Khaled Hosseini pisses me off.


He's become one of those exotic birds perched atop an American arm. You see, KH fits the bill perfectly - he is different but tame: he is amusing, with his slight tang of accent, yet he is anglicized enough to have over for dinners and conversations. He receives praise and peanuts for amusing the dinner guests. While his country stumbles and falters in a ruined war that has sucked the life out of a whole people. Yet intelligent, suave, cultured Khaled Hosseini, perched atop an American arm.

Or take Mohsin Hamid. We all know serious artists don't take him too seriously. But it says something deep about our diaspora when the success of a free and fair elections convinces you that wow, this Pakistan can actually be civilized sometimes, and that wow, maybe just maybe i could consider it "home" some day.

No thanks, MH. we're good. this country is running after all without the promising allure of the educated youth who decide to establish their "homes" outside of Pakistan. The braindrain account of this country is in deep deficit because of people like yourself, who choose to make better lives outside their troubled nations. Great. So you've chosen your path in life. While everyday Pakistanis must deal with the reality of troubled politics, a border being carpet bombed and raided by an unwelcome superpower, and suicide bombings that tempt the fate of our cities. and yet you disrespect this country by deeming it "livable" and "unlivable" according to your own weak minded spectrum. you watch from your distant corners till you think it is "safe to return", to the land of the uncouth cavemen. No thank you, we don't need your judgements from your polished london flats and New york night clubs telling us when we've become civilized enough to meet your princely standards.

And then their are those whose own complexes force them to flex their intellectual muscles in our faces. the young pakistanis who were flushed to a foreign land in their preteen to teen states of unsure. who have grown up in the red, white and blue -- For whom nationality is merely having nusrat fateh ali khan on their last.fm lists and having exotic stories to tell to their fellow "intellectuals". how you fill the bellies of your dinner conversations with tales of "from back home" and makes dibs at your fellow countrymen over a fag in your fraternity houses. do us a favor and chuck those nationalities you claim in jest down the loo for your fresh foreign ones -- so that atleast you no longer possess the ragging rights on the 'Stan. yes we're a shithole, a craphole, but this is OUR shithole and craphole, and we will fix it on our own.

And then there are the portly uncles who leave for a foreign country with a fresh wife tucked with them. When thirty years pass, and they are comfortable but troubled by a bushel of brats who have taken to wild drinking, dating Blacks, turning white -- then you curse the land that has given you so much, and then you make calls to the ones back home that you want to move back, but never do, except a summer trip to buy more property, to plan your retirement -- because of course, you will come back to the motherland after your retirement, to be 'rid' of that 'awful gora country'. you are the worst of the lot -- since you refuse to accept yourhomeland as the homeland of your youth, and only as the homeland of your retirement fund- and on top of that you are ungrateful to a country that adopts you, places clothes on your back, and coins in your hands, gives your kids free education till they go to college, and one that delivers social security, and pays for your upkeep after 65, no matter where you choose to live. you are the worms of the earth, sucking at the teat of every land you wriggle upon, owning allegiance and loyalty to none.