Haider Imran & The Silk Road

I was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. I used to travel a lot with my parents when I was younger since my dad was a ship captain. I’d been to a good 10 or 15 countries by the time I was 3. But I don’t remember most of that.

I started preschool in Pakistan, but I moved to the US when I was 4. I knew English already but I perfected it by watching Pokémon and PBS. We moved to Houston in the end of 2000, and I did all my high school in North Houston.

I started college thinking it would be hard, but that wasn’t the case. I came in as a Supply Chain Management major, but always wanted to be a dentist so I did my SCM and science classes at the same time.

You know how when kids are young they’re like ‘I want to be a doctor?’ Yeah, that was me. I wanted to be a dentist. I always wanted to be a healthcare professional, but I didn’t want to be a doctor because I didn’t like that lifestyle. I can’t see myself being some 45 year old guy in a clinic, being like, ‘Oh, hi, how are you, how’s the knee? Alright, here’s some medicine, bye.’ If you have your own clinic, you set your own hours and you have people working under you.

I recently went to Pakistan and I’d like to say I’m pretty in tune with my culture. If I go there, I put on some traditional clothes and nobody can tell I’m American. I went mostly to see my Grandma, but I had some free time, so I went to the Northern areas to travel the Silk Road with my cousins and a family friend and professional driver, Majeed.

It was a five day trip. We started from Islamabad and went to the northern province of Gilgit-Baltistan. We saw the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen in my life. Every day, I’d tell my cousins it couldn’t get better, and every day, it got better. Every day I’d ask myself, “is this place even real?” It was magical.

One day, after a long drive going from Gilgit to Skardu, we set up camp at Satpara Lake. One of my cousins had been there twice before, and he set up camp with his friends, no problem.

We have dinner and relax. Then night falls. It’s about 10 o’clock at night.

We’re by the lake shore, and there’s one way in, and one way out. Satpara means Seven Mountains, and these tall mountains are imposing on all sides, covering up the moon. The sun went down three hours ago, and you can see the Milky Way up in the sky. Majeed was in the car because he had a bad feeling about this place and how isolated it was. We were like “Whatever, Majeed, you’re being paranoid, old man.”

I’m brushing my teeth and I have my flashlight in my hand. I see this motorcycle up ahead across the lake. No one should be out there on a motorcycle at that time, so I’m thinking, “What is this guy doing?” I flash my flashlight at him to see if he needs help. He doesn’t flash back.

I see there’s a few more motorcyclists, and they’ve seen my flashlight, and they’re all heading down towards us. Usually the guys in this area are super nice. If they actually needed some help they would say hi, and ask. These guys just bike past us without making eye contact.

Majeed is extra freaked out now. This whole trip, Majeed was like, “I’ve got this pistol underneath my seat.” And we’re like, whatever, yeah right. But he actually did have a pistol. Majeed takes out the gun, puts it in his waistband, and goes up to one of the motorcyclists who came close to us. He said, “Hey, what are you doing here?” But Majeed doesn’t get an answer. Instead, the motorcyclist takes out his cell phone and starts dialing someone.

Everything is getting really hostile. The motorcyclist is trying to yell at his friend. By now, Majeed knows — we all know — what’s going on. We start getting everything packed up.

My cousin is trying to fold up our tent, but he’s confused and he’s wasting time. Majeed gets agitated and tells my cousin to throw it in the back and get on top of the tent. So now, my cousin is facing the back of the road in the bed of the truck, sprawled on the tent. We all get inside the car and start moving.

More motorcyclists are coming down the path, but we speed up, so they get out of the way. When we get closer to the top, we hear tapping on the side of the car. It’s my cousin in the bed of the truck. He yells, ‘they’re right behind us, they’re right behind us!!!’ We keep going. We get to this point where the glacial runoff creates a bend in the road, and there’s a minivan waiting for us over there that boxes us in. But Majeed drives our truck on the edge of the cliff and we somehow make it out.

We get to this hotel 10 or 15 minutes away. We get inside the gate, turn our lights off, and put our heads over the gate to see what’s happening. It’s dark and nobody can see us from the road. Eventually we see the motorcyclists have caught up, but they just ride on ahead, and we watch them from inside the gate as they zoom on by like something from Scooby Doo. So we got away.

The next day we were headed to Deosai National Park. We get stopped by a boulder in the road and we’re approached by some teenagers. There are a bunch of nomads everywhere in this area — they’re people from Punjab that take their horses, cows, and goats up into the National Park where it’s lush, to come and graze.

They asked us for fever medicine so I gave them 2 Advil but I told them I wanted something in return. They had a good 100, 150 goats, so I was like, ‘Yeah, give me one of your goats.’ So we got a goat. They gave us one of the smaller ones. We tied it up, put it in the bed of our truck, and drove away.

My trip on the Silk Road made me appreciate Pakistan more. It’s something not a lot of people do. It makes me want to go back. It makes me want to see the Indian part of Kashmir too, because that’s also nice, but they tell Pakistani people to renounce their citizenship if they want to go to India.

My dad’s been to 146 countries. My mom’s been to 70-something. It’s crazy. My dad was all salty, saying, “Back in my day we only had 120 countries.” We tell our mom she lives like a queen. All she’s done the past 9 years is travel first class. And when she comes home, she’s jetlagged, so she doesn’t cook for like a week — but don’t tell her that. You can’t tell her that. She’ll get mad.

There’s more interesting people in my family than me. They’ve seen history. My great grandfather was a poor soldier, then my grandfather became the first in his village to join the army. My grandfather told his children to do their best and that’s exactly what they do to this day.

When he first moved to Houston, my dad’s salary was probably $50,000. My dad had a family of four and kids to feed. My brother got a new job and he’s making $200,000. He’s 28, and now he’s making four times as much as my dad was. And when I become a dentist, I’ll be making way more than my brother. And that’s what it’s all about. That’s the American dream. This the land of opportunity, the land of freedom.

You should always strive for upward mobility, social stratification — and that’s coming from an immigrant, because most of the people I went to high school with, they’re not doing anything with their lives. And why? They were born with more opportunity than me. But my kids will become that kid born with privilege. It’s an endless cycle — what can I do? Eventually someone else is going to have to struggle. It’s because people are complacent with what they’re given. It’s always been like that. The cure is hard work.

Emma Kathleen Armer

Houston born and raised. Analyst by trade. Humble & unafraid. www.emmaarmer.com

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