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My friend Raja Anwar phones from Germany to say Syed Ashiq Kalim is dead. I ask when, as if knowing can bring him back or make it easier to come to terms with his death. Several weeks ago, comes the reply. Of what he died, I do not ask. What is the purpose? Will death by lightening be any different from death by slipping over the bathroom floor and breaking one’s neck? In both cases, the curtain is drawn over what was once life. So it goes.

Ashiq Kalim’s death took me back to the heady late sixties when the Pakistan People’s Party was young and in the vanguard of the movement against Ayub whose heavy-handed regime had begun its ordained, but long-awaited, descent into the dustbin of history. There was a smell of revolt in the air. Those truly were street-fighting days, to borrow a phrase from Tariq Ali who too had come over from England to get a ringside view of the action. But he did not stay long because, though he detested the regime, he detested the man who was leading the battle against it even more. Maybe he will write a novel about it, since that is what he does rather successfully these days.

Ashiq Kalim came from the Campbellpur-Attock region, the constituency of the Khattars of Wah in general and of Sardar Shaukat Hyat Khan in particular. He belonged to that new breed of political worker that Bhutto had brought to birth. He was a jiyala, as Tariq Waheed Butt was in Lahore and Ahmed Raza Kasuri was in Kasur. These men were intoxicated by Bhutto. No political leader since the Quaid-i-Azam in the 1940s had moved his followers so deeply, so powerfully, as Bhutto. And the miracle was that until 1966 Bhutto had been one of the leading lights in the Ayub-dominated Muslim League. He had left the government and being the only politician in West Pakistan to have read the public mood correctly, he had leapt into the political breach that only he was big enough to fill. Sardar Muhammad Sadiq said once that there was already a jaloos on the street, and Bhutto had just jumped in front of it and was now leading it. ZAB had sensed the anger on the streets, while others had remained confined to their living rooms spinning out intrigues.

Ashiq Kalim was not a lover of Bhutto: he was a mad lover of Bhutto. He had a good bit of land in Attock, chunks of which he sold to follow Bhutto wherever he went. If Bhutto was in a plane flying from Rawalpindi to Karachi, the man sitting right behind him on the same plane was often Ashiq Kalim. Through 1969 and 1970, there was perhaps not a single Bhutto rally, a single Bhutto march through the streets, a single Bhutto public meeting where Ashiq Kalim was not to be found. He was the kind of worker who would interrupt his leader as he spoke to shout, “ Jiye Bhutto!” He ran against the redoubtable Sardar Shuakat Hyat Khan from Attock for the National Assembly and nearly beat him, falling behind by less than 3,000 votes. Had he spent a little more time in his constituency instead of chasing Bhutto around the towns and cities of Pakistan, he would have beaten Sardar Shaukat Hayat.

It was Ashiq Kalim who brought Malik Hakmeen Khan and the late Ahmed Waheed Akhtar into the People’s Party. He was made adviser for local bodies to the Punjab governor after the PPP came to power. His stay at the wicket was brief but eventful. In cricketing terms, he was not a Hanif Mohammad but a Shahid Afridi. The end came in Gujrat where in a speech he declared that CSP officers in particular and bureaucrats in general had been sucking the people’s blood and it was time to deal with them. And how was that to be done? “I am going to set dogs on these fellows,” thundered Ashiq Kalim. The speech created an uproar that may have cost him his job, the first and last he held with a government that he and people like him had brought to power. Politics is cruel. Its finest children are the first to be abandoned by the wayside. What a pity that Ashiq Kalim’s imaginative method of dealing with bureaucrats was not given a chance. It might have solved most of our problems. However, as was to be expected, not the CSPs but Ashiq Kalim it was who was thrown to the dogs.

Another memorable Ashiq Kalim quote from those days involves the journalist fraternity. Action had been initiated under martial law regulations against Punjab punch, a Bhutto supporter, and the two Bhutto-baiting journals Zindagi and Urdu digest. When Ashiq Kalim was asked about it, his colourful reply was, “They were dogs. And they used to bark. They have now been collared and chunks of meat have been thrown to them. When considered necessary, they will be decollared.” This created quite a rumpus. The right-wing press went to town with the story, expressing shock at a member of the government threatening the press. Obviously, these upholders of press freedom did not consider the venom and abuse continuously hurled at Bhutto and his party an infringement of press freedom.

Off and on, Ashiq Kalim would phone me here in America from Attock when he should have been sound asleep. We would have long, rambling conversations. Once he said that he had the answer to Pakistan’s debt problem. “It would all be gone in no time,” he declared. He asked if I could arrange to have him reveal his formula to the then head of government. I told him he couldn’t have chosen a more unlikely interceder. I did, however, try but it got nowhere, something I had known would happen all along.

Raja Anwar tells me that in 1975, the Intelligence Bureau reported to the prime minister that Ashiq Kalim had been heard addressing his leader in a style straight out of the movie Sholay. He had declaimed, “O my Sardar, we’ve captured power. If it was a daaka then we, your followers, are only petty dakoos. But Sardar, you have made our enemies like Muhammad Hayat Khan Tamman your ministers. Sardar, what is this? What is this, Sardar? Tammans yes, and Ashiq Kalims no?”

Ashiq Kalim was one of the last of that vanishing breed, the political worker who is in love with his cause but remains a fugitive from the camp of victory. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto drew Ashiq Kalim’s kind in droves in the early days. But things changed as he settled into office and the dynamics of power took charge. Ashiq Kalim, however, kept dreaming and dreaming. He died some weeks ago in a remote town in Pakistan.

This has been a long, wet, humid summer. In fact, it has been no summer at all. If there were cloudless days, one does not remember them. God, of course, has to cater to all his creatures, so in Washington at least this will go down as the summer of the mosquito, not excluding the West Nile virus which despite the romantic name that triggers visions of that old serpent of the Nile, Cleopatra, can leave far more deadly a trail than just scratchy skin. While there have been no reported cases of the virus, to the residents of Washington, come evening, everything that buzzes past them looks like West Nile or if not that, at least, its first cousin.

Congress is in recess and every third or fourth person is on holiday. Those who remain in the District are obviously bored, hence the newest fad that has come to be called ‘flash mob.’ The fad is not confined to Washington but is rapidly spreading worldwide. According to the Washington Post, this is ‘the latest fad among the digitally connected, people eager for whimsy in this summer of suicide bombers and war, looking for a chance to do something wacky.’

This is how flash mob is played or enacted or how it happens because it is a happening thing. In Dupont Circle, which is the heart of Washington, there is a bookshop called Books-a-Million (Khaled Ahmed, when he was here, was often to be seen browsing there). At exactly 7.28 pm on Wednesday, several young people drifted into the bookshop and made straight for the magazine racks where they grabbed copies of five different magazines. Six minutes later, they swapped the magazines and began to read aloud from them. Sixty seconds later, they cheered and ‘high-fived’ or touched palms. As the puzzled staff and customers watched, they calmly walked out, going in different directions.

The point about flash mob is that it has no point. According to one flash mob enthusiast, ‘It’s Here! Imagine sitting on a bench in a public park on a warm, summer afternoon. Without warning, more than 100 people from all directions suddenly gather around a single spot, erect a small statue, then disperse as suddenly as they appeared. Or think about yourself during Christmas, walking through the mall. You pass a toy donation booth. Without warning, dozens of people descend on it, laying down their donations in such a way as to spell out a word or create a tableau. Then the flock moves onward, to the next destination. Now imagine that you are one of the people in the flock, being a part of a living, physical community. Better yet, imagine yourself thinking you have a better idea and organising one of your own.’

In another American city, at 12:30 pm Thursday, many people converged on a plaza that leads to a ferry building. Every time an F Market train went by, they all yelled out, “Choo Choo” and pumped their fists up and down to get the conductors to ring the bell. As soon as the first conductor rang his bell, they all dispersed. In Atlanta, Georgia, a group assembled at the famous FAO Schwartz Toy Store and pretended to row a boat as they sang ‘Row — Row — Row your boat’ for exactly three minutes. Then they abruptly stopped and walked away, each to his own destination. In Sacramento, California, flash mobbers were asked to gather at a state fair at exactly 7.30 pm. Everyone was carrying a book. Five minutes later, they began to read aloud and thirty seconds later, they were gone. It was shown on a local TV channel because they had staged their act in front of the TV booth.

In Cologne, Germany, a crowd of young people gathered in front of the main entrance to the famous cathedral. The men were wearing white sports socks and the women, knee-length hose. They were all carrying beach towels which they spread on the ground and lay down as if they were in Majorca. There they lay for fifteen minutes, then got up, rolled their beach towels and vanished.

Could some high-spirited Islamabad youngsters gather at the entrance to the Prime Minister’s house at midday, the boys jumping up and down for three minutes and screaming “Eat more, Eat more, Eat more’, and the girls standing quite still in hijab and shouting ‘Hi handsome’ before dispersing.

However, if any of them get arrested, they are not to say where they read it.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The operative word here these days is paranoia. Everyone is jumpy, led by the monolith created by President Bush, the Homeland Security department, which is several departments joined together in a shotgun marriage that in the end may be found unworkable. However, like most bad marriages, it will go on, getting more unworkable every day.

When on Thursday afternoon, the great power breakdown hit a whole swathe of northeastern United States and vast stretches of Canada, including areas well west and north of Toronto, every Muslim in this country must have hit the prayer mat asking the Almighty, ‘Let this not be one of us’. Since a call to the Almighty operates on a grid that does not trip, the prayer seems to have been heard, so as I write this late on the evening of Thursday, initial assessments by officials suggest that the breakdown was not a result of sabotage or an act of terrorism. Allah be praised, I say because had it been the doing of one of the faithful, the backlash would have been unthinkable.

It has been said before but it can be said again. Had all the enemies of Islam, past, present and those yet to be born got together to wreak vengeance on this religion and those who are identified with it, they could not have achieved in a hundred years what the authors of 9/11 managed in just a few minutes. Nothing has been the same since. Things that were unimaginable in the open and relaxed society that the US is, are now taken for granted. More than anything, it is personal freedom that Americans value most, a good deal of which has shrunk since 9/11. And incursions made by state agencies into what were no-go areas of an individual’s privacy once have come to be accepted without much protest.

It is a fact that if you invest a bureaucratic apparatus with coercive powers of investigation, those powers will invariably be exceeded. After all, who is to draw the line? The word of the individual against whom an excess is committed carries little weight as things stand today. Anyone who has attempted to question the actions of intelligence and investigative agencies has found himself running into an impenetrable wall of steel. If you bash your head against it, you will only end up bloodying yourself. The rule by which police and intelligence agencies play is simple: take no chances and remember that an excess committed in the interest of caution is justified. Consequently, at the slightest whiff of suspicion, the machinery of the state comes into action and proceeds ahead regardless.

While it is important to keep one’s head and one’s rationality intact, it is a fact that Muslims, especially Pakistanis, have come under grave and continuing suspicion since 9/11. Some time back, a couple of FBI agents appeared at a friend’s house (no, they do not call before they arrive) and wanted to know why he had been sending packets to the same address in Canada for the last one year.

My friend, who is also associated with a New York Urdu newspaper and a well-known Karachi weekly magazine, replied that since he ran a modest computer notebook business on the Internet, he did mail packets to customers in the US and Canada, but to the address the agents had mentioned, he had sent a packet just once. He then showed them his records.

They left but came back some days later. They wanted to look into his computer. “Come right in,” my friend, who happens to have a beard and is learning Arabic, said. They did, checked out his computer and left without shaking hands. They haven’t bothered him since, but he keeps looking over his shoulder.

What about phones? “Always proceed on the assumption that your phone is bugged,” a wise man once said. To which I add, “And always assume that your e-mail is going to be read by persons others than those you send it to.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Chaudhri Zafrulla Khan had an amazing memory, even more photographic than that of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Of the many stories told of his uncanny gift of retention, I rather like the one I heard recently from a friend who once went to call on him with the request that he write a letter on his behalf to someone whose full address he had jotted down on a card. Zafrulla took the card from him, looked at it cursorily and returned it. Somewhat disappointed, his visitor said, “It is for you to keep”. “I don’t need to keep it. I have read it.” His mind was like a camera. He had read the address once and committed it to memory, to be pulled out when required.

In 1962-63 when Zafrulla was president of the UN General Assembly, as part of its oral history programme Columbia University recorded several long conversations with him. The transcripts lay unpublished in the archives of the university, although in between, one so-called Pakistani historian lifted large portions of the transcript and published them without acknowledgment as interviews conducted by him personally. It is only this year, thanks to the efforts of Professor Pervez Parvazi, formerly of the Osaka and Upsalla Universities, that the full transcript was obtained from Columbia and published in Urdu translation with the permission of the university which also attested to the accuracy of the translation. These interviews were recorded by Professor Wayne Wilcox and Professor Embury, both historians of some eminence. Zafrulla spoke from memory and it is amazing how many details he is able dredge out while describing events that happened decades earlier, some of them half a century in the past.

Professor K.K. Aziz, the only true historian produced by Pakistan, said of Zafrulla that all his life he served his country with single-minded devotion and in an upright and principled way. He served the movement that led to the establishment of Pakistan. And while we, the Pakistani Muslims, excommunicated him from our religion, we should not excommunicate him from our memory too because nations which forget their great men ultimately stop producing them.

Having grown up in Sialkot, I feel a special bond with Zafrulla, who is a Sialkoti like Iqbal and Faiz. I met him only once, when as a Pakistan Times reporter I covered a speech he was making at the Bazm-e-Iqbal, Government College, Lahore. Since then I have been among those few who spell his name correctly, without an ‘h’ because he told me that was how he spelt it.

Responding to the oft-heard (to this day) criticism that it was the British who set up the All India Muslim League and it was they who were behind the Pakistan demand, Zafrulla said it was a baseless charge. One of his arguments was the fact that the Labour Party that came to power in 1945 was never in favour of the Muslim League. In fact, its sympathies had always lain with Congress. Atlee kept trying till the end to block the partition of India, which was why the Cabinet Mission was sent.

Asked about Chaudhri Rehmat Ali, he said he knew him since his student days at Islamia College and Law College, Lahore. He met him again when he was at Cambridge in the 1930s. His only credit was that he coined the name Pakistan (Aslam Khattak, who was at Cambridge with him, denies it). He lived in an imaginary world where the practical side of things did not matter. He wanted every single Muslim living in India to move to Pakistan. When Zafrulla asked him how the logistics of such a vast operation and the enormous work of settlement would be carried out, Rehmat Ali replied, “We ourselves would have to do it, who else?” He heaped more abuse on the Quaid-i-Azam after the Pakistan scheme was announced in June 1947 than all of his enemies put together. He accused the Quaid of having destroyed his, Rehmat Ali’s, idea of Pakistan.

When asked about the Quaid, Zafrulla said if Pakistan’s creation could be attributed to an individual, then 99 percent of the credit must go to the Quaid. He followed the dictates of his intellect more than those of his heart. His commitment to Pakistan was total and that left him nothing to devote to other interests. He believed in loyalty and sacrifice and he did not forgive anyone whom he found wanting on that count. He personified devotion to duty but he never looked for sympathy. He never gave anyone a chance to express sympathy. He did not encourage that sort of thing at all.

Zafrulla also laid to rest the Indian claim, repeated every time the UN resolutions on Kashmir are mentioned, that it was Pakistan that refused to pull out its troops from Kashmir. According to Zafrulla, when the UN Commission met in Delhi in early 1949 and asked Pakistan if it had a plan for pulling out its troops from Azad Kashmir, the answer was yes. India was required to pull out the “bulk” of its army. The Indian government said it also had a plan ready but it had yet to be seen by the Indian army chief who was out of the capital for a few days. When he returned, the prime minister disappeared from Delhi. This caused a delay. When India finally presented its plan to the commission, it did so with the condition that it should not be shown to Pakistan, nor sent to the Security Council. This caused grave difficulties for both the commission and Pakistan. The tribals who had entered Kashmir had already left, as required by the operative Security Council resolution and the commission had confirmed that fact. Had an agreed peace plan been signed, all Pakistani troops would have been evacuated from the state with the simultaneous withdrawal of the bulk of India’s troops. Thereafter a Plebiscite Administrator would have taken charge and a plebiscite held. That was not to be. So it was not because of Pakistan’s non-compliance with the will of the Security Council that the Kashmir dispute could not be settled. India had no intention of letting Kashmir go because it had already annexed most of it.

Another point that Zafrulla makes with much emphasis is that it was President Truman who forced the Security Council’s hand in passing the resolution partitioning Palestine and creating Israel. The Soviet Union also voted in favour because, argued Zafrulla, it wanted lasting discord between the US and Arab states. Truman, whose recently found diary contains some nasty observations about the Jews, became the Zionist entity’s true begetter because he was up for election a year later and could not risk losing the Jewish vote.

What a shame that two of Pakistan’s greatest sons, Zafrulla Khan and Professor Abdul Salam, should have been denied the place of honour that they deserved more than anyone. Here is something General Pervez Musharraf can make amends for.

I often wonder what it will take to stop those who waste this poor nation’s money on enterprises ranging from running a special train at a cost of hundreds of thousands of rupees to celebrate Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah’s centenary (which should have been celebrated ten years ago when it went by utterly unnoticed) to holding confused and confusing conferences on Kashmir at home and abroad.

I suppose the answer is nothing and never, but since most of us live in the hope, or under the illusion, that good sense has not entirely abandoned this nation, perhaps a day will come when those who organise such tamashas with the taxpayer’s money can at least be asked why. While one has to concede that this has not been possible in the 56 years that Pakistan has been in existence, who knows what the years to come are going to be like, although the way our luck has run, we may look back on, say, the year 2003 ten years from now, draw a deep sigh, turn our eyes towards the sky and say, “Ah! those were the days.”

Since the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I do not question the good intentions of those who organised the Kashmir Conference held in Washington on 24 and 25 July. However, it could have been done without. Kashmir does not need any conferences because it is the most thoroughly documented international dispute in the world. It also happens to be the oldest unresolved question on the agenda of the United Nations. There is no aspect of this case that has not been discussed, debated and written about in and outside the United Nations.

Every possible solution that you can think of, has already been thought of. I state this only to make the point that yet another conference on Kashmir, no matter how well-intentioned and how well-organised, can only be a waste of time, effort and money. What is needed is goodwill, quiet diplomacy and a genuine desire on the part of both India and Pakistan to reach a settlement that best suits the interests of the people of the state, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, in short, everybody.

That notwithstanding, I would still like to say a few things about the Washington conference which unlike at least one self-important gentleman who wrote about it last week in a newspaper, I attended from start to finish. While the conference was billed as an exercise ‘beyond the blame game’, so thick was the air with blame that you felt like biting the person sitting next to you. Had the promised format been strictly adhered to, perhaps by the end some good ideas might have come through. But that was not to be. If you put Indians and Pakistanis in a room and ask them to talk about Kashmir, after some time all you will have will be otherwise serious people screaming like banshees on the night of the full moon.

To impress viewers in Pakistan, who do not need to be impressed, PTV had a team in position to file reports back home. The first session, which actually was five sessions without a break, was held in a large conference hall of the Canon House Office building on Capitol Hill. Out of the hundreds of congressmen and congresswomen, all the sponsors were able to rope in was a single senator and a single congressman, a born-again evangelist who exercises little influence but blows a lot of hot air. The senator turned up in the morning, but slipped out after speaking for about five minutes, not to be seen ever again. The congressman returned once but left soon which was just as well.

From Pakistan, the contingent was made up of Dr Attiya Inayatullah aka ‘Dukhtar-e-Kashmir’, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan (who made a disjointed speech that nobody could follow) and Sen. Mushahid Hussain who, to many people’s disappointment, delivered a load of clichés on Kashmir. There was also former Foreign Secretary Inam-ul-Haq who, it was obvious, is in need of being assured that he no longer is in GoP employment and can speak without being afraid of earning a bad annual confidential report.

There was no Kashmiri from the Valley, though several names had been announced. Four Kashmiris living in America were actively involved in the proceedings, one of them being the principal organiser. There should have been a ban on anyone unfolding the history of the Kashmir dispute, since it has no agreed version. If the idea was to go ‘beyond the blame game’, then that quest should have begun from 2003, not 1931. It is time the history of Kashmir was left to PhD-seeking students.

From India, instead of persons of substance, the organisers had invited a maverick politician whom no one in India takes seriously. Had newspaper editor Ved Bhasin from Jammu not been among those flown over, the Indian end would have gone by default. What Bhasin said was music to Pakistani ears but anathema to the Indians. In other words, if bridges are to be built and the Kashmir dispute settled, you need bridge builders, not one of whom could be spotted at the conference. Two Indian academics, including the grandson of the Mahatama, who are at present living in America, were included, but neither was able to go beyond the blame game. In fact, one of them said that India would never let go of Kashmir. Period.

The conference should have produced a set of recommendations. It produced none because that would have required thoughtful organisation, imagination and clear and honest thinking, none of which was much in evidence. The people of Kashmir have suffered enough, and so have the people of Pakistan and India. If nothing can be done to end their tribulations, they should at least be spared these cruel jokes.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

He was an immaculate man: a gentleman to his fingertips and an officer whose kind has disappeared like the world in which he grew up and whose values he tenaciously held on to until the end. To A.B. Awan, who died in Islamabad the other day, concepts like honour, uprightness, honesty and self-respect were not just a set of fine words that rolled off the tongue easily, but values that admitted of neither compromise nor abridgement. His most appropriate epitaph would be: Here lies a man of honour.

With A.B. Awan’s passing, the last member of the old Indian Police once known as IP is laid to rest. One of the more pleasant memories of the two and a half years that I lived in Islamabad in the late 1990s is off and on going with my friend Zafar Rathore to A.B. Awan’s house off the northern end of Marghalla Road on Sunday mornings to hear him talk of times past and present. Unlike most men his age, he did not live in the past, though his recall was total; he lived in the here and now. He was aware of what was going on and he wasn’t thrilled by it, but he spoke of it all not bitterly but with a detachment, tinged with melancholy because Pakistan could have been what it hadn’t become.

He was the ideal public servant: courageous, educated and a believer in the power and majesty of the law. I first met him in Lahore in 1968. He was then heading the Interior Secretary. The Intelligence Bureau that he ran for eight years was not the second rate refuge of army surplus that it is today. It was an efficient and well-run organisation that operated within given parameters. When A.B. Awan ran an organisation, nobody could dare fall out of line or side-step the rules. I wanted to meet him because of what Muslehuddin, then news editor at the fledgling Lahore station of PTV, had named ‘the journalist somersault case’. I had asked Zafar Rathore to arrange for my friend Iftikharuddin and I to meet Mr Awan. But more of that later.

Mr Awan’s lifelong acolyte and admirer Zafar Rathore, a police officer in the Awan mold, said of him, “He was probably the only Pakistani I know who was proud but not conceited. He would never ask for a favour, even the most minor one. As a boss, he was firm and upright and was held in awe, but would allow liberties to those he considered of the right order, intellectually and morally. He observed the highest standards of rectitude and integrity and was never afraid of anything or anyone. He had scholarly leanings and his book on Balochistan is an authoritative piece of work. During the Bhutto years, a farmhouse he had built with great love and effort at Chattar on the way to Murree was grabbed by toughs at the behest of the local MNA. Later, it was taken over, quite illegally, by a government outfit. Ironically, it was the same farmhouse where ZAB used to go for a friendly drink when his troubles with Ayub Khan were beginning to unfold. Mr Awan fought the case for the return of the farmhouse for many years and, finally, regained it through the Supreme Court.”

But who was Iftikharuddin and what was the journalist somersault case? Retired army captain Iftikharuddin was the Hong Kong correspondent of the Pakistan Times who used to always file dramatic and sometimes alarming defence and armaments-related stories for us. He had come to Lahore for a visit but stayed because, he told us, he wanted to get even with “this American who the other day not only insulted Pakistan but assaulted me”. Iftikharuddin had a room at the Hotel Intercontinental where he often entertained us, his poor country cousins, and it was at the hotel one evening that this American, claimed Iftikharuddin, insulted Pakistan and when he protested, the man had charged into him like a bull. Iftikharuddin had lodged a police report and as he worked for Pakistan Times he had arranged with us to have a story or two filed every week about the “journalist assault case”. Why did he want to be taken to see Mr Awan? Because, said Iftikharuddin, “That American is CIA and he is going to do me harm”. None of us ever saw or met this American. Some people said he did not exist, a theory Iftikharuddin considered nothing short of high treason.

Rathore took us to meet Mr Awan, then the Interior Secretary, in one of the reception rooms of the Hotel International on Lahore’s Upper Mall. There he was, a tall, handsome man exuding authority. Iftikharuddin practically fell into his arms, “Sir, I need protection. The Americans are out to get me.” Mr Awan smiled, put his arm around Iftikharuddin and told him to relax. Then he offered us each a drink. I have no idea where Iftikharuddin is or what happened to that American; what I do know is that Mr Awan is gone, a couple of months short of his 90th birthday.

Rathore arranged a birthday party for Mr Awan when he turned 85. He recalled that when Mr Awan took charge of his first district, his British IG asked him if he believed in God, but did not wait for an answer. “Before you take a decision, ask for His guidance that you do not do anything unjust.” That remained Mr Awan’s motto all his life. He was appointed IG of West Pakistan, a larger charge than any police officer had ever held before; but when he spoke of those days, he saw himself as a failure. “Look,” Mr Awan said, “I consider myself a failure. I have not been able to change anything or convert anyone. I failed to prevent the moral and administrative deterioration that we find all around us today.”

Few people know that Mr Awan wanted to be a doctor. He went to England in 1933 to study medicine but did not finish and returned to join IP in 1935 through a tough All India competitive examination. The empire was on the decline and the British knew that the subcontinent’s freedom was not far off. They took great interest in the training of civil servants who were destined to hold positions of responsibility once the Raj was gone. Mr Awan’s rise was rapid and he was an IG at the age of 39, first of the NWFP, then of West Pakistan. He became director of the Intelligence Bureau while still in his 40s.

Mr Awan was that rare civil servant – he always denigrated his achievements. He said on the day he was being honoured by his juniors, “I was a failure. I was neither able to impress my political superiors nor my subordinates of the need for rule of law, merit, fairness and public interest”. He resigned four times in his 34 years of public service. He first resigned in 1955 because he was being pressured to transfer one of his officers who had connections. He next put in his papers in 1958 because he was opposed to the militarisation of the border police. He next resigned in 1968 over unfair criticism of the Intelligence Bureau in a government report. On all three occasions, his resignation was turned down, once by Iskander Mirza and twice by Ayub Khan.

He resigned for the fourth time in 1969 because he could not get along with the Yahya regime. Had Mr Awan stayed, he would probably have been sent home by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whose style of governance would not have sat well with the sort of civil servant Mr Awan was. It reflects poorly on those who ran Pakistan in the 35 years that Mr Awan was alive after turning his back on public service, that never even once was his wise advice sought on anything or any attempt made to benefit from his vast experience.

And now that he is gone, there simply isn’t another who could take his place.

If Government College, Lahore can be given the illogical name of Government College University, why can’t the Punjab University be called the Punjab University Cantonment in honour of the men who now run it? It was not always like this and there weren’t always people on the teaching staff who found profanity where only divinity exists.

There were men here like Dr Gerard Martin Friters, the distinguished academic who became head of the political science department, having come to Lahore in the early 1950s and found the city agreeable. I was never his student but I know enough of his students to have become his fan. The other day, I asked Dr Nasir Islam, until recently of the University of Ottawa, to recall what he remembered of Dr Friters. What follows is based on Nasir’s memories of this brilliant and eccentric scholar.

Dr Friters, in addition to building probably the finest department of political science in the country, also taught generations of CSP and PFS probationers at the Civil Service Academy. His knowledge was encyclopaedic and he was an uncannily astute judge of political behaviour. But it was the department that was his passion. He revised the curriculum, updated the academic content and motivated his students, creating in them a sense of curiosity and urging them to analyse facts before theorising. He established a reading room in the department where some of the best international publications were available. He also launched a vibrant publication programme, the University’s first, besides setting up a diploma in international affairs.

Dr Friters was famous for his delightful eccentricities. A bachelor when he came to Lahore, he would eventually marry Sheharbano Rizwi, a student at the department (1957-59) and a firecracker who loved to lead protest rallies. She too was an eccentric. The day after they got married, Nawa-i-Waqt ran a story under the headline: Khoob guzrai gi jo mil baithen gaye diwanai dau. Dr Friters used to live at Faletti’s and travel to the university on his Quickly, an affectation that became his trademark. During one class, the lights went out but before the students could leave, Dr. Friters ran out, returning with the Quickly which he parked in the middle of the classroom. A student was assigned to pedal the wheel to start the motor, while he switched on the headlamp to continue the lecture. Once as he drove out of the University’s front gate, he hit a banyan tree and was knocked unconscious. When he came to at Mayo hospital, his first words were, “Is my Quickly all right?”

Dr Friters would often peep into the office of Vice-Chancellor U. Karamat and say, “You are the King of Siam, Karamat, You are the king of Siam” to deflate the impeccable Karamat who was a pucca sahib, known to sign files put up to him, ‘O.K, U.K.’ Dr Friters’ class was never short on theatrics. He took the roll call by having those present sign their names on a sheet of paper that would be passed from student to student. The last one to sign would bring it to him. One day the last student to sign happened to be Iffat Iftikhar, pretty, bright and snooty. She broke the drill by waving the sheet at Dr Friters who first ignored her, then went down on his knees in front of her and said, “Madam, may I?” He returned to the front of the class with the paper, still on his knees. Loud cheers greeted this act of European chivalry.

Dr Friters hated flying. Once, when he had to go to Peshawar, he fumed and fretted about the impending air journey until Zahid Sarfraz, one of his favourites, offered to drive him in his new Volkswagen. He might as well have flown because Zahid drove like a demon. When they arrived, a much shaken Dr Friters said to him, “Zahid, it is better to be late in this world by 25 minutes than to be early in the next by 25 years.” Once, to test his students, he asked them to identify different capitals and cities on a huge map. When one of the students failed to find Mecca, Dr Friters marched out of the class shouting, “Pucca Muslims! Pucca Muslims! Pray five times a day facing Mecca and can’t find it on the map.” Only two students passed. At first he refused to promote the rest to the final year (though there was no examination from 5th to final year) but in the end relented.

When Nasir was leaving, having come first in the university gradings, he went to Dr Friters for a reference. “Nasir, you know what I am going to write?” Then he chuckled and said: “You are a very, very, very, very good second-class student. You are bright but you don’t follow up.” Nasir says thirty years later he wonders if Dr Friters was right. The two were fated to catch up with each other, this time at Laval University in Quebec where Dr Friters, who was then the Distinguished Professor of International Relations, helped him get a job.

Dr Friters’ eccentricities included his hatred of neon lights which he would keep switching off in the science and humanities building which were switched back on by a certain professor of economics. The Quickly had by this time made way for a cycle which carried its rider with a ton of books and maps hanging in a bag from the handlebar. Nasir, married by then, often had over him for lunch. Dr Friters ate while he talked and talked while he ate. Once he “lost” the phone in his office, which was only found, buried under a heap of books, when his number was rung. His office was a state of utter chaos, which no one could enter, Nasir being the exception. But there was method to his madness; he knew where everything was. However, the fire department took a dim view of it and told him to clean the place up as it was a fire hazard. The task brought him to tears because he hated to throw away even a single piece of paper.

In his last years, Dr Friters began to believe that he was being followed. He also started disappearing for days on end. Once his wife, a friend and Nasir chased him to Montreal where he insisted on taking them to a Hawaiian restaurant. Once there he began to complain that the music should be livelier because what they were playing was more appropriate to a graveyard. The manager got so exasperated he sent for the police. As they arrived, Dr Friters rushed out. A couple of minutes later, the police approached his would-be rescuers and asked why they were bothering the old gentleman. Later, word of Dr Friters came from Ottawa. The police phoned Nasir to ask if Dr Friters was a violent man. It turned out he had gone to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s office (whom he knew) and insisted on seeing him. When the staff resisted, he declared, “Je vais liquider le Parlement.”

After five years at Laval, Nasir moved to Ottawa. Dr Friters was not happy he was going. As the two stood talking, Hambleton, an economics professor, rushed out of his room and disappeared down the stairs. “Double agent, KGB and …,” Dr Friters said. Years later, Hambleton was arrested in London and charged with being a Russian spy. He may also have worked for Canadian intelligence. When Nasir read the story, he wished he could call Dr Friters and tell him he had been right, but the old eccentric scholar had passed away some time before.

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