Karl Marx once said: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it.” While Marx would have wanted a communist party to carry out the task, writers from the United States have accepted the burden of doing so on their own: a group of fellows from the International Writing Program (IWP) is on a trip to Pakistan, attempting to understand Pakistani society, polity and people.
IWP is a writing residency programme for international writers and artists that is based in Iowa City. Writers, poets and filmmakers from around the globe are invited to the programme to provide them enabling and favourable conditions to produce their creative work.
This is the first time that any group of IWP fellows has visited Pakistan. And the group is comprised of heavyweights: Joshua Ferris, author of ‘Then We Came to the End’ which has published so far in 25 languages; journalist and author of ‘The Tenth Parallel’ Eliza Griswold; University of Iowa’s Program Officer of Iowa Writers Program Kelly Bedeian; and documentary filmmaker Ram Devineni.
The IWP fellows met with a group of print and electronic journalists, columnists and social activists on Tuesday at a local hotel. The event was arranged by the US Consulate in Karachi.
“I asked my father what he knew about Pakistan, and all that he replied was Muslims, extremism and suicide bomb attacks. But after personally visiting Pakistan, I discovered something entirely different. I realized that the Pakistani people want to know more about the United States,” Ferris said.
“During my visit to Pakistan, I visited different places and found that people wanted to talk about and share their experience. They want to know about the US, and I feel that writers, poets and novelists, media persons and filmmakers of Pakistan and United States must work to bring the people of both countries closer,” he said.
Ferris argued that people are sick of wars, claiming that they are “nothing else but a reason behind increasing grief and poverty.” He said that many people in the US feel this way, and they want to see peace. The same is the case with Pakistan and Pakistanis, he said.
Eliza Griswold said that a section of the media in both countries should portray why the gap between citizens of both countries has increased. “To bring the citizens of both countries closer, media persons, writers and others involved in communication must work hard,” she said.
Kelly Bedeian, while responding a suggestion on the creation of a forum of writers, intellectuals, columnists and authors from both countries to exchange ideas and work together to create cultural and social understanding, said that she would talk to people in the US who could make this proposal a reality.