WASHINGTON: They came in droves, Pakistani Christians from the states of Virginia, Maryland, Penn­sylvania and the District of Columbia. They had tears in their eyes and kept expressing their love for Pakistan, again and again. And all this they did because the Pakistan Embassy allowed them to celebrate Easter at its premises on Saturday night.

This second favour — the first was celebrating Christmas at the embassy — had apparently washed away all the grievances, all the pains that extremists in Pakistan had inflicted on this oppressed community.

“No, don’t talk about that here. This is our embassy, we are here to give and get love, not regrets,” said a teenage Pakistani Christian girl as a journalist asked her about attacks on Christians in Pakistan.

And the event organiser Ilyas Mohsin, a Christian from Peshawar, was so moved that he thanked the embassy and the ambassador at least 50 times, choking with emotions each time he shouted: “Pakistan Zindabad.”

“This is my country. This is my leader. This is my love,” he said as a slide show uploaded pictures of Pakistan and its founders on the screen.

“Sir, there are so many people, is there enough food for all?” asked another Pakistani Christian teenager as a volunteer started setting the dinner tables.

“There will be no shortage, not tonight. There’s abundance of love here,” the volunteer replied.

The ambassador, Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, also was moved and pledged to offer the embassy premises to the Pakistani Christian community whenever they needed it.

“You are a bridge, a beautiful bridge, between Pakistan and the United States. You are the true face of Pakistan,” he said.

Walter Anderson — a former chief of the US State Department’s South Asia Division, who now heads the Johns Hopkins University’s South Asia Studies Programme — said it was a “very smart move as this Christian community has access to the highest echelons of powers” in the Trump administration.

The credit obviously goes to the organisers and the embassy staff for putting together this programme but the most magnanimous were the Pakistani Christians for forgiving and forgetting the excesses committed against them in the name of religion.

“Yes, this is my embassy because I am a Pakistani,” said Victor Gill to a white American guest — and there were plenty of them — who asked him if he was with the embassy.

Moved by his sentiment, the guest, who was a physician, asked Victor to introduce him to an embassy official as he wanted to do a free medical camp for the Pakistani community.

In his address to the gathering, Dick Black, a Virginia state senator, recalled the long US-Pakistani partnership and urged the United States to stay engaged with Pakistan. “Pakistan helped us when we needed it.

We should not abandon Pakistan in its hour of need,” he said.

Three Christian leaders also addressed the gathering, each saying how they received a very warm welcome when they visited Pakistan. “Do not believe the media. Go, visit. You will be surprised to see how loving and warm the Pakistanis are,” one of them said.

Ambassador Chaudhry commended the Pakistani Christian community for spreading the message of peace, love and hope, and highlighted their role in Pakistan’s development.

A group of children presented Easter songs, in Urdu and English.

In the pulsating beats of tabla and the sweet melody of the young singers, it was easy to forget the wounds that extremists in Pakistan had inflicted on both Christian and Muslim Pakistanis.

But while returning home, a Pakistani Christian narrated what he witnessed at a church during one of his visits to Pakistan:

“Everything was soaked in blood. They came and performed the dance of death inside the church, and left. Inside, we were counting our dead. Outside, people were making speeches. Bullet wounds, shrapnel, broken glass, we were in great pain.”

He remembered telling a group of Muslim friends who visited him to offer their condolences: “Forgive us if we have no ears for your sympathies and no eyes for your protest rallies, candlelight vigils and for black bands on your arms.”

He told them: “Soon, you will go home and we will be left alone to lick our wounds and the extremists will strike again, exploding a bomb inside a church and straightening their guns at the congregation.”

But there were no wounds or pain at the embassy’s Easter dinner. Only love and healing.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2017