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norafinds · 7 years

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ATWWV - Laila Shalimar

Third post of the Around The World With Vintage and I cannot be more excited for you to read this. Today I would like to introduce you to the Australian-Pakistani pin up Midcentury Mermaid aka Laila Shalimar. I was really excited when I discovered Laila as she is definitely the perfect person to feature on this series. I started this series because I wanted to talk to vintage wearers about culture, nationalities, and identities. Laila has the most fascinating stories growing up in Pakistan and moving to Australia at 16. I thought it would great for me (and you) to learn about Pakistan and its history. I asked her about the Westernised Pakistan that I've seen in vintage photographs as well as her views on being a Desi woman and a pin up girl.

Hi Laila, tell us a little bit about you!

My name is Laila Shalimar. I am a twenty something tattooed pinup of colour from Western Australia. When I am not working one of my two reception jobs, you can find me in the library of Edith Cowan University where I am a student of Criminology and Counter Terrorism. I am passionate about writing and the art of storytelling. Being able to speak 2 languages other than English, linguistics have always been a source of comfort for me. The written word has been a source of solace during some of the most isolating and vulnerable moments of my life and I am grateful to be able to share my experiences with others through the power of writing. I have had some of my pieces published by magazines such as Adore Pinup Magazine, Retro Vintage Review, Damsel Magazine, Dircksey and I hope to continue writing for as long as my mind will let me tell stories.

What is your racial and cultural background?

Because I don’t have an Anglo Australian accent, I often get people asking me where I am “really from”. This is usually after a long and embarrassing guessing game where every country but Pakistan is thrown in as a possibility. I dread these kind of interactions because it makes me feel like my accent, name and appearance prevents me from being considered “Aussie” and also because I never know how people will react to my “identity story”. For one thing, I never know whether they are asking about my ethnicity/race or where I have lived before I moved to Australia. First and foremost, I consider myself a Desi Australian. I was born in Peshawar, Pakistan to a Muslim Pashtun father and a mother of mixed Indo European ancestry. I grew up between Karachi, Islamabad, and Peshawar. I have also lived in the UK and briefly in some parts of Europe. Because I went to an English Grammar school for most my life and was practically raised on American cable, I have a very American sounding accent. I moved to Australia with my family in 2013 and have lived here ever since. Because I was sixteen at the time, I never managed to pick up an Australian accent.

People make the mistake of assuming that “Pakistani” is a racial or ethnic identity when it is merely a nationality. Pakistan is a small country that only came into existence in 1947. Prior to that it was part of the Indian subcontinent and fell under the British Raj. My father’s generation was the first generation to be born in Pakistan. My grandparents were born in British India as it was called. Pakistan hosts a multitude of races and ethnicities much like Australia does and many of us refer to ourselves as Desi or “of the motherland/subcontinent”. I like to think of myself as a Desi Australian because I have a very mixed ethnic background, most of which can be traced to the Indian subcontinent. I value all these beautiful aspects of my ethnicity and often wonder what stories lie hidden in my genes. In my appearance I see a kaleidoscope- as time progresses and my features change, I cannot help but wonder about the ancestors in the obscured and missing branches of my family tree.

First prime minister and first lady of Pakistan during their US visit. The two have been credited for the Pakistan Movement that gained the country its independence. Photo by unknown, provided by US Department of State as part of the album "Visit of his Excellency Liaquat Ali Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan, to the United States of America, May 3 to May 26, 1950." (Missouri Digital Heritage) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Tell us about your family and your childhood

My mother was 25 when she had me. She had only been married to my father for a year and they lived in a teeny tiny little studio apartment in Peshawar in a “not so desirable” part of town. My mother said she spent a lot of her pregnancy reading and eating tropical fruits. The day I made my entry into the world, she had been reading Valley of the Dolls and eating pomegranates and rock melon. It was a scorching 39 degrees and they had no air conditioning in their apartment. I was born on the 12th of June 1987, in the middle of a heatwave, in a small maternity home at 3pm in the afternoon. My parents did not know they were expecting a daughter and in a society that valued a male heir so strongly, my birth went largely unnoticed outside my immediate family. I was given an old Persian name that I wish I could share with your readership because it has the most delicate sound when pronounced correctly. I was raised in a household full of books, laughter, kitchen table science experiments and the concept of a Ubiquitous but loving God who didn’t care whether I prayed to him in the customary Arabic or my mother tongue of Pashto. I was raised to ask questions and my parent’s ensured they always answered truthfully and to the best of their knowledge.

I was soon joined by two siblings, a brother and a sister and we lived a pretty happy and carefree life amidst the political turmoil of Pakistan’s 90s. I grew up worshipping The Spice Girls, swooning over Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys, having slumber parties with my schoolmates where we watched movies like Clueless and Never been kissed over and over while painting our toenails bright blue. Summer vacations were spent finding inventive ways to stay cool during ”load-shedding” (where an entire suburb loses power for a week at a time), trips to the British Council Library in Islamabad to borrow books like Matilda and the BFG, eating gola ghanda (local shaved ices) with the other neighbourhood kids and going on long road trips to see our grandparents in Peshawar. And in the background of my childhood and early teens governments were sworn in, governments were kicked out. Each party made promises it would not or could not keep before being replaced in some kind of political ousting. Sometimes there would be Union strikes that would result in school being called off for a few days and we would grow bored and restless indoors waiting to get back to our schoolyard and our friends. Pakistan in the 90s was the best bits of the west and the east tossed together like Chaat Masala on fries, coca cola with Naan Kebab, and Friday prayers after the Power Puff Girls marathon. Had I known what was to follow in the years to come, I would have committed more to memory.

I feel like my life can neatly be divided into two parts: pre and post 9/11. The collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11th and the so called “War on Terror” that followed had a major impact on the world I lived in. While Pakistan has by no means known peace and tranquility in its short existence thanks to our politicians, our military and our religious right, this time the instability was coming from politicians in an office more than 12,000 KM away from us. In war, they say, it is children that become the first casualties of damage physical and spiritual. The thing that will haunt me for the rest of my life are the tired eyes of small Afghan children attempting to sleep in strange doorsteps on freezing winter mornings. It was October when they first started piling into Peshawar, children no older than 5 or 6 unaccompanied by parents in the back of trucks huddling together like chickens roosting. The local hospitals were full of children with injuries from shellings, shrapnel embedded in limbs that often needed amputation, sometimes with very little anaesthetic. Often times the littlest ones would perish due to chest infections left unattended. Our country did not have the finances nor the infrastructure to take on the sheer volume of refugees that were making their way across the Khyber Pass once more. Aid arrived from the UN at a snail’s pace and the US happily wrote off these people as “collateral damage” forgetting that they were the children and family of the men and women who fought the Russians for them in the 80s.

My mother and grandmothers helped where they could by organising “khairaat” (charity food) but there was never enough food to stave off hunger just as there would never be enough comfort for children displaced in the middle of the night. I remember hearing a doctor ask an Afghan boy of maybe six what he wanted to be when he grew up in an attempt to distract him from the tetanus shot he was about to receive. The boy with big fat tears rolling down his cheek replied that he wanted to be “a grown up” and look after his mother who was still “back home”. Things like these hurt to think about even a decade later. I was 15 then but when I look back I feel as if I was watching the world with old eyes. I feel younger now than I did then somehow. Perhaps it is because I am now watching the same things happen from far away, on a television set that I have the luxury to switch off. Some nights I think about that boy and his mother, and other children I saw on my way to my grandmother’s house or our in Baara Market. I can switch off the Tv but the human mind refuses to co operate in the same way.

How did your family decide to move to Australia? How was the experience like for all of you?

Shortly after my 15th birthday I fell into a deep and unshakeable depression. It manifested itself in very violent and angry behaviour. I got into numerous physical fights, refused to hand in assignments and spent most of my time in the school library reading instead of attending classes. I remember thinking of the futility of education when it was likely that we would all end up dead at the flick of a button. What was the point of calculus, social studies and human biology in the event of an all out World War like they kept talking about on TV when I went home every evening sulking, writing terribly morose journal entries in my diary and crying myself to sleep. I could not eat because of constant anxiety and made several attempts to end my own life when it got out of hand. My parent’s sensed that the environment I was in was causing me great distress. They were also extremely worried about the political circumstances in Pakistan and what it meant for my father’s job and our futures. My parents had applied for American, Canadian, Dutch and Australian visas. The interview processes were often followed by months of silence and then rejection letters. In January 2003, I was 6 months shy of my 16th birthday, due to sit my O level exams and had completely stopped attending school altogether. My parents were frantic. What future was there for a woman in Pakistan especially if she didn’t even have a basic high school graduation? They tried over and over to talk to me about my poor performance at school and my lacklustre behaviour at home but to no avail. I was not living, merely surviving day to day, waiting for something to drop on my house or hurt someone I loved. It was an awful time for me.

On the 11th of March 2004 at 2pm in the afternoon, I was at home with my father who was reading a newspaper in the living room. I remember every detail of this day because that was the day the mailman brought the one envelope that changed the rest of my life. I cannot remember if it was from the Australian Embassy or whether it was from my father’s colleague who had ties to the embassy but I remember him opening the envelope, reading its contents several times before looking like he was going to throw up. “As of tomorrow” he said “I want you to start considering options for your future. Australia is a very competitive country with very intelligent people and you’re going to need to be on top of your class to go to their Universities”. That was it. We were moving to Australia. My family had been granted a 5 year multiple visa and with it came the option of residency and citizenship. The only catch was that we had to be in Australia by the 5th of May. We had little under 2 months to move across continents and start a new life.

With a suitcase and a backpack each, we said our final goodbyes to family and relatives at Peshawar Airport. One of my father’s work colleagues accompanied us to the terminal gates. They had been friends since college. I heard from my mother several years later that he had been assassinated. Rumour was that someone from a rival political party had decided to take a hit out on him to ensure a district election win. The more I think about things like this, the more I take comfort in the workings of Australia’s political and legal system. It is by no means perfect but the safety it offers those of us who are lucky enough to yield it is comforting.

Does your love of vintage stem from your cultural background?

There is a Pashtun saying that our home comes alive in our stories. That is to say our histories and therefore our cultural identity provides us with a sense of belonging or home and this really resonates with me. My family moved to Australia on such short notice, with such little time on our hands that there was never any closure. We barely brought anything with us to the new country to remember it by. I never got to say goodbye properly to my life, my family or friends. I was under the impression that our move was temporary and that I would one day return to my life as I left it. Nearly 14 years have passed and I have not visited “home”. I have lost grandparents, schoolmates, and relatives. Shops, restaurants and parks I went to as a child have been reduced to rubble or ruin. People have moved on. The Pakistan I felt safe in, the Pakistan I grew up in is like a little figurine in a snow globe, a place frozen in time, in a little bubble of reminiscence. There is no reclaiming it nor will I be able to return to those carefree and happy times.

We have seen numerous articles about how Westernised Pakistan was before the 1980s. Is there a lot of vintage now in Pakistan? Do people hold on to those memorabilia or were they destroyed?

One of my favourite pieces of furniture back home was a chest of drawers that my mother had as a teenager in the 1970s. The drawers were part of an old deco set that my maternal grandparents were given as a wedding gift. In the topmost drawer, underneath some very “groovy” 60s lining paper was a little peace symbol, “Janis Joplin forever” and my mother’s initials. When I inherited the bedroom set at 13, my mother showed me this little bit of graffiti and said “When I was a teenager, i wrote this in the drawer to piss your grandmother off”. I was equal parts mesmerised and weirded out. My mother was once a teenager who liked scribbling on furniture to make her mother angry. When I recounted this story in my year 12 drama class, my classmates attempted to discredit me. In their minds it was impossible to believe that a teenager that lived in 1970s Pakistan had ever heard of Janis Joplin. The Pakistan they had heard of in pre social media 2003 was the one overrun by the Taliban and women in blue burqas. It was hard for them to comprehend the Pakistan my parents grew up in.

My father fondly recounts stories of his American Hippie friends whom he met in Peshawar restaurants en route to Kabul. They had been traveling from India and wanted to visit the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan. Pakistan was an important destination on what was called the "hippie trail" – an overland route taken by young western backpackers between 1967 and 1979 that ran from Turkey, across Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, usually ending in Nepal. Numerous low-budget hotels and a thriving tourist industry sprang up (in Peshawar, Lahore and Karachi) to accommodate these travellers. The hippie trail began eroding after the 1977 military coup in Pakistan, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and the beginning of the Afghan civil war (in 1979).

My father delighted in telling me stories of discos and cinemas in Kabul and how he and his cousins would go on weekend trips to buy the latest in American style fashion from the markets there. I have seen photos of my mum in smart embroidered Kaftans wearing ridiculously wide bell bottom trousers topped off with big round sunnies. Like many teenage Pakistani girls of her time, my mother’s fashion choices were influenced by the 1974 box-office hit Miss Hippie. A cautionary tale of sorts, the film depicted the "effect hippie lifestyle and fashion were having on Pakistani youth" but ironically this movie seemed to draw more and more youngsters into the hippie fashion scene. When my parents and my relatives talk on skype its not long before the conversation turns to “the good ol days in Pakistan” and if I had not seen the photos with my own eyes I too would have thought they were lying to me. Live music, great food, lots of booze and dancing were the hallmarks of the scene in cities like Karachi and Lahore. Sadly, a lot of the amazing venues and attractions they spoke so lovingly about were closed down by Military Dictator Zia Ul Haq’s government in April 1977.

[Hippie trail into Aghanistan] - By Karte: NordNordWest, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-sa-3.0 de, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, Link

Is there any Pakistani vintage piece that you covet?

There are 3 pieces that I hold very dear to me that I managed to bring with me from Pakistan. The first is a pair of gold earrings my grandmother wore at one of her wedding events in the 50s. My mother wore the very same earrings to her engagement party in 1985 and I wore them as part of my day wear for Miss Pinup Australia 2016. The second is a pair of italian leather shoes my grandmother pestered my grandfather to buy her from Bata Shoes in the late 60s. The number of times they have been cobbled and resoled is incredible! I still wear them in photo shoots from time to time. The last and most important piece to me is my grandmothers rosary. My grandfather had bought her the rosary when he went to Mecca to pay pilgrimage in the early 60s. They are made of a strange kind of early plastic that glows in the dark. My grandmother would constantly be clicking the beads of the rosary, passing each through her nimble calloused fingers, reading short passages from the Quraan. She was hardly ever seen without them. The last time I saw her, she was sitting in front of an old gas heater all misty eyed with her rosary in her hand. When I sat next to her tying my shoelaces, she looked at me and said “i want you to borrow this rosary from me for now but remember to bring it back with you from Australia”. My grandmother passed away two years ago. The rosary has been on my night stand for 14 years, i never got a chance to return it to her.

Are there many Desi women in the vintage scene?

I think there have always been a number of us interested in vintage in some form of the other but the problem has always been exposure to our history and one another. With the advent of social media platforms such as instagram and facebook, we have started becoming more visible. It has become easy to find treasure troves of images, articles and videos from the bygone days showcasing our unique cultures. I know of several vintage loving Desi women that I met on autonomous Women of Colour spaces but wouldn’t have otherwise met because they are self conscious of how they look in vintage. The fact that the presentation of vintage culture and pin up culture is so euro and anglocentric makes a lot of pinups of colour, particularly darker skinned and more ethnic looking pinups feel too self conscious to put themselves out on social media. They often feel like they are “doing it wrong”. Our features and even our vintage ethnic fashion don’t readily fall into the already pre ordained and celebrated vintage or pinup look. An example of this is how coveted pale and almost snowy white skin is in the vintage community. Darker skinned Desi women are already maligned in their own communities for their complexions, and yet are indirectly made to feel unwanted and unattractive in their beloved subculture as well. It is harder for Desi pinups to gain visibility and popularity on social media because history has never placed us in a position to be thought about or considered desirable or conventionally attractive.

Do you find it difficult to be a Desi woman in the pin up industry? Do you think people are surprised that Desi women can and want to be sexy?

I remember when I raised the issue of the lack of diversity in Pinup and vintage publications in Adore Pinup Magazine last year. There was a slough of accusations thrown at myself and the magazine. I was labelled everything from a “reverse racist”, to “a toxic negative nancy”, to a “jealous and ungrateful pinup” all for that one article that discussed the need for change in the Australian vintage scene and the global pinup industry. Apparently, if you are a Desi woman, or a woman of colour, you are expected to be grateful for the one or two token pinups of colour a magazine publishes a year. God forbid you raise hell over the lack of diversity you see in the vintage scene or if you attempt to claim an autonomous online space to celebrate women like yourself. I was lucky that the editor of Adore Pinup Magazine, Brianna Blackheart, addressed the issues I discussed in the article publicly on all of Adore’s social media platforms and backed me up in my arguments. I don’t think I would have continued writing about these issues without her support so early on in my writing.

As far as creating Desi and PoC representation in vintage and pinup goes, the conservative desis in the community feel that I am too racy, too vocal and too sexual to “appropriately” represent Desi femininity while the conservative non PoC feel that I am trying to create a “racial divide” by working on projects such as Pinups of Colour that exclusively celebrates racially and ethnically diverse pinup communities. There is no winning! I feel like people want women like myself to pick a very narrow and carefully constructed box and sit in it very quietly. Every now and then a nice whitewashed hand will come in and either grab my ethnic outfits to be appropriated and if I am VERY good and quiet I will be paraded around like a ventriloquist's dummy parroting phrases that implying (non existent) diversity in the scene. I am sorry but I cannot do that. I refuse to shrink myself to make other people feel comfortable by helping to maintain a status quo and it is just as well as I find it impossible to follow guidelines in order to fit into these boxes anyway!

Staff and students of St Patrick's Teachers' Training College, Karachi, 1956. You can see that for some time during the 1950s-1970s Pakistan strongly adopted Western fashion and culture - Source - Wikimedia Commons.

How did you start wearing vintage? Have you been back since? How do you think you will be accepted there with your tattoos and your look?

I will be honest, I spent my teenage years riddled with insecurity and self doubt because I was one of the few ethnic Desi girls in my predominantly white high school. I stuck out like a sore thumb and at a time where there was a growing mistrust of people from Muslim countries, I was either isolated by my peers or ostracised by them. Vintage clothing gave me a way to feel comfortable with a body that at times felt like a battlefield. As a new migrant whose parents didn’t have much of an income, op-shopping was equal parts necessity and thrill! Much like vintage fashion, tattoos have helped me embrace my body. I wouldn’t say all my tattoos have stories behind them but a vast majority of them were inspired by moments in my life where I felt something move me to my core. I view my body as a passport and see each tattoo as a little stamp for moments in my journey, from my darkest moments to the happier ones.

Tattooing in the Indian subcontinent is not unheard of but it isn’t as common as it is in Australia. This is partly due to conservative culture in countries with little separation between church and state. Tribal facial tattoos were common among the early pagan Pashtuns, however, my ethnic group gave up these customs upon the advent of Arab Islam in the 12th century. While some tribal women in Pakistan’s far north still practise stick and poke facial tattooing, a manual method involving charcoal pigment being inserted into the skin using hand fashioned bone needles, tattooing as a Pashtun art form is almost non existent these days. When our tattooing history is brought up in conversations nowadays, our people refer to that period in our history as the “dark ages” and dismiss the practise as uncivilised. As I haven’t visited Pakistan since starting my body modification journey, I really don’t know how people would react to my body art or style of dressing. I suppose it would be no different to how tattooed ladies got treated in the 20s and 30s in America or Australia!

What is the one thing you want people to know about you?

I am one of those people who is passionate about social justice issues, particularly issues pertaining to the representation and rights of people of colour. Sometimes this passion is severely misread as spiteful. I am angry. Of course! How can you not be angry in this day and age when women, especially women of colour, receive the short end of the stick? My anger derives from hurt, from isolation and from the yearning to have my identity recognised as valid. It is frustrating to be denied representation in the subcultures I love. It is disappointing to be overlooked on the basis of appearance. It is heartbreaking to be denied a space in my own ethnic and cultural group because I defy convention. I am angry but I am not doing it to be spiteful. I am doing it because nice women seldom make history. There are some people who have the luxury to stand by idly and watch the world plummet into darkness. I do not have this luxury. It’s not in my nature nor is it in my favour to do so. Besides, I would much rather be a cactus than a wallflower any day.

#norafinds #around the world with vintage #atwwv #interview #series #blog #pakistan #pakistani #australian #australia #pin up #midcentury mermaid #laila shalimar

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