“Tourism Brings Emotional Issues to a Practical Level”

Parag Khanna’s recent trip to Lahore, Pakistan—he traveled with his father, who was returning to the place he was born for the first time since the 1947 partition that created the country—was a revelation. As an American of Indian descent, Khanna wondered how he and his family would be received in Pakistan. The surprises began the moment they arrived.

“On our first morning in Lahore, my parents and I, with our local driver, Latif, wandered through the sprawling market district of Anarkali, following a crude map drawn from dim memories by my great uncle in New Delhi: past the bamboo market, a left before the King Edward Medical College, adjacent to a narrow staircase leading to a white masjid (mosque),” he writes in a touching New York Times essay. “Sensing that we were lost, people stopped to help. Dad communicated in Punjabi. Passers-by, shopkeepers and bicyclists tried to help us correct our multiple wrong turns and sent us to an octogenarian tailor who stood hunched over his wooden cart of fabric and needles. Hearing that we were Indian, he asked our name, hoping to cross-reference with memories too strong to fade. Our apprehensions dissolved.”

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