Conclusion: Being Pakistani beyond Europe and South Asia

The 2008 Pakistani film Khuda ke Liye (KKL) has the contemporary topical Pakistani transnational story. Mansoor, a wealthy young man, leaves Lahore for America where he studies music. He meets an American woman, marries her, and after 9/11 is arrested, tortured, and finally deported by the intelligence agencies that have come to realize he is not guilty of any terrorism-related charges (the plot of the film anticipated of a real-life situation as described by Siddiqui 2009). His brother Sarmad, who used to play in the same band in Lahore, stops doing music when he meets a mullah from the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. He also agrees to marry a distant cousin from UK to help her “revert to tradition,” and leaves with her for the tribal areas. The British cousin tries to escape, and once safe from her husband, she contacts a “modernist” imam who helps fight her case in court. She then decides not to return to the UK, but to go back to the tribal areas to help with the education of the local girls. The plot of the second highest grossing film in the history of Pakistani cinema is both a geographical triangle (Pakistan, United States, and UK), and an “identity triangle”: Islam, family traditions, gender relations (see Malik 2008: 169)