What was going on when I was born?

Voters dealt an unexpected rebuff to President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq on Monday by turning seven of his Cabinet aides out of office in elections to a new National Assembly, according to returns announced today. Among those defeated was Defense Minister Ali Ahmad Talpur, who was running in Sind Province. His rejection was viewed as stemming from ill feelings brought on by eight years of martial law under General Zia. In addition, about 30 members of the existing national legislature, whose members were picked by General Zia, lost in their attempts to win seats in the new assembly. About 40 members won, but the defeat of so many was also interpreted as a loss for the President.

International Pakistan's leadership was rebuffed in National Assembly elections as the voters turned out of office seven Cabinet aides of President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. A major reason for the defeats was opposition to nearly eight years of martial law under General Zia. (Page A1, Column 5.) The trial of Klaus Barbie for crimes against humanity is expected to start late this year. Lawyers say the trial of Mr. Barbie, the former Gestapo chief in Lyons, France, will focus on three charges instead of the eight originally announced and on 800 of the Jews he ordered killed. (A1:3-4.)

Pan American World Airways announced yesterday that it had reached an agreement with its pilots' union for a new contract. The settlement greatly enhances Pan Am's chances of averting a strike by the Transport Workers Union, which has set a deadline of midnight tonight to reach an agreement. A strike could damage Pan Am's bookings ahead of the important summer tourist season.

French prosecutors expect to try Klaus Barbie for crimes against humanity by the end of the year, but the case they have developed against the former Gestapo chief of Lyons will not involve the torture and murder of France's greatest Resistance hero. As evidence against Mr. Barbie is assembled by the investigating magistrates and the charges against him are pared down, it has become clear that the trial will deal with three specific charges, instead of the eight originally announced. The three charges exclude Mr. Barbie's role in the arrest and death in 1943 of Jean Moulin, the underground chief, and the Nazi police official's campaign of repression against French Resistance fighters. If lawyers' evaluations are correct, the case against Mr. Barbie, who is 72 years old, will concentrate on about 800 of his Jewish victims, offering a microcosm of a beastly system rather than a confrontation with the Nazi mechanism on its widest, most brutal scale.

John M. Fedders, the head of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission since mid-1981, resigned today amid widespread publicity that he beat his wife. There were indications that the White House had asked for his resignation. In a letter of resignation to the S.E.C. chairman, John S. R. Shad, Mr. Fedders said that although he was satisfied that his private difficulties had not affected the execution of his duties, ''the glare of publicity on my private life threatens to undermine the effectiveness of the division of enforcement and of the commission.'' Allegations 'Exaggerated' Mr. Fedders said newspaper reports about his marriage and pending divorce trial had ''exaggerated allegations in the divorce trial'' and had ''unfairly described occasional highly regrettable episodes in our marriage.'' He did acknowledge that ''on seven occasions during more than 18 years of marriage, marital disputes between us resulted in violence, for which I feel, and have expressed, great remorse.''

The Supreme Court ruled today that a state must provide an indigent criminal defendant with free psychiatric assistance in preparing an insanity defense if the defendant's sanity at the time of the crime is seriously in question. The 8-to-1 decision, written in expansive terms by Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall, was the first Supreme Court ruling in years to extend an important new constitutional right to criminal defendants. Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist dissented. The Court overturned the death sentence of an Oklahoma man, convicted of murdering a minister and his wife. The defendant's request for psychiatric assistance in presenting an insanity defense was denied by the Oklahoma courts. The man, Glen Burton Ake, was given a court-appointed lawyer but could not afford to hire a psychiatrist. As a result, he presented no expert testimony to support his contention that he was insane at the time of the crime.

Forty years ago, during the era of ''whites only'' theaters and art galleries in much of the nation, Jack and Jill was an elite social club that held teas and cotillions and private film showings for the children of the black middle class. Twenty years ago, at the crest of the civil-rights movement, it was a seeming anachronism, written off by some blacks who denounced it as a relic of segregation and an unsavory reminder of intraracial stratification. ''It was kind of an embarrassment to middle-class blacks who thought they were aware and with it,'' said Dr. Alvin Poussaint, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard University. Now, with 38,000 members, 1,800 of them in the New York City area, Jack and Jill has become one of the largest black family groups in the country, offering social and civic activities for children and giving thousands of dollars to family-related charities, according to its president, Ramona W. Arnold of Los Angeles. As more blacks move up the socioeconomic ranks and into predominantly white suburbs, members say the organization is experiencing a resurgence and renewed acceptability among some of the very people who rebuked it a decade ago.

When James McManus flew from Syracuse to London recently, he took an Empire Airlines flight directly to one of Pan American World Airways' gates at Kennedy International Airport in New York City and then boarded a Pan Am trans-Atlantic jet just a few hundred yards away. The trip was better in several ways than before Empire's affiliation with Pan Am two years ago, said Mr. McManus, an employee of the Carrier Corporation. It was not only cheaper but the dash from one terminal to another was eliminated. Furthermore, both he and his luggage were ticketed straight through to London, and he earned extra miles on Pan Am's frequent flier program.

THERE is a Vietnamese specialty called cha gio, spring rolls of ground pork, crab meat, onion, garlic and seasonings, wrapped in thin rice paper, that I first tasted 20 years ago in Paris. It made such an impression that a few years later I traveled to Saigon to taste it at the source. The trip was more than worth the effort.

Nissan. Toshiba. Bridgestone. Sharp. Matsushita. Tabuchi. In these parts, the names of Japanese manufacturers are getting to be as familiar as Jack Daniel's and the Grand Ole Opry. The State of Tennessee has done remarkably well in attracting Japanese ventures. The latest announcement that Tennessee had snared another big Japanese company came earlier this month. Komatsu Ltd., the world's second-largest maker of earthmoving equipment, after Caterpillar, is negotiating to buy an existing factory in Chattanooga for its first manufacturing venture in this country. So what does Tennessee offer that the Japanese like so much? Some say it is a nonunion atmosphere, although unions do exist in Tennessee. (Even the Nashville Symphony went on strike this month.) Others say it is Tennessee's climate. Still others, rising to the topic, point to such historical similarities between Japan and the South as the fact that both were defeated in war.

Because of an editing error, a front- page article and headline on Monday about a pattern of mortgage defaults incorrectly described the region involved. The defaults have been largely confined to California and the Southwest, although mortgage investors across the country have been affected.

''We recognized long ago that mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process, and that a criminal trial is fundamentally unfair if the state proceeds against an indigent defendant without making certain that he has access to the raw materials integral to the building of an effective defense.'' - Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall. (A18:1.)