A Jew In Pakistan

"I want the government to recognize the Jews as a minority in Pakistan."
Fishel (Faisal) Benkhald, Pakistani Engineer

"Naturally there is an anti-Israel feeling which is very strong. But this is our heritage, irrespective of whether we are Jewish, Muslim or Christian, and we have to protect it."
Arif Hasan, Karachi architect, provincial government cultural heritage committee 

"There are people who want to come over and make this a Muslim graveyard. They tell us we will give you money to give this area to us."
Chand Arif, graveyard caretaker

Abandoned Jewish cemetery (illustration)

Flash 90
 

Faisal Benkhald considers himself to be the last Jew in Pakistan. And he feels it to be his responsibility to see that Pakistan's largest city with a population of 20 million people honours its heritage by preserving the old Jewish cemetery. He is not Jewish, however, he was raised a Muslim; father Muslim, mother an Iranian Jew. He is honouring the memory of his mother and the former Jewish residents of Pakistan who were forced to leave the country in fear of their lives.

Traditional anti-Jewish attitudes had been amplified on the occasion of the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. Although there is now no Jewish population, anti-Semitism in Pakistan is endemic and fierce. So a man with a Muslim father and Jewish mother who identifies himself as a Jew, despite his Pakistani ID listing him as a Muslim is either horribly foolhardy or passionately devoted to justice and fairness and the need to honour history.


He has sent letters to authorities, he has launched a Twitter campaign, and his requests have been ignored by authorities. The cemetery continues to disintegrate. It has, in fact, been cared for by Chand Arif and his extended family, for several generations. They and their goats are in virtual control of the cemetery. And they seem to respect the fact that it is a Jewish cemetery, seeing no reason for it to be uprooted for any reason from its historical position reflecting a once-thriving Jewish-Pakistani community.


The Mewa Shah burial district is behind moves to convert the Jewish cemetery to a Muslim cemetery. Karachi architect Arif Hasan prefers an option to turn the cemetery into a heritage site. Dating from the mid-19th Century there are about 300 graves remaining there. A grand sarcophagus set within a square sandstone building holds the remains of one Solomon David, founder of the Magen Shalom synagogue in Karachi who died in 1902.

An apartment building was built in the 1980s over where the synagogue had been situated. At that time one of the last remaining Jews requested that the city provide a replacement synagogue, but the developers saw no need for anything of that nature. The handful of Jews remaining in Karachi appear to have intermarried, or hidden their Jewish identities. In a city of that size it makes sense that an apartment building would have priority over a reconstructed synagogue with a handful of residents using it.

A situation which certainly would not endear the users, identifying themselves as Jews and attending prayers at a building housing a place of worship for a despised religion bringing attention to their presence in a country where persecution of ethnic and religious minorities distinguishes the geography as wholly dysfunctional, where even Muslims themselves cannot be certain their schoolchildren will return home safely after their classes.