Asha

I had very few specific expectations when I arrived in Pakistan but I did hope to attend a village wedding so that I could experience Pakistani dancing. As time went by in Pakistan, I visited villages but only experienced funeral rites without celebratory dancing. When I mentioned my hopes to Pat, she explained to me that summer is not wedding season in the Sindh region. Paul suggested I pray that somebody gives birth to a son; that would be the most likely way to experience a celebration. Thus, whenever I’ve thought of it over the past seven weeks, I have been hoping that God will send us a baby.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting in on one of the training days for the Village Outreach Project evangelists. At first I sat with the wives and listened without comprehension as a Bible story was told in Urdu. After lunch I joined the evangelists for their session. I was seated next to the first and only female member of the evangelist team. Ratna, an aging but vigorous woman, enthusiastically participated with the 28 other (male) evangelists as they discussed the scripture, told testimonies, and reported prayer requests.

Ratna told us all how her daughter had recently given birth to a miracle baby. Ratna’s daughter has a heart condition that couldn’t be corrected with surgery because of her pregnancy. Because of this, all the doctors expected her to die in childbirth. In fact, no hospital would allow her to give birth there for fear that her family would sue when the girl died. Ratna eventually took her pregnant daughter home saying, “God is the great physician; He can take care of my daughter if it is his will.” Finally, a local hospital allowed the girl to come there for the birth on the condition that she signed a form saying she was giving birth against medical advice. By the grace of the Great Physician, the birth was entirely normal and the baby was born unusually healthy.

There was one catch; the child was a girl. After seven daughters this baby had been the family’s last hope for a son. While the mother was in the hospital recovering from labor and from a hysterectomy to prevent further children, she feared to tell her husband about the gender of the baby. After eight daughters and no sons, many men in Pakistan would be ready to divorce their wives or to hope that she would die in childbirth so they would be free to remarry. In tears for fear that he would never love her again, Ratna’s daughter handed her husband their last child. His response? To host a celebration thanking God for sparing the life of the mother and to make a statement to the Hindu community that God loves baby girls as much as baby boys. In this way, God answered my prayers to let me witness a village celebration, a Satti, a baby naming ceremony.

Two days before leaving the country, I found myself trying on brightly colored skirts and headdresses in preparation for attending the event that I had hoped for so long. The first several outfits I tried on were too small in one respect or another or were of the wrong tribe. Eventually I had to borrow a generic, shiny, yellow tribal blouse from one of the Stocks’ tribal neighbors, match it to one of Pat’s yellow-flowered, magenta skirt, and to fudge on the length of the magenta headdress. This problem solved, I enjoyed sweeping around the house to make the sea of skirt swish while Paul braided Jodie’s hair and Pat urged Joel to take a shower before putting on his best shalwar chamise.

We left only an hour so late for the two hour drive to the village. I sat in the front seat, my hand out the window, drinking in the sight of the country side. I was all too aware that this was my last village visit, one of the last car trips I would experience in the crazy, beautiful, dusty, vibrant, chaotic, exotic land I had come to love. While I watched the road roll by, Pat read aloud from The Hobbit and we enjoyed time together as a family. We arrived to the place where we had to leave the car and continue on foot just as dusk fell. We were met by smiling villagers who escorted us past fields of towering sugar cane, muddy lanes, and shadowy buildings to the heart of the village.

After the customarily joyful greetings and hearty congratulations to everyone in the village, the ceremony got underway right away. It turned out that though the village had been waiting for us, it was traditional to complete the naming ceremony before sunset. While Ratna, the esteemed grandmother, prepared a manger-esk pedestal for the baby, other family members asked us our input on what to name the baby girl. I was surprised that the family hadn’t chosen a name in the 20 days since the baby was born. They wanted our input first. Pat wanted a name that would indicate how valued the baby was, something that would translate into “Gift”, but she couldn’t think of any names like that in their language.

“How about Hope?” I suggested. “What is their word for hope?”

“Asha…” Paul responded meditatively.

“That sounds a little like they were hoping that she was a boy.” Pat added hesitantly. But a village member had already heard the suggestion and was enthusiastically repeating the name to other villagers. It turned out that Asha fit phonetic theme that the family used for their names. As the news of the name spread throughout the village with growing excitement, Pat turned to me. “How does it feel to know that you have named a baby? She will have this with her for her whole life.” I had asked God for a baby and He had personally delivered one that even doctors didn’t expect to live. Now I had also been allowed to give the child the first building block of her identity. I sat silently as the significance of it sunk in. As I sat still, I felt my heart grow very warm and full to overflowing.

Without waiting for me to process my contribution to the occasion, the ceremony began. Ratna sat at the head of the baby laid on the pedestal and chanted blessings over Asha while an aunt scooped celebratory sweet wheat kernels and chickpeas onto large leaves to be distributed to the guests. Soon significant women in the tribe started approaching the foot of the baby, tucking money into the cloth under the child, and scattering grain over her after cracking their knuckles on their own foreheads in blessing. Bashfully, I allowed myself to be pushed to the front where I clumsily imitated the motions of the other woman while the crowd laughed good-naturedly. After a while, Ratna finished her declarations over the baby and the crowd began to disperse.

Pat helped me to my feet and led me into the main hut; before I knew what was happening, someone had placed in my arms the bundle of swaddling clothes that was baby Asha. I was transfixed by her beautiful big eyes, her soft dark hair, and her small button nose. My baby. While people bustled around us I began to sing over her gently every hope I could have for her. I repeated over and over her name in the context of hoped for favor with God and man, strength of character, life success and every other blessing I could think of to hope for her. I only stopped when I was called to bring the baby over to be in a photo with her family. I held Asha there surrounded by her seven sisters, her young mother, her kind father; someone snapped pictures while others, aunts, friends, and even the Stocks took turns crowding into the picture frame. But for me, the only thing that mattered was the baby in my arms. Eventually someone took the baby from me. I sat down in a corner to scribble down the song I had poured out over Asha. Later I gave the poem to Paul to keep for Asha until she was old enough to understand that someone had loved her and prayed this hope for her on her naming day.

The rest of the evening went by around me as a pleasant whir of activity. We ate dinner of curry that once would have been unbearably spicy for me. I sat at the front of the company of woman and sang along to once foreign Urdu praise songs and watched eagerly as Paul sprinkled baptismal water over the heads of eight to ten children and women. As the baptisms finished and people began to prepare chai, I was growing sleepy. It was after 11:00 as I fell under the spell of the warm evening, the good food, and the warm contentment that had filled me since holding Asha. I lay down on the soft dirt floor of the hut and lazily watched the colorful forms flitting around in the dark village center.

Then I remembered, I hadn’t done any dancing yet! A young man soon pulled out a large drum and positioned himself in the center of the courtyard. As he began to beat a brisk tempo, Paul led about ten other men in a song about parenthood that we had learned earlier and the men began to dance. I watched eagerly, no longer tempted to sleep. Paul led the men in an acrobatic circle dance that involved sudden leaps in the air, flailing arms, and low hops along the ground. Pretty soon Ratna and Pat joined the circle of men. They maintained a steady pattern of sidesteps, clapping with the beat of their movements. The steps were simple and didn’t vary so I soon joined them.

At first I had to think carefully to not get out of sync with the other women. But pretty quickly I was able to sing along and watch the antics of the men while staying on beat. As the novelty wore off and the night wore on, the steady movements round the circle became almost hypnotic. Eventually I retired to watch from the sidelines. I watched the colorful skirts swishing past in time to the drum until the lateness of the hour overcame me. The last thing I remember is someone gently tucking a cloth under my feet, which were dangling off the blanket spread on the smooth hut floor, to protect me from the ants crawling around in the dirt. Thus cared for and content, I drifted off to sleep, grateful for having experienced a celebration and also aware that I had received so much more than I had hoped for.