I Was, In My Own Eyes, A

If We Try To 'protect Ourselves', Our Nation-states Begin To Look Like Prisons.

I Come From An Enormous And Very Close Family. I Have Over A Dozen Aunts And Uncles In Pakistan, Dozens Of Cousins. I Have Many Close Friends. I Have Received So Much Love In Lahore That The City Always Pulls Me.

Like Many Of My Friends In The Pakistani Diaspora - And Many Of My Friends In Pakistan Itself, For That Matter - I Have Sometimes Looked At The Country Of My Birth And Wondered Whether Its Future Will Be One Of Steady And Sad Decline.

I Did Not Grow Up In Poverty. But I Did Grow Up With A Poor Boy's Sense Of Longing, In My Case Not For What My Family Had Never Had, But For What We Had Had And Lost.

Our Countries Are Weaker: They Cannot Protect Us From Imported Goods, They Can't Protect Us From Climate Change, They Cannot Protect Us From Epidemics. These Things Cross Borders. But The Kind Of Cooperation That Would Protect Us From Those Things Was Completely Lacking And Because Of This There's Been A Backlash. People Feel Vulnerable.