r/PakistanDiscussions

Most of us left Pakistan with a very specific picture in our heads.

The street you grew up on. The smell of rain on hot concrete. The chai at the same dhaba every morning. Neighbors who knew your name. A pace of life that was chaotic but somehow familiar and comforting.

That Pakistan felt like home. This one — the one on the news, the one relatives describe, the one you see on your visits — sometimes feels like a different country wearing the same name.

So the honest question is — are you returning to a real place, or to a memory?

And even if you made peace with the fact that Pakistan has changed — there's another fear nobody really talks about openly.

Are you afraid of integrating back?

Not the paperwork, not the logistics. The social reintegration. Walking into a room full of relatives and feeling like a guest in your own family. Your cousins have inside jokes you don't get. Your siblings have friendships, routines and a whole life you were never part of. You laugh a little too loud, dress slightly differently, have opinions that make the room go quiet.

You're family — but you're also somehow the expat cousin.

And it goes both ways. Does your family back home still treat you as one of their own — or has the distance quietly changed that too? Are you the one they're proud of, or the one who left? Sometimes both at the same time.

Some returnees say it took them a full year to stop feeling like a foreigner in their own country. Others say they never fully shook that feeling and came back abroad.

Has anyone here actually gone through this? Did you ever feel truly home again — or is home now somewhere in between?

I don't usually post things like this. But I've been watching this situation for months and I can't stay quiet anymore.

A close friend of mine lost his brother, Sakhawat, not long ago. Sakhawat was one of those people you don't forget. quiet, sharp sense of humour, never a harsh word for anyone. I studied alongside him for 8 years. Not once did I hear him speak badly about a single person. He came from a family that left everything behind, moved from a remote area, and built their life with nothing but hard work and integrity. That's the kind of household this was. And sakhawat was fightinh rear type colon cancer for 4 years and documented some part of it here: https://www.instagram.com/sakhawatay/ .

His younger brother Sharafat is also so good and muture at yang age. coz i think he have seen alot stuff, coz idk how he handle all this with patiace fr. And now he is the sole responsible person in that family. He has major exams right now. That's the situation a grieving family, one son carrying everything, and he can't even fully process his loss because he's trying to hold the family together.

Here's what's happening.

A woman named Kainat Ansari that as get in tuch with him in june july after knowing about his cancer and he was in hopital uk, she was in usa, all intaction haopped on call mostly they met few times, and she has been using Sakhawat's name, his story, and content to build a public narrative on Instagram. She is actively collecting donations including USD from international followers, including people connected to Harvard using his identity and his memory as leverage.

The family has not authorized any of this. Not a single post. Not a single fundraiser. Not a single use of his name.

She has blocked the family. She has built a following around this story. And she is using the goodwill of people who genuinely loved Sakhawat or who are simply good-hearted people moved her narative and by grief to collect money.

The family does not want a public fight. They do not want legal chaos. Sharafat has exams. They are trying to survive right now, not go to war. But I could not watch this continue without at least documenting it and putting it in front of people who deserve to know.

I sat with Sharafat and convinced him to document everything. That document is here :

Full Documentation — Names, Timeline, Evidence

Her Instagram is here:

instagram.com/kainatannsari

What I'm asking from this community:

Always Good-hearted people are being used. That's what hurts most. People who follow her, who donate, who share her content they think they're honouring someone's memory. They're not. They're funding someone who blocked the actual family of the person she claims to represent.

If you've donated, please know that money did not reach Sakhawat's family.

If you follow her, please read the document before deciding whether to continue.

And if you believe, as I do, that using a dead person's identity and story without family consent to collect real money from real people is fraud please report her account on Instagram.

To report on Instagram:

1. Go to her profile → tap the three dots (⋯)
2. Select Report
3. Select "It's a scam or fraud" or "False information"

I'm not posting this for drama. I'm posting this because Sakhawat deserved better than to have his name used as a fundraising tool. His family deserves peace. And the people donating deserve the truth.

That's all.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments. I'll answer what I can. i will tell Sharafat about this post. Coz He asked me not to make things worse I'm trying to make things right at least i think i hope I'm not overreacting.

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If Kathak is a shared culture(Gangu culture). Urdu is our national language (again Gangu) .If Mandirs are Pakistani history, we want to be secular.

**What is the difference between pakistan and 1ndia. We are the same as Indian Muslims.**

Indian Muslims are not even a minority. There are almost the same number as us if not more.

Everyone wants to erase the Punjabi culture of Pakistan and want to use Urdu as national language, want to remove our military and let us be invaded by India.

Where claim do we have on the 2 nation theory.

Honestly we should take a leaf from Egyptian society or any other North African society and really think hard about our identity.

I really need some advice because I genuinely don’t know what to do anymore.

Me and my boyfriend have been together for almost 6–7 years now. We were basically high school sweethets. Bohat ups and downs dekhe hain together, but somehow we always found our way back to each other.

At the start of our relationship, he had a lot of anger issues and honestly it became mentally exhausting for me. Sometimes the way he reacted or spoke during fights felt emotionally draining and borderline toxic. It affected me deeply and after around a year together, things got really bad between us and I broke up with him. I was extremely heartbroken at that point. He was actually the one who had chased me for a long time before I agreed to be with him in the first place, and after the breakup he came back too. He kept trying, apologizing, taking me out, making efforts, asking me to forgive him.

During that phase, we were very on and off and a lot of things happened between us. We eventually ended up separating for some time, but after a while we met again and realized we still loved each other too much to stay apart. So we patched things up.

Since then, years have passed. Obviously idhar udhar ki choti moti laraaiyan hoti rahi hain, but overall things became much healthier. Also, my parents’ divorce affected me very deeply. It was a really painful divorce and I think it has permanently affected the way I see relationships and marriage. I’ve carried a lot of fear from it.

The thing is… he genuinely loves me. He cares for me a lot. He’s always there for me emotionally. If I need something, he’ll do it. He comforts me when I’m struggling. We laugh together, enjoy each other’s company, understand each other really well.

Now we’re at that age where marriage conversations are becoming serious. He wants to get married in a year or two.

And I’m terrified.

Not because I don’t love him. I do love him. A lot. But the idea of marriage scares me so much. What if things go wrong? What if we end up divorced? Marriage feels so permanent and heavy to me. It’s not just dating anymore, it’s a lifelong commitment.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m not ready for marriage at all. Sometimes I wonder if my fear is because of my parents’ divorce. Sometimes I wonder if I’m overthinking and sabotaging something good.

What to do in such situations?

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If Kathak is a shared culture(Gangu culture). Urdu is our national language (again Gangu) .If Mandirs are Pakistani history, we want to be secular.

**What is the difference between pakistan and 1ndia. We are the same as Indian Muslims.**

Indian Muslims are not even a minority. There are almost the same number as us if not more.

Everyone wants to erase the Punjabi culture of Pakistan and want to use Urdu as national language, want to remove our military and let us be invaded by India.

Where claim do we have on the 2 nation theory.

Honestly we should take a leaf from Egyptian society or any other North African society and really think hard about our identity.

Deportation flight to Muslim-majority Pakistan serves pork sausages

Nobody talks about this one openly. But I think it quietly lives in the back of every overseas Pakistani's mind.

You moved abroad for opportunity, for a better life, for your kids' future. And it made sense at the time. But somewhere along the way your parents got older. The video calls started showing more grey hair, slower movement, a tiredness in their eyes that wasn't there before.

And you're still here. Thousands of miles away.

For a lot of us the deal was always "I'll go back when the time is right." But the time never feels right. There's always one more year of saving, one more school year to finish, one more promotion to wait for. And meanwhile they're getting older every single day without you there.

Some of us fly back as often as we can afford to. Some send money and tell ourselves that counts. Some have moved parents over abroad which solves the distance but creates its own complicated guilt — uprooting a 70 year old from everything they know. Some have siblings back home and quietly rely on them carrying the load, which creates a whole different kind of guilt.

And some of us have already lost a parent while being abroad — and carry that weight in a way that never fully goes away.

There's no clean answer to this one. But I think pretending it doesn't hurt is worse than talking about it.

How do you handle it? Have you found anything that actually helps — or is this just the price we pay for the life we chose?

I have seen a lot of Pakistanis be racist to each other, saying things like "Nan lagao", "Patwari" this and that, and you go in their reddit history and you'll see them advocating against racism.

Bhai log ye munafiqat kab khatam hogi?