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Gen Pervez Musharrf is come and gone, from Washington that is, and the sun has still risen from the east the next morning and the traffic on the beltway has been just as bad. He came for half a day, his entourage in tow, which, as in the past, was small, though complete with our immaculately turned out foreign minister, Mr KM “Blameworthy” and information wizard and ebullient spokesman Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, his face flush with good health and his jet black hair as free of grey as it has been since the day he acquired it. The special flight from New York landed at the Andrews Air Force Base near Washington and, contrary to earlier information, the ten or so journalists covering the tour were brought along.

One of the early acts in office of the General was to abolish free trips for the press; however, that “mistake” has since been corrected, thanks to the discreet ministrations of my good friend Sam, known otherwise as Syed Anwar Mahmood, the eyes and ears of this regime. I also saw for the first time a gent I only see on TV, announcing military victory after military victory over the residents of South Waziristan. Because of the tight security in effect, I was unable to get within carnation-throwing distance of Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan, not that I was carrying any carnations.

The President arrived and the large audience of Pakistanis, some local, others from near and far, rose and gave him the sort of ovation that must have immediately improved the bad taste in his mouth left by unhelpful editorials in The New York Times and Chicago Tribune. It was most impressive, but Pakistanis are such spoilsports, because one sitting next to me whispered in my ear that he had heard even lustier cheering for Nawaz Sharif, Benazir Bhutto, Zia-ul-Haq and anyone and everyone who has come along from the catbird seat in Islamabad. I found that most reassuring.

The community meeting, as the Pakistan embassy had billed it, was actually paid for not by the community, its upwardly mobile (Gen Musharraf’s favourite expression) fat cats notwithstanding, but by that old workhorse, the Pakistani taxpayer. Why the meeting wasn’t held at the embassy, as originally announced, but at Mayflower Hotel, Washington’s most expensive, is something for Mr Shaukat Aziz’s desk at the finance ministry to work out. After all, he it is who is going to issue a special sanction for this road-show. The proceedings began on a most extraordinary note. The address of welcome was made not by a member of the community but by the Charge d’Affaires Mohammad Sadiq, who is rather given to describing himself by a rank that does not exist in the diplomatic blue book: Acting Ambassador.

General Musharraf is generally a cool and laid-back person, but one could see that he was thrown by the His Acting Excellency’s performance (and in fact said as much when he finally and at long last got an opportunity to speak). For a moment, I at least was transported to those heady meetings at Mochi Gate, so overwrought was Gen Jehangir Karamat’s future No 2. I have seldom heard a more emotional and sycophantic introduction in my life, and I have heard a few. It actually had the President blushing. The said Mr Sadiq informed everyone that in his 24 years as a diplomat, he had never known a leader to interview whom, even for five minutes, the media would mob an embassy. Such popularity, he said to titters from the less discreet, fell to the lot of only a few leaders. He said everyone in that auditorium had come in response to “just one e-mail” (nice to know that all Pakistanis are now computer savvy). So emotional had Mr Sadiq become by now that I was getting worried about his blood pressure. He did in the end sit down, but not before he had declared, “Like the green Hilali Parcham, our hearts are also green.” Normally, green has been taken to be the colour of jealousy. Didn’t the Bard call jealousy the “green-eyed monster?”

Since I have already reported the President’s speech in some detail in this newspaper, I will skip what he said. What is interesting is what the President did NOT say. He said not a word about the newly-inducted civilian government. He said not a word about the National Assembly or the Senate. He said not a word (but let me first wipe away a tear) about Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. He said not a word about the No 1 hit parade item in Pakistan, his uniform. And he said not a word about the press for which he always has either some choice epithets or some advice.

He did remind everyone though that “If you live in the river, it is not a smart idea to have the crocodile for an enemy.” I think I will send the President a complimentary copy of a book I once wrote, called The Crocodiles are Here to Swim.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

If there is so much confusion and misinformation about recent events, how much reliance, one would be justified in wondering, can be placed on the history of times long past. The traumatic year of 1971 is a good example. Several accounts have been in circulation about those days, most of them either consciously dishonest or self-serving, and quite often both.

One never tires of being told that the only fair election in Pakistan’s history was held by Gen Yahya Khan in 1970. This is untrue. Everything was done to promote and finance the campaigns of centrist and rightwing parties such as the Muslim League – the once and forever mistress on call – and the Jamaat-i-Islami, given the latter’s great patron, Sahibzada “Napoleon” Sher Ali Khan’s presence in the cabinet. A great deal of money was handed out. There was one colonel I knew who actually used to carry large sums of cash in a briefcase which he would open sometimes to impress his friends. I hope he kept some of the money being frittered away for himself.

In reconstructing the last days of the Yahya regime, two facts must be recognised. One, the regime had absolutely no intention at any stage to make a meaningful and complete transfer of power. Two, even after the abject surrender in Dhaka and the decision to avert a fight on the western front, Yahya had no intention of leaving the office that he had grabbed from an ailing Ayub Khan. In fact, he had already had Justice AR Cornelius write him a constitution that promised “full autonomy” to East Pakistan. One can only pull out one’s hair when one recalls that Yahya wanted to announce this constitution (the document’s now a collector’s item) after the break-up of Pakistan. East Pakistan no longer needed autonomy; it was no longer even Pakistan, thanks to Yahya’s catastrophic actions and India’s aggressive intervention.

How then was Yahya made to go? There are many versions, but the most truthful is that recorded by one of the finest officers to have served in the Pakistan army, Brig FB Ali. It is not surprising that this upright and patriotic officer who can be singly credited for the ouster of Yahya and – in Maestro HK Burki’s phrase – his “fat and flabby” generals was retired from the army when he should have been earmarked for commander in chief. And therein lies the tragedy of Pakistan, where personal ambition has always overridden the national interest.

Brig Ali, who has lived in Toronto for many years, kept silent for nearly 25 years. It was only after the publication of Gen Gul Hassan’s self-serving autobiography that he decided to record his own version. This short document appears as an appendix to the fascinating autobiography of Maj-Gen AO Mitha – Unlikely Beginnings – published in 2003. Gen Mitha had died a year earlier, another victim of the power groupies of Rawalpindi.

Brig Ali begins his account of how Yahya and his coterie were got rid of by writing: “For most Pakistanis, there is no history, no past, nor any future, only an ever ongoing present in which one pack of vultures and jackals is succeeded by the next in feeding on the (still) living carcass of the country and its people.” Yahya accepted the unilateral Indian ceasefire offer on December 17, promising the nation in a slurred voice the night before that only a battle had been lost – a reference to the surrender at Dhaka – but the war would go on. Brig Ali was then based in Gujranwala. He and his fellow officers were quite sure Yahya would step down but by December 18 they had realised that he had no such intention. They were also certain that Yahya would try to use the army to crush protests that were breaking out across Pakistan, a move that they feared would divide the army. That day he and two other brigade commanders informed their division commander that they and their men had no faith in the higher army leadership and that he should convey this message to GHQ. When the commander, an East Pakistani, hesitated, Brig Ali asked him to step aside, which he willingly did, putting him in charge.

The officers met and decided to send a no-nonsense message to the ruling junta that it had to go. When a call to Gen Gul Hassan, who was chief of general staff (CGS), failed to get him to come to Gujranwala, two officers Col Aleem Afridi and Col Javed Iqbal were assigned to travel to Rawalpindi with two letters demanding that Yahya and company resign. They met Gul Hassan who called Air Marshal Rahim Khan to join him and the two went to Gen Hamid Khan, Yahya’s buddy and chief of staff, to inform him of the situation. Gen Hamid promised to go to Yahya but before doing so, he made a “flurry of calls” to several army commanders, none of whom offered him the support he was seeking. Eventually, Gul Hassan, Hamid and Rahim called on Yahya at 7pm and told him of the situation. An hour later, Yahya announced that he would step down, transferring power to the “elected representatives of the people” – a formulation Brig Ali had insisted on. While Yahya was now prepared to go, the rest of the clique was not. On the morning of December 20, Gen Hamid addressed garrison officers at the GHQ but was hooted down. The game was finally up.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who on his return from New York was waiting in Rome, not being sure what was going on in Rawalpindi, was informed by Ghulam Mustafa Khar that he should rush home. When his plane landed Khar went on board to brief his leader. Then they drove straight to a government guesthouse. That evening, Yahya formally handed over power to Bhutto, with Ghulam Ishaq Khan as the master of ceremonies. Gul Hassan and Rahim assured Bhutto that it was they who had forced Yahya out, something that was not true. The list of officers who should be retired handed to Bhutto – it was prepared by Brig Ali and his fellow officers – was doctored by Gul Hassan who added Brig Ali’s and Gen Mitha’s own names to it. ZAB did get rid of Gul Hassan and Rahim some months later because of their hauteur. I recall walking with ZAB in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing for a state banquet when hesuddenly asked me, “Why is it that whenever I look over my shoulder I find these two walking behind me?” “Because they want everyone to know that you are in power by their leave,” I replied.

It was one of the few answers I remember making during our association that he could not have agreed with more. The rest, as they say, is history, remembered by few and distorted by many, but history nevertheless.

As the presidential election fight begins to draw to a close, there are no holds barred — and this remains as true of Republicans as Democrats. Hitting below the belt, showing lack of the sporting spirit, misrepresenting the record, presenting opinion as fact, rumour as reality, putting the worst possible interpretation on what may have been said or done in innocence or in a moment of carelessness, using the Internet to launch the most vicious attacks on the other side, employing the power of the television image to paint the other side as not only wholly black but possibly unpatriotic, appealing to the basest of human emotions, or propping up the American flag to reinforce questionable allegations, in short, nothing but nothing in this increasingly bitter campaign is on the no-no list.

The amount of money being squandered on television advertising is enough to solve Pakistan’s debt problem without Mr Shaukat Aziz’s wizardry, or feed the hungry in half a dozen African countries. In fact, the amounts being spent by the two sides are obscenely high. The well-oiled, well-heeled and well-connected Republican sympathiser and party machine have all guns firing all hours of the day and night, especially in states which can swing the election this or that side. These campaigns are being carried out relentlessly, without much regard for what is true and what is false, what is fair and what is unfair, what can be proved and what can merely be alleged. Sen Kerry is portrayed as Mr Flip-Flop who has no fixed opinions and, consequently no fixed principles, in fact, no principles at all. He is shown to veer with the wind. What he said yesterday, no longer holds true for him today, it is stressed. His voting record in the Senate has been subjected to microscopic scrutiny to show that he is either intellectually dishonest or a man of such weak will and mental limitations that he really can go either way, depending on what suits him at a given moment.

The Senator, whose long jaw continues to get longer, and whose billionaire spouse — known for “shooting her mouth off” has not been of much help to him — what with a strange “foreign accent” not to speak of the money to which she was not born, only married. And there have been changes in both the candidate’s strategy and his campaign tactics. It must now be realised by the Kerry camp — too late in the day, I should add — that it was a mistake to make the Senator’s Vietnam war record as the centerpiece of his campaign. The Republicans have managed to create serious doubts about the genuineness of his medals and the truth of his claims of gallantry. His first Purple Heart medal has almost conclusively been proved to have been less than deserved. Any wound suffered in combat is worthy of a Purple Heart. However, it appears, as several of his Swift boat buddies have testified, that the first wound the young Kerry suffered was from a ricocheting piece of shrapnel from a shot he had fired himself. It was also superficial.

Some of his comrades have come to his defence but what the Republicans have succeeded in doing is sow doubt in the mind of the American voter, and that is good enough for the Bush election machine. Sen Kerry need not be convicted, merely charged and charged repeatedly. A book demolishing Kerry’s war claims is a bestseller. Kerry was in Vietnam for only four months and became entitled to shipment back home on the basis of the four medals he had won. He wasted no time in getting himself sent home, when he could have stayed back and fought. Once in the States, where an anti-war movement was raging, he joined that camp, testified before Congress against the war and in a childish gesture of defiance, stripped his medals or ribbons or whatever he was wearing, off his chest and threw them away. This one incident has hurt him more than anything else because it has been projected as he having dishonoured those who were dying for their country in the distant, hostile jungles of Vietnam.

And what about the Bush campaign? It seems the disaster in which he has landed his country by invading Iraq has not hurt him as much as the Democrats and those who oppose war had assumed. Despite “slaughterhouse Iraq”, it seems the average American voter wants Bush to “win the war on terror”. Logic, argument, facts on the ground, history, analysis, or whatever else you may come up with, sadly seems to have little bearing on the thinking of those who in that most beloved of American phrases want to “kick ass”.

And what about the much-touted Muslim vote? One, despite Iraq, it could go to either candidate. Two, it is not clear how many Muslims will actually go out on election day and vote. Can they be motivated to help kick Bush out of the White House? Not likely, not likely. If they are Pakistanis, they would rather sit down to a nice video of an Indian movie on election day and a lunch of aaloo gosht with family.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Next time I hear a Pakistani leader or official calling Pakistanis living abroad “ambassadors of Pakistan” I will have a hard time keeping myself from screaming. In a country which eats, drinks, breathes and lives on clichés, this one has pride of place. It is used day in, day out, in season, out of season, inside the country, outside the country. Are our big chiefs so devoid of imagination and vocabulary that this is the only way they can think of to describe a Pakistani living abroad? The latest gentleman from Pakistan to use this hackneyed description was the governor of Punjab at the independence day rally in New York where Imran Khan – not he – was the star of the show.

If Pakistanis living and working abroad are our ambassadors, why are they often treated like doormen? If our leaders and officials really believe what they keep repeating, the least they can do is to inform their real ambassadors of that fact. If anyone back home wants to know how the real ambassadors treat their awami counterparts, all he or she has to do is to stand outside the consular section of any embassy and see how the ‘ambassadors’ are dealt with.

The basic assumption at most Pakistani embassies dotting the world is that anyone who comes to report a lost passport, obtain a certificate of some kind, get a marriage document countersigned or seek a police report, is in all probability a crook and should be so dealt with. The wise among those who need such assistance have long known that money talks and BS walks. Consequently, their passage is easy and they come away with no hard feelings on either side.

An old Pakistani ambassador who has since passed on once told me that every officer in the country’s foreign service should pray to God – unless he has an uncle in high places back home – that he be sent to a country where there are no Pakistanis; Finland for example, if not Western Samoa, assuming we have an embassy on that delightful island. If God, or the lesser god in charge of postings and transfers at what was once the lively Islamabad watering hole of Hotel Sheherzad, is kindly inclined and the transferee diplomat does get sent to Finland, he will live a happy life (at least as long as he is in Finland) watching the snow fall gently on pine trees, not to mention those long-legged, blue eyed Finnish blondes.

I am unable to say why Pakistanis living abroad are considered generally bad and, only rarely, good news. And this I state despite having spent a few years in the foreign service from which I parted ways after Zia-ul-Haq took the country in July 1977 – precisely on the day when, after protracted negotiations between Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government and the Pakistan National Alliance, a mutually acceptable agreement was to be formalised. All that was left was for it to be signed, which was exactly what the great soldier of Islam did not wish to happen. But that is a another story for another day.

It is not the “beautiful people” among Pakistanis living abroad who need assistance. It is the ones who work with their hands, live hard lives, and save every penny they can so that they can send it home. The vast reserves that Shaukat Aziz keeps reminding us are now in the vault of his State Bank would have been far more modest were it not for these simple working men who are fated to only give but receive nothing from their country except periodic speeches, statements and messages – messages especially – declaring them to be “ambassadors of Pakistan”.

When the country is hit by floods, earthquakes or some other calamity, it is these men who are the first to contribute to relief funds. I do not recall if any of them has ever been honoured by the state in whose running they have no hand, but for whose survival they are the first to sacrifice. I recall a meeting in a high-priced New York hotel where the annual convention of Pakistani doctors living in the United States was taking place. Mian Nawaz Sharif had just launched the scheme he (or Nazir Naji) had named Mulk sanwaro, qarz utaro. The prime minister had dispatched his finance minister “Surcharge” Aziz to the convention to make a direct appeal to the doctors, who included thousands of millionaires, to transfer all they could to Pakistan on what appeared to be (and indeed were) extremely attractive terms. A separate general session had been set aside for that pitch to be made.

Some of us working for home newspapers had travelled from Washington to witness the Great Givers in action. We sat at the back listening to the speeches. “Surcharge” was preceded by the late Dr Mahbub ul Haq who made an impassioned appeal to the doctors to come to the aid of their country. “Surcharge”, after conveying the prime minister’s greetings to the assembly, explained in detail what the scheme was, how it would help Pakistan, and what benefit it would bring to the doctors – apart from generating tremendous goodwill for them back home.

After the speeches were over and done with, those present were asked to raise their hands and announce their pledges. There was a long silence. For the first few minutes no hands went up. The embarrassment was becoming unbearable. There was another exhortation from the stage and some people raised their hands. The slight excitement that had appeared on the Pakistani finance minister’s face soon disappeared when the amounts of the pledges were announced. They were without exception piddling sums of money, considering that the auditorium was full of fat cats. The entire thing was a fiasco and “Surcharge” returned home practically empty-handed.

However – and this is the point of this story – those who sent money were cab drivers, daily wage workers, and those who toiled in restaurants and held the sort of jobs that have traditionally been the lot of immigrants. One cab driver who had saved for years to buy a medallion and become the owner and operator of his taxi sent every penny he had collected to Nawaz Sharif’s well-intentioned but ill-fated scheme. Had India not detonated a nuclear bomb and Pakistan not followed suit, the foreign exchange accounts that were frozen overnight would have been spared that fate. There may have been some Pakistanis who contributed sizeable sums but their number was small. Most of the money came from those whom Zulfikar Ali Bhutto used to call “meray mehnat-kush awam”. And it was they, who could least afford to, who lost out. The beautiful people, some of whom dine at the highest tables when they visit Pakistan like wintering birds. remained unaffected.

It would do everybody good, therefore, if the insincere and hypocritical description “You are the ambassadors of Pakistan” was to be buried six foot under with a stake through its heart, never to be resurrected.

An Austrian policeman told a friend of mine once to always keep his hands out of his pockets when approaching an armed policeman because, he said, if the policeman suspects you are trying to hide something — a gun, a bomb, a rotten egg — he will shoot first, Wild West style, ask questions later. That is sound advice. However, in America today, whether you keep your hands in your pockets or whether you are carrying castanets in them, when approaching an armed and uniformed member of the security agencies — no one any longer knows how many there are — it no longer matters, because if you bear “Middle Eastern” looks, you are a fit candidate for “special attention”.

Firmly entrenched now is the belief that while all Muslims or those who look like Muslims may not be terrorists, all terrorists are Muslims. Since 9/11, for instance, many Sikh gentlemen have been roughed up because of their beards and turbans. Some have been killed. I ran into a Sikh gasoline station attendant the other day who wanted to know what the Sikhs had done to the Muslims to be mistaken for them. Even if I had told him to do the unthinkable by shaving off his beard, getting a haircut and throwing away his turban, he would have remained just as vulnerable, bearing as he did unmistakable “Middle Eastern” looks. When racial segregation was openly practised in this country, any number of Africans, including diplomats and UN officials, were refused service in restaurants or a ride in front of the bus because they looked black. The same sort of thing is now happening to our Sikh and Hindu friends in America. Considering how well versed US security personnel are in the world’s religions, I am willing to take a bet that half of them believe Hinduism to be some kind of an Arab, Iranian or Pakistani branch of Islam.

Every time the current American paranoia about security comes up, someone is bound to tell you, “But it is all because of 9/11.” While that is true, there is such a thing as reasonable limits to which any measure can or should be carried. On security, it is the sky that is the limit now. The security people have so many unspecified powers that sometimes they appear to be operating beyond the law. The American Civil Liberties Union certainly thinks so.

Here is another story that shows to what ridiculous limits this obsession with security has been carried. Scene: Republican Convention, New York. Arun Venugopal, a reporter for India Abroad, a largely circulated fortnightly from New York, notebook in hand, press credentials around his neck, is confidently walking through the specified entrance to get a feel of the big jamboree in Madison Square Garden. On his notebook, he has snapped an anti-war sticker (Bush lies. Who dies?) that he has peeled off a demonstrator’s back during a melee a few blocks from the Convention where 1,000 protesters have been arrested.

Arun passes effortlessly through the first few cordons of security. He arrives at the walk-through metal detector, empties his pockets into a little basket that he puts on the conveyer belt. A guard picks up his notebook, the yellow anti-war sticker having caught his eye. “Woha, woha, what’s this!” He takes Arun to his superior, who takes him to another man who asks him for his social security number as he wants to perform some “background checks”. He picks up the phone, “Let’s do an NIC on him,” he says. He waits for an answer, then puts the phone down and asks, “Were you in Boston last month?” Arun was there to cover the Democratic Convention. “And you spoke with a police officer there?” he asks. Arun is not sure if it is a trick question (like: Have you stopped beating your wife?) The man grilling Arun is joined by several others who start firing questions at him.

They want to know where he lives and for how long he has lived there. Arun is nervous and says Park Slope, Brooklyn, which he immediately changes to Fort Green, as that is where he actually lives, has lived since 2000. Arun is also an American citizen (not that it matter much if you are who you are). The cops look unconvinced. They periodically drift away, only to re-congregate around him, each time bringing someone new who gives him a long once over. They also look through his notebook (we reporters are often unable to read our own notes). “Call Intel”, someone says, which Arun thinks means “an intellectual”, but it turns out to be plainclothes man named Vargas. Arun asks if he can call his editor. “You do that and we’ll have the dog over here”, he says, pointing to a German shepherd. “Should we collar him?” Vargas asks a colleague, pointing not at the dog but Arun. Then Arun sees Jyoti, a friend who works for Time magazine. She comes over. Vargas asks her if she knows this man. She nods her head and leaves. Arun spies his photographer and calls out for him, but the man takes one look at the scene and moves on. Obviously, he is taking no chances. Vargas is very happy. “Can’t you see he doesn’t wanna talk?” Arun asks if he may now leave. “No, no, no, no, no,” Vargas answers. By now the Convention hall is nearly empty. A senior officer appears and tells a sidekick to escort Arun to the street. Vargas tags along

“You were lucky. They were ready to give you the chair”, he whispers to Arun. I suppose that is how he says good night.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Ashfaq Ahmed is gone and when they laid him in the earth of his beloved city of Lahore, they also buried with him what his mentor Saadat Hasan Manto had called the art and mystery of short story writing. His first stories were published in the early years of independence and Manto, the man who thumbed his nose at all work except his own, shook his head in approval. He liked Ashfaq and he praised him – something he rarely did – as a fine writer of prose and a man who could tell a story the way a story should be told.

Ashfaq’s collection Aik mohabbat say afsanay was electrifying. Were you to pick it up today, you will find in it some of the most moving love stories written in Urdu before or since. (‘Bindraban ki Kunj Gali mein’,for one.) A Hamid, the other young writer who came to popular attention during those years, especially among the younger set, also scored a great hit with his first collection Manzil manzil. Both Ashfaq and Hamid were in their twenties, both were refugees from East Punjab and both were to remain amazingly creative and “with it” for the next fifty-five years. Ashfaq is gone, but A Hamid is very much around. He writes for several hours every day, rain or shine, and his output is mind-boggling, I have no doubt he could produce a book a day if called upon to do so. Today, with millions of words in print, I am sure his heart still misses a beat when he recalls his wistful stories of young love with the vanished city of Amritsar as the backdrop.

During Gen Zia-ul-Haq’s rule, Ashfaq came under fire as he came to be seen by many as being supportive of military rule. It was perhaps not a fair charge but what lent it strength was his constant advocacy through his radio and television programmes of the message that everything that happened to man was the Will of God and it was not right that it be questioned. His critics and those who were struggling against the ferocious military rule of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s executioner saw Ashfaq’s philosophy as a blatant effort to divert criticism of the regime. If acceptance of whatever happened was what God wanted man to do, then there could never be change or revolution. Ashfaq’s view seemed to be that one should leave it to God to do justice. In other words, if Zia was unjust, then the people should leave the matter in the hands of God. The corollary of this thinking was that in the meantime the people should let their bare backs be whipped. I am perhaps exaggerating but that was how Ashfaq and what he was writing was seen by some people in those days, including myself.

In 2001, Ashfaq and Bano Qudsia, his wife of many, many years, and his closest friend, came to Washington, DC. They spent spent an afternoon with a small group we have here which hosts some of those who visit from Pakistan. Ashfaq was asked if he was aware that throughout the dark decade of Zia-ul-Haq’s regime his advocacy of the stoic philosophy of acceptance, no matter what came one’s way, including illegal military rule, had made him appear to many as the dictator’s apologist and helper. Someone said it was difficult to defend the role he chose to play during those dark times, when through his programmes on radio and TV, he continued to drill into the people’s minds that what mattered really was their inner life and not what lay outside, including the ugly and repressive government of the time. He was reminded that he had also advocated that it was injurious to one’s soul to question the order of things as it amounted to questioning the ways of God. Such a philosophy of life was morally repugnant, he was told.

Ashfaq listened to this bitter criticism patiently and when we were done with it, he replied in a calm voice that he was well aware of what had been said about him. In fact, there were people who went about whispering that every night Zia-ul-Haq sent him a packet of money or gave him a plot of land, “I believed what I said then and I believe it now,” he said. “I do not think the answer to people’s problems lies with those who lead marches in the streets so that they can come to power. We have seen what they do when they get there. If people concentrate on their inner life and find joy in the life of the spirit, their worldly problems would solve themselves.” Somebody said it would be difficult to give this message to a Kashmiri fighting Indian oppression.

I recall that the meeting where these exchanges took place was presided over by Akmal Aleemi who had known Ashfaq since his days as a reporter with Imroze. Akmal reminded Ashfaq and Bano of their having been together in Lahore over forty years ago, just sitting and listening to a very simple and unassuming man in one of Lahore’s far-flung suburbs because everyone believed that he was close to being a saint if he wasn’t one already. Ashfaq remembered it as if it were yesterday. He said, “I have always wanted to know the unusual and what lies hidden behind surfaces and people’s faces. That is why I have sought men who have an inner life. I call them babay.”

Those who had thought that Ashfaq’s babas had to be native to the land were surprised when he told them who his first baba was. The year was 1950 and he was in Rome on a scholarship which included teaching Urdu to Italian students. One day a man came to his university to give a talk. His name was Alexander Fleming, who a few years earlier had invented penicillin. “After he had finished speaking,” Ashfaq recalled, “I walked up to him, took his hand and kissed it. He did not understand it perhaps but I had just performed his bayt”.

That day Ashfaq also spoke to us of his early work, his years in radio, his arrival in television, his books, Dataango, the magazine he used to publish from his tiny home in Samanabad and then from a set of rooms on the Mall, and how the years had rolled by. He said he felt deeply for the people of Pakistan. What they needed, he said, was their self-respect to be restored to them. As a young agitator for the cause of Pakistan in East Punjab he used to tell people that in Pakistan they would have respect. “That is one thing they have not received. That is the Great Betrayal,” he said that day. Bano Qudsia spoke too. She said any happiness that we experience is actually permitted to us so that we can cope with the despair and heartbreak that are nature’s way.

Ashfaq said he was writing a book about the babas he had met. He had already written 200 pages in longhand, but he wasn’t sure when it would be finished. When Akmal and I phoned him about three weeks ago because I had a hunch that he was not in a good way, I asked him when he his books on his babas would be completed. “Only if I live,” he replied weakly, quite unlike the robust, athletic voice one always associated with him. I had a feeling the book will remain a fragment, and so it has.

But what a body of work has this extraordinary man left behind!

The hijab has been creating a good deal of turmoil in the Muslim community in North America. If the religion of Islam, according to the hijab’s wearers and defenders, has been reduced to this ungainly wrap around a woman’s head, then obviously they and the rest of us who also consider themselves Muslims are worlds apart.

I do not know what the hijab has done for the enhancement of women’s modesty, but what I do know is that it has created an image of Islam that has no relevance to its teachings or spirit or message. If the Quran places no compulsion on what people can believe, why would it lay down a dress code of the kind that the defenders of hijab insist it does. What happened in France is common knowledge. In Iraq, the “Islamic warriors” are slaughtering innocent people in the name of what they have been deluded into believing is their true faith.

The two French journalists kidnapped by them were alive at the time of this writing. The French government, to its credit, has rejected the kidnappers’ demand that it repeal the law forbidding the display of such outward religious symbols in state schools as the hijab, the Jewish skullcap and large crosses. Can a greater disservice to the faith in whose name these people are fighting the “crusaders” be conceived, even by Islam’s worst enemies? A tree shall be judged by its fruit, says the Bible. In the same way, an action is to be judged by its consequences. Let’s ask ourselves honestly: are the consequences of Al Qaeda-like actions of benefit to Muslims? Did those who planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks and those who beheaded Daniel Pearl in Karachi or a dozen Nepalese in Iraq advance Islam’s cause or did they cause injury to the religion and disgrace to its followers?

Since the hijab has caused such worldwide upheaval in recent years, it is only fair to ask why this supposedly great protector of Muslim women’s modesty, if not their ticket to heaven, was unheard of, say twenty or so years ago. It was, come to think of it, only the Iranian revolution, which in reality was a counter-revolution, that started this bit of fashion in the name of Islam. Khomeini’s gift to the world is the chador, the living shroud. The hijab is its pocket edition.

No women wore the hijab in Pakistan until recently. Women in villages representing 75 to 80 per cent of our population wore no such thing, nor did they even don a burqa, since they worked side by side with their men. The burqa had begun to disappear in the cities and out of 10 urban women no more than two or three, if that, any longer wore it. My mother, for instance, used to wear a burqa but by the time I was a teenager, she had given it up. My two sisters never wore it. Did that make them bad or inadequate Muslims?

Earlier this year the Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail published a comment by Sheema Khan, chairperson of the Canadian chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in which she claimed that the hijab “forms part of my Islamic faith” and that “wearing the hijab as stipulated in the Quran is an act of worship”. Not so, responded Tarak Fatah, a progressive Muslim activist of Pakistani origin. He wrote that while Ms Khan had every right to cover her head and not be discriminated against at a job interview (that she claimed she had been), wearing the hijab was not “an act of worship”, as nowhere did the Quran make it mandatory for a Muslim woman to cover her head, only the bosom. “It is perhaps a result of culture, maybe fashion, even a dash of feminist defiance, all of which is okay, but covering of the head is certainly not an act of worship’, added Fatah.

It was Colonel Anwar Ahmed, a retired Pakistan army officer, who clinched the issue by quoting the great Islamic scholar, the Austrian convert Muhammad Asad, from his brilliant commentary and translation of the Quran. Wrote Asad: “Khimar denotes the head covering customarily worn by Arabian women before and after the advent of Islam. According to most of the classical commentators, it was worn in pre-Islamic times more or less as an ornament and was let down loosely over the wearer’s back. And since, in accordance with the fashion prevalent at the time, the upper part of a woman’s tunic had a wide opening in the front, her breasts were left bare. Hence the injunction to cover the bosom by means of a khimar does not necessarily relate to the use of a khimar as such but is, rather meant to make it clear that a woman’s breasts are not included in the concept of ‘what may decently be apparent’ of her body and should not, therefore, be displayed.”

Col Anwar’s letter remains unchallenged to this day.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

How do religious minorities in Pakistan feel? Do they see themselves as first class citizens? Do they find that the doors they knock on open easily for them? Do they feel severely disadvantaged? Do they feel secure? Can they find justice if they go to court? Do those of them who have gone into the services, civil or military, run into a wall after putting in a number of years? Do they feel that their loyalty to the state is suspect? What do they think the future holds for them and their children and their children’s children?

How many Pakistani Muslims are ever troubled by these thoughts? Hardly any, I would say. I have in mind two minorities in particular, the Christians who follow a different religion entirely, and the Ahmadis who were declared a religious minority through a stage-managed legislative exercise, circa 1974. It is hard even after thirty years to believe that this retrogressive act was committed by the government of Pakistan’s most promising ruler, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Maulana Kausar Niazi told me in London in 1978 that he had tried in vain to convince Mr Bhutto not to take that road. I have no doubt ZAB regretted what he had done and should have said so. He did after all offer an apology of sorts for his last minute “Islamic reforms”.

Air Marshal Zafar Chaudhry told me once that when he learnt that he was going to be made chief of the Pakistan Air Force, he sought a meeting with Gen Yahya Khan, who had by then taken over the country. Zafar told Gen Yahya that it would be only fair for him to know that he, Zafar Chaudhry, was a practising Ahmadi. Yahya Khan glowered at him and replied, “That’s your bloody problem. What has that got to do with me?” Or words to that effect. Could it happen today? That is the Pakistan, that is the worldview we have lost. It’s tragic what a bigoted hellhole our country has been allowed to become.

Many of us, when told that India has had two Muslim presidents and one chief justice of the supreme court, say “That is all window dressing.” If that is indeed window dressing, how come we don’t even do that? Will the time ever come when Pakistan’s constitution is rewritten by enlightened people who will first delete the article that excludes non-Muslims from being head of state? In that one article lies sanction for discrimination on the basis of religion at the very highest level. AR Cornelius lent dignity to the office of the chief justice of Pakistan. Will a non-Muslim ever come to occupy that exalted position again? Will a non-Muslim ever head any of the three armed services? The Pakistan army, whose character Gen Zia-ul-Haq’s blinkered and ignorant policies changed forever, has had two Christians, both foreigners, both our former colonial masters, as commanders-in-chief. The air force had a British commander-in-chief, who, by all accounts, was a good Christian. Isn’t it a sign of our precipitate moral decline that such a thing is unthinkable today?

I have many old Christian friends who live in Canada and whom I visited recently. I was talking to the wife of one, who told me that discrimination was all she had ever known. She said she had been conscious of being non-Muslim and thus at a disadvantage from the age of eight or ten. She, Lahore-born and bred, said when she told someone she had just met that she was a Christian, there was an immediate drawing away. In Canada though she felt she was a citizen with full rights. She complained about Muslim Pakistani-Canadians who, while taking full advantage of the welfare-oriented state of Canada, kept cribbing about discrimination. Her question was simple: how can you demand rights which you are not prepared to accord to all members of your own society? She said she felt bitter and angry, and that hypocrisy was the reigning value in play.

Pakistani Muslims in Western countries also complain of the “shameless and immoral” society in which their children are growing up. And yet they do not leave. Why have they chosen to settle down in countries which are so “ besharam and behaya”? Why do they not return to the “moral purity” that is missing from their chosen country? Ironically, when such people visit Pakistan for a holiday, they invariably return with a long list of complaints. In Pakistan they behave like white Canadians, and in Canada they take on another role. This is also true outside Canada – in the thirty-plus years I have lived away from Pakistan, on both sides of the Atlantic, I have seen the same mentality again and again.

My Canadian Christian friend who was selected to one of the central services through open competition said that he felt discriminated against in Pakistan though he came from a privileged family and was privileged himself. His brother, a decorated army officer, gave in his papers because he felt – and he said as much when asked by a superior – that as a non-Muslim he would never be able to go very far. He loved the army and still does. One of our great war heroes, Group Captain Cecil Chaudhry was the sort of officer who should have gone right to the top in the air force, but did not. It’s to his credit and patriotism that despite the discrimination that he suffered on critical occasions, he chose not to leave. He stayed right at home, is now the head of Lahore’s finest school, St Anthony’s, and is an indefatigable fighter for human rights – not only of religious minorities, but of all Pakistanis. That deserves to be saluted.

I have one question to ask of my Canadian Christian friends. They escaped discrimination and are now living happily and prosperously in a Western country that offers every facility a person can dream of. But what have they done for their downtrodden and underprivileged brothers and sisters back in Pakistan? I have the same question of such Ahmadis who have left Pakistan. Surely they too have the grave moral responsibility of serving those members of their community who are at the receiving end and who do not have the means to ride into the Canadian sunset. If that is not a cop-out, then what is?

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