Excerpt: I AM THE PROCEDURE

'I AM THE PROCEDURE’ The Gender Team was about to begin a celebration for finalizing the Program Concept and most of the project proposals. Celebrating each step was a common practice I had inculcated in our team. We had arranged cake and tea in our office and were all nicely dressed up with colorful dopattas fluttering around. Suddenly, Tarik called, insisting  I come to his office. I told the group to go ahead with the celebration, saying that I would join them in a few minutes. Tarik pounced on me as I entered his office. “I called your office this morning and a strange voice answered the phone—probably a new consultant you hired. Can you believe she didn’t know who I am?” He stood up in anger. “Tarik, these are new people, hired for a short time,” I said calmly. “It takes a while to learn who is who. Even I don’t know everyone’s name, and I’ve been here for a lot longer. There are hardly any opportunities to interact.” He looked at me very suspiciously and said loudly, “A NEW person? Working in UNDP, who doesn’t know TARIK KHAN? Am I losing control or what? She should be thankful to ME for her job, she should come and thank ME for getting her into the UN system and instead she says to me,” he mimicked her in a funny voice, “‘Fouzia is busy right now, where are you calling from? You can leave a message and she will call you back.’” Furious, he hit his desk with a fist and sat down with a jerk. I jumped up from my chair, while he continued to rage. Suddenly, he smiled, “You know, Fouzia, I wonder where you have collected all these consultants from. You should at least be aware of their looks, no? I wanted to leave his room in disgust, but could not afford to because once our Unit was officially approved, we would have to begin hiring for the permanent positions. That would require a close cooperation from the Operations Unit. Tarik continued, “It’s nice to have all these women around, no?” He slipped back in his chair and put his hands in his pockets and kept pulling at his crotch from inside his pockets. My blood pressure rose—he always made sleazy comments from this position. “I’ll be more involved when you hire permanent people. You know hiring is our job.” He started fiddling with himself. “Of course, Tarik,” I said very formally. “Right now, even I am only sometimes involved in the short-listing process. I don’t even sit in on the interviewing panel when the bosses make the final decisions on hiring. Once regular UNDP funds are used, we will involve the Operations. We follow the procedures religiously!” “Follow the procedures?” he grunted. “I AM THE PROCEDURE. I mean…I know the procedures. You know that I was sent to Headquarters to learn UNDP procedures and rules. Even Edward consults me on the rules. I’ll guide your team also. Okay?” His mood changed again and he continued, with a beaming smile, “That Masako is kind of cute, no? I notice that Kitomi is very possessive of her. He wants to be her guru, right?” Ignoring his comments on Masako, I said, “I’ll continue to get your and your team’s guidance on the hiring process, but I’d appreciate the process being expedited.” With a very artificial smile, I got up to go. As I was leaving the room Tarik called, “Fouzia!” I turned around. He said, “Chuchu jani, get some good looking women…that one you hired…yara…we must have some standards!” He roared with laughter. My office was happily celebrating, acknowledging how much we had accomplished in the last two months. Team members hugged each other and joked. What a little haven we had created in this barren room. The time came for Kitomi and Edward to go to New York and present the UNDP Pakistan’s new program at the UN Headquarters. The program was approved, but the Gender Program was not fully funded. Initially, I was very angry and argued aggressively with Kitomi, but later realized that Edward and Kitomi did not have any real commitment to this program. They bragged about it because it was the first of its kind in any UNDP office, but they never really understood the spirit behind it.  (chapter continues)