Pakistan, May 11 -- With repeated chants of "Pakistan Zindabad" rolling through Jamshed Marker Hall for nearly three hours this Friday, the Pakistan Embassy in Washington briefly ceased to look like a diplomatic mission and became something closer to a national courtyard: crowded, loud, restless, emotional, defiant, and alive with the old ache of belonging.

The ceremony had been planned as a two-hour commemoration. It stretched late into the night, with rows of chairs filling every possible corner of the venue and people standing where protocol had run out of space. There was something of Eid prayers in the scene, not in ritual but in warmth and recognition. People did not linger because anyone expected them to. They stayed because the e...