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Jessica Lynch went home last week after months in the Walter Read Army Hospital under the tightest security. She returned to the small West Virginia mountain town of Palestine to a heroine’s welcome, received with a fanfare that the Washington Post described as ‘worthy of a visiting head of state’.

Jessica has emerged as the most celebrated American soldier from the Iraq war. She has been awarded the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and the Prisoner of War Medal. The first two are for gallantry in battle. There is only one problem with this made-for-Hollywood story. It is not true. The 19 year old is not what she has been made out to be.

Jessica who was ‘rescued’ in what was described as a high-risk commando operation from an Iraqi hospital was the toast of America when the Pentagon-planted story of her great valour in battle was splashed across newspapers and given the running-lead treatment by TV and radio networks for days on end. Nameless US officials told the press after the ‘rescue’ that Jessica whose convoy had been ambushed had fought fiercely and kept firing her gun till she had run out of ammunition. She was also said to have been shot and stabbed by her Iraqi captors. One official said Jessica ‘was fighting to the death’.

It was some weeks later that the BBC broke the real story. Not only had Jessica not fought to the last bullet in her gun, she had done no fighting at all. The military vehicle called the Humvee she was riding ran into another and the very grave injuries she suffered were sustained in that accident. She did try to fire her gun but it jammed. It was the Iraqis who evacuated the injured Jessica to a hospital where she was given all the help she needed, despite the limited resources of the Iraqi hospital. The Rambo-like raid mounted on the hospital to ‘rescue’ Jessica was utterly unnecessary as it was an Iraqi who tipped the US military about Jessica and where she was to be found. If she is alive today, it is thanks to the Iraqi doctor who attended to her and gave her the crucial initial care she needed.

The ‘rescue’ was a staged operation that terrified patients and victimised the doctors who had struggled to save her life. Doctors at the al-Nasiriyah general hospital said that the airborne assault had met no resistance and was carried out a day after all the Iraqi forces and Baath leadership had fled the city. Four doctors and two patients, one of whom was paralysed and on an intravenous drip, were bound and handcuffed as American soldiers rampaged through the wards, searching for departed members of the Saddam regime. An ambulance driver who tried to carry Jessica to the American forces close to the city was shot at by US troops the day before their mission. The US operation has angered and hurt doctors who risked their lives treating both Jessica and Iraqi victims of the war. “What the Americans say is like the story of Sinbad the Sailor — it’s a myth,” said Harith al-Houssona, who saved Private Lynch’s life after she was brought to the hospital by Iraqi military intelligence.

The Jessica Lynch episode is a classic example of the old adage that facts should not be allowed to stand in the way of a good story. The people in her hometown are treating her as a heroine and don’t really care if the actual events run counter to popular belief. James Roberts, a 77-year-old storeowner said every war needs a hero and ‘she is the hero in this war; the facts don’t particularly matter’. The townspeople have added two additional bedrooms and an extra bathroom to her modest family home. And through public subscription.

‘Jessi’, as she is affectionately called, returned by a Black Hawk helicopter to the adjoining town of Elizabeth where a grand public reception had been mounted for her and where she spoke for a few minutes. The world’s press was in attendance and the arrival was carried live by every American TV network. Said Ray Watson, 79, to the Washington Post, “We are great Jessi people — this whole county is Jessica people — and we don’t like anyone to say anything bad about her.” He added that those who were trying to take the ‘lustre’ away from the Jessica story could ‘go to hell’.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Javid Iqbal has gone through life bearing a great burden, the burden of being the son of Iqbal, who was an intellectual colossus and whose name one takes with a reverence bordering on worship. In his autobiography published a year ago, he wrote “I am not angry at having been born into the Iqbal household nor to have been born as his son. However, I am angry at those of Iqbal’s admirers who, while disagreeing with his ideas, want to slot me as the ‘son of Iqbal’. They resent my attempts to step out of this ‘frame’. When I go abroad, I am recognised as Javid Iqbal but I consider it my misfortune that in my own country, I am nothing more than ‘Iqbal’s son’.”

There should never have been any doubts about Javid Iqbal’s formidable intellectual gifts and the use to which he has put them. If he were to live his life again, I am not sure he would choose to go into the judicial solitude of the Lahore High Court. In a way, those years have been a loss to Pakistan which could have done with his clear-headed exposition of what Islam is and what it is not, what Iqbal stood for and what he did not, what the idea of Pakistan was and what it was not.

That debt, however, Javid Iqbal has more than repaid by publishing Islam and Pakistan’s Identity under the joint imprint of the Iqbal Academy and Vanguard Books. It is a bold and brilliant work which examines and answers every major question that has troubled Pakistan and its people since its establishment. The book analyses the concepts of nationality and state in Islam, the Muslim state in India, militant Islam, Muslim India and the West, the communal problem, the “mysterious” Khilafat Movement and Islam’s social and political horizons. The great merit of this book is its clarity which is admirable since much too much of what we write and print in Pakistan is muddleheaded.

The myth that Muslims ruled India for a thousand years is laid to rest by Javid Iqbal when he writes, “The Muslim state in India had always been the property of the Sultan/Padishah. The inhabitants never enjoyed the status of citizens, but were merely treated as subjects.” He shows that the Muslim “power state” in India was administered under “mixed” laws. The Shariah was enforced but it was the will of the ruler that overrode all laws. When needed, even the Shariah was “modified” by royal proclamation. Quranic laws could be temporarily suspended. Barring a few, most Muslim rulers of India led lives of luxury bordering on depravity and no subject could dare call their dissolute lifestyles into question.

Javid Iqbal calls the Khilafat Movement in India “enigmatic”. He also explains how utterly ignorant of the Turkish reality the Muslims of India were. He writes, “Muslim India gave wholehearted support to Mustafa Kamal and his nationalist followers. But out of complete ignorance, the ulema and the political leaders misjudged the situation. They thought that the Turk nationalists were fighting in order to release the Sultan-Caliph from the captivity of the Allies at Constantinople. Consequently, the Ghazi – Mustafa Kamal – and the Sultan-Caliph were extolled by the Muslims of India. Nobody realised that the Ghazi had been proclaimed an enemy of Islam by the Sultan-Caliph and the Sultan-Caliph had been denounced as a traitor to the Turkish nation by the Ghazi. The abolition of the Caliphate in 1924 came as a rude shock to the Muslims of India as they had been warned by the ulema that if a Muslim were to die without swearing allegiance to the Caliph, he would go to hell. The Khilafat Conference decided to send a deputation to Turkey to discuss the matter, but the Turkish government refused to receive the Indian delegation.”

Javid Iqbal looks at secularism, which the mullah and much of our Urdu press confuse with atheism, through Iqbal’s eyes. Iqbal saw secularism as “rooted in the spirit” and thus there can be no justification in regarding it as ‘anti-God’. Iqbal hailed Ataturk’s political reforms and wrote, “As to licentiate the ulema, I will certainly introduce it in Muslim India if I had the power to do so. The stupidity of the average Muslim is largely due to the inventions of the myth-making mullah. In excluding him from the religious life of the people, Ataturk has done what would have delighted the heart of an Ibn Taimiyah or Shah Waliullah.” Iqbal fervently believed in Ijtihad; he believed in family planning and he believed that Shariah values ( ahkam) as related to punishments, for instance, were specific to the people to whom they were applied and “their observance is not an end in itself, they cannot be strictly enforced in the case of future generations”.

The great value of Javid Iqbal’s book lies in its exposition of what the Pakistani state was meant to be. He writes that Pakistan was to be a “state for anyone who considered himself a Muslim”. He quotes Iqbal to argue that in a truly Islamic Caliphate all powers of the ruler were to be transferred to a democratically elected assembly. The Quaid fervently believed in parliamentary supremacy. “Both Iqbal and Jinnah thus reconciled tradition with modernity, justifying the establishment of a contemporary parliamentary form of government in a democratic Islamic dispensation.” He shows that Pakistan faced problems not foreseen by its founders. The Quaid decried provincialism, yet regional and ethnic pressures ultimately dismembered Pakistan in 1971. He is critical of Bhutto for his “short-sighted policy of making compromises with the religious extremists (exactly what General Musharraf is doing 25 years later) for immediate political gains”. He calls General Zia’s “Islamisation” a “complete departure” from the founding fathers’ vision. He regrets that no elected government has ever been allowed to complete its term, since the military has interfered again and again. He considers terrorism the worst problem facing Pakistan.

Javid Iqbal believes that Pakistan’s “only hope of salvation is to entrust the new generation with the responsibility of managing its affairs”. He writes, “Pakistan has vast human and material resources; its ideology is derived from a liberal, humanistic and egalitarian vision of a state, which is to be run according to modern, democratic and Islamic ideals on the basis of Ijtihad in every sphere of the collective life of the people of Pakistan. It is the responsibility of those who wield power to persuade and encourage the educated and dedicated young men and women to grasp this opportunity to fulfil the dream of the founding fathers of Pakistan.”

It is obvious that this is Javid Iqbal’s hope, not his expectation.

I finally have the answer to a question whose answer so far had eluded me. I now know what ails Pakistan and those who live there. It is called Adult ADD which, spelt out, stands for Attention Deficiency Disorder. So this is what we have had all along without knowing it.

ADD is big time in America. If you don’t have it, well you are not quite there yet. It is the chic thing to suffer from. There are of course those who say there is no such thing, that it is a figment of the imagination of a few clever dudes and that it is yet another con trick to fleece those who hear of a disease or condition and declare that they have had it for years. Here are some questions picked out of a standard test to determine if you have ADD or you don’t. I tell you we come out winners, winners all the way.

We have ADD and God strike those who say otherwise. Sense of impending doom? Sure. It is an article of faith. And it is not without reason. Every other day we get hit by one disaster or another. Or could it be that we have developed a taste for disasters since we go out looking for them when we find none looming over our heads?

Frequent mood swings? All the time, especially when thanks to WAPDA, the power goes on the blink for the sixth time since the sun rose on the hottest and longest day of the year. Failure to see other people’s needs or activities as important? Absolutely, nothing is of consequence except what interests us. The only activities that matter should be your own. That is the one way of egging ahead in Pakistan.

Trouble with authority? All the time. Laws, rules, regulations are a waste of time and meant for weaklings. Be strong. Get into your SUV and go through every red light on the road. If Authority comes after you, what is that Mauser for? Short fuse? Naturally. In Pakistan not only are we on short fuses, we are directly connected to the main grid, so no fuses please, short or long. We are Pakistanis. Trouble going through established channels, trouble following proper procedure and a general attitude that translates into ‘I’ll read the directions when all else fails?’ Yes, a hundred times yes!

Frequent traffic violations? Not frequent but all the time, everywhere, under any conditions, rain or shine. Were this the sole criterion for the determination of ADD, every single Pakistani would be diagnosed as an advanced case. Poor organisation and planning? Yes, as proof visit any government office, high or low, in any part of the country. Poor financial management? To a fault. Look at our external and domestic debt and it will show that not only the people but the state of Pakistan is fully qualified. Chronic procrastination? Absolutely. What can be done tomorrow should be put off until the day after tomorrow and then by another day and so on till the whole thing is given up or forgotten.

Coordination difficulties? All the time, every time. The left hand in Pakistan does not know what the right hand is doing which is the way it should be. Coordination is for those who lack self-confidence and initiative. Easily startled? Yes, round the clock because it is the unexpected which is the expected in Pakistan and though it is expected, when it happens, it hits everyone as if it were the unexpected. Lack of attention when it comes to details? Of course, not only to details but to the main thing as well. Forgetfulness? Yes. Does anyone, for example, any longer remember that Bangladesh was once East Pakistan?

So now that we have determined, thanks to those clever Americans, what Pakistan suffers from, it is time to relax and stop worrying! At least we are afflicted with a condition so far found only in the most advanced countries. Isn’t that yet another first added to our already impressive list of firsts!

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

My memories of Agha Mubarak Ali are so inextricably intertwined with my memories of Sialkot that it is impossible to recall when and where exactly we first met. He was second of the four brothers who ran Amelia Hotel under the watchful eye of their mother, a grand looking lady even when she was old, after whom the hotel was named. Sialkot was that kind of place.

The principal meeting point of the with-it crowd was named after a woman and a short-lived but popular restaurant was called Café Brownie, Miss Brownie being the rather winsome Anglo-Pakistani temptress who sat behind the counter, taking your money and in the case of many distracted young men, their hearts. Café Brownie did not stay in business long, nor did Miss Brownie in the city where the tribe of her admirers, secret and declared, was on the rise.

Café Brownie was a flutter in a teacup. Our place was Amelia Hotel which served superb food and endless cups of hot and strong tea with signs on the wall in some rooms that said it was forbidden to talk politics or bring in a woman from the streets. However, while the first condition was violated round the clock, despite one of the regulars being a very friendly CID man, the other prohibition was neither applicable to us nor of any direct interest.

The four brothers who ran the Amelia each had a talent unique to him. The youngest, everyone called Soofi, was a master angler and would go fishing every Sunday to Head Marala and return with catch of enormous size. Nothing could stand between Soofi and his fishing. Since none of us was interested in angling, unless we were angling for girls who were far less obliging than Soofi’s catch, we would pass his generous invitations to join him on his weekly adventure. Fishing is a passion; but so, I suppose, are girls, and a far fiercer one.

My chief in Vienna, the larger-than-life Venezuelan Gonzolo Plaza, for instance, was into cars. At one time, he had three Mercs parked in the OPEC underground garage. Whn I asked him why, he replied, “You see, everybody collects something. Some collect stamps, others collect matchboxes, still others collect women: I collect cars.” Senor Plaza is no longer around but there is no question that he drove to heaven in the longest, sleekest, blackest limousine ever built: God’s own Merc, custom-made.

But back to Sialkot. Sheikh Riaz Ali, older by several years to Soofi, was a superb photographer. He and his Rolleiflex were inseparable. I would always ask where he had taken a certain picture and when he would say where, I would exclaim, “But I pass that way every now and then. I never saw this.” “You didn’t see this because you do not have the photographer’s eye. I see a picture where you don’t.” He worked in black and white and he made the most humdrum sight look striking, such as his pictures of ugly, black buffalos cooling themselves in the Aik on a hot summer day. In winters he would travel to Murree to photograph snow. Every room in Amelia had his framed pictures adorning the walls. ‘Photo by Sheikh Riaz Ali,’ they all said. No wonder then that he had come to be called Photoby.

The eldest brother Sheikh Ijaz Ali whom those in his age group called Jaji, was not into any particular thing but he liked to listen to music and he liked to knock back a few as the evening deepened. He was also the handsome one among the brothers, fair, blue eyed and curly haired. He died suddenly as did Riaz, of a massive heart attack. Someone said ultimately everybody dies of a heart attack.

Agha Mubarak was a musician. He played the violin which he had learnt by himself. No musical show in the city was complete without Agha coming on amid cheers to given a recital. He was also a wit and an acerbic one at that. He had such a superb ear for music and a good deal of what I know of the art of listening, I learnt from Agha. The main entrance of Amelia Hotel lay just short of Allama Iqbal Chowk, known by its less reverential name of Drumman wala chowk because drums were what the city fathers had placed in that great roundabout. The entrance to Amelia was through a corridor about 25 to 30 feet long. To the right, Agha had constructed a stand with small glass-topped counters and display windows. Here you could buy what were known as “fancy goods”, such as perfumes, silk handkerchiefs (considered the de rigour present to melt the most indifferent of female hearts) neckties, cufflinks and perhaps even discreetly tucked away “women’s things.”

Agha was extremely choosy in terms of the company he preferred. The standard test of someone’s having won Agha’s friendship lay in his being admitted behind the counter. I remember only two or three people to have crossed that particular Rubicon: Arshad Majeed, Riaz “Qibla” and Khalid Pal. I was admitted to the magic circle a little later. No one could play the counter like Agha. His nimble fingers would move on the glass as it if were a pair of the most fastidiously tuned tabla and as he played a hummed. He greatly admired Naushad and once told us that we should listen to the interval pieces in a Naushad composition because that was where he had put away his next hit, so when you heard it later, your ears were already familiar with it. All subliminal.

To the distracted, sighing youngsters, more in love with the idea of love than in love (to quote our Prof. Arthur Mowat) who thought Mukesh had such a romantic voice, Agha used to say, “Uska galla cement ka bana huwa hai; kambakht sur par se seedha guzr jata hai). Rafi, he used to say was the perfect singer, an assessment we disagreed with then but later when we knew more we realised that Agha was right.

Agha, a friend phoned from London the other day, died in Sialkot last May. Rafiq, my Sialkot friend in London who mourns his passing with me, wrote, “He was always good to us and gentle to me and I used to see him in Ghas Mandi where in later years he had opened a restaurant, and even later when he opened one in the district courts precinct. Once or twice I went to see him at his house when he had almost stopped coming to his restaurant. A decent man, a great violinist. He had a great sense of humour though once or twice I did see him in a foul mood directed at some unmannerly customer when he was running the general store in the entrance to Amelia. I think it would have been inconceivable for him to hurt anyone. He was simply great. There are very few born like him in the world now.”

After the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the takeover of the country by Ayatollah Khomeni, many Pakistanis were frequently heard wishing that someone like the Iranian cleric would take over Pakistan and “clean up the mess.” The kind of people who express such wishes for their country are also often heard saying things like, “The only way to deal with this nation is by use of the big stick. That is the only language Pakistanis understand.”

This brand of Pakistani – and there is no shortage – obviously has nothing but the highest contempt for his own people. After I returned from “revolutionary” Iran some years ago, having spent two weeks there travelling around, I knew exactly what to tell people who suggested the Khomeni treatment for the ailing Pakistani nation: “Go to Iran and see for yourself the religio-political police state the mullahs have set up. Is that how you would like us in Pakistan to live?” Some years later, the same crowd could be heard saying, “O we need someone like Mullah Omar in Pakistan.” The catastrophic state in which the Muslim world finds itself today is due to primitive and mindless zealotry that has demeaned a great religion, made it a synonym for terrorist obscurantism, and turned the lives of millions of its simple and faithful followers into a living hell.

The savage manner in which the ongoing student protests in Iran have been dealt with by the mullah -run regime – even Khatami is a cleric, don’t forget – should open our eyes to what some of us are still advocating for our people. Recently, there has come to light here a letter sent anonymously from Tehran by a man who lived quietly by renting out copies of the world’s great cinema classics. His arrest is part of a wider purge of film journalists over recent months.

The letter begins, “Today is Thursday the 1st of May. It is a public holiday here in Tehran … But it makes no difference what day it is for those of us who are second-class citizens, or ‘ambulant pieces of flesh attached to legs’, as Mesbah Yazdi describes us, who are of no use to the ‘Islamic Republic’ of Iran. I was up all night, glued to the computer screen ‘to earn my daily bread’. I fell asleep at 6:30 in the morning and managed briefly to escape my troubles, which I know will spell my end one day: exhaustion, backache, eye strain, headaches, heart palpitations. I was shattered.”

He learns sometime later that Mahmoud Vakili, a film critic, has been arrested. The woman who calls to break this news also warns that no attempt should be made to contact the Vakili house directly. Afshin, the caller, says that Vakili is afraid of getting caught in some kind of trouble. He is well known and his phone is tapped. He is not a political activist, just a film critic, “but like all of us, he can now be found guilty of this new crime.” He wonders why the regime is after people like him. He writes, “We are those simpler souls who sought to steer clear of any sort of political fuss in this accursed corner of the planet. We eliminated every shred of ambition from our lives and instead of seeking solace in drugs, money or womanising, we turned to culture – to art and cinema. We chose to step into a dream – the dream of things we don’t have. Now, they are shattering this dream with lashes of the whip, with jail, torture, dishonour and accusations. This makes us afraid.”

The crackdown by the mullahs on activities that they consider “repugnant to religion” has been the harshest on Iran’s flowering film culture. Kambiz Kaheh, a film journalist and Said Mostaghasi, another journalist, were arrested from their homes in February, while Mohammad Abdi, editor of a film journal, and Amir Ezati were picked up a couple of days afterwards. A day later Yasamin Soufi was taken away by henchmen from the Adareh Amaken, the department that deals with “moral crimes”. Others in jail include Abbas Abdi, Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, Akbar Ganji, Hossein Ghaziyan, Siamak Purzand, Khalil Rostamkhani, Said Sadr and Nasser Zarafshan who are serving sentences of between five and 11 years for no crime other than that of expressing their opinion.

The anonymous correspondent calls Iran “this land of gold and power, of dishonesty and hypocrisy; of ignorance in the name of God, where human dignity is crushed.” Mahmoud Vakili who went abroad with his sister and her young child but returned to “this wasteland” became what is known as a “filmi.” He only rented cinema classics and quality films by new-wave cinema directors. This the regime found unacceptable. However, it did not do much to stop the trade and rental of pornographic films in every Iranian city, big and small.

The correspondent writes, “Those in charge act as they do because they seek this very result. Theirs is a silent terrorism directed at individuals, a terrorism of minds, of thoughts. It seeks to drive its victims into isolation. They know what they are doing. Those in charge know exactly what they are doing. Carefully and patiently they have identified the most complete collections and archives there are and have proceeded to destroy them. Film and book archives were among the greatest resources available in this barren land. Now they are gone forever. Another such archive was Mahmoud’s. We were right to be worried about it. It too has now been eliminated.”

He writes that the regime would present the confiscated films as proof of its determination to eliminate “corruption” but films that contain action scenes or titillating sequences would “end up in the homes of some official or other who lives off government handouts.” He asks, “Do you think the mullahs have seen Farenheit 451?” That film, based on a science fiction novel, imagines a future world where all books are thrown into the fire.

The anonymous correspondent says, “I feel the few films I have in hand have been spared the destructive fire. He notes ironically that “the frustrated and unemployed young men who populate the country, themselves the fruit of the revolution, can easily get their hands on any brand of porn movie. At every public intersection and busy square such films are readily available. Yet a stone’s throw away a uniformed thug will be harassing a young woman whose hair may have slipped out from under her scarf, while some young man walking along with a young woman friend has to answer to the thug to avoid being sentenced to lashes of the whip. Not far from them a prostitute will be stepping into the luxury car of some devout Haji to sell herself for a paltry sum of ten or twenty thousand toman in order not to go hungry. Meanwhile, the mullahs stand in prayer and mourn Imam Hossein. They take their wives to Mecca and Syria, and temporary wives to the freeport zones and buy stocks. They smuggle, acquire exclusive dealerships, export girls, then attend Friday prayers and chant “Death to America.”

I am not sure what the General took back from Washington, but there can be no doubt as to what he brought over. To rain-soaked Washington, he brought three days of good weather. As soon as he had cleared town, the rain returned. Does he have some kind of an arrangement under the Legal Framework Order with the rain gods? If so, it should be announced, giving the bearded brigade yet another reason to walk out of the house to which it has been returned, not to thump desks but to do some lawmaking, including laws that would unseat the man it is not crazy about.

The $3 billion package so far remains what the Americans call pie in the sky. It is fool’s gold because it is tied to not one, not two, not three but four conditions. Since many newspaper columns have been blackened with details of what those are, including this one, they need not be repeated; but what does need to be repeated is that if the movers and shakers of the world sitting in Washington come to the conclusion that Pakistan has fallen short of delivery, the $3 billion will disappear before ever having appeared. In other words, promises made in Washington are not lovers’ promises that may not be kept. If the four ‘commitments’, which is what a senior administration official called them, are not kept, the honeymoon should be considered done and over with. I mean what do you expect from a man whose favourite movie is Black Hawk Down.

Regardless of how much the arch spin master of the regime, Shaukat Aziz ‘Smoothie’ coos, the money will be no more than distant music in his ears until 2005. And we live in an uncertain world; who knows what it may be like two years from now. Already, there are many who are predicting that Bush is a one-term President, as Iraq will prove to have been his Waterloo.

One of my embedded sources tells me a bit of what happened behind the scenes. On the eve of Camp David, there was a ‘strategy’ session at the ambassador’s residence, attended by the President. When a public-spirited member of the entourage suggested that the hounding of Pakistanis after 9/11 should be raised with Bush, there were disapproving glances from some of the Islamabad Metternichs, but the General said yes. Cut to Camp David. The meeting with Bush is all but over, when the same man realises that the Pakistani issue has not come up. Hurriedly, he passes a note to the President who, in his forthright style, tells Bush how the community has suffered and asks him to be sympathetic. Bush retorts, “But you should be sympathetic. It was the US which was attacked.” Cut.

The President takes time off to open the new chancery but disaster strikes when the airconditioning packs up, which is no wonder since a system equipped to deal with body heat emanating from 175 or so invitees is made to cope with three times the number. Being there is like standing on the main boulevard of hell. The plight of the Pakistani begamaat is heartbreaking, their makeup cascading down in small rivulets. The mems do better since they don’t wear much make up anyway. This $15 million white elephant is disaster prone. The lifts trap rather than carry those who get into them and a couple of days after the President leaves, the phone system breaks down. The ISI should find out if it is the neighbour’s doing, the neighbour being the embassy of Israel.

The President meets the Pakistani press on his last night in Washington. I ask him why after presiding over one cricketing disaster after another, Gen. Tauqir Zia is still there. In answer, the President goes into a long spiel about the great good the said General has done to cricket and, furthermore, invites this unworthy soul to come and see it for himself, as well as ‘forgive’ General ‘Hulk’. After the press conference, I am surrounded by correspondents from Lahore, “Congratulations,” they say, “you just made sure that Pakistan cricket remains saddled by General Tauqir Zia for many more years.” Which only shows that putting questions to heads of state can produce results exactly contrary to what the questioner intended.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The first time I saw Delhi was in 1968. I went as part of a pilgrim party, as that was the only way of getting a visa. However, my pilgrimage and that of Akmal Aleemi, my friend from Imroze, the Urdu twin of The Pakistan Times, was not to the mausoleum of the venerable saint who had made our travel possible – saints do perform miracles – but to the city of Delhi itself which is a million shrines gathered into one.

While the streets of Delhi were not exactly the painted parchments of an artist, nor every woman we saw akin to a painting as Mir Taqi Mir had assured us, of one thing I found myself in no doubt: this was one city where one could live happily as if one were living in Lahore. Over the years, I have gone to Delhi several times and every time I go there I return convinced that if there is a sister city on earth for those who live in Lahore, it is Delhi. That may be the reason why almost every Hindu and Sikh family that was uprooted from Lahore in 1947 is settled in Delhi. When you run into one of its members, even the generation born long after independence, and say where you have come from, their faces light up and a strange look of longing comes into their eyes. There will be no forgiveness on judgment day for those entrusted with running the affairs of India and Pakistan because they kept adding brick after brick to the wall that separates the people of their two countries instead of bringing that wall down.

And this leads me to Mrs Ruh Afza Hyder’s nostalgic account of her life-long romance with Delhi and its inhabitants, including friends she went to college in Lahore with in the early 1940s, a time that is now so remote as to have become legendary. Among those friends from Lahore with whom she caught up in Delhi, and with whom she has retained affectionate contact across continents, was Teji, who was to marry Prof Bachhan, who was to gain fame not so much on account of his verse, as his son Amitabh, the great heartthrob of the Indian cinema in the post-Dilip, Raj and Dev Anand era.

Mrs Hyder, whom everyone calls Afza (and so will I) married Sajjad Hyder, one of Pakistan’s most distinguished ambassadors who served his country quietly and gracefully, neither seeking posts that other people ran after nor questioning such decisions. But in a career that began with Pakistan – he was one of the three Muslims selected for foreign service by the Interim Government of India in 1946. His final interview was conducted by Jawaharlal Nehru, who wrote the word ‘Japan’ against his name because, having served in the Indian army during the Second War in Southeast Asia, he had become a fluent speaker of Japanese. It is ironic that one country where he was never sent to serve through his long career was Japan.

To Sajjad and Afza fell the honour of being among the first three officers posted to Delhi where they were already living, the other two being Sultan Muhammad Khan and the late Iftikhar Ali whom everyone called Ifti. The first Pakistani embassy in India was established in the Sher Shah Mess, New Delhi. Sajjad and Afza had three postings to Delhi: at the time of independence as third secretary, in 1957 as deputy high commissioner and in 1968 as high commissioner. He was in Delhi in 1971 and since his telegrams to his government, he felt, were falling on deaf ears, he jumped into his car one day and drove to Rawalpindi. He was taken straight to Yahya Khan by his old friend, the Foreign Secretary Sultan Muhammad Khan.

Sajjad did not mince his words. He told the president that the situation demanded a political compromise be hammered out with Sheikh Mujibur Rehman because the situation was rapidly deteriorating and the deck was stacked against Pakistan. He also predicted that war would break out before December. Yahya Khan turned to the foreign secretary and said, “It seems to me that the high commissioner is exhausted after his long posting to Delhi, which is why he sounds so worried. There is going to be no war. I think he should be sent to a friendly country. What about Turkey?” Sajjad replied that he was neither exhausted nor tired of Delhi; he was only warning that time was running out and a political compromise should be made with Mujib. He returned to Delhi disillusioned and frustrated. He had done his duty and his advice had been thrown aside.

Afza is a delightful writer and a great storyteller. Here is one of her stories. In 1950, Sajjad was private secretary to Ikramullah, Pakistan’s first foreign secretary. One day the Russian ambassador stormed into his office which was housed in Mohata Palace, Karachi. He was furious because all the cigarette sellers outside the Russian embassy were intelligence informants and a nuisance for his visitors. Ikramullah heard the ambassador out with great patience, asked Sajjad to get everybody a cup of tea and then said to the enraged envoy, “Could Your Excellency teach us a better method because we are newcomers in this field and a bit naïve too”.

The most poignant parts of Afza’s account relate to the heartbreaking defections of East Pakistani officers in 1971, one of whom came to Sajjad, took his hand and with tears in his eyes said, “I have always felt towards you as if you were my own father”. Then he left. Such were the times. Who shall we hold responsible for what happened to Pakistan? Perhaps Mustafa Zaidi provided the best answer to that question: “ Mein kis-kai haath pai apna lahoo talaash karoon: Tamam shehr nai pehnay huwain hain dastaanay”. (Where should I seek the hands that are besmeared with my blood, because every resident of this city is wearing gloves?)

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