ECommerce solution in Pakistan

A complete eCommerce solution

Weebly’s eCommerce website builder gives you a surprisingly easy way to sell products online. We arm you with modern store designs and the powerful features you need to provide a consistent shopping experience that works across desktop, tablet and mobile devices. The online shopping experience once reserved for major online retailers is now at your fingertips.

Fully Integrated Shopping Cart and Secure Checkout

Provide shoppers with the convenience of a fully integrated free shopping cart and a secure checkout experience directly from your ecommerce website. Our shopping cart software is set-up automatically when you create your store so you can start selling online immediately, no technical skills needed.

Complete Mobile Store and Checkout

Give shoppers a mobile experience that works every time from any device. We ensure your online store and products load quickly and display perfectly. All ecommerce websites include a free mobile shopping cart and and secure checkout experience that’s designed to work perfectly on smaller screens like phones and tablets.

Powerful Filtered Product Search

Give shoppers a faster way to find exactly what they want. Highlight the most relevant products and let your customers filter the results by attributes like price, color, etc. Filtered product search helps you maximize exposure across all of your inventory and create more buying opportunities.

Sell Digital Goods, Physical Products , Services and More

We offer flexible options for selling a wide range of products. Digital and downloadable items are automatically delivered to your customers via email with a secure one-time use link. There are extensive options for physical products, one-of-a-kind handmade items, services and donations that can be completely customized to meet your needs.

Search Engine Optimized Online Stores

Our ecommerce websites are designed with search engines in mind so customers can find you. We automatically optimize your site and product pages so you’ll have everything you need to start ranking for search results.

Flexible Shipping Option

Offer the shipping choices that shoppers want and easily handle a full spectrum of shipping situations ranging from simple to complex. Sellers can offer “free shipping” on select orders, set shipping rates based on price or weight and define carriers (e.g. UPS, USPS, FedEx) as well as delivery speed (e.g. ground, 3-day, overnight). Rates can be adjusted for geographic locations including full international support and fine-grained control options for sub-regions (states, provinces, etc.).

Fine-Grained Tax Controls

It’s simple to manage even the most complex tax situations with a Weebly eCommerce website. You determine when and where to apply taxes. Weebly provides and maintains current city, state and province level tax rates for the United States and Canada. For all other countries, tax rates can be defined by the seller.

Track Your Inventory

Manage a handful or hundreds of products. Track your inventory to manage your supply, show customers the number of items remaining to create urgency and boost buying behavior (e.g. only 2 left!), and automatically show items that are no longer available as “out of stock”.

Manage Your Store on the Go with the Weebly iPhone and Android Apps

Mobile apps make it easy and convenient to manage your online store from anywhere. You can process and fulfill orders, provide personalized service and respond to customer inquiries, upload new products and photos, notify customers when a purchase has shipped, check sales figures in real-time and receive notifications whenever a new order is placed.

Powerful eCommerce Website Builder

Getting your store up and running is as simple as choosing a design theme, adding your products, setting up shipping and selecting your preferred way to accept payments. We automatically create a storefront for you to customize as much or as little as you’d like, including the option for full CSS/HTML control and editing.

Modern eCommerce Templates and Storefronts

Choose from a wide variety of modern and unique ecommerce templates and color palette combinations to design the perfect look for your online store. You can showcase featured products, categorize items for easy browsing, customize fonts, and define photo display options to create a store you’ll be proud to share.

Free eCommerce Hosting

Reliable, world-class cloud hosting that’s redundant and scalable means your online store is always available. We handle all the details to ensure your ecommerce website loads quickly every time, no matter how much traffic you receive.

Payment Options

Instantly accept major credit cards directly from your own domain name. Choose from a variety of payment options including Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and Square.

Showcase Your Products with Display and Merchandising Options

The Weebly eCommerce platform brings the ease of drag and drop website creation to product merchandising. Create rich product descriptions with slideshows and videos. Easily reorder products for maximum visual appeal. Shoppers can easily share your products on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Integrate Content and eCommerce

Combine content and products in unique ways to create more buying opportunities. In addition to a powerful storefront, Weebly gives you the freedom to showcase and sell products or accept donations from any page on your site such as a blog or your homepage with our standalone ecommerce element.

Sell to Shoppers Around the World

Tap into the growing global market with complete international support for accepting payments, shipping and taxes. Payment processing is available in 25 countries with PayPal and 11 countries with Stripe. Easily manage shipping to any destination. Flexible tax management with fine-grained controls to support online stores globally.

Process and Manage Orders

Process and manage orders from end-to-end with order confirmation emails, shipment tracking notifications, refunds and returns processing and real-time reporting for orders and sales.

Import Your Online Store to Weebly eCommerce

Want to see a preview of what your existing store could look like on Weebly? Import your store from Etsy, Shopify or upload a  free version for up to five products and a Business plan with unlimited products and the full set of features for only $25/month.

Drive Sales with Coupon Codes & Discounts

Sellers are armed with promotional offers to compete effectively and increase sales. They can incentivize visitors to purchase with a limited-time offer, attract new buyers by offering a referral discount and generate repeat sales from existing customers by running a sale.CSV file directly into Weebly’s eCommerce platform for fast and easy setup. Once imported, you can adjust and tweak your store design to create a unique look.

We’re Here to Help You Start Your Online Store

We are committed to helping you create a high-quality store that achieves your goals. We offer live chat, email support and a variety of resources to assist you every step of the way. If you are creating a store for the first time, our Site Planner and free live training sessions will walk you through everything you need to know to get your store up and running.

A complete eCommerce solution

Weebly’s eCommerce website builder gives you a surprisingly easy way to sell products online. We arm you with modern store designs and the powerful features you need to provide a consistent shopping experience that works across desktop, tablet and mobile devices. The online shopping experience once reserved for major online retailers is now at your fingertips.

Pakistan Army

Pakistan was formed as a result of partition of India in 1947. The new nation began the development of its army soon after separation. Within a few years, the army ousted democratic system of governance and army rule existed most of the time until General Pervez Musharraf quit his presidency in 2008. The army is the strongest force is the Pakistan defense system and has fought a number of wars over the decades. It has also tackled a number of internal conflicts. Pakistan army is the backbone of the nation and plays a major role in development of socio-economic conditions by developing infrastructure in the country. On the international front, the army of Pakistan is doing great work in promoting world peace. Recently, the army won appreciation for being the biggest contributor to United Nations peace keeping attempts. The following article is a brief sketch about the evolution, the present status and future plans of the Pakistani army.PAKISTAN ARMY IN HISTORYAn official army was soon formed after partition and the first General of Pakistan army, General Ayub Khan, took charge of the army in 1951. Before partition of India took place, both the countries experienced a lot of violence. The root of the problem was fear on behalf of the Pakistanis who feared that India would capture Kashmir. At the same time, India received 21 infantry regiments, 40 artillery and 12 armored weapons of war and Pakistan received less than half of each. This gave birth to insecurity and that resulted in the massive massacre of 1947. Pakistan army first fought India in 1947, hardly a few months after the division of the countries. The war was interrupted by the United Nations. However, the war did bring out the strength of the Pakistani army as it managed to hold on the northeastern parts of Kashmir.The Pakistan army has fought a number of wars throughout history. In 1958, Pakistan army ousted democratic rule and military rule was established. General Ayub Khan became the President of the country. By 1957, the military strength of the army had increased significantly with United States and England providing a lot of aid to the country in terms of weapons and finances. This aid came after the Baghdad Pact of 1954 and subsequently, the South East Asian Treaty Organization and Central Treaty Organization.At the time of independence, Pakistan acquired and raised 7th, 8th and 9th divisions. In 1948, the country raised 10th, 12th and 14th divisions. In 1950, the country got its 15th army division. However, due to the fact that aid from United States was restricted, several of them such as Division 6 and Division 9 were disbanded. Six infantry divisions and one armored division received US aid after 1954.All through history, Pakistan has always had tensed relationship with India. A number of minor scuffles on the borders have been a common happening between the two countries. The tension peaked in the 1960s for the second time after 1947 and a battle was fought in the Rann of Kutch in the 1965. The most dominant feature of this border war was the implementation of Operation Gilbraltar. The battle ended with the Tashkent Declaration. However, the performance of Pakistan army has been widely appreciated in the war because it stood like a rock before the much stronger and advanced Indian army. In the war, artillery played a very important role.In 1969, when General Yahya Khan became the president after ousting Ayub Khan, the Pakistan army was strengthened by formation of 16, 18 and 23 divisions. In the period between 1969 and 1971, a lot of civil unrest took place in the country and the army played a major role during this period. East Pakistan, which is the present Bangladesh, got its independence from Pakistan after a fierce war of Independence. The Bangladesh army, with the support of Indian army to a large extent, succeeded in defeating Pakistan army and gained their independence. The People’s Republic of Bangladesh was formed on 16th December 1971 after General Niazi’s surrender to the Indian attack.Between 1971 and 1977, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took over as the President and Chief Martial Law Administrator, a post vacated by General Yahya Khan. This appointment brought a brief end to the army rule and democracy was reinstated, although not for long. In 1977, army head General Zia ul Haq ousted the Bhutto government and declared himself President and military chief. Thus, army rule was back.Pakistan has fought four wars with India in 1947, 1965, 1971 and the more recent Kargil war of 1999. In 1947, Pakistan took control of northern and western parts of Kashmir while India retained the northeastern, central and southern parts. The war ended on an equal footing. In the 1965 war that lasted five weeks, Pakistan army lost. The next war of 1971 was not over Kashmir but over the independence of Bangladesh. India won decisively and Bangladesh got its independence. Kargil war of 1999 was also lost by Pakistan and the forces had to retreat from the Line of Control. In the 1970s, Pakistan army fought the Balochistan war. Although the army was successful in the war, heavy losses were incurred. After the Kargil war, the army came back to governance with General Pervez Musharraf as the President.Ever since 2000, Pakistan army has been involved in scuffles with the Al-Qaeda, Taliban and other terrorist groups that exist in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 2004 May, Pakistan military suffered severe losses in war with Al Qaeda due to poor organization. Pakistan has been in the clutches of terrorist violence with a number of bombings taking place all over the country regularly.In 2007, army attacked the militant region Swat Valley but was unsuccessful in driving militants out. In 2008, negotiations over Swat valley with militants did not yield results. In April 2009, the army again attacked the Swat Valley and by July of the same year, a lot of militants were cleared out. However, Taliban activity still exists in the country. The attack on the militant controlled Waziristan region took place in September-October of 2009. 30,000 troops were deployed and the army was able to recapture the territory of Waziristan.All through history, Pakistan has had the support of United States financially and in military training and development. In 1948, US aided Pakistan with $0.77 million and progressively increased the aid. In 2010, $1867.37 million was provided.
PAKISTAN ARMY IN PRESENTPakistan army is the biggest force in its defense mechanism. There are 651,000 personnel employed in the army with 500,000 personnel in the reserve force. The present General of the Army is General Ashwaq Pervez Kayani.On the whole, Pakistan army has a 16,461 land based weapons, out of which, there are 2640 tanks, 1700 towed artillery, 4620 APC/IFVs, 500 SPGs, 200 MLRS, 3200 mortars, 3400 AT weapons, 2500 AA weapons and 11,500 logistical vehicles. The country plans on expanding its nuclear power. As of now, the army is in possession of various surface to surface, surface to air, air to air and air to surface missile.Pakistan army is one of the largest and the most active participant in the peace keeping missions of the United Nations. Currently, thousands of soldiers are deployed in different parts of the world for peace keeping activities. 3556 troops are deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission. These troops have been involved in the operation since 1999. Beginning from 2003, 2741 troops have been assigned as part of the United Nations Mission in Liberia. From 2004 onwards, 1185 troops have been stationed for United Nations Operations in Burundi. In the same year, 1145 troops were sent for peace keeping mission for United Nations Operation in Cote d’Ivoire. In 2005, 1542 troops were sent to support the United Nations Mission in Sudan.There are two main branches in the Pakistan Army – Services and Arms, the Services wing consists of Army Services Corps, Corps of Military Police, Military Intelligence Corps, Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Army Ordnance Corps, Pakistan Army Medical Corps, Army Dental Corps, Remount Veterinary and Farms Corps, Army Education Corps, JAG Corps and Army Clerical Corps. The Arms wing consists of the Armored Corps division, artillery, infantry, air defense, engineers, aviation, signals, chemical corps and airborne division.The weapon strength of the Pakistan army is substantial. The force has different handguns such as Glock 17 and 26, Tokarev, HK P7, Beretta 92 and Steyr M9A1, which has been obtained by SSW. Sub machine guns are of different kinds such as Heckler and Koch MP5, Heckler and Koch MP5K, M4A1 and FN P90. Heckler and Koch Battle rifle is also present in the Pakistan army. In addition, the force has a number of Assault rifles such as Type 56, AK-103, Steyr AUG and FN F200 and Arges 84 & M67 Grenades, Sniper rifles such as Dragunov, HK PSG1, M82 Barret and Steyr SSG69 and Machine guns such as FN MAG, FN Minimi para, MG3 and RPD. Grenade launchers such as Carl Gustav recoilless rifle, Mk 19, RPG 7 and 29 are housed in the army weapons wing.The Pakistani army houses 400 Al-Khalid, 320 T-80UD, 300 Type 85-IIAP, 400 Al-Zarrar, 400 Type 69-II, 400 Type 59 and a number of Type 63 and T-54/55 Main Battle Tanks. Many of these are held in reserve storage.Armored personal carriers are a major contribution to the weapon strength with Hamza infantry fighting vehicles, 140 Al-Fahd infantry fighting vehicle, M113 armored personnel carrier which are 1600 in number, 120 armored personnel carriers of type BTR-70/BTR-80, Mohafiz Light Armoured Personnel Carriers, 260 Otokar Akrep Light Jeep and M88 ARV Armoured Recovery Vehicle. In addition to these, Pakistan army has two Armoured Vehicle Launched Bridges such as M60A1 AVLB and M48, both of which are currently in service.Pakistan army consists of around 500 self propelled artillery such as M110 of caliber 203mm, M109 of caliber 155mm and Norinco SH1 of caliber 155mm. 36 300 mm A-100E, 122 mm Azar (Type 83) and 122mm KRL-122 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems are available with the army. The KRL-122 MLRS is a truck mounted launching systems that has a range of 40 km and is enabled with GPRS. In the towed artillery section, the army houses around 1700 weapons such as 28 M115 of 203mm caliber, 52 MKEK Panter, 148 M198 and 144 number of M114 of 155mm caliber. In addition, the towed artillery section consists of Type 59I, Type 54, M56, M101 and Type 56 weapons and equipments.Anti tank weapons such as Bakter Shikan ATGM, BGM 71 TOW and BGM 71 TOW 2 and MILAN are present in the army. 35mm twin cannon Oerlikon GDF-005, modified cannon Oerlikon AHEAD, PG99 (CS/SA1) and Bofors 40mm cannons augment the army strength of Pakistan.Originally, the Pakistani army consisted predominantly of Punjab regiment. However, as of now, the army is equipped with a number of regiments that fight in various formations. Important regiments in the army are Punjab regiment, Frontier Force Regiment, Baloch regiment, Azad Kashmir Regiment, Sind Regiment and Northern Light infantry. Besides these, there are a number of cavalry regiments under Pakistani Armored Corps. A special force is formed for the protection of the President called The President’s Bodyguard.For carrying out special elite operations, the army has special forces consisting of 2100 personnel who are divided into three battalions. The current strength, with possible enhancements is kept confidential although it is expected that the special forces now consist of six battalions. These forces have been created on the same lines as that of American Green Berets and SAS of Britain army.The headquarters of the Pakistani army is at Rawalpindi in Punjab state. The army has thirteen corps divisions, each located in a different part of the country. Each of these Corps, in turn, has a number of armored brigades, artillery brigades, Infantry brigades and anti-tank brigades. The Corps are headquartered at Mangla Cantonment, Multan, Lahore, Gujranwala, Bahawalpur, Karachi, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Quetta. The air defense command forces and army strategic forces command have their headquarters at Rawalpindi.The army of Pakistan plays a major role in governance and nation building activities in arenas such as infrastructure development, industrial development, National disaster management and other miscellaneous national tasks. Besides defending the boundaries of its motherland, Pakistan army runs a number of welfare organizations such as AWT, FWO, Fauji Foundation, Bahria Foundation, Shaheen Foundation, SCO and NLC that work towards uplifting various sections of the society including national martyrs, those disabled in national service and military retirees. The army also takes up massive restoration and rehabilitation tasks in places hit by disaster. It works towards providing basic facilities such as medical aid and education in addition to restoring infrastructure such as roads, bridges and dams.The contribution of Pakistani army in maintaining internal peace in a country that is always characterized by terrorism and violence is appreciable. The army acts as a major stabilizing force in the country.FUTURE OF THE PAKISTAN ARMYFuture plans of Pakistani army are to increase their weapons inventory and in keeping with this objective, several firms in Pakistan have come together to develop and produce weapons in joint agreements with Ukraine, France and South Korea. These deals were formed during the International Defense Exhibition and Seminar help in 2006 November at Karachi. As per these agreements, the Pakistani army is to receive land and armor weaponry, 155mm artillery shells and armor bricks. By 2019, the entire artillery capability of Pakistan army will be upgraded to 155mm. China, United States and Europe will be supplying a number of heavy, medium and light self propelled and towed howitzers to Pakistan.Massive plans for enhancement and modernization of artillery, infantry and armor divisions are in line. Development is planned both quantitatively and qualitatively. The army aims at having a total of 2000 Talha armored personnel carriers. Sa’ad armored personnel carriers are currently in production. The army also plans to arm itself with 200 Al Qaswa logistic vehicles and they are in the process of procurement.Pakistan army has signed agreement with Heavy Industries Taxila. This pact is for the development of main battle tank Al Khalid II. By 2012, the country plans to make these tanks the major tank force of its army. The older tanks that were procured from China will be replaced by these state of the art tanks. The tank sports western design and is said to be a huge development over the currently existing Al Khalids.In addition, Pakistan army has formed contracts with Turkey for development of modern tank systems and other defense machinery. WS-1B multiple launch rocket systems are also in line for procurement from China. These rocket launching systems will be various sizes and ranges. The army aviation wing is another arena that is the subject of development. Attack helicopters will be acquired for Europe, United States and Russia.The special forces, paramilitary forces and regular forces of the Pakistan army have been initiated for modernization. The modernization drive is planned to be a highly comprehensive activity that includes development of new battle strategies, improvement in training of personnel and procuring better weapons and equipments. Plans are also on to bring a change in the infantry uniform, which will include bullet proof vests, assault rifles of caliber 5.56mm and helmets.The army also plans to improve its night vision equipment and systems of communication that will provide highly secure channels for communication. Devices for enhanced communication will be procured from the United States. For improving standards in training, Pakistan army sends officers to NATO countries, where instructors from the United States offer state of the art training. Development of missile strength, especially of the Shaheen II missile, is another major agenda in the future plans of the Pakistani army.

SEO Optimize Blogger

SEO Optimize Blogger

In my previous tutorial on BBC (BestBloggerCafe) I tutored about optimizing blogger labels and thus, in this tutorial I'll address optimizing blogger comments. Comments are very important for a blog because they are crawled by search engines. So if a blog is having a lot of comments from the visitors then it is a very good thing. Google and other search engines give importance to the websites or blogs which's posts are commented the most. This shows the popularity and usefulness of a blog. But when people leave bad links in their comments, this becomes a headache for the blogger as well as for search engines. Bad links in comments can destroy your blog and SEO. In general, we keep comments links as nofollow. And nofollow means, we instruct the search engine's crawler to not crawl the link inside comments, but crawl only the content of the comment.This is the best practice, because you can't give dofollow external links to the commentators. This reduce your Page Rank and can harm your blog's SEO. By default now many platforms including WordPress add nofollow HTML attribute to the comment links, but in Blogger there isn't this setting available  But we can do it manually by ourselves.

How to optimize Blog's comments?

Now here is a simple solution for getting rid of this problem. You'll just have to add an HTML attribute to the comments part of HTML section of your blog. Follow steps below:

1. Login to your blog
2. Template >> HTML >> Proceed >> Check the Expand Widget Templates
3. Now find below piece of code by using CTRL+F

expr:href='data:post.createLinkUrl'

Just replace the above code with given code below:

rel='external nofollow' expr:href='data:post.createLinkUrl'

Save your template and you're almost done!

What we did?

We just added a rel='external nofollow' attribute to the comments of the visitors, so now search engines won't follow the links inside comments. You can only use rel='nofollow' but the external nofollow is better then only nofollow, because sometimes you can insert links indicating to your blog's other pages, so they will be followed by search engines and the rest won't be.

Your Turn:
I'm trying my best to resolve all the issues you're facing while working on blogger, so let me know if you have questions regarding this tutorial... Stay happy and peaceful.

I Love Pakistan

I Love Pakistan

There’s a question I get asked almost invariably, whenever I speak in public about a country I’ve known and loved for almost twenty years: Why Pakistan? I don’t think I can fully or satisfactorily answer that question, but this talk will be an attempt at least to acknowledge and address it.The people who ask the question – Why Pakistan? – often phrase it as, “Why did you first go to Pakistan?” There are specific, contingent answers I can give to that version of the question. Most specifically, I first went to Pakistan in early 1995 because a fourteen-year-old Pakistani Christian boy, Salamat Masih, and his uncle were on trial for blasphemy, and the newspaper I was writing for at the time, the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong, wanted me to write about it. More broadly, I had become interested in the horrible and chronically disputed situation in Kashmir, I had already spent many weeks on the ground in the Kashmir Valley itself and several months in India, and I felt both a desire and a duty to spend time in Pakistan, in order to elicit and appreciate the Pakistani point of view on Kashmir. These were identifiable, proximate starting points for what has become my lifelong friendship with Pakistan.I don’t think that’s what most people who ask mean by the question, though. Implied in it are a few other questions: Why do you care about Pakistan? Why do you look at and write about Pakistan so differently from so many other Americans? Why in the world would you go to a country with such a bad reputation? Why do you keep going back?These questions are more interesting, and my books are attempts to offer full, proper answers to them. In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that it has taken me the effort of writing two full books, just to begin answering the questions for myself.Which is to say that I can’t really explain my enduring interest in, and love for, Pakistan, but I can narrate it. I once told a New York literary agent that I had written a book about Pakistan. He responded by asking me: “What’s your argument?” I’m sure the agent considered himself savvy, but his question betrayed the fact that he looked at Pakistan the same tiresome way most members of the American political and publishing establishment do: not as a country and a society in its own right, but as a problem or challenge for America to deal with, about which it’s necessary for any writer to have an argument. Not only do I refuse to see Pakistan that way; I genuinely don’t see it that way. I don’t claim to know or understand Pakistan completely. But by the same token, I don’t know or understand my own wife or mother or father or brother completely. But I love my wife and parents and brother, and my own country, as well as I humanly can, despite their faults and flaws, as I know they also love me despite mine. My love for Pakistan is similar: human, based on flawed and partial knowledge and understanding, but honest and genuine. I was so surprised by the literary agent’s question – “What’s your argument?” – that I could scarcely blurt out my answer, which was and is: “I’m not making an argument; I’m telling a story.And the story I’m telling is about how – and, I suppose, why – I came to know and love Pakistan. Although I began my career as a political journalist, a “newsman” or “Asia hand” in the old-fashioned parlance, my books are not analysis but nonfiction narrative, written in the first person: travel books. That’s what they are, I guess, if you have to classify them. But The Daily Telegraph‘s reviewer of my book Alive and Well in Pakistan understood my real purpose – perhaps even better than I did at the time – when he observed that “The author’s real journey is a search for common humanity.” I’m still on that journey, still on that search. And I’m glad to report that I have been finding the common humanity that I went looking for.I found it in Shakur and Nusrat, the young couple who managed the guest house where I lived in 2003 and 2004 in Lahore, when I was teaching at Beaconhouse National University. Nusrat and especially Shakur had their share of human foibles, which I took the liberty of depicting in Alive and Well in Pakistan. The same is true of Mrs. Zarina Sadik, my housemate at the guest house who so generously shared her stories and her family’s life with me, and of the gents at the Lahore Gymkhana who welcomed me into the world of their egos and rivalries on the grass tennis courts almost every day. And the high-spirited young men, especially the earnest, bearded teacher Mohammed Faisal, in the general enclosure at Gaddafi Stadium during an exciting one-day Pepsi Cup cricket match between Pakistan and South Africa. When I think of the reviewer’s kind insight – “The author’s real journey is a search for common humanity” – I think especially of Mohammed Faisal, who had come to see the match from a village near Gujranwalla, with twenty other young men in the back of a Toyota pickup truck, and who put his hand on his heart and told me, “It was you who made our journey memorable. At first I didn’t know what you would speak to us. I was a bit shy. But you speak to us very nicely.” And I think of Nusrat, who was chronically exasperatedwith her jolly but lazy and silly husband, and who, one day when she was leaving to visit her village in what was then still called the Frontier Province, showed me the black garment on her lap and said, “Sir, see my burkah!”During my months as her guest, Nusrat and I spent many hours together in the sitting room, watching reruns of the American sitcom Friends, on an all-sitcom channel that used a voting system to determine which show to air next. We took turns controlling the remote: Nusrat would watch an Indian soap opera, then I would switch back to Friends on the sitcom channel. She didn’t understand much of the dialogue, but she enjoyed the zaniness of some of the episodes, she thought it was funny that the characters all sat around together all the time in the same coffee shop, and she was curious about the things she learned from the show about life in America. Nusrat was intelligent and curious about the world outside Pakistan, while at the same time maintaining a strong sense of who she was: she had integrity, in a context that had meaning and purpose for her. She always dressed and behaved with great decorum. She knew that I was from a different, non-Muslim world, and that was all right with her. She had enough human sympathy and imagination to consider how strange Pakistani mores might seem to me. When she showed me her burkah I smiled, imagining her in her village or on the bus, to the eye just another faceless cliché, and I reflected on how privileged I was to have come to know her as an individual.I also found humanity in the remarkable Minallah family, who have been on the receiving end of so much of Pakistan’s hard, painful history. I celebrated Eid al-Fitr with Athar Minallah, who later would fall into the role of spokesman for Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry during the lawyers’ movement, his sister the artist and environmental activist Fauzia Minallah, his courageous wife Ghazala Minallah, and their elderly German-born relative Helga Ahmed, who didn’t have to be a Pakistani but chose to become one for the duration of her long and admirable life. Some of you may know that Ghazala’s father, Syed G. Safdar Shah, was a Supreme Court justice during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s murder trial and that, despite his personal dislike for Bhutto, he refused to vote with the majority and paid for his principled stand with lifelong exile. One can – and Pakistanis endlessly do – debate that or any other of Pakistan’s many political turning points. But knowing the Minallahs has given me insights into how, in Pakistan – just like right here in the USA – politics and the intimate personal life of any individual or family are unavoidably and too often painfully intertwined. Ghazala lived her father’s legacy at many dangerous moments during the lawyers’ movement, at one point literally shedding blood on the street. “I was not like Ghazala,” Fauzia told me when I returned to visit the family in 2009. “She really put her head in the lion’s mouth.”It’s nearly ten years now since Alive and Well in Pakistan was published, and I find myself reflecting a lot on those ten years and on the preceding decade, the decade between 1994 and 2004, which the book covers. A whole lot has happened in those two decades. The funny thing is that when Alive and Well in Pakistan was first published, my attitude was that that was that, I had written about Pakistan, surely now I would move on and write about other adventures in other countries. Things didn’t work out that way. Pakistan stayed in the public eye, to put it mildly, and I began to understand that I had an opportunity and obligation to do what I could to counteract the ways in which American media dangerously distort, simplify, and misrepresent what I know as an all too flawed but complex, interesting, and likeable – indeed, lovable – human society. I call it the difference between the Pakistan I know and love and the Pakistan that you see on TV.As I returned to live in the U.S. and began accepting invitations to tell American audiences about the Pakistan that I know, of course things continued happening in Pakistan, including violent things and, of course, as always, plenty of politics. Was Pakistan changing? Of course it was; every society is always changing. But the more things change, the more they stay the same, and I’ve learned to trust my own experience and judgment. In Pakistan there is always violence and politics, but there’s always violence and politics in America too, and everywhere else. These are aspects of our common humanity, and the search for that is my real journey. We can’t – and shouldn’t – avoid politics, but part of the challenge is to keep our eye on the politics as it perpetually unfolds, without letting ourselves be distracted by it. That’s easier said than done, but taking the long view helps. And you can take the long view only if you make a long-term commitment, if you’re in it for the long haul. Here’s something an American writer once wrote:Some ugly specters are haunting Pakistan these days: the specter of an ugly end to the [current] government; violence and civil chaos; even, perhaps, an Islamic revolution. [Recent events] have led many to wonder if a major upheaval is brewing in Pakistan. Well, yes, surely something along those lines is indeed on the cards.I wrote those words, in an unsigned leader editorial published in theBangkok Post newspaper in November 1996, on the very day that Benazir Bhutto fell from power for the second time. What’s instructive is that any writer could have written those words, at almost any time. A lot of things have happened in Pakistan since then, and a lot of damage has been done, but the major upheaval I predicted so glibly and easily has still not happened. I didn’t yet know better. What I didn’t yet know is that, as Robert Harris put it, “There are no lasting victories in politics, there is only the remorseless grinding forward of events.” And the point should come across loud and clear when we reflect that Harris wrote those words in a novel about the Roman Empire. Another thing I didn’t yet know in 1996 was that Pakistan has achieved a hard-won nationhood. Pakistan exists, it is a historical and geopolitical fact, and as such it deserves the same respect as any other nation.Many American writers have written things even more foolish than my editorial, but I want to single out one of them for special mention. In 1989 in Foreign Affairs, the house journal of the American foreign-policy establishment, Professor Thomas P. Thornton of Johns Hopkins University claimed that “The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan reduces the need for an intimate relationship with Islamabad.” There’s so much stupidity and later tragedy contained in Professor Thornton’s arrogant and myopic words that I can’t even begin to summarize it all here. But I don’t think I need to. All of us in this room have lived and witnessed the history of Pakistan since 1989.You might think that I should give Professor Thornton a break because he wrote his article so long ago. But there are always writers writing such things, and the way of looking at the world that they express is damaging. I take a different perspective; I insist that any writer who wants to write things that are true and helpful should write as if human beings matter more than states. This is the fixed point from which I look back at the history I’ve witnessed and documented, and forward to the writing and speaking I want to continue doing. These things are on my mind particularly this year, as I prepare to reprint my original book to mark its tenth anniversary and to write a new chapter covering events over the most recent eventful decade. Between 2004, when Alive and Well in Pakistan was published, and 2009, when I next visited Pakistan, so many things happened there that I titled my follow-up bookOvertaken By Events. Since 2009, to make a long story short, a lot of other things have happened. But the remorseless grinding forward of events will always be with us and, when we look at each other, the proper place for events is in the background. Our focus should be on the foreground, where we seek and find our common humanity. The search for that should be our journey.We all know only too well how flawed and fragile Pakistan is. But every nation, and every person, is flawed and fragile. Why do I love Pakistan? It’s a fair question. The best way I can answer it is with another question: Do you love your brother or sister? Do you love your wife or husband? Do you love your neighbor?