Its All About Pakistan (Video) by Diego Buñuel

   

My name is Diego Buñuel, host and director of the series, "Don’t Tell My Mother", on the National Geographic Channel. I am a French foreign news correspondent, and the grandson of the renowned Spanish film director, Luis Buñuel. I was born in Paris, and have bachelor degrees in journalism and political science from Northwestern University in Chicago, USA.

After graduating, I did an internship at the Chicago Tribune before moving to Florida to handle the police beat for the Sun-Sentinel in Miami. The French military drafted me to serve in Sarajevo. I worked for NATO’s weekly armed forces newspaper and travelled all over the war-torn Balkans. My 10-month experience in the service inspired me to become a war correspondent. In 2001, I joined the Capa Television Agency where I produced and reported for French television. My assignments focused on international affairs from Afghanistan, Congo, Iraq, Indonesia, Israel, China and North Korea amon.

A techie-mullah in your local madrassa … a sex gear factory opposite the neighborhood mosque … long treks on breathtakingly beautiful snow-covered mountains … rocking parties at the beach with wine, women and a drag artist cum TV anchor who has become a household name – does it sound like the Islamic, militant-infested Pakistan that is the staple diet of the western media?

Laced with humor and light-hearted banter with the locals, Diego Buñuel's Don’t Tell My Mother I’m in Pakistan originally aired on the National Geographic Channel as part of a television series where the journalist travelled to many ‘troubled’ countries (Colombia, Iran) and aimed to go beyond the headlines to discover the people and culture. The “Pakistan” episode is now available on DVD locally. It discovers the real Pakistan – but with a twist.

In Karachi, Buñuel begins his journey with a trip to the ‘infamous’ madrassas. But instead of unearthing a cupboard filled with arsenal or fanatic preachers, he comes across affable men with beards. They inform him that the students who rock back and forth while reading the Quran only do so to prevent themselves from falling asleep. The head-honcho of the establishment is the very busy but jocular Mullah Naeem, who is surrounded by CCTVs and telephones that are constantly ringing. And it gets even better. Opposite the neighborhood mosque is a factory – but this is not just any ordinary factory. Employing around 50 local women as seamstresses, this unit fetches over a million dollars a year for gear they stitch for sale in sex shops abroad. Buñuel looks at the black masks and red sassy outfits and asks the factory owners, the Kadeer brothers, the inevitable question: Doesn’t this go against the tenets of Islam? The Kadeers don’t seem to think so.

Later, the French correspondent parties with celebrities at the Karachi beach. Disco lights gleam in the background and alcohol flows freely as Ali Saleem, a local cross-dressing celebrity, welcomes his gora guest to Pakistan.

Onwards to the more decrepit city of Hyderabad, a few hours away from Karachi, Buñuel rides on an ambulance with a former cop and a doctor who tends to Sindhi farmers. With a well-entrenched feudal system and 1.5 million farmers in the chains of bonded labor, local women complain of rape and plunder by the ruthless zamindars.

In Punjab, the scene opens with Buñuel crushed in the middle of a wildly enthusiastic crowd at Wagah – the 1,200-mile border between “enemy” countries India and Pakistan. Every evening the spectators view the same scene being played out – flags of India and Pakistan are raised and lowered to the cheering and jeering of raucous crowds. Buñuel says it reminds him of a “crazy football match.” He seems at ease amidst the locals, dancing and waving frantically, chanting “Pakistan Zindabad” along with them. Buñuel proceeds to spend time with the transvestite community of Lahore, and then heads off to the snowy hill stations.

Skardu, a paradise tucked away in the secluded Himalayan Range, was a major tourist attraction, prior to 9/11. But now it resembles a ghost town. The manager of the local hotel called Shangri-La introduces Buñuel to the untapped potential of Pakistan’s tourist industry and the beauty of the place, which Buñuel likens to Switzerland.

Because of it’s television-series origins, Don’t Tell My Mother I’m in Pakistan is too short a documentary to really give you an in-depth view of the realities on ground, but it offers a much-needed respite from the barrage of Taliban and terrorism-related docs on Pakistan.

This article appears in the November 2010 issue of Newsline under the title “Pakistan with a Twist.”

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