Some people in that room wanted unity. A single story they could take home and feel good about. I understand that. But unity that requires silence is not unity. I would rather sit with disagreement.

There was something refreshing about sitting in a room where people did not have to agree. I like rooms like that. I always have.

Our community evenings are warm. I am grateful for that warmth. But they can also feel careful. Too careful. Everyone smiles. Everyone is decent. And then we go home without saying the things that matter.

APPNA in St. Louis on September 12 looked like every other such night at first. Physicians. Families. Speeches. Music. I am not a physician, though people in these rooms always assume I am. It used to amuse me. Then it stopped being amusing. As if a medical degree were the only acceptable proof that someone can think. I have a seventeen-year-old daughter and a thirteen-year-old son who are watching how we argue, and I have a habit of listening.

What stayed with me was not the program. It is that more than one version of Pakistan was allowed to stand in that room without being tidied up into one comfortable message.

Three Different Corridors

Moeed Pirzada trained as a doctor, then the civil service pulled him in. He could have stayed. Instead, he chose journalism-which means he chose to ask hard questions of powerful people. He studied at Columbia and the........

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