres and is dotted with lovely trees and no less beautiful buildings. One of these has a huge auditorium, which can seat 27,000 people. The Square also accommodates historic sites, museums and plaza gardens. But the most interesting place to me is the Family History Library, where with the help of computers you can gain information about your ancestors. A staff member tries to help me find my lineage, but while there may be Khans, Siddiqis and Syeds on their record there are no Nooranis. He is more disappointed than I am. “I guess my ancestors maintained a low key,” I tell him and he nods in agreement.
I can’t get to see much of Salt Lake City, but whatever I do seems clean and impressive. The roads are free from traffic jams. The tram or the street car, as it is called in the US, is more beautiful than any I have seen in all my journeys. Its bell is sweet sounding.
I see more of Provo than Salt Lake City. Its mountains and the languid Utah Lake, where a Pakistani takes me, are beautiful. Competing with them in sheer beauty are the buildings, but then you can’t compare nature with man-made structures, just as you can’t compare apples with oranges. However, what will remain etched on my memory are the people — ever-smiling and ever ready to help you.
Provo’s mountains and the languid lake are sights to behold. Competing with them in sheer beauty are the buildings that are well planned and lovingly cared 
