Tahmena Bokhari is a remarkable young lady. PoliGazette had the pleasure to talk to her. Below follows the interview.

I first encountered Tahmena Bokhari and her work online after she sent me an e-mail containing a link to one of the most recent blogs she created. Most bloggers receive such e-mails regularly, but, sadly, most links are quite useless. Not so with Tahmena’s blog. At the very moment I started reading I realized that this is one special lady. She travels frequently to Pakistan where she helps locals improve their lives. At the same time she hopes to learn something from them; how do they experience being Muslim? How do they live? What is her cultural heritage? She then creates blogs in which she publishes her experiences and thoughts.

 After having read the blog in its entirety I sent her an e-mail asking her whether she would like to be interviewed; she had, I thought, truly something interesting to say. She gave me some information about herself and happily agreed to an interview. Below follows the interview, shortly after an introduction about her. If it arouses your attention, and I am sure it will, you can read the blog that draw my attention and interest here. Also be sure to read this blog; it describes the work she did after Pakistan was hit by a terrible earthquake back in 2005. 

 So what did Tahmena tell me about herself? Well, for of all that she is a Pakistani Muslim born in Canada and that she has a Masters in Social Work from the University of Toronto and has been working in the field for 10 years.  She is an advocate for social justice and recently received the Schlesinger Prize for leadership.  

Her areas of focus have included violence against women, health, gender & feminism, access & equity, immigration, welfare, disaster relief and international social work.  This includes working as a consultant for communities, non-governmental organizations and governments. She has also worked with a diversity of communities living in Toronto, including Chinese, South Asian and Black.  She loves working with people as she says her passion lies in “building a close connection with individuals.” In her off time she pursues her hobby of photography and likes to write fiction, poetry and speak and write on social issues. 

THE INTERVIEW

 How do you feel about your work?
My work is my passion. I love what I do although it is very challenging at times, its hard work.  There is little glamour and remuneration, but the personal satisfaction is amazing.

Tell me about being a social worker?
To get paid to do what I do is just a bonus.  If you are looking to make big bucks, then social work is not for you.  What I advise students I have supervised is to be honest with yourself and know what really drives you.  Social work is also a field in which you have tremendous impact on the personal lives of individuals.  This can be a great feeling if this impact is positive.  However, if you are not able to help or in some way have a negative impact on a client, it can be very difficult to come to terms with.  It is not the kind of work in which one should experiment in.  The lives of many people depend on you, your maturity, your professionalism and your sound judgement.  I take this role very seriously and feel extremely privileged to work with individuals and families so closely.

I understand that the way to you define social work is a bit different than what usually comes to mind, how do you define social work?
In North America and most other developed countries social work is a regulated profession, which means that it is a career which a) requires one to have specific education, training and designation and b) is regulated, like doctors, by a regulatory body. In the case of social workers in Ontario, this body is called the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers.

Many parts of the world I go often times people do not quite understand what a social worker is or what is involved in their training.  Sometimes people associate me with a ‘charity worker’ or think that I am there as a volunteer, like many others. In some countries, women who are able to afford to work for free help their communities.  This is different from the role I usually take as I am trained in various types of direct and indirect social work interventions.

In North America, when I say I am a social worker, people assume I work for the Ministry of Community and Social Services, that I hand out welfare cheques or that I police how they treat their children. I do none of those things, in fact I have advocated for people on welfare and for single mothers who were in fear of having their children taken away from them.  I have also facilitated parenting courses for immigrant parents.

I define social work very broadly. It is a way of life. I feel that everything I do is social work from training students, demonstrating leadership, serving on a committee, helping my community, speaking at a youth event and even when I work with companies to create better policies or work environments for their staff.  I have learned a lot of from local social workers working in various parts of the world who have been doing this for longer over 30 years. Even though they may not have been formally trained like I have been, they know a heck of a lot more than I do about their community, local culture and customs and on solutions of local social problems.  Those are the people we need to be listening too.

Being a social worker is often difficult work. Have you encountered problems in your career?
Earlier in my career, when I was working with extremely impoverished communities and individuals who had gone through years of severe abuse, I was greatly impacted. I gave up much of what I had materially. I felt that I was not any more deserving than my clients who were born into poverty, or did not have control over their circumstances. I stopped wearing jewellery and make-up and did not buy new clothes for a long time. The only things I did not give up were my love of books and my camera and the many photographs I have collected over the years. However, I am very satisfied and proud of even my most gruelling experiences in the field.

How did you get into this work?
I had always done a lot of community and volunteer work. It was an example that was set for me by my parents and grandparents. I was also brought up in an environment in which there was awareness about global and political issues. I never took it seriously as a career, but thought of it as a way of life. Early on when I was learning about myself as a scientist and flirting with the notion of making my income from pharmaceuticals and health care, I shifted my thinking to defining my ‘way of life’ as my career rather than seeing career as a mere means to creating the life I wanted. It is the life I wanted! This was a very liberating shift for me as a student, as a young woman and as the first generation eldest child of immigrants to Canada.

As becomes clear from both this interview and your blogs, you are highly interested in Pakistan. Why this draw to Pakistan?
When I heard about the earthquake on the news, my heart must have stopped for a split second. That was my country and my people on the news crying in despair. You have to remember that as a Pakistani, I hardly ever saw my people on the news, unless of course recently if they were accused for being a terrorist or a woman who was beaten and oppressed. Although, I was not impressed with the coverage and the survivors stories being used by the masses within a victim-helper dynamic in the midst of what they called ‘donor fatigue’, I just like any other Pakistani I know, was deeply impacted. My instant reaction was to send money and make phone calls to all my family and friends there.

I wanted to be there, to use my skills to support the country my grandparents so traumatically parted from India for. Ever since I left Pakistan as a child, left what I believed to be my family, left the streets where children played and where I witnessed some extreme poverty, I had always told myself that I would come back given my privileges as a Canadian citizen. When I heard of the earthquake and learned more and more about it, I felt like a piece of my own home was burning away.

That sounds as if you closely identify with that country. Would it be fair to call you a ‘nationalist’ who happens to live in a Western country?
I am a Canadian national. I am a Pakistani national. I claim my roots in India and Uzbekistan. I claim all of South Asia in feeling very much that I reflect a South Asian identity. I am also a Muslim. So yes, if it means to be an ambassador, a representative, to be a nationalist, then yes. I am also committed to building the image of Pakistan and Pakistanis. I am committed to enhancing the status of Pakistani women and improving the outlooks of and for Pakistanis.

“Claim.” As you know there is a lot of debate around this issue of ‘claim’. How is it that you can claim all of South Asia or all of Pakistan even?
I am South Asian. Many South Asians did not know they were South Asian until they came to North America when they were lumped all together. My ancestry is made up of various places in South Asia. I spent my childhood in a country in South Asia and consider it my home. I speak the languages and love to immerse myself in the culture. I can claim all of South Asia because I exemplify one small piece of it.

Where does one draw the line? Is my grandmother more Pakistani than I was? She was born in India and struggled through partition to create Pakistan? Is my mother more Pakistani? She was born there and then lived majority of her life in Canada. I feel that it is my experience that I utilize to claim all of Pakistan. I do not claim to be the expert on Pakistan or know all of Pakistan or claim that my experience is average or representative of every Pakistani. But I still have every right to claim a country given my experience. In a similar way I also claim all of Canada.

To summarize, you feel both Pakistani and Canadian, South(east) Asian and Westerner, Muslim and being of the enlightenment. Why then the impulse to leave your comfortable home in Canada in order to help Muslim villagers in Southeast Asia?
As a Muslim woman, I was never satisfied with the images of Muslims and Muslim women in the media. Southeast Asia is where the majority of the world’s population lives yet I hardly ever saw a Southeast Asian Muslim on television. I wanted to learn about these villages that were Muslim. What did being Muslim mean to them? Did they have identity issues living among non-Muslims? How did these villages end up in these remote parts of Southeast Asia?

It is not typical work for Muslim Pakistani women and it is not traditional social work as defined in the west. Although, I will say that international social work has been around for a long time. In addition, I feel that eastern values are very much the values of social work. I want to tell the world that the basic values of humanitarianism I found in the secluded mountain areas of what has been declared one of the most dangerous places on earth. These were elements such as a sense of a community, collective decision-making, concept of sharing, believing that strengthening one’s family and community is connected to strength of self, compassion and belief in human spirit.

Although you are correct in saying that media pay little to no attention to this part of the world, some writings have most certainly appeared about, for instance, north Pakistan. How do you feel about those ‘reports’?
I disagree with most of them. Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s writings, for instance, were reflecting of his time and not ahead. His views on distant lands told us more about him and his context than they did about the places he was describing.

Winston Churchill once wrote, quote from “The River War”, an 1899 book by him,
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!”
“…the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science – the science against which it had vainly struggled – the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

I think today’s blogs of western travellers are not any less ignorant, but again reflective of the writers own social locations and contexts. Mine is not a typical blog. But today, if you look at the power of the internet and instant news spread, blogs are an important source of information. Many use this format to send a daily or weekly diary home to family and friends when travelling. Similar to the example of Churchill, going to other places teaches you more about you than of the place you are visiting. That is why you and I can go to the same place and have a completely difference experience. In the words of Anais Nin, “We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.” I advise people to reflect on their blogs after returning home a few times.

Being a Pakistani woman, were you afraid to go to Pakistan, especially to NWFP and Kashmir?

People always ask me this question. Actually I was not afraid at all. Of course this does not mean that I was not diligent in my planning and concerned for my safety as I would in travelling any where in the world, including walking down my street in Canada after dark.

Going to Pakistan was going home. I was the most comfortable I had ever been in my career and in my life. I was treated extremely well by the Pakistani military, NGOs and local communities. In fact, I was treated better than I am in Canada sometimes. People in Pakistan want help and are very appreciative of any help they receive. They want education, healthcare and to live in a healthy peaceful community. When in Pakistan, I recognize I am a woman of extreme privilege.

Going to Pakistan also was very emotional for me. I had just lost the woman who raised me in Pakistan, the woman who was my role model and taught me everything I know. A week after I buried her I flew to Pakistan where I saw the impact of mass death as I was morning only the death of 1 person in my life.

Growing up in a first world country, how did you manage to live in isolated parts of the world with little facilities such as hot water or electricity or even safety from the extreme heat and cold?
I grew up in North America but I also grew up in Pakistan as a child. I grew up in an environment in which I did not have all the luxuries and had to work for what I wanted. Living in villages to me is actually quiet liberating from the chains of North American consumerist culture and the corporate culture of competitiveness and ‘each for his/her self’ attitude.

Furthermore, I am a Canadian citizen by birth and proud to be Canadian. I have the privilege of knowing I can leave a village any time, if I get sick I have insurance, if I am caught in civil unrest in a country or need to leave that I can come back to Canada. Those living in the village do not have this kind of privilege and this raises many ethical questions on the politics of who gets to help who? I acknowledge the tremendous privilege I have in doing this work and feel obligated to do the work given my various privileges.

I see you talked about this concept of being an insider and outsider a bit in your website on Muslim Villages in Southeast Asia. Can you explain further what you mean about your privileges?

Part of the workshops I run include anti-oppression and diversity work. Much of this work has to do with examining one’s own social location before and while helping others. I am extremely privileged because I am middle-class, educated, live in the West, have Canadian nationality, am fairly healthy and able-bodied, have access to healthcare, and have a supportive family circle. I realize this privilege even more so when I work overseas in the way people treat me and being in an environment where I do not have the benefits I do in Toronto. Being a woman, Muslim, and a Pakistani I am sometimes not so privileged in North America and in some parts of the world. This is due to the status of these identities and sexism, islamophobia and recent images of Pakistan.

Tell me about growing up as a Pakistani Muslim girl in Toronto?
Toronto prides itself as being one of the world’s most diverse cities. I work with organizations on how to work with and for diversity and inclusion. I also work with communities, families and individuals.

I love Toronto because of all these reasons. However, it has been a struggle at times carrying my various identities, and not to mention being a publicly known feminist. Even as a feminist, I do not fit in completely with the women’s movement in North America as my experiences of racism are not relevant to sexism as viewed by some. Meanwhile women from my own communities of Islam or South Asia or Pakistan may also disagree on the roles of feminists and practicality of feminism in their lives. And yet another camp, those of men may not recognize sexism as an issue at all. Some Canadian-born men may feel men and women are equal and women are not oppressed, certainly not in Canada any more and feel that a women’s movement is no longer needed. Some men who identify as Muslim, Pakistani or South Asian may be able to share in my work against racism, but may draw the line when it comes to my ideas of women’s liberation. [I do want to point out here that some of my most favourite feminists have been men.] It can be difficult for some to accept multiple identities that may on the surface seem as though they are conflicting. I feel that all of my identities fit in to the greater picture of who I am. It is, however, a balancing act one has to do to juggle the politics as I just described of my various identities.

You are a Muslima (female Muslim) and a feminist. Most people may consider that a contradiction in terms. Could you explain what you mean by ‘feminism’?
There are a lot of misconceptions about feminism.There are many kinds of feminists and we may disagree on various issues. For me feminism means self-empowerment and empowerment of my community. As a Pakistani Muslim woman I experience racism, sexism and islamophobia all at once and in the very same act. I am also someone who identifies as being from the third world and from the east, which comes with its own set of connotations and perceptions. Feminism to me means participating in a journey of liberation from these and all other “isms” for everyone.

Do you consider yourself a role model for Pakistani women?
I do not think I have a choice being that. By virtue of being a Pakistani Muslim woman I have younger family members who will look up to me. As the eldest woman in my generation born in the West, I had no choice but to be a leader. I was the first women in my family to go to graduate school and travel the world as much I have. There were many other ‘firsts’ and in some cases, ‘onlys’ that I am example of. Outside of my family, I think by being a Pakistani Muslim woman who has had the privilege of being educated, and that in one of the best universities in the world, I am proud to represent my country. With all of these values, more importantly, I would say I am a role model for all women. Any woman from any ethnic background who has the qualities of leadership is a role model for all women everywhere.

Since we’re nearing the end of the interview, lets turn back to the subject of your work. What are some of your current projects?
I am currently working with a team on the China earthquake relief. China supported Pakistan quite a bit when our earthquake hit in October 2005. China sent hundreds and thousands of dollars in aid and volunteer support. Medical and rescue teams worked Balakot and other hit areas. The China earthquake was 7.8 and Pakistan was about 7.6 on the rector scale. In addition, Chinese culture and Pakistani culture, being from the east share common traits in issues of modesty, privacy, family as well as other issues surrounding dealing with emotional and mental trauma.

Why did you create the blogs?
To bring awareness in an accessible format for youth who access the internet. I sometimes present at seminars, and often youth are very taken by some of the information I present here in the GTA. Young Pakistanis born and raised here have limited awareness of life in Pakistan or have only heard stories from their parents’ experiences. Pakistan has changed considerably since the time of my parents and even since I lived there as a child. I see a great deal of potential in Pakistan for social work, research, business and more. It is an interesting time for the country, one of fear as well as one of extreme possibility. At least now when I say I am from Pakistan people know what I mean. Growing up in a predominantly white society, often my classmates mistook Pakistan for the capital of India. It was a proud moment for me when the Pakistani diaspora united to support earthquake relief. It was a proud moment for me when in the horror of 9/11 Muslims spoke out against the attacks on Americans and any innocent parties. I was proud to be Muslim and once again reclaim my identity and heritage.

Photos; copyright Tahmena Bokhari, used with permission.