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Born Abroad (A 1980s Pakistan Photo Thread)


Fist 666

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Inspired by @misteraven's 70s-00s thread I started digging into some recently digitized family slides. 

 

I was born in Qalandarabad, Pakistan in the Himalayan foothills in 1984 to christian missionaries. Here are a bunch of family pics (mostly embarrassing) and random shit from my childhood over there. Some of these are before my time, order is fucked, and I'll probably slip a duplicate or two in, but you get the idea. Obviously my parents were not photographers...

 

City pics are likely Karachi. Mountain pics are either Murree, Qalandarabad, Abbotabad (where they killed OBL), Rawalpindi, or some random spot in between. 

 

People are either my family, family friends, or complete strangers on the backs of some poor animal.  I have to assume my love of brown women started here.

 

 

 

 

 

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Birth of little bro.

 

 

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Reading with my grandfather, RIP

 

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First dog, Sentry

 

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I believe this is my second or third birthday party. 

 

That's all Folks. Thanks for looking, I'll answer any questions I can.

 

No I am not a dual citizen and no I don't speak Urdu anymore (though it was functionally my first language as much as English was)

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@KILZ FILLZ There was a six month furlough in Washington state in 86/87 and then finally home in 1990, so I was six when we moved to Chicagoland. My parents wanted to go back for another 4 year stint but the PK government had accused my dad of being a spy and would not renew our visas. I am forever grateful for that hilariously wrong accusation. 

 

@Ko SprueOneThat would have been 85 or 86, somewhere outside Murree I believe--I'm sure my parents could get the exact date and location as that Rover was being driven by family friends (they were fine). I have several more photos from the vehicle recovery I'll organize and post.

 

@Drue_Down We were there til I was six so I have very real memories of it. I have memories from as early as age 2 and 3, which is apparently odd, I think it has to do with the fact that my family looked at photos and shared photos and told the stories around them from an early age with an uncomfortable frequency that kept things in the memory. Also, that I have distinct time/place differentiation helps clarify/delineate age to memories. 

 

@WorldBenchAfghanistan was a mental trip for me because of this experience. I ended up at the Wesh ABP station for the second half of my deployment, right on the PK border (One night mission I took a few steps over the border just to say I'd been back). The smells and aesthetics were hardcore flashbacks to early childhood, it was wild seeing mangoes and guavas with the exact packaging I'd seen as a little kid. milk pack, too. The trucks, diesel fumes, cooking oil smells, all of it was a weird trip down memory lane for sure. It was fun speaking the little bit of Urdu I still know to the kids and having them being confused as fuck that I could count to ten with them...

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These are great photos. Oddly enough it brings back memories. 
 

my american aunt got married to her husband in Karachi. Had three kids and left her husband to come come back to the states when she was pregnant with the fourth. In like late 70s, early 80s. it was an extremely difficult time I guess for her to do that 


eventually the children (cousins)  would visit relatives in Karachi every other summer and brought back these fantastic dolls and tea sets and jade trinkets and all that kind of stuff. I wish I still had the dolls but I still have a few items. 
She would cook el tradition al Pakistan food for us as children.  
I wish I had my hands on the photos from when she lived there. 
 

Would you ever return to visit? 

 

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One memory those pics stir is of the crazy mountain roads that are just carved and blasted into serious mountains with insane drops, and people crowd into and hang off the sides of buses like its nothing. Buses dropping off cliffs and killing 50+ people isn't an uncommon headline. 

 

This is the worst of the worst, but I've been on similar. 

 

 

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Spent about 2 hours total in here, whoever took all those photos really knew what they were doing, compared to people who carry a camera in their pocket 24/7 these days. Makes me wish I could scan all my old film photos, but they aren't this good lol.

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2 hours ago, Fist 666 said:

One memory those pics stir is of the crazy mountain roads that are just carved and blasted into serious mountains with insane drops, and people crowd into and hang off the sides of buses like its nothing. Buses dropping off cliffs and killing 50+ people isn't an uncommon headline. 

 

This is the worst of the worst, but I've been on similar. 

 

 

Documentary was nuts. So crazy to see how some people live. Can’t even imagine what they’d think of how we live. 

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