“Why have you come to Pakistan? Don’t you like your own country? Is it a bad country?”
Afsary, Bibi and I were sitting on a rope bed in front of their small house talking about many things – how expensive goods are in the bazaar, how much I paid for my dress and how much they paid for the materials in their clothes, how many brothers and sisters I have, etc. – when Afsary asked me this question.
Afsary is the 18-year-old daughter of our local Evangelist, and Bibi is his wife. Afsary and Bibi are still Muslims. I go out several evenings a week to spend an hour with them. They are both in “purdah” (live behind walls and won’t let their faces be seen by men other than close relatives) and often don’t get out of their small square yard for months at a time, so they welcome the diversion of my visit.
On this evening we had been talking while Afsary mixed and kneaded bread for their supper, and now she was resting a minute while it was baking. She made the bread out of “atta” (coarse wheat flour) and water. She formed four large balls out of the dough – one for her mother, one for her father, one for herself and one for the two small children – and slapped them back and forth from hand to hand until they became round and flat in shape, about 12 inches in diameter and 1 inch thick. She and her mother had made an oven out of mud – round with the opening on the top. Into that Afsary put dry leaves and sticks and started a fire. For about 20 minutes she kept the fire going. When the fire was almost out she took the bread and plastered it on the sides of the inside of the oven. I looked into the oven before she did that and saw that the sides were black with soot. We watched as the bread began to puff and to turn brown. Then she put a tin cover over the top of the oven and we went to sit down while it finished baking.
They wondered if we used that kind of oven in our country, and then, Afsary’s question, “Why have you come to Pakistan? Is your own country a bad country?”
“No,” I answered, “it is a very good country and I like it very much.”
“Well, then” asked Bibi, “don’t you love your mother and father and sisters and brothers – is that why you left them to come here?”
“No,” I replied, putting my hand over my heart as they do when they feel something strongly, “I love them very, very much and miss them every day.”
“Then why did you leave them and come to our country?” asked Afsary again.
Again I put my hand over my heart and said, “Because I love the Lord Jesus most of all and in our Book it says that we should go to every country in the world and tell everybody about him. That is why we’ve come. We want you to love him too.”
They both said, “hao, hao” (“yes” in Pushtu) and Bibi repeated several times, “love for Jesus, love for Jesus.”
Just then Afsary remembered her bread and ran to the oven to get it out. It was done and surprisingly clean on the bottom where it had been on the sooty oven sides. I had to taste a piece as usual. It is very heavy and soggy and not pleasing to our taste, but they are so anxious to have me like it that I must eat it with relish.
I looked at my watch and saw that it was 7:30 – time for Afsary’s father and Frank [Billie’s husband] to come home from the Reading Room for supper. We said good-bye with many “salaams” and assured each other that we would meet again soon.