Living with rats, no problem!

Young Pakistani female students have recently joined the throng of their male counterparts who come to the UK in search of better lives. Away from home and family, they brave isolation, financial stress, joblessness, even racism, in search of their dream. Most of them are from rural backgrounds who don’t have as much freedom as the elite enjoy back home. That freedom pulls them in, and keeps them stringed, till the very thought of returning to their country becomes akin to a nightmare. I’ve had the opportunity to interact with several such young women. A long-lost friend would call up from Pakistan, and inform me that such and such’s daughter had landed in the UK, and was having trouble finding a job, so could I help?

These women leave friends and family and step into a world so different from their own that they can’t help but be overwhelmed by the contrast. What most shocks me is that they refuse, outright, to go back once they’ve finished their courses! The trend is to stay on, by hook or by crook, and to gain the ever-alluring British Passport, as one young lady patiently explained to me over the telephone.

‘But what about your family?’ a shocked me enquired. ‘They keep asking me to return, but I’m not going without a passport!’

‘Are you comfortable here?’ ‘Yes, although there are rats in the room I’m renting, but I’ve managed to kill a few.’

Pakistani girls are that reluctant to return to their homeland? Why?