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With the death in Lahore of Maqbul Sharif, yet another bit of old Pakistan Times is gone. He was called “Judge sahib,” not only because of his law degree but for his brilliance as a court reporter. He reported some of the most famous cases of the 1960s, including that of Colonel Muhammad Yusuf who was taken to court by the Pakistani husband of a German woman by the name of Christa Renate. If the readers of Pakistan Times from those days remember Col. Yusuf’s dramatic declaration – ‘No man has loved a woman as I have loved this woman’ – it would be because of Maqbul Sharif’s evocative reporting of those proceedings that were more fascinating than a fictional romance. It was a soap opera that no soap opera could beat.

Maqbul Sharif not only reported what he considered reportable cases, he knew most of the famous judges of those days, including the severe and unsmiling Justice Shabbir, well enough to walk into their chambers for a cup of tea and some inside dope on what was going on. He once told me that before he meets a judge, he spends some time sitting on the bench outside the courtroom with the peons. “They always have the real inside stuff,” he said. So trusted was he by some of the judges that off and on he played a role in their internal fights. One that I recall was the running feud between Sardar Muhammad Iqbal and Maulvi Mushtaq Hussain. Maqbul Sharif was in Maulvi Mushtaq’s camp and helped out with some below the belt moves made against Sardar Iqbal. “One does things for friends,” he would say.

When I came to the Pakistan Times , a paper not easy to get into, Judge sahib whom I knew vaguely was not only doing the higher courts but also politics and government. Every reporter had a beat but if you landed an exclusive story outside your beat, it was run. Those were Ayub Khan’s years of unchallenged power and though there was always much opposition, it was by and large ineffective since it did not affect the government’s conduct. Ayub Khan was a benevolent dictator, but a dictator nevertheless. The atmosphere of those days can be judged from the following joke. “Is there freedom of the press here?” “Yes, the press is free to praise Ayub Khan.” Another joke concerned two dogs, long-lost cousins, who meet at Wagha. One is an Indian dog, the other a Pakistani. After pawing each other affectionately, the Indian dog, an undernourished bag of bones, asks his well-fed, corpulent cousin about life in Pakistan. “We want for nothing here except that we are not permitted to bark,” he answers.

People said in those days that Ayub Khan is like the “Ghainta Ghar” of Lyallpur. Wherever you go and from whatever point you look up, all you see is Ayub Khan. Military rule, however, never bothered Judge sahib much. Perhaps he had come to understand early on that we were fated to be ruled by the military and one should not let that interfere with life which should be lived as well as it could be. Also, because of several members of his family being in the military, he had a soft corner for “the Boys.”

Soon after I joined the Pakistan Times’ reporters’ team, Judge sahib became my guide in that labyrinthine business. Once he took me along to the Civil Secretariat, Lahore, where he was to interview one of the CSP bigwigs. Things went wrong from the word go and after about ten minutes he asked us to leave as he had more important things to do. In other words, he threw us out. Judge sahib was cool. “We’ll get even with this twerp. He is going to be misquoted and contradictions by officials, remember, nobody believes.”

Judge sahib had a Moscovich, a car that has disappeared like the country that manufactured it. That car spent most of its short life in a stationary state rather than on the road. Everything that could be wrong with a car was wrong with it. It always reminded me of the Shafiqur Rehman story where a mechanic after looking at a car declares that it needs two things: an engine and a chassis. However, when the Moscovich moved, it moved like a Russian woman discus thrower. Years later, when on one of my visits from Vienna to Budapest, I asked a Hungarian to tell me a Russian joke he said, “Why is there no Russian micro-computer? Because it is too big to be taken out of the factory gates.”

Judge sahib lived at the time in Islamia Park, Lahore, and it was always a bit unnerving to visit him because the only thing that divided his house from the sprawling Miani Sahib graveyard was a low wall. He was married – it did not last long – but, basically, he was a bit of a blade, a man of discreet liaisons, some of the ladies being otherwise happily married. My other senior in the reporters’ room, IH Raashed, who was a man of great piety though he did not have the flowing beard that he wears now, used to say to Judge Sahib, “Judge sahib, baaz aa jao .” The advice was also directed at me as I was always hanging around with Judge sahib. Needless to say, it had no effect on either of us. I should add that Judge sahib was not a union man: he also did not like Reds, with which the Pakistan Times was bristling. He did not like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto either, but we still remained friends. During the 1971 military action in East Pakistan, Judge sahib and I were among the few at the paper who openly expressed their abhorrence of the killings. It is sad to think this was a minority opinion in the Lahore of 1971.

During the romantic but doomed bid by journalists to take over the Progressive Papers Ltd., Judge sahib, I am afraid, was in the other camp. “This is going to come to nothing,” he would say. He turned out to be right. It was ZAB himself who denounced the rebels as “Sir Galahads,” in other words, romanticists fighting foolish and losing battles. Judge sahib also knew Yahya Khan well because of his brother who was a close friend of the General. When in Pindi, Judge sahib would generally get invited for drinks with the General. “Gentlemen, let’s drink to the fact that we have not been found out,” was one of the toasts proposed during one such evening. They did get found out, though, but by then half of Pakistan was gone.

I have a million memories of Judge Sahib – we met in London and he came to Vienna and to Washington for heart surgery – but one that I treasure most is visiting Mushtaq Ahmed, an officer and gentleman of the old school who spent several months of the year in the French countryside, the rest in Lahore. We would be shown into a small study where the bookshelves were lined with mostly French and Mushtaq sahib would say, “Behind that row of books you will find what you need after a hard day’s work.” And there the three of us would sit and Mushtaq sahib would talk to us of British times and the principled ways in which the civil servants and courts of law worked then. In 1968, something of those old structures was still in place: but in 2005 it is not even a memory.

Judge sahib’s great gift was forming friendships, differences of rank and age notwithstanding, and maintaining them as the years passed. His last days were not happy, dogged as he was by ill health and increasing isolation. I am sure when I next visit Chacha F.E. Chaudhry, the doyen of Pakistan’s press photographers, who was 96 on 15 March; he will tell me that the Judge is gone though he still owes him the twenty rupees he borrowed in 1966. Chacha, I should add, was the one we borrowed money from when we were short, which was most of the time. Five minutes after Chacha had lent the money, half the city of Lahore knew about it.

The blossoms have peaked and a succession of hot summer-like days has brought the Washington spring almost, but not quite, to an end. The azalea bushes are opening up and will soon be a riot of colour in a sea of green.

The last few days have been eventful. The Pope is gone — much moaned and much, too much covered by the media — and the College of Cardinals has picked up a new one. The former Cardinal Ratzinger can only have warmed the cockles of President George Bush’s heart because the two men are practically in accord on so many issues. The world finds itself sandwiched between a right-wing papacy and a right-wing presidency. Someone asked me if the philosophy of President Bush could be summed up in one phrase. “Simple,” I said, “Democracy through Invasion.”

Some people want to know why if the President is sold on democracy flowering in Muslim lands, he does not turn his attention to Pakistan, where he stands one hundred percent behind General Pervez Musharraf whose concept of democracy is, well, not exactly Jeffersonian. Such curious birds can be told that since the US is not intending to invade Pakistan, any hopes we may have been entertaining of the return of democracy to our country, may please be abandoned while the Republicans are in power.

It is quite simple. No invasion: no democracy. Wars are unpredictable. Supposing America declares war against Pakistan, and Pakistan wins. What are we going to do then? I suggest the fire-breathing lady who runs one of Islamabad’s khaki-coloured think tanks hold an international seminar on this fascinating possibility.

Last week, we had the two guiding lights of Pakistan’s finances doing Washington. I refer to State Bank Governor Ishrat Hussain and Prime Minister’s Adviser Salman Shah. They did the spring meetings of the Bank and the Fund, which happened without much let or hindrance. The demonstrators who were supposed to get us, the poor and underdeveloped of the world, justice and debt write-offs could not manage much of a number. The Washington police had given them permission to bring in 5,000 people to the “Big Demo” in a park around the corner from the Bank and the Fund. Alas! Those who turned out numbered no more than 200. However, there was much music and tomfoolery and no heads were broken.

Next time, we should fly a contingent of Punjab Police to deal with the spring meetings and I guarantee you broken bones, bruised bodies and smashed TV and press cameras. One hopes the “King of Underpasses”, the Punjab chief minister, will decorate the police heroes who roughed up journalists who had had the lack of wisdom to hop on Asif Zardari’s plane from Dubai to Lahore.

But to return to Messrs Hussain and Shah, they turned up at the Woodrow Wilson Centre and threw so many figures at the audience gathered for a conference on education in Pakistan that after they left, the place had to be vacuumed. They were also at the Middle East Institute for lunch where they left their audience agog with stories of the scintillating success of the present government’s economic policies.

The native press, namely the Pakistani correspondents, were not forgotten, and were part of an invited gathering at the embassy with its Shalimar frontage for talks by the two finance wizards. Since there is no peace for the wicked, after dinner, we were herded into a press conference addressed by Salman Shah. Despite efforts to locate him, the governor had fled the reptiles — and I don’t blame him. Earlier, he had complained to me that he came to Washington no more than twice a year, so my writing last week that every time I sneezed, I found Ishrat Hussain in town was not quite fair. Since it is always a smart idea to keep the big money men on your side, I conceded that I owed him one. From now on I am going to keep a count on how many times he hits town.

A most unusual thing happened though. After our press conference with Salman Shah was done, he asked what each of us thought of what was happening in Pakistan. So, one by one, each person present told the adviser what he thought of the government that he advises. He heard us out without interruption, in the process even curbing the enthusiasm of a more-loyal-than-the-king member of the delegation. I hope he keeps what he heard to himself because otherwise any of us landing in Pakistan next time is bound to get picked up by The Boys on arrival.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

So finally and for reasons that do not appear to have anything to do with the prime minister, who is not exactly known for his interest in Urdu literature, a stamp bearing Saadat Hasan Manto’s face has been issued by the Pakistan post office with a face value of five rupees. This is a sum of money that might have bought a reasonable lunch in the Lahore of the 1950s, but one that no self-respecting beggar will even accept today. Like all stamps issued in Pakistan, this one too wears a washed look. It is time these people got themselves some fresh inks.

What has led to this change of heart on the part of the establishment, one does not know. Did Manto have to be dead fifty years before being acknowledged as having once lived; and not only lived but done enough to be included among the Pakistan postal service-ordained ‘Men of letters’ series? Is that all there is going to be of it? Is the establishment that has conferred all kinds of honours on all kinds of people now ready to confer on Manto the highest award that the state of Pakistan can offer? I don’t think so. Is a road or a square or a city to be named after him? I doubt that too. However, were a city to be named after Manto, it should be the one after which he named perhaps his greatest story: Toba Tek Singh.

Manto arrived in Pakistan from Bombay in January 1948. In a postscript to one of his collections, he writes, “My heart is heavy with grief today. I am overcome with a strange listlessness. More than four years ago, when I said farewell to my other home, Bombay, I experienced the same kind of sadness. I was sorry to have left the place where I had spent many working days of my life. Bombay had asked me no questions. It had taken me to its vast bosom, I, a family reject, a gypsy by temperament. And the city had said to me, ‘You can live here happily on two paisa a day, or if you wish, on 10,000 rupees. It is up to you. You can also be the most miserable man on earth while earning either of the two amounts. Here you may do what you like. Nobody will find fault with you, nor will anyone lecture you on what you ought to be doing. Every difficult task, you will have to accomplish yourself. Every important decision of your life, you will have to make on your own. Whether you live on the footpath or in a palace, it is of no consequence to me, nor will it matter to me whether you leave or stay. I am where I am and I will remain where I am. I, therefore, am a walking Bombay. Wherever I go, I will make my own little world.”

Manto writes, “After leaving Bombay, I was sad. My friends, of whom I am proud, were in Bombay. It was there that I got married. My first child was born in that city. The other one also began the first day of her life there. In Bombay, I earned from a few rupees to thousands and hundreds of thousands of rupees, and spent it all. I was in love with Bombay. I still am. The partition of the country and the changes that followed, left feelings of rebellion in me. I still have them, but in the end, I have accepted the awesome reality of what happened. I have not allowed hope to abandon me.”

I once asked Ahmed Rahi about Manto’s days in Lahore when the young Rahi was often keeping him company. They shared the powerful Amritsar link. Rahi said – and he said it in Punjabi which was very moving – “ Manto sahib te aus din toon hi marna shooray ho gaye saan jis din toon ohna Bombaii chaddy si .” (Manto began to die the day he left Bombay). Rahi said Manto never made any money in Lahore except the pittance that came to him from his writings. The Lahore movie industry was barely alive and only once did Manto get any work there. On another occasion, Anwar Kamal Pasha, whose story-line for a movie he was shooting was all tangled up, came to him for advice that the quick-witted Manto provided as soon as he had heard the question. Next day, Pasha, a gentleman, sent him a cheque for Rs 500. Other than that, Manto did not make any money. In the last years of his life, because of his drinking, his publishers were under instructions to make all remittances direct to his wife, Safia, not him. Manto, a man of the utmost independence, must have found that belittling.

Of the Lahore of those days, Manto writes at another place, “There was a strange listlessness in the air, much like that created by the forlorn shrieking of kites flying purposelessly in the skies of early summer. Even the slogans ‘Long Live Pakistan’ and ‘Long Live the Quaid-i-Azam’ fell on the ear with a melancholy thud. The airwaves carried the poetry of Iqbal on their shoulders night and day and felt bored and exhausted by their burden. The feature programmes bore weird themes. How to make shoes. How to raise poultry. How many refugees had come to the camps and how many were still there.”

Manto’s last days in Bombay were a time of great emotional disturbance. In his tribute to his best friend, the actor Shyam, he writes, “I was going out of my mind. My wife and children were already in Pakistan. When it had been a part of India, I knew it. I was also familiar with the periodic riots that used to break out; but now that its name had changed, I could not get a mental picture of it. Nor could I work out what the government was going to be like. Mentally, I could not get the new configuration in focus. August 14 was celebrated in Bombay while I watched. People were jubilant, but killings and arson went on un-interfered with. Slogans of ‘Long Live India’ and ‘Long Live Pakistan’ continued to rend the air. Congress and Muslim League flags fluttered from housetops. The streets resounded with the names of Jawaharlal Nehru and Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Still, my mind could not resolve the question: What country did we belong to now – India or Pakistan? And whose blood was being so mercilessly shed every day? And what about the bones of the dead, stripped of the flesh of religion, were they being buried or burnt? Now that we were free, who were our subjects? When we were not free, we used to dream of freedom. Now that freedom had come, how were we to view our present state? Were we really even free? There were different answers: the Indian answer, the Pakistani answer, the British answer, Every question had an answer, but when you tried to unravel them to get to the truth, you were left groping.”

Well, were Manto to return to life, he would find us still groping.

Dorothy Parker once said to know in what contempt God holds money, all you have to do is look at the people He gives it to. That applies to Bush. To know what he thinks of the United Nations, just look at who he has nominated as the next US ambassador to the world body.

The man is John R Bolton, a serving official who was rather aptly described during his nomination hearing at the Senate as a “quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy”. This colourful characterisation came from Carl W Ford, a retired State Department official, who had worked with him. He said of Bolton, “He’s got a bigger kick, and it gets bigger and stronger the further down the bureaucracy he is kicking.” I should add that this holds true of every good Pakistani bureaucrat.

However, in Bush’s book, Bolton is eminently qualified as ambassador to the United Nations, since he holds the organisation in such contempt. Under questioning by the Senate’s Democratic members, when he said that he had been misquoted, Sen Barbara Boxer from California who is adept at putting the boot in, played a videotape of a 1994 speech in which Bolton had said, “There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world — that’s the United States — when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along.”

Pax Americana is what the President believes should be — and is — the new world order. If you don’t like a regime — and there is no shortage of bad ones in the world — invade and destroy it — and do it on CNN. Bolton fits the bill. He is exactly the type of Republican the White House loves. Carl Ford who testified against the nomination — a group of former American diplomats has said in a joint representation that the man is not fit to hold the UN post — told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Bolton was a “bully” who abused his authority and power, intimidated intelligence analysis and damaged the integrity of the agency he was working for. He questioned his suitability for high office. He said he himself was as good a Republican as Bolton but “the collateral damage and the personal hurt he (Bolton) causes is not worth the price that had to be paid”.

One allegation against Bolton is that when the chief bio-weapons analyst at the State Department, Christian Westermann, refused to approve Bolton’s intended announcement that Cuba had a secret bio-weapons programme, he tried to get Westermann fired. He also berated and intimidated him. Bolton said he had merely tried to get him transferred because the analyst had shared Bolton’s Cuba concerns with others, something he wasn’t supposed to do.

While Bolton’s nomination is expected to go through since the Republicans are in a majority in the Senate, this is hardly the kind of message that needs to be sent to the United Nations and the world at this time of all times. However, the ultra conservatives whose dream agenda for the world Bush seems to follow are elated at the appointment. Helle Dale, a columnist for the right-wing Washington Times wrote this week, “If the UN can be redeemed, it’ll need someone like Bolton to take charge.” He also called the UN “the errant world body”. Senator Boxer, to her credit, suggested that Bolton needs “anger management”.

The New York Times, which but for the law, the Bush ultras would burn to the ground, once again spoke out boldly against yet another divisive and provocative administration decision when it wrote in a leading article on April 13, “The longer John Bolton’s Senate hearing for the post of United Nations representative went on, the more outrageous it seemed that President Bush could have nominated a man who had made withering disdain for that world body the signature of his career in international affairs. Some fear that the aim is to scuttle the United Nations. It’s more likely, but just as disturbing, that this is another example of Mr Bush’s rewarding loyalty rather than holding officials accountable for mistakes, especially those who helped build the case for war with Iraq … With America’s credibility as low as it is, the last thing the nation needs is a United Nations envoy who tries to force intelligence into an ideological construct.”

I should add that to the great disappointment of those who still harbour the illusion that the Washington Post is a “liberal” newspaper. Here is how it ended a rambling editorial on the Bolton nomination, “So far, there is no compelling case for denying Mr Bush his choice.”

I think I will cancel my daily subscription and read the newspaper that chased Richard Nixon out of the White House on the Internet.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The Voice of Cricket has gone silent. Omar Kureishi is dead and with him much of the romance and excitement of cricket as one knew it. Nothing can match the experience of listening to cricket. To those of us who followed the game through Omar’s eyes and his gravely voice, its arrival on the living room TV was a comedown. We never saw the great players of the 1950s and 1960s play and yet we were able to visualise them with an intensity, an immediacy, that time has not diminished. All that and more we owe to Omar.

Omar could communicate the feel of cricket in sharp, incisive, dazzling language, and always tinged with humour. He was never partisan, never took sides, never hesitated to call a bad decision a bad decision, regardless of whether it was against one of our own or the opposition. Unlike some of those who followed him in the commentary box, he had played cricket, both in Bombay and in England. His understanding of the game and its finer points was even acknowledged by Skipper Kardar who was not known for handing out compliments, even when they were deserved. I have had the good fortune to be in the press box with Omar on some of the world’s great cricket grounds in England and Australia and I have witnessed the respect in which he was held by his peers. The great John Arlott was a close friend of his and admired his knowledge of cricket and his fairness.

Omar was one of my heroes but I had never met him, the backwaters of Sialkot not exactly being Kureishi country. I did know, however, that he was a friend of my cousin KH Khurshid, whom he had known back in Bombay when Khurshid was the Quaid-i-Azam’s private secretary. It was not until 1960 that I met Omar, though only for a few minutes. The smart lunch place in those days in Karachi Sadar was Hotel Farooq which was run by the famous Sheikh hoteliers from Sialkot. Better food than that served at Farooq’s I have seldom eaten. It was there one afternoon that I saw Omar. He was wearing a red and black striped necktie and no jacket. I walked up to him as he was leaving, and nervously dropped Khurshid’s name which brought a smile to his lips. We shook hands but more than that there wasn’t to this meeting. Little did I know then that in the years to come, I would become a close friend of his. Our closeness notwithstanding, he always remained “Kureishi Sahib” to me.

There are so many firsts associated with Omar when you come to think of it. He was Pakistan’s first real cricket commentator and I would place him in the same league as Arlott and some of the great Australians. He was certainly held in much esteem by them and treated as an equal. He was also the first true public relations professional in Pakistan. He it was who gave PIA the slogan ‘Great People to Fly With’ and he it was who gave Hanif Muhammad the name ‘Little Master.’ Omar was a stylist, in manner, in conversation and in writing. I often catch myself using a phrase that I first heard from Omar’s lips and took into my conversational repertoire. Omar did not suffer fools gladly but he was a generous man who would go out on a limb to help a friend.

One of the first things Zulfikar Ali Bhutto asked me to do as his press secretary was to ask Omar what he wanted him to do for him. When I asked Omar, his reply was short and telegraphic. “Nothing. I wish him well and I want him to leave me alone.” Omar could have asked for the moon and ZAB would have made an earnest effort to get it for him. All the years that ZAB, his friend from their school days in Bombay and university years in California, remained in office, Omar never asked anything of him. That shows class and character and Omar had both and in generous measure. He had elegance and over the years, though he went through some very hard times, he never sought favours, never compromised his dignity and always kept a stiff upper lip. In every way, Omar Kureishi was a man of elegance.

The year 1992 I will never forget because that was the year when the three of us – Omar, Farooq Mazhar and I – travelled through Australia and New Zealand with the Pakistan cricket team, led by the then – and in my book even now – debonair Imran Khan. We began badly and Farooq and I decided that since Pakistan was going to be eliminated early on, we would travel through the Great Australian Outback. I recall Omar and I having dinner with Imran in Hobart, Tasmania, and Imran telling us that he was going to take the Cup home. After he had turned in for the night, I told Omar that Imran was dreaming. Omar paused before replying, “Don’t underrate him. I think he is going to do exactly what he says he will do: take the Cup home.” And it did indeed come to pass. I should add that for some reason, Omar had picked up a book in Brisbane on the trial of Socrates and presented it to Imran. I have wondered to this day, why?

Omar was a marvellous writer. Over the years, he wrote several books, including that evocative account of his childhood and youth. Omar returned to Pakistan after five years at the University of Southern California. He was 28. Starting out as news editor of Pakistan Standard , he moved to Times of Karachi when his first paper died. His editor was ZA Suleri, and a more unlikely combination it is not possible to imagine. Thanks to Suleri’s shenanigans, Omar took the rap and went to jail when the paper was sued for defamation. How times have changed: those who should be in jail are crowing over us like overfed chanticleers. Ustad Daman got it right when Mukhtar Rana was sent to the clinker by ZAB. Wrote the maestro, Rani baar te Rana andar. Damadam mast qalandar. But this is an aside.

Omar’s first book – Black Moods – published in 1955 contains not a single mention of cricket. The subjects chosen, he writes, are “depressing and poignant reminders that the idealism of Pakistan has been adulterated by callousness in attitude and laziness in approach.” He speaks about “neglect and indifference” as the nation’s “calamitous disease”, while pointing out that all problems that exist are of our own making. He never was a believer in the “hidden foreign hand.” He calls the book “an attempted documentary in frustration.” But the “black moods” are not black all the way through. Consider this. “There are some very important people here. They consist to those who came to Pakistan after partition leaving everything behind… unpaid bills, income-tax summons, warrants of arrest for fraud, forgery and miscellaneous 420. When they came here, they were poor while the country was rich. Now the country is poor and they are rich.”

Omar got it right fifty years ago. Nothing has changed; in fact we have gone downhill. Here is another prophetic line from the book, “The moral of the story is that when in Pakistan do as the Americans do.”

Well played, Mr Kureishi, well played.

“It is a month before the month of May: And the Spring comes slowly up this way,” wrote Coleridge, which is exactly what we now have under Washington skies. The cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial are out on schedule and will have peaked at the weekend. And where you have cherry blossoms, you have Japanese. They do the world in droves. A lone Japanese is not a common sight. They do not wander about aimlessly. They have everything worked out to the last dot. They have maps and English-Japanese dictionaries and if you ask them something, they smile, which is their way of saying that they are not sure if their English will carry them through the conversation you are trying to have.

It is hard to believe that it is the same people who gave America Pearl Harbour and who treated their prisoners with such extreme cruelty. All that is now forgotten and the Japanese themselves have rewritten their history. The rape of Nanking is barely mentioned and the harsh rule imposed on the Koreans stands entirely forgotten, though not by the Koreans. As for the Chinese, they have long memories. They also believe that ultimately all scores should be settled. Washington remains one of the favourites with Japanese tourists, so there it all is, at least till the next Pearl Harbour.

The first heralds of spring are the narcissus and those tiny yellow flowers that sprout from the long-branched bush whose name I do not know. Yellow is the colour of spring in our part of the world and it is the first colour to appear here, but it is soon overwhelmed by a riot of pink and white. It is strange how nature, regardless of the affairs of men, follows its own impersonal cycle. Therein lies a lesson for those who when in positions of power believe that the sun rises and sets at their express wishes.

The cheer that spring brings has been marred, however, by a number of deaths. The Pope is gone and the attention his passing has received in the American press and on television, can be taken as a graph of the popularity of this remarkable man. However, there are some who are pointing out, though in muted voices, that the Pope was extremely conservative and dead set against abortion, female priests and birth control. On one of his visits to Latin America, he repeatedly jabbed his finger at one of his priests who believed that it was the duty of the church to fight for human rights and to stand up to dictatorship. That approach came to be known as liberation theology, but the Pope would have none of it. He did not believe it was for the church to get into such things.

Everyone who watches television news was shocked by the sad news that one of the most watched news anchors, Peter Jennings, had lung cancer. He made the announcement himself. This was followed by the news a day later that Saul Bellow, whom most people place in the same class as Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck had died. He was well into his eighties. I never read any of his books though I bought a few of them over the years. Not every book that one buys, one reads. Some one reads a few pages of and abandons; others one plans to read at some point and then there are those that one never has any intention of reading. I have read Ulysses, but not War and Peace, though I have always had the intention to do so. Maybe it is those long Russian names that put me off. I have been told that if you can read through the first hundred pages or so, you will be glued, but a hundred pages are a hundred pages. In any case, Tolstoy has enough readers, so he can do without this one.

Spring brings birds one has not seen all winter. It also brings their human counterparts from Pakistan. An email from the Embassy of Pakistan states that an un-elected young gentleman who is said to be the apple of Mr Shaukat Aziz’s eye and, that being the case, naturally runs the Ministry of Finance, is going to be in town and, what is more, in the company of Governor Ishrat Hussain of the State Bank of Pakistan. Why is it that every time I sneeze, I find him in Washington? The few of us who report for the Pakistani press are to be briefed on the great economic strides the country has made. I await the arrival of both. Last time I heard Dr Ishrat Hussain, he puffed out his chest and declared that democracy and development did not go together. I did not have the heart to tell him that he had taken me back to Ayub Khan’s “Decade of Development”. I suppose that explains why he is the Governor of State Bank and I am not.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Were Ashoka the Great to return to life and walk through parts of his great kingdom that now constitute the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, he would immediately take to the woods, sit under a tree and never speak to another human being again, lost as he would be in contemplation trying to find understanding and forgiveness for the religious zealotry that now stalks this land like an evil spirit that won’t be laid to rest.

Born just over 300 years before Christ, and third in the great Mauryan dynasty, he it was who spread the gentle creed of Buddhism throughout his vast empire and even beyond its borders. He was perhaps the first great ruler who pressed government into the service of the people. While little is known about the early years of his rule, the latter part of his reign remains documented through his edicts and inscriptions that he built and raised from one corner of his kingdom to another. The turning point in Ashoka’s life came eight years after he ascended the throne. His large and powerful armies attacked and conquered Kalinga, which we know today as Orissa in Eastern India. The war lasted two years and it killed a hundred thousand soldiers, hundreds of thousands of non-combatants, many of them Brahmins, besides leaving in its wake an even larger number of wounded and disabled. A hundred and fifty thousand men are said to have been forced out of their homes into exile. The king was so horrified at the mayhem he had let loose that from that day on, he foreswore war (does Bush know about Kalinga?) and turned to Buddhism.

His long reign thereafter was characterised by what he called dharma or the law of piety, and ahimsa , or non-violence. To spread his message of peace and humanism, he created a vast network of officers called Dhamma Mahamattas or officers of righteousness. He never fought a war again, as long as he lived. His life and government exemplified the Buddhist principles of truth, charity, kindness, purity and goodness. He banned the sacrifice of animals and opened clinics for birds and animals. Ashoka’s pillars, erected throughout his kingdom were massive 40-foot high structures that carried inscriptions setting out his beliefs for the guidance of the people. One of the pillars said, “All men are my children. I am like a father to them. As every father desires the good and the happiness of his children, I wish that all men should be happy always.”

A pillar that still stands near Delhi carries the following inscription, “On the high roads, I caused banyan trees to be planted by me to shade cattle and men. I caused mango gardens to be planted and wells to be dug at two-mile intervals, rest-houses were constructed, many watering-stations were established here and there, for the comfort of cattle and men. Slight comfort, indeed, is this. People have been made happy through various kinds of facilities for comfort by previous kings as well as myself. But this was done by me so that people might strictly follow the path laid down by Dharma.”

Another of Ashoka’s rock edicts, says, “Devanampriya, the conqueror of the Kalingas, is remorseful now, for this conquest is no conquest, since there was killing, death and banishment of the people. Devanampriya keenly feels all this with profound sorrow and regret. But, what is worse than this, there dwell in that country Brahmanas, Shramanas and followers of other religions and householders who have the duty of rendering due service to elders, to mother and father, and to gurus, of showing proper courtesy to friends, comrades, companions and relatives, as well as to slaves and servants, and firm devotion to Dharma. To these, injury, death or deportation may have happened. And the friends, comrades, companions and relatives who still retain undiminished affection for those affected by the war are terribly pained by this calamity. To Devanampriya, Dharmavijaya – conquest by Dharma – is the most important victory.”

Just where Karakkurram Highway begins to snake its way up into the mountains, not far from Garhi Habibullah, a couple of Ashoka’s rocks still stand. About fifteen years ago, I broke a journey to pay homage to the great king and seer. I would commend Ashoka’s edicts to General Pervez Musharraf. If he really wants to understand what “enlightened moderation” means, he should start reading the writing on those pillars. Since he is unlikely to make such a trip, here is what those edicts say. There are fourteen of them. After Kalinga, sacrifice of animals and birds was discontinued. Earlier, thousands of animals and bird were slaughtered in the royal kitchens. This was stopped. The sacrifice of two peacocks and two deer a day was also discontinued. Herbs with healing and medicinal qualities were made available, both for the use of men and animals. Trees were planted and wells dug along the highways. State officials were chosen from among those who had kind and sympathetic temperaments and who could persuade the citizens to live at peace and obey the law. Even neighbouring countries, the king believed, would benefit from those steps. One edict says that since long the business of state was not being run efficiently and little information was being supplied to the government, a situation that had been corrected. Carelessness and laziness were to be banished and the king had decided to be ready to serve his people, be it day or be it night.

Another edict said that the king had dedicated himself to the service of his people and it was his hope that he would be rewarded for his good deeds in the next life. For the convenience of the people, the king had also discontinued travel undertaken for the sake of amusement or pleasure (Mr President, please note). All his trips, he said, were now entirely for the purpose of gaining merit in the eyes of God. He wanted people to live in amity and under laws that were predictable and permanent. Silly customs and ceremonies had been ordered ended. Feasts to ward off illness or celebrate weddings, births and farewells were wasteful and pointless and had, therefore, been banned. Instead, people were being asked to try to practise humility, treat their servants and slaves with kindness, respect their teachers and be considerate towards ascetics and Brahmins.

This then is true “enlightened moderation”, laid down and practised more than two thousand years ago by one of the greatest kings in recorded history. The beauty of these Ashoka edicts lies in the fact that not even one of them is outdated. “Let there be tolerance and let the law of piety alone be glorified,” declared Ashoka. What better advice can a ruler ever hope to get!

I first visited Washington in 1969 and so small was the number of people who looked as if they could be from Pakistan and India, that every now and then, one was asked, “Where are you from”, followed by, “How do you speak English?” In Washington where I landed, there were no more than a couple of Indian restaurants. Today their number it is not possible to count.

One of them on Connecticut Avenue, which all good Pakistanis as a rule pronounce as “Connect-ee-cut” rather than “Conneticut”, was called Taj Mahal. That was where the then press counsellor at the embassy — Syed Nazim Qutb — often took me to lunch. Regardless of how cold it was, he would put on his Humphrey Bogart raincoat and we would walk from 1235 Massachusetts Avenue, where the embassy was at the time, to the restaurant. Taj Mahal still stands but Syed Nazim Qutb is long gone. Its name has not changed, but what it is like now, I do not know because I haven’t gone there since it is associated with a departed friend.

Washington has changed. It was then called the murder capital of the United States and though the murder rate is still quite high, I am not sure it can still claim that dubious title. There were areas around 14th Street in downtown that were pretty rough. If you were looking for drugs or ladies in short skirts and long cigarette holders, that was where you were told to go. Although nobody has yet been able to put the oldest profession in the world out of business, the 14th Street is pretty respectable now. However, there are still many areas in Washington and its suburbs from where those who are mindful of life and limb stay away.

In 1969, if one was looking for spices that go into our food, it was not easy to find them. Today, there is a Pakistani or Indian grocery store every few blocks. I recall going into a record shop — yes, those were LP times at 33 and a quarter revolutions per minute — where to my great thrill I found in the small section of “Eastern Music”, a Nur Jehan LP. I still have it 36 years later, though Madam is gone, but what of it, her voice lives.

As I said, Washington has changed. There are Pakistanis and Indians everywhere. Although the number is much smaller than it is in New York, there are also scores of Pakistani cab drivers. The other day, I met an Indian woman whose family originally came from Lahore, who told me how moved she was when her Pakistani cab driver refused to take any money after a long ride. When she insisted, he said, “Bhainji, paisay twaday kauloon hi lainay nai; hoar paisay dain walay barray nain.” (Sister, am I to take money from you when there are many others who would do the necessary?)

Even if there were no Internet, one can learn about the goings-on back home from several Urdu newspapers printed here. They can be picked up free from any grocery store, or sweetmeat outlet (the bad news about cholesterol has yet to travel to these establishments) or halal gosht stand. Many Pakistani sweetmeat sellers are rolling in money because their clientele eats everything that the rest of the world believes is lethal. The Pakistani mithai-buying frenzy is at its peak during Ramadan and around the two Eids. People cart away loads of the stuff one mouthful of which contains more sugar than a normal person should need for the entire year.

If you pick up an Urdu newspaper published in New York, you will be amazed at the inroads our people have made in business and industry. However, physically, they may be living in America, but in most other respects, they could be taking in the sun on a winter afternoon in Sharaqpur Gharbian. In some neighbourhoods, the sight of our men walking around in their pyjamas is not uncommon.

There are of course the rich and stylish Pakistanis — mostly doctors and businessmen — most of whom live in grand homes that cost millions of dollars. I asked the mistress of one such home, what sort of help she needed to dust and vacuum her sprawling villa. “None”, she replied, to my amazement, “I do it myself.” While that is commendable, there is no question that by the time she has done the dusting and the mopping and the vacuuming, she falls to the ground in a heap with exhaustion. She has to be an exception as most Pakistanis of means import their cooks and naukaranis from home. As to how the imported help lives and how it gets treated, that is a story for another day.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

I used to think that it was Mark Twain who said, “A sucker is born every minute.” I was wrong. It was PT Barnum, of the Barnum and Baily circus, or so I believed for a while. It now turns out that it was not even he; it was his rival, a banker by the name of David Hannum, owner of the Cardiff Giant that later turned out to be a hoax.

Barnum did however leave posterity and the English language with many memorable phrases. Jumbo is his word, being the name of his elephant, though the animal came to him with that name which is now applied to any outsize thing. The phrase “throwing your hat in the ring” was born when a politician actually threw his hat into Barnum’s circus ring after declaring his candidacy for a local office. Grandstanding referred to people who would sit in the best stands at the circus so that they could be noticed.“Let’s get the show on the road” was what Barnum would say when it was time to load the animals on the train.He it was who called his circus the Greatest Show on Earth. “Rain or shine,” also is Barnum’s because the circus under the big top would go on whether it was sunny or raining.

But I stray; this column is about the ten or twenty emails that come to me every day informing me that I have won a lottery which I never entered and have never heard of, or that several million dollars are waiting for me in a bank in Africa or Europe and all I have to do is not share the information with anyone but get in touch with my personal money manager or some such. If you do that, after a couple of exchanges comes the request for the remittance of a sum of money that can run into several thousand dollars into a specified bank account so that the waiting millions can be transferred into your bank account. When you send the sum of money demanded, that is exactly when you kiss that sum of money goodbye. Indeed, a fool and his money are soon parted.

This email scam has come to be known as 419, why I do not know. If a single digit was added to it, everyone in Pakistan and India would understand what was up. One American who got roped in sent a thousand dollars to a bank in London so that the big stash could be released to him. When no such thing happened, he tried to reach the bank to which he had sent his money, only to find out that no such bank existed.

Here is an email that comes to me from Dakar, Senegal, or so it says. “Hello, Good Day,” it begins cheerily, but comes to the point right away. “I would like to apply through this medium for your co-operation and to secure an opportunity to invest and do joint business with you in your country. I have a substantial capital I honourably intend to invest in your country into a very lucrative business venture of which you are to advise and execute the said venture over there for the mutual benefits of both of us. If this proposal is acceptable by you, please do not make undue advantage of the trust I bestow on you, and your urgent reply is highly needed today, for more detailed informations and oral talks. Best regards, and have a great day. Yours Faithfully, Mrs Marriam Taylor & Son.” No thank you Mrs Taylor. I would prefer both you and the money to stay in Dakar. The climate is better.

Here is a message from Miss Binta Wahid to me which begins, “Hello, I am 24 years of age now, I will not forget to ask you about your health I hope fine, I want to ask you if your interesting to help me, because I will like you to take me as your Sister or adopt me as your daughter. My late father was working in gold and diamond company for 17 years but was killed during the crisis in my country, then I managed to escape with my father’s important documents that worth (8.3 million dollars) which deposited in my name in Europe. If I receive any positive response I will forward all the documents to you based on interest. Please, I await your very Urgent and Positive reply as soon as you receive this message. Please, also give me your personal phone and fax numbers so that I can contact you and also send you the Documents by fax. Have a great day and extend my regards to your family.” Thank you Miss Wahid, but you need to take some English lessons first.

The only likely beneficiaries of the tsunami are going to be the scammers. Here is one who calls himself Fred Newman, lawyer for Alhaji Abdul Mohammed who died in the tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, with all members of his family. His money is in London and unless I help out it will be confiscated by the British government. All I have to do is say I am next of kin and bingo. There is also a humanitarian side to this scam. Once the funds are transferred, half of them will be given to the victims of the tsunami in Indonesia as a donation from Mr Newman’s late client. Well, thank you Mr Newman, I would prefer that Perfidious Albion take all. As for the Alhaji he hasn’t a thing to worry. He is already in heaven, never having existed in the first place.

Other popular scams include the one about a Neiman Marcus cookie recipe for which the scammer’s Aunt Cynthia was charged $250, but it can be mine for $25. Many Americans fall for it because this is a nation of cookie lovers. The Nigerian scam that asks for your bank account number in return for zillions of dollars that sit in a lonely vault, waiting for you, ends up with every cent in your account doing the Indian rope trick; that is disappearing into thin air. Then there are those who promise you money if you “work at home.” If you reply to such a message, you will be asked to purchase supplies and equipment. You will send the money and that would be the last you will hear from them or from your money. Lottery “winners” are asked to send money so that the big sum can be “freed” for delivery. What gets “freed” is your money from the bondage of your bank account. Many people also send money to buy an “e-mail tracker”, a device that does not exist, because they have been told that long-distance e-mails are soon going to be billed and a tracker would help circumvent that.

Moral of the story: Nobody gives you anything for nothing, brother and there ain’t no free lunches either.

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