Tada kam zai ye? Where Are You From?
I entered the elevator on the 9th floor of my hotel in Frankfurt to go down to the lobby. It was dinner time. A hotel employee, his identification badge hanging around his neck, holding a bundle of used linen, hurried into the elevator after me. He had been making rooms and changing linen. He stood quietly in the elevator's corner, carrying the laundry and staring at his toes.
I scrutinized the young man like many of my countrymen do when we see a stranger — a bad habit — trying to place him on the ethnic map of the world. He seemed to be in his thirties, of a slight build, light skin, and black hair.
He didn’t look European. Perhaps a Turk? There are many Turkish immigrants in Germany, driving taxis and doing other jobs, but he didn’t look quite like a Turk to me. Not an Arab either. Having lived among Arabs, I could tell. Judging by his demeanor and against the ethnic ‘shade card’ I carry in my head to judge people’s ethnicity, I concluded he was a Pakistani from the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — my province.
“Ta-da kam zai ye?” where are you from? I delivered the first question. Startled, he looked up, his face lit like a light bulb.
“Za da Chiraat yem … Nokhar da nizde … ao taasu?” I’m from Cherat, near Nowshehra, and you? He stammered with a wide grin.
I’m from Mansehra, I told him.
From then on, the poor fellow didn’t know what to do. He was in the midst of his work but couldn’t let go of me either. “staaso sa khidmat kwole shem?” what can I do for you? He kept asking.
I knew he had to deliver the bundle of laundry he was carrying and do other things. So, I thanked him and told him I had to catch a flight in the morning and would go to bed early.
“But where are you going to eat?” was his concern.
“In the hotel,” I told him.
“But they don’t serve halal food here,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I would eat fish and vegetables.”
Finally, we shook hands and said goodbye, he reluctantly. I could sense that he felt guilty that he couldn’t do anything for me. His name was Javed Khan, and he said he had been in Frankfurt for sixteen years and was happily settled.
On my flight back to New York, I thought of Javed Khan and realized why Hubert Michael Close, our professor of English, chose to teach at Islamia College Peshawar rather than at Saint Stephen’s, Delhi, where he had been teaching before the Partition.
Close, as he was known to his students and colleagues, graduated from Cambridge and taught English at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, in 1937. However, his teaching career was interrupted by World War II, when he joined the army and ended up in Cyprus and other Mediterranean islands, commanding a Pathan Company.
At the end of the war, Close returned to St. Stephen’s Delhi, then, after the Partition, migrated to Pakistan and took up teaching English at Islamia College Peshawar.
In his book, A Pathan Company, published in 1993, Close fondly describes his “boys” in the Company he commanded, admiring their sturdiness, simplicity of habits, sincerity, and loyalty. Most of them came from small towns like Javed Khan’s Cherat. Close’s affection for the young Pashtuns of his Company probably motivated him to move to Peshawar rather than continue at St. Stephen’s.
