Page 280 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

comparison I make – it might sound a little crass, so you’ll have
to forgive me – is like finding out you are adopted at the age of
forty-two and meeting your birth family. I had this powerful
connection with Lahore that I had never experienced before. I felt
at home in my birth city.
When I tell people in Britain that I spend time in Pakistan, they
often ask me if it’s safe. The perception is of a war zone filled with
militias and fundamentalists. So I tell them their attitude is a bit like
an Italian tourist arriving in the Yorkshire Dales at the height of the
IRA’s campaign and wondering where the bombs were. In Britain,
we only hear about Pakistan when there’s trouble, but it’s a huge
country with a population three times the size of the UK, and most
people live simple and peaceful lives. Lahore felt like a particularly
gentle place, and the more I saw of it the more I liked it.
The next day I met more family members, and I was having such
a good time that a three-day trip stretched to eight days. A lot of
the conversations I had with relations were about my dad, and I
couldn’t help but think what an amazing trip it would have been
to have done together. I realised how much I missed him, and some
of the strong connection I felt with Lahore was tied up with my
feelings for him.
On one trip we ventured outside the city and within half an hour
we were driving through very rural areas with just the odd
farmhouse and a few people in the fields. It looked so . . . well . . .
primitive. I talked to my cousin about how things worked in
Pakistan. Who’s in charge, how do the politics work, what are the
real problems? Like I always do, I was just asking questions. His
feeling was that the country’s biggest problem was education. The
conflict with India over Kashmir meant a high proportion of the
GDP went on defence: the budget for education in a country of
160 million was less than the budget for running the parliament.
That meant that kids in state schools were regularly in classes of
forty or fifty, often with no books, and sometimes not even desks.

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