Ap Kaise Zardar?

Zardar (standing) with Arif and Ajab the chokidar on our rooftop in Zamzama, Karachi. (Pic by S)

The year was 2005. S was sent for posting to Karachi, Pakistan. So, there we were, the kids, S and I had our first taste of life in a foreign country. So foreign that we could not imagine how it was going to be. Anyway, it was during this stint there we met a man called Zardar, a Pakistani man from Peshawar. He was to be S's driver.

When we first met Zardar, it was when he drove up to the lobby of Sheraton Hotel where we had been staying for 2 weeks while waiting for our stuff to be shipped in from Malaysia. After two weeks of being driven around by an AVIS driver, Zardar was certainly "different". To be honest, I was scared of him then. He looked intimidating with his moustache and unkempt look. And he drove like a maniac too! (Honking and and high beam flashings were nothing unusual to Karachi drivers apparently). To make matters worse, he could not speak a word of English! "Oh dear.." I thought.

A few days later, Zardar turned up at our house as he usually did every morning, this time looking different. This time he was clean shaven (save for that moustache), with neat, shorter hair and pressed shalwar kameez. We were pleasantly surprised. All the more surprised when he greeted S with "Good Morning Kamar Saab". In English! Kamar Saab is Mr. Kamar(ul) in Urdu by the way. I was excited. Zardar knew a bit of English after all! Then I spoke back to him (in English of course) and Zardar just looked puzzled...Hahaha, he couldn't understand what I was saying. Apparently the "Good Morning" bit was just something he has just picked up and nothing more!

One week later, after communicating in sign language I thought to myself that this had to stop. It was frustrating when we couldn't understand each other. I made a pact with him. I would teach him English and in return he would teach me Urdu. He agreed excitedly and a couple of months later, he spoke a smattering of English and I, Urdu. It came to a point when we were in a conflict when he refused to speak in Urdu and I refused to speak in English! In the end we still spoke to each other in two different languages! Hahaha...that was so funny!

Zardar turned out to be a very hardworking man. He will come to the house early in the morning and set out to do his daily duties. Wash the car, send the kids to school, come back to the house, send Kamar Saab to the office, come back again, send the laundry to the Dhobi Wallah, run errands, bring "Madam" (ehem..that's me) to wherever she wants to go to kill her time (either window shopping, visiting Malaysian friends or grocery shooping at Aghaz). then pick up the kids and Kamar Saab back to the house for lunch and on and on and on....His work seldom ended early in the night. There were times when he had to work really late especially when we had to attend official functions. He would wait around by the roadside with other drivers and never once, he complained about his long hours. Sometimes we really took a pity on him but we had no choice because S didn't have Karachi driving license and besides, driving in Karachi was simply out of the question. One must have the heart of steel to be able to drive around in Karachi. The traffic was just insane!


"Madam" spending her rupees at Naveed's...(Pic by S)


Zardar, carrying Arif. (Pic by S)

Zardar was also popular with my kids. They simply adored him. He would spend his free evenings playing basketball and cricket with them. He would go to the shop and get candies for them. When Arif was sick, I remembered him offering to sleep over at the servant's quarters just in case we needed to go to the hospital in the middle of the night. And we did go to the hospital that night and were so thankful that he was around then.

Zardar also liked to play and joke around with his Kamar Saab. They shared secret jokes in the car and laughed out loud together, often leaving me wondering at the back of the car what they were laughing about. S would sometimes play basketball with him and show some karate chops to him as Zardar's favourite movies are kung fu movies. "Chinis movies" he would say....hehehe.

Zardar would also occasionally helped me in the kitchen and also helped fixed stuff around the house. We actually have another helper (a chokidar) to help me at home but I was more comfortable having him to help me out. He was a pleasant and hardworking person and everybody in the house liked him.

When it was time for us to leave Karachi and moved back to Malaysia, Zardar was as cheerful as usual. At least he appeared to be cheerful. But we knew that he was sad. We had bonded with him and we were very sad to leave him. We persuaded him to visit us in Malaysia and he excitedly agreed to do so. But until the last moments before we left, we still failed to get visa clearance for him.

So, good bye Zardar. We hope to see you in Malaysia one day. We will definitely take you around KL but bear in mind you will definitely not be behind the wheel this time! Not with your driving style, you will never survive the roads here in Malaysia. You could end up in the hospital not because of an accident or anything but because you would end up being beaten by our road bullies for all your high beam flashings and honkings!!!

"Ap Kaise Zardar?" (How are you Zardar?)