My first “job” was with an architect not much older than myself. He had decided university was useless to him, dropped out halfway through, and began picking up construction contracts financed by his father’s friends. He would not appreciate the way I have worded this, largely because he earnestly believed what he was doing was architecture, and to some degree, he was right. To be trained as an architect is to be fluent in multiple skills at once, technical, social, economic, linguistic, and to be able to speak comfortably across vastly different rungs of society. He was doing that just fine. He was also making a lot of money from it.

But I could not quite bring myself to call it practicing architecture. This was probably snobbish. To me, architecture was a higher calling, a way of shaping the world rather than merely responding to it, of redefining living and spatial structures, molding social behavior, determining how humanity might choose to inhabit itself. I wanted to contribute to the history we are taught in schools, to become part of a movement or philosophy, or at least attempt to form one. When I tried explaining this to my “boss,” I failed to realize that my rambling was not falling on neutral ground. It was, in fact, persuasive. I had somehow bewitched him, body and soul. Whether there was a soul worth bewitching is another matter.

He drove me out to dinner one evening and asked why, if I was so smart, I could not see what was right in front of me. I was slow when it came to human feelings and told him I did not know what he was talking about. He shook his head, sighed, and drove me home.

I told my mother. “Why,” she said as she rolled out the roti equipment, “do you not understand? The man is trying to get into your pants.” I was horrified, more by my mother’s language than by the man’s intentions. I shook my head aggressively, picked up the phone, and began looking for other jobs. Real jobs. Ones where I would not be a token hire.

As I started connecting the dots, I realized how many signs I had subconsciously ignored. He had sent everyone else in his office to another location so I could work alone with him. He had tried to teach me self-defense. He had repeatedly reminded me that he was a rich man with a good house. I did not quite fancy myself old enough to move into someone else’s home and had failed to apprehend the meaning behind this behavior. I understood it very clearly then.

My next place of work was in a basement ten minutes from my house. My employer was a woman who had conveniently embraced pregnancy just as I was hired and left the office entirely to her husband. All my coworkers were men. She would only appear when she needed to reprimand me and brushed aside any concerns I raised about the others. As frustrating as it was to work in what I began calling my professional grave, there was always the hope of a well-earned walk afterward. I often worked ten to twelve hour days without seeing much daylight, so I made the most of what little time I had.

One afternoon, I wandered into Hina Rabbani’s old house, designed by Nayyar Ali Dada and now owned by a close associate of Malik Riaz. It was what one would expect: local vernacular, mid-century interiors blended seamlessly into their surroundings. The front door was a large black arch set into deep red brick. What I liked most was the presence of multiple interior levels. I am an admirer of man-made contours, even when they are impractical for most bodies. You had to step down into the living room, a wall-less spatial distinction that quietly shaped behavior. I am still surprised the woman inside let me explore her home. She chased after her children while I stood there taking photographs.

Another day, I wandered into what had once been Waris’s home. The man who opened the door looked startled. “How did you find this house?” he asked. A narrow walkway led to a double-height living space opening into a garden. Small windows from the upper bedrooms overlooked the trees, offering a moment of calm away from the traffic on the other side. It all felt deeply familiar.

There exists a distinctly Pakistani architectural identity, even though all I hear from architects back home is how there is none. When I think of Pakistani architecture, I think of terrazzo and stone floors, cool beneath bare feet, white walls occasionally washed blue, desi mid-century furniture placed sparsely within open plans, circulation that inevitably leads toward a space of gathering, ample seating for family and friends. Ceiling fans hum quietly, beams sometimes left exposed for cost-saving texture rather than spectacle. Bougainvillea and creepers blur the boundary between inside and out. A dusty palette holds its ground so that brighter textiles can take center stage.

There is almost always a wooden bookshelf with glass doors, a subtle nod to art deco geometry, rectangles culminating in a spiral bouquet of roses at the top. Pottery and expensive crockery are displayed openly, for some because there is little else to decorate with, for others because they are used too infrequently to justify being hidden away. Kitchens are ventilated carefully, designed to work with the direction of the wind, because one must not smell of food simply due to aromatic local ingredients. Fresh motia scatter themselves around the house each morning. Everything is made with the intention of sustaining relationships and negotiating tradition rather than erasing it.

In any other essay, I would apologize for straying from my narrative. Here, I let it happen. It is by walking roads not clearly marked that we understand who we are. I might have only grasped the idea of identity years after moving away, surrounded by design languages both foreign and uncannily familiar.

There will be those who ask, “But what about Siddiq Trade Center?” To them, I say, yes, what about it. The Siddiq Trade Centers of the world are no longer fashionable, and most cultures have accepted that they must live with their STCs. We complain about foreign-inspired buildings while refusing to acknowledge how global movements affect all regions, albeit unevenly. This is not an attempt to romanticize the desi home, but to emphasize the elements that already make Pakistani architecture its own.

It is time to stop waiting for a savior to define us. I say we, though I am no longer part of the system I critique. This is not an attack, nor is it a denial of the many studios doing thoughtful work. I only arrived at this understanding while studying American architecture, watching the same tensions play out between locality and imposition. The modernists are still blamed, the postmodernists tried and failed to correct them, and every new ism will eventually find itself under the same scrutiny. The debate between the duck and the shed will never settle, and judging the world through a single American metaphor is its own limitation.

I write this from a Barnes & Noble, surrounded by a Texan neo-Renaissance interior desperately attempting to differentiate itself from the uniform strip mall exterior required by zoning. I did not expect these realizations to come so late. When I look at brutalist highways in Texas trying to convince themselves that ornament is not crime, clinging to stars and grooves to soften what is otherwise an eyesore, I think of the Gulberg overpass and its unapologetic murals.

I have gone from believing Pakistan’s architectural identity could be described as commuter maximalism to believing the question itself is unnecessary. Identity is already present. What remains is deciding how much external influence we allow into buildings meant for daily life. I do not believe Kamil Khan Mumtaz is the definitive answer to vernacular design, nor do I think gaudy neoclassical mansions threaten local culture. Different media should enter the conversation. People should adopt what suits them.

What unsettles us is not hybridity, but insecurity, an anxiety about how we are perceived by those unfamiliar with us. This hesitation pulls us away from ownership. Embracing the world is not a failure. Done with conviction, it may finally lead us toward who we want to be, rather than who the country insists we are.

There is also something deeply overlooked about Pakistani apartment buildings. They still hold a sense of community. Neighbors know one another. We have not fully embraced the hotel-like apartment model where hallways feel transitory and anonymous, where pools function as symbols of impermanence, and lease agreements remind you not to get too comfortable. I moved often in Pakistan, but I do not remember living anywhere my parents were not on familiar terms with those around us. Many became lifelong friends.

I have lived in my current building for three years and cannot say the same.

Identity is not something to be stressed over. It is meant to be felt. At least in architecture. Our social structures may need more work, but in design, I am hopeful.

I did not stay at that office either. A coworker made my life unbearable after I made it clear I was not interested in him. He reverted to insults, to reminding me I was a girl. “In ten years,” I told him, “we’ll see where we are. Then we can decide who deserves to be called an architect.” I still have five years left.

I intend to keep that promise.