Finding my fairy-tale

Salam Debriefers,

I love to travel. But many border officials go into a confused trance when they see me. 

It’s not just my disability or wheelchair. Those are combined with my hijab, brown skin tone, and the accent of my English. 

From when I was a child, stories inspired me to explore the world. But to be able to travel, I’ve needed to tell my own story. For my family, for the confused border guard, and most of all, for me.

Disability Debrief commissions original writing with reader support. Thanks to Rémi for a new contribution.

I wanted to be a hero

I was born and grew up in Lahore, Pakistan. I spent summers in the village of my family home, watching chickens run in the courtyard. At night, under the stars, my dozen cousins and me would chat and laugh until sunrise.

Women and girls mostly stayed indoors preparing meals and supervising the servants while men went for long drives, hunting. They always came home tired, sweaty, hungry. Dinner time was all about their stories from the fields.

Stories shaped my childhood. I grew up reading Snow White, Red Riding Hood and, from the Punjab, the tragic love story of Heer Ranjha. Their heroes traveled and met remarkable strangers, solving problems and rescuing princesses from towers.

I wanted to be a hero who travels and becomes part of these legends. But the characters in the stories weren’t like me. I was born with a deformity of both of my legs, and none of the stories had a hero with a disability. So I would imagine myself as one, a pirate who sails to find gold, or Jane who meets a strange but interesting man in the jungle.

My moment to travel

The first time I sat in an airplane it seemed like a huge boring machine. We sat for hours and hours and are then transported to a destination. I was eight years old, traveling to the USA for a surgery on my legs. 

While in the USA, strangers were kind. I saw a nice and courteous world beyond my family. I had my first pizza and saw Teletubbies on screen. On going back to Pakistan I got my first wheelchair and invested most of my time in school. And then I read other books with a new lens of possibilities, knowing I can travel.

I was also becoming an activist. As soon as I discovered I could write, I found I could also use my voice to make some noise. I did grassroots activism and sensitization workshops on ending discrimination towards people with disabilities.

There was a Youth Activism Summit in India. Applications were made by sending a short video. It was such an alien idea for my whole family that I waited for everyone to sleep before sneaking into my mother’s room to use her phone.

I recorded my video in the worst camera resolution, but somehow my enthusiasm shone through. I was invited on a fully funded trip as part of a cohort of 60 from across Asia. This was my moment to travel as I’d always dreamed.

Why do I need a chaperone?

My happiness was short-lived. My father only permitted me to go if my mother went with me. It made me feel that he didn’t trust my ability to take care of myself, or as if I was a child who needed assistance at every moment. Instead of feeling autonomy, I felt like a baby in a stroller.

‘Mujhe kyun attendant chahiye?’ Why do I need a chaperone? I felt that having one would change the way the world would see me. I was convincing others that people with disabilities are capable of living an independent life. 

But these words stayed tied to my tongue and I just nodded instead. My opportunity was delicate, like a butterfly, and I wanted to catch it.

Traveling with my mother made me anxious. I also felt a strong need to protect her. I was worried about thugs, racism, or being tricked.

Ami and I both tried to take care of each other in our own way. I would fill out forms, find routes, do the talking with immigration and also look for halal food. I wasn't in a stroller; I was in a red cape.

But the cape vanished when I reached staircases, steep ramps, narrow alleys or small bathrooms. My mother helped me in inaccessible spaces. She would run errands while I was busy, wake me up on time to get breakfast, and make sure I had a headscarf that matched my outfit.

In the next five years we traveled together and bonded over many mishaps and misunderstandings. Slowly we both realized that there were no thugs or racism like the media had made me dread. Just a world where mum and daughter are traveling and learning together.

The journey before the airport

It’s a long journey even before I reach the airport.

In a Pakistani household, children need to take permission from parents before stepping out of the house. My first visa to travel was getting my father’s approval. Then it would be time to meet the big boys at the embassy.

The embassies are a crash course in getting past the barriers of travel. I have to ask if the visa process is accessible, if the interview can be done on the phone. The Chinese embassy in Islamabad has a revolving door and there isn’t a single entrance my wheelchair goes in. Can the biometrics be done in the parking lot? 

Most of the embassies involved long waiting hours with no nearby canteen or accessible bathroom. There were barricades, security checks and extreme scrutiny. Who am I and why do I want to travel? 

I’ve been suspected of being an asylum seeker or trying to get a medical visa. I have to provide evidence of my ties to Pakistan. I see tourist pictures of the destinations on the walls, but they feel deceptive, totally contrary to what I am experiencing in the embassy.

Once at the Germany Embassy I had to wait so long without an accessible bathroom that I developed dehydration. After more than six hours, I left the embassy with a visa and a UTI. Sometimes you only leave with the UTI.

Spotlight on my wheelchair

The scrutiny continues all the way to the airport counters. A powered wheelchair gives me freedom but also the spotlight at every airport. I wait to get it screened by security. I do demos on a loop to show how to disconnect the battery. 

I request my wheelchair back during transit. But I’m often provided a different one, alien and hard to manoeuvre. I miss my own wheelchair like an old friend, and often find it hard to even use the loo. 

One time in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the organizers sent a BMW to pick me up from the airport. The trunk was too small for the wheelchair, so it was folded and put in the front seat. Through the ride, I appreciated my wheelchair’s promotion.

On another trip to Chengdu, China I asked the driver to bring a bigger car so my wheelchair can be put in it without folding. He brought a school bus. I hailed a taxi and the wheelchair had the entire bus to itself.

By the book

In the world of travel, faces are loaded with smiles and words with sugar. I am enthusiastically told that the only available accessible room is the ultra-expensive suite and that the conference organizers have only booked a regular room.

I explain it’s not my fault, they say it’s by the book.

What book? There isn’t any book that I can travel by. I have to write my own.

For example, my wheelchair often can’t fit into a hotel bathroom. I solve my own issues by putting a wooden chair in the bathroom and throwing some water on the floor to remove friction. I sit on the chair and slide it to the sink, toilet or bath.

In a new language it’s hard to find the word for “accessibility” or “wheelchair”, or to explain why I need a bathroom with a bigger door. I call the reception to explain that I need a plastic chair to take a shower on and they cheerfully agree and send me a pack of shower gels. 

In my initial years of traveling, most of it was paid by organizations who invited me to speak at different events about challenges faced by young people. On stage I had to shine, to throw facts and demand rights. 

But I was alone in dealing with my own challenges. I would resolve them or suffer silently. I wanted to keep a brave face on and not be a problem. I was speaking about empowerment but not feeling any power myself.

Becoming an accessibility queen 

After traveling to more than 15 countries, I thought I had picked up all the tricks of traveling like a pro. I learned the language of travel, details about my battery and jargon around disability. I was street smart in embassies, airports and destinations. So much so that now at the airport I often fight on behalf of older people and fill out forms for those who need help. I am the accessibility queen! 

Or so I thought. The reality of challenges comes up. I struggle to explain that I can only use the toilet if I have water as it is an Islamic practice to wash oneself with water. I need to find a way to tell the fancy hostel owner that I need a girls-only room because I cover my hair with a hijab. Can I even ask a restaurant owner to turn the music low so I can pray as my religion requires?

Freedom to travel

I’ve learned to demand support. So much so that it convinced my father to let me travel on my own. 

We were on holiday together in Turkey. I made all the plans, and he did all the negotiations. We roamed the streets, laughing and snacking on local corn on the cob. We saw palaces, bazaars and mosques and took beautiful pictures of each other.

He explained afterwards that he saw my independent mindset at one of the reservation desks. I balanced myself on my knees on the seat of my wheelchair, gripping the desk for balance. I went eye to eye with the clerk and demanded a room with a view. 

With my father’s permission, I didn’t lose a second. I booked a second trip to Istanbul to test my ability to travel alone. But as I arrived there was a covid outbreak and the entire city was locked down. It was a risky trip, and the streets were lonely. I had left everything behind, even my own fears. 

It was time to take the brakes off. Even though the green Pakistani passport is often at the top of notorious lists, I resolved that neither it nor my disability would be a barrier. I would go where even feet couldn’t take me.

A most delicious buffet

I came to Sweden to pursue a Masters. I took maximum advantage of the opportunity to travel across Europe by flight, by wheels, by train. By now I realize that my journey through the world is parallel to other travelers but not with them. My experiences in a destination are always different from theirs.

While in Alcover, Spain, I was strolling in a forest. The breeze brought a branch of a tree down to place a peck on my cheek. I paused and started at it for a few seconds. I was transported back to my childhood and a story of a talking tree.

Travel has been the most delicious buffet. There is an instagram version of traveling that is colorful, smooth and bright. Then there is the real version that is unpredictable, anxious and lonely. I have learned to take a bit of all experiences on my plate, whether good or bad, and enjoy it to the fullest.

Telling my stories

Using a wheelchair in Pakistan it was difficult to even go to the supermarket. There are so many infrastructural challenges and inaccessibility.

But it turns out that among my cousins I have traveled the most. They have beautiful domestic lives around the stove, married and with children. When we meet they want to know about the lands far far away. Eyes wide open they ask “How do you even manage to move around?” or “Aren’t you afraid of strangers?” or “What if you fall?”.

I imagine myself in the stories I grew up with. I’m a modern-day Ibn Battuta traveling by wheelchair and airplane rather than camel, wagon or horse. I’m Snow White and I had to stay at the cottage because the Airbnb wasn’t accessible.

I hold my nieces and nephews in my lap and tell them my stories. I tell them about how a fight over a wheelchair battery led to a traveler left on the tarmac in Krakow, Poland. They grow hearing about what she did next.

Khuda Hafiz,

Tanzila

Roll on

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Sonaksha for the magic carpet ride illustration.

I want to say a big thanks to Disability Debrief for bringing out the reality of lived experiences of people with disabilities to the world with new colors and flavors every week. Thanks to the readers and organisations whose support makes this possible. 

Reflecting on a 15 year journey of traveling in a wheelchair is a rollercoaster ride in its own way as it brings back memories of struggle, chuckle and times when I lost and gained faith about any prospects of traveling around the world. It is only helpful to have Peter provide guidance on bringing out not just raw emotion but also a perspective for the travel industry through this article.

I am forever grateful to my Ami, Baba and Bhaijan (Big brother) who endlessly support my ideas and passion for traveling and cheer for me as I cross continents.

I would also say my thanks and a prayer for the countless strangers who I have met on my journeys and they have helped me by carrying my wheelchair or using their authority to ensure inclusive treatment and sometimes also open the doors to their homes if need be. Hence proven that a system of empathy and kindness is not just a fuel to the motor of this world but also to fairytales that we all can be in.