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J Salik came to America last year and made a splash, but not of the kind he makes in Pakistan. He did not crucify himself in front of the White House. He has done that in Pakistan but it was the police that took him down from the cross not a flight of singing angels.

He did not chain himself to the fence of the Bush residence either, nor did he slash his wrists in front of the Capitol. He did not try to climb the Washington Monument, which was a great pity. He would have scored a hit, got on Good Morning America, if not on Oprah Winfrey’s show which is watched by half the women of America. He was expected this summer too but he failed to turn up.

It is only through an email that one learns why. The email from J Salik (loveandpeace_dxb@hotmail.com) runs under the headline “It’s Time to think that how we can Support for the Demands of Human Rights in Pakistan.” As to how “we can support” it is explained in the lines that follow: “We all do talk about and arrange meetings that we want to do this and that for the people of Pakistan but what happen? The Rulers of the Country Listen from one ear and out from the other. This is the person who always put him self in pain for him self. NO. IT’S FOR US! for the demand of our people rights. So can we support him how ever we can? Write letters to Ambassies of the countries, to different Political, Humans, and Religious Parties and ask them to support us. SALIK IS IN ASHES WITH SHAVED HEAD.”

And to the left, the email shows a picture of Salik with blood streaking down his face, his shirt front striped with red. He seems to be trying to stench the blood trickling down from his head with his hand that may or may not hold a handkerchief. His eyes are closed, so he is either asleep or he has gone under. The picture to the right shows Salik throwing ashes over his head. So there you have it: Salik in Ashes with Shaved Head.

But why is he in ashes and why is his head shaved? Here is the answer and it is datelined Islamabad because that is where the great man lives. “Former Federal Minister, Pakistani nominee for Nobel Peace Prize and Organiser of Pakistan Human Rights Party said that Christian community should be given no further test.” (In other words, “kisi aur imtihan mein na dala jaye”.) Salik warns that if his demands are not fulfilled, “he would spend the coming Independence Day August 14 in the Graveyard with the souls of Shaheeds.” Awesome!

He also complains of media inattention. He says the national electronic media are paying no attention to him that he, as a national leader, deserves. He has thus been left with “no option but to cut and present pieces of his flesh to the Rulers.” Well, knowing our Rulers, I can assure him that if he does that, he would soon be barbecue. One thing the Rulers do not do is miss a free meal, even if that free meal is a former federal minister.

The message from Salik carries the disquieting news that “he has been wearing yellow parachute for the last 51 days, ashes for 33 days, shaved head 31 days and this has caused burns on his whole body. During this time he has extracted his blood four times but there is no response from the Rulers.”

To be fair to the Rulers, how could they have responded to a resident of the earth like Salik, flying as they seem to be through the stratosphere most of the time, going from one capital to another, including those where no one has ever heard of them.

Salik promises to live and die for Pakistan, which he declares he is never going to leave. It is the Rulers who will leave, he predicts. Could the man in ashes and yellow parachute be right? Going by the Iranian experience he could be. When at the height of street protests, the Shah asked one of his courtiers why “our people” are not in the streets, the courtier replied, “Your Majesty, they are, but in the streets of Paris, London and New York.”

J Salik’s message also reminds his readers that after resigning from the National Assembly, he left his shoes behind, walking all the way to Lahore in his bare feet. An assembly, he says, that cannot help the poor can only be fit for being a repository of footwear.

Doubtlessly, when it comes to the assembly, Gen Musharraf and J Salik are on the same wavelength, though for different reasons.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Lists are always interesting. Recently, the American Film Institute (AFI) came up with several of them, including the 100 best American films of all time, the 100 best lines of dialogue, the 100 best songs and so on.

If you ever wondered what the most famous, the best remembered line from all the movies made in Hollywood is, you have probably already guessed it. Yes, it is Clark Gable playing Capt Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind saying to Vivien Leigh, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” And the second most widely remembered line? You may have guessed that too. It is from The Godfather: “I am going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” The third on the list is from Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront which made Marlin Brando a star, and he it is who delivers it: “You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could’ve been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”

My favourite is from The Wizard of Oz . It is Dorothy, the young Judy Garland, saying to her dog, “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Since Mr Shaukat “Shortcut” Aziz took the job once held by Liaquat Ali Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, I have often had the feeling that we are not in Kansas anymore. But to get away from the production set built by the Rawalpindi-walas in Islamabad and return to the far happier land of the movies, No 5 is the classic Humphrey Bogart line spoken to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca , “Here’s looking at you kid.”

Casablanca , which gave the world some of the greatest movie quotes, has five others in the AFI list of 100. The other five are: “Play it Sam. Play ‘As time goes by.’” And who can forget the great line on which the movie ends with Bogart telling Claude Rains, the dodgy chief of police, as they walk away from the plane which is going to carry Bergman and her husband Paul Henreid forever out of the life of Bogart, the man whom Bergman really loves, and he her, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Another great quote from Casablanca – which has been adjudged the best movie ever made, though it is No 2 on the AFI list – and one which is the guiding light and philosophy of all police forces in the world is delivered by Claude Rains, “Round up the usual suspects.” And then there is that classic bit that puts the seal of permanence on the great love between Bogart and Bergman, “We’ll always have Paris.” And, of course, another classic uttered by Bogart when out of nowhere Bergman walks into Rick’s Café that he runs in Casablanca, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

Clint Eastwood, who went from the toughest guy to one of the finest film directors, while at the same time broadening his range to include several memorable roles, delivered a line that has become synonymous with him and his spaghetti westerns, “Go ahead, make my day.” As for the most romantic line of dialogue ever delivered, this one from Love Story is a favourite with many, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” It is another matter that when you are not willing to say you are sorry, love flies out of the nearest window. If you don’t believe that, try it next time you find yourself in one of those situations.

The American Film Institute, which did not dream up the best 100 lines but chose them after extensive surveys, accords place nine to Alec Guinness saying to young Luke Skywalker – if I recall correctly – in the first Star Wars movie, “May the Force by with you.” Another line that has become a classic is from All About Eve , a Bette Davis movie released in 1950, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” And who can forget this gem which should be inscribed on the front of every military headquarters in the world, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” And there is the children’s favourite, the line from ET, the Extraterrestrial , “ET phone home.” The 1976 movie Network is remembered for that great declaration, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.” I recommend this as a slogan to all political parties in Pakistan except the eternal mistress of Rawalpindi, the security-cleared, scrubbed and ironed, Pakistan Muslim League.

The most ghoulish line comes from that chilling movie, The Silence of the Lambs and is spoken by Anthony Hopkins, the psychopathic killer, “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fauva beans and a nice Chianti.” And anyone who saw Sunset Boulevard , the sad story of a diva of the silent screen who finds herself cast aside when the talkies take over, will remember Gloria Swanson saying, “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.” And Greta Garbo it was who said icily in Grand Hotel made in 1932, “I want to be alone.” Those who recall the 1989 movie When Harry Met Sally will remember it for Meg Ryan proving to Billy Crystal as they sit in an outdoor café that orgasm can be faked. After she has finished making those particular noises, a woman at the next table, when asked by her waiter what she would like, answers, “I’ll have what she is having.”

Two of the great quotes are from A Streetcar Named Desire , made in 1951, starring Marlon Brando, Vivian Leigh, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter, one being Vivian Lee saying as she is led away to be detained in an asylum, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.” James Bond fans should know that the line from Goldfinger – “A martini. Shaken, not stirred” – stands at No 90, while at No 22 we have the line Sean Connery and all those who followed him in that role always delivered when introducing themselves, “Bond, James Bond.” Another great line, also delivered by Vivian Leigh in Gone with the Wind is the classic that has gone into the language, “I’ll think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day.”

And Godfather II had a line that we will all do well to remember, “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

AFI also listed the 100 best movies ever made, the first 10 being Citizen Kane (1941), Casablanca (1942), The Godfather (1972), Gone with the Wind (1939), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Graduate (1967), On the Waterfront (1954), Schindler’s List (1993) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952).

Yet another conference on Kashmir, mounted at great expense and a good deal of effort that could have been saved, both for the sake of Kashmir and the sponsors’ continued financial health, ended in Washington last week. The title was grandiose: “The Kashmir Dispute and Building a Peaceful South Asia.” Ah! Only if wishes were horses, or at the very least mules! One session followed another and reminded me of those two priceless lines from Hamlet. “What do you read my lord?” “Words, words, words,” answers the Prince of Denmark wearily.

I have never understood why we preach to the converted, unless the intention is to get them so bored with what is being drilled into their ears that they should tear off their clothes and run into the nearest jungle, raving mad and stark naked. For those who braved travel, some of them all the way from Pakistan, to sweat it out in the humidity and hot air of Washington (with all those politicians, this town has plenty of that) the curious thing was that there were only two from India.

In a county of a billion people, could the sponsors not have done better? One of them may as well not have been there but the other, Subramanum Swamy, president of the Janata Party, said it was not clear who was leading whom down the garden path in the India-Pakistan dialogue. While one cannot say who, it is quite clear who would be led down that path in the end. Pakistan.

The piece de resistance was the short paper presented by M Yusuf Buch who told the gathering in the Canon House building on Capitol Hill that he was going to make an irrefutable statement. “I am the oldest person in this room; I distinctly remember July 13, 1931 when 21 Kashmiri Muslims were shot dead by the Maharaja’s police in Srinagar.” He was the only one who mapped out the direction in which things should move.

At the same time, it is a given that no attention will be paid to his words, either in Islamabad or New Delhi. He said there was a good deal of talk about “changed atmospherics” which showed a “lamentable shift of focus from the human content of the dispute to the realpolitik of India-Pakistan relations.” It is extremely doubtful that a Kashmir settlement, no matter how pleasing to the leaderships of India, Pakistan or even the United States will carry a stamp of genuineness unless it has a rational framework, rests convincingly on principles and is transparently democratic.

Buch warned that no better present could be made to extremists than an “unprincipled deal” between India and Pakistan which mocks the suffering and sacrifices of Kashmiris and nullifies the “sustained effort” at the UN to enable the people of Kashmir to determine their future. He predicted that if a deal was done over the heads of the Kashmiris, extremists on both sides would be exultant.

Those on the Pakistan-Kashmir side would feel vindicated in their belief that peaceful, secular processes cannot produce results. The extremists on the Indian side would jubilate over “tangible proof” that the atrocities committed to maintain Indian occupation of the Kashmir had not only remained unpunished but even been “handsomely rewarded”.

Buch said India and Pakistan will not lose in any sense if they both procure the endorsement of the Kashmiri “personalities” whom they respectively patronise to deal between themselves. He explained that no “authentic” Kashmiri leadership had yet been allowed to emerge, hence his use of the term “personalities”. He said, “At this time, we can not only pose the question from whom the Indian and Pakistani leaders derive the authority to decide the future of a people who have not delegated it to them; we are also obliged to look askance at the claims or pretensions of Kashmiri political figures strutting about whether on India’s side or the opposed one.”

While praising the Hurriyet’s tenacity, he said it was “most unedifying” to see some of its leaders “basking in Indian or Pakistani patronage,” with one of them having recently claimed that he had 35 Kashmir options to consider; words, Buch observed sardonically, spoken in “youthful jest”.

Kashmir, Buch said, is not a question of “what” but “how”. The “setting aside” of UN resolutions is one thing; the discarding of the principle they embodied is altogether another. The latter amounts to “throwing out the baby with the bath water.”

The principle involved, he said, is twofold: first, the settlement of the problem must accord with the wishes of the Kashmiris and, second, which is “equally important”, these wishes must be impartially ascertained. “Gimmickry and manoeuvres, no matter by whom encouraged and approved, cannot be a response to a demand for which thousands have shed their blood,” he added.

I don’t think anyone would have been listening in Islamabad, least of all those who have 35 solutions, product of Ordnance Factories, Wah Cantt.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

No one could make dramatic declarations like Dr Ashiq Hussain Batalvi. Had he not been a historian and a man of letters, he would have been an actor, strutting about the stage in an Agha Hashr epic. He always entered a room with a flourish. The year was 1979, the place London, the locale one of the upper floors of New Zealand House in Haymarket where I then worked in the BCCI-funded group of publications run by Altaf Gauhar (the publications lasted a little longer than I did working for them). Dr Batalvi had a booming voice. I had not seen him enter but when he spoke, he could have been heard as far as Knightsbridge where lay the Embassy of Pakistan, from which I had been smoked out some time earlier by the rightly-guided Zia-ul-Haq government of hangmen and whiplashers. “Maulvioon nain Muhammad Ali Jinnah se badla lai liya, ” declared Dr Batalvi. The Mullahs had taken their revenge on Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

I thought of Dr Batalvi the other day at the Brookings Institution as I sat at lunch listening to NWFP Chief Minister Mohammad Akram Durrani. He was reading from a prepared English text but it was obvious that he was at about as much at ease doing that as I would have been were I reading Hungarian in a loud voice. To his right sat Steve Cohen who runs the South Asia programme at Brookings with flair and competence. However, he was not the host, merely the master of ceremonies. The host sat to Durrani’s left, one Chris Seiple of a most rightly-guided, born-again variety church outfit called Group for Global Engagement. Stranger bedfellows would have been hard to find that day in Washington. Durrani was being hosted and dined (not wined, to the regret of some present) by a nice, evangelising Christian gentleman whom Durrani’s political and religious tribe in the Frontier and Afghanistan’s Talibanland would surely consider a “crusader” who should be fed to the lions, if not blown up through a suicide bomber. It turned out the man who had brought these two together was a Pakistani by the name of Dr Zia Mahmood, who never said a word but kept smilingly benignly, patronisingly through the extremely awkward proceedings. Durrani hardly touched his lunch because the chicken served had obviously not been slaughtered in the name of God. His three sons, who were doing America with him, however, did. What awaits them when they get home is anybody’s guess.

After Durrani finished, to everyone’s great relief, there were questions. He had said that the US was a “beacon of hope” and it should be understood that there is “room for faith in politics” and, further, that he believed in the sanctity of life, there being no room for terrorism in Islam. He also announced that “there is room for minorities in our tent.” He then spoke about driving through Nathiagali and after spotting the hill resort’s dilapidated church, ordering its repair and rehabilitation “on the spot.” The Christian community, he added, was so grateful to him that it built a mosque, as if the place needed yet another mosque where nobody will go to pray. He also declared, “I am a church protector, not a church destroyer.” I am sure the faithful who have put him in the Chief Minister’s house in Peshawar will one day have him account for that one. He said, “We have our own culture and some girls do not want to go to co-educational institutions, so we have set up separate ones for them.” It is another matter that there was no such demand from the Mullah-terrorised girls of NWFP. At one point, he declared, “I am a fighter. I am a fighter. I am a fighter.” Before people could run for cover, he clarified that he was fighting poverty.

He said his party had been “demonised” by the media (why do we get blamed for everything?) He told his audience to “look at our record” which he claimed would show good governance highlighted by new opportunities for women (which must come as news to women). He said, “We’ll die for our friends,” as if there was any doubt that Durrani and the bearded brigade would not die for the Taliban. Before signing off, he looked at his churchy host and said, “We are all children of Abraham.” Mercifully, when it came to question time, he spoke in Urdu, something I wish Sheikh Rashid Ahmed would do when going on CNN or BBC. (I always remember Muslehuddin’s timeless quote, “Sheikh Rashid speaks incorrect English fluently.”) Durrani’s interpreter was one of his aides who would not have received a pass were he in my English class. But he could not be faulted for trying. Durrani complained that Pakistan had received no more than a pittance from the Americans for all the sacrifices it has made, which reminded me of the popular slogan of pre-Musharraf years, “Raqm bharao Nawaz Sharif, hum tumharay saath hain.” Up the cash, Nawaz Sharif, we are with you.

Durrani said not force but friendship resolved problems, though I wonder if he said that at the Pentagon where he had been taken a day earlier. It was left to Prof Marvin Weinbaum of the Middle East Institute, who once lived in Peshawar, to ask why the Hasba Bill was being rammed through the Assembly when the rest of Pakistan found it unacceptable. Durrani replied that the MMA actually wanted to end honour killings, outlaw surrender of daughters as peace offerings to newly reconciled enemies, ban instant divorce, and enable women to get their due inheritance. The Hasba law would also ban the use of loudspeakers except for the call to prayers and ensure the sanctity of mosques and churches, he added. He called the propaganda against the MMA “poisonous.” When it was suggested that his government may be dismissed, he raised his fist and declared that if that happened, “we will wreak havoc” – Eent se eent bajja dai gai in Urdu. He also asked everyone to study the text of the Hasba Bill, which I for one did that evening.

Now that the Hasba Bill has been passed and the federal government has gone to court to have it declared unconstitutional – an interesting move by a government that is unconstitutional itself – it is in order to list just a few of the “special powers” of the Mohtasib envisaged by the Bill: to monitor adherence to moral values of Islam at public places; to monitor adherence to Islamic values and its respect and regard at the times of iftar and traveh ; to discourage entertainment shows and business transaction at the time of Eids and Friday prayers around mosques where such prayers are being held; to remove causes of dereliction in performance and proper arrangement of Eid and Friday prayers; to remove causes of negligence in maintenance of mosques; to observe decorum of Islam at the time of Azan and Fardh prayers; to discourage un-Islamic and inhuman customs; to check the tendency of indecent behaviour at public places including harassment of women; to eradicate taweez (amulets), palmistry, magic, etc; and to advise those who are found to be disobedient to their parents.

Come back Mullah Omar, all is forgiven.

Washington is hot and humid these days. Long ago, a Chinese traveller walking through Bengal described it as a green hell. There are days in this city that remind you of that Chinese traveller. There is much thunder and lightening here during summer months and cloudbursts without warning. It is nice while the rain is coming down in sheets but the moment it stops — and it stops as suddenly as it had come down — you are back to square one. But that is not surprising because the nation’s capital used to be a giant mosquito swamp once.

Human beings are never satisfied; they are also quick to forget. No one remembers what life was like before air-conditioning. America has had air-conditioning for a long, long time, but take Pakistan where it is a rather recent phenomenon. And yet, few if any who now spend the summer months in cool rooms and enjoy the comfort of soothing air while driving or being driven, remember times when being in a car in the summer was the equivalent of being in a furnace.

And that was what had made my esteemed friend RU Rad once declare that all Pakistanis are going to heaven because on judgment day, God will realise that most of what hell has to offer, they have already suffered on earth. God is a fair judge and does not punish twice, Rad added.

Well, the weather being what it is and US immigration inspectors offering the kind of welcome they do these days to anyone with “Middle Eastern looks,” one can only wonder why this city is under a VIP invasion from Pakistan. Travel may be fun but it is expensive fun, especially when you are a minister and nothing but the best would do.

Club class tickets that the ministers have an entitlement to and good hotels that they have to be put into — not to mention the chauffeured limos that they expect to be waiting on them whenever summoned — all add up to a lot of what my Sialkot friend Abdul Qayoom Mir likes to call “Amreekan Naqdullahs”, or Yankee dollaah.

What never ceases to amaze me is that the prime minister (Was macht er in Deutschland?) who was and is finance minister should be so generous with sanctioning these largely pointless foreign trips, including his own. I remember the late Mumtaz Hasan once telling me that the Ministry of Finance had once turned down a request from Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan for an increase in his entertainment allowance. Pakistan’s first prime minister and the Quaid-i-Azam’s trusted lieutenant, who even laid down his life for Pakistan, had accepted the decision without demur.

So next time, Shortcut is signing away another go-where-you-please authorisation for a member of his battalion-sized cabinet (does he know everyone’s name and portfolio?), he should stop for a moment and think of Liaquat Ali Khan. One also hopes Shortcut knows that the Pakistan high commissioner’s magnificent residence in New Delhi was gifted to the nation by the Nawabzada who, when he died, had maybe a hundred rupees or so in his bank.

There were three if not four Pakistani ministers at the recent ECOSOC meeting in New York. There was Mukhtar Mai’s minder, the State Bank governor (yes, him again), Prof Ataur Rehman (who should be renamed the Flying Dutchman) and one more whose name I can’t think of. And then there was the Kashmir Affairs minister who told a meeting of Pakistanis at the Consulate in New York that he was here at the head of a three-member delegation to persuade Kashmiris living in America to invest in Azad Kashmir.

It should be added as a footnote that there are only 118 Kashmiri families scattered across the United States and Canada. With the possible exception of Ghulam Nabi Fai, no one else knows where or who they are.

I must not forget Tariq Azim Khan, the minister of state for overseas Pakistanis, who went from coast to coast like a whirlwind, but then he is full of beans and being a relatively recent arrival in politics is relishing power, the ultimate aphrodisiac. I must add in all fairness that he did leave a good impression behind. I suppose if that comes to be more widely known, he many not be sent out again.

We have been, however, denied the pleasure of welcoming the lady minister of state of information. My heart goes out to her for her cross is heavy, working as she does with the Farzand-e-Rawalpindi. Someone called Shahzad Waseem, who the embassy informs the local scribblers, is the deputy home minister, is already in Washington and is threatening to hold a news conference. We would have preferred “Lion Foot” instead but he obviously has more toothsome quarries to stalk in the green hills around Islamabad.

While all this is going on, we await the captain of the world’s only 50-member First XI, Shortcut Aziz himself. President Musharraf, one has to concede, is generous to a fault. He wants everyone to have a bit of fun. And since travel broadens the mind, he is keen that the acute national shortage in this department should be fulfilled expeditiously.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The year 2004 was not a good one. It took away in its first month Syed Abid Ali Shah, a man so full of life, humour and good cheer that the angel of death must have wondered if he had come to the right address. Abid once said that he wasn’t afraid of dying as long as there was life after death.

The number of his friends was legion and he had no enemies. There was one thing he shared with Faiz Ahmed Faiz, to whom he was very close: No one ever heard him speak ill of anyone or anything. He personified Faiz’s immortal line: Jo aaye aaye ke hum dil kushada rakhtay hain (Our heart is large and we welcome all and any who come this way.) Abid’s favourite people – whose great favourite he in turn was – show what kind of man he was. Among his special intimates were Faiz, Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum and Sadequain. His relationships were not to be measured in days and months but in lifetimes. Another three people I would like to name, of the scores whose friend he was, are Syed Jamil Shah, Raja Tajammul Hussain and Sheikh Hafizur Rahman. Their friendship spanned half a century, and in Jamil Shah’s case another ten years plus. If there was one man who could truly be said to be the life of the party, whatever party he was at, it was Syed Abid Ali.

The one time Abid lost his shirt – actually it got torn all the way down the front – was in 1966 at Karachi’s great watering hole of those days, Central Hotel – Sadequain’s favourite hangout – where of an evening Safdar Mir, Abid and I sat sipping what was then both legal and legitimate. Whether a man sitting at the next table said something to Safdar Mir which made the “Great Boxer of the Progressive Writers’ Movement” rise to his full height to take the man down, I do not know. What I do know is that before Safdar Mir could stage a first round knockout, Syed Abid Ali Shah was swinging both fists wildly. It was a scene straight out of a silent Chaplin movie. The only casualty of the evening was Abid’s starched muslin shirt.

I have spoken of Abid’s friends but no friend of his was closer than his lovely wife Nazneen, whom he always called Nazi. They remained as devoted to each other till the end as on the day their stars first came together. How she has dealt with there being no Abid around the house and long evenings without the light and laughter of Abid’s friends, I can only attribute to her great inner strength. A few months ago, Syed Babar Ali, Abid’s cousin, Nazi and Sheikh Hafizur Rahman, put together in a book many of the delightful columns Abid wrote for the Daily Times and some other newspapers, including The Muslim which he managed from Lahore, with Zafar Iqbal Mirza, “Zim,” as local editor. Zim once let the paper publish without an editorial on the unexceptionable ground that there was nothing much to write about that day. I wish other papers had followed his example. I suspect it was Abid’s idea.

The book – The Way it Was – took its name from the column Abid wrote for the Daily Times . Earlier this year, when I was in Islamabad, I asked Sarmad Ali, one of Abid’s three worthy sons, to get me a copy of the book, which he did before I left. It came affectionately inscribed for me by Nazi, which makes it an object of great value. I have since been reading Abid’s delightful reminiscences. He had a light and airy touch and he was a wonderful raconteur. At Government College, he was Prof AS Bokhari’s favourite student and once won praise from him for his doggerel about Sufi Sahib. His class fellows included the late Maj Gen Imtiaz Ali and Chaudhri Anwar Aziz about whom Abid wrote in 2001, “He is a popular nocturnal host who entertains sundry journalists, failed politicians, out-of-favour bureaucrats and various other inexplicable characters, including myself.”

Abid recalled in a piece he wrote after the death of his friend Comrade Abdulla Malik that on the day Zulfikar Ali Bhutto announced a ban on drinking, gambling, races and other “sinful” activities, he was at the Governor’s House in Lahore chatting with Abdulla Malik, when Bhutto spotted Malik from a distance and sent for him. When Malik came back, he reported what Bhutto had told him, “ Abdulla, dekha kaisi Maulviyoon ki hava nikaal dee .” (Look how the Maulvis have been deflated.) Abid’s reaction was immediate. The Maulvis, he said, had in fact been inflated; it was people like him and Abdulla who had been deflated. How right he was. The Maulvis gave the Prime Minister no credit and admirers like Habib Jalib and Abid Ali Shah dreaded the approach of evening, “snake juice” having disappeared from the face of the earth, at least initially. About the closure of the Rawalpindi Club by Gen Zia-ul-Haq, Abid wrote, “May God save his soul in the other world from the eternal turmoil and lasting hatred which he managed to create during his transient passage in this one.”

The one man Sadequain was utterly devoted to was Abid, but more than him, to Nazi whom he had declared his ikloti behan , his one and only sister. In Rawalpindi, much of his time was spent at their home. There was a particular sofa which would serve as his bed, whenever he decided to kip in for the night. He once said that he had slept on that sofa in all the eleven houses Abid and Nazi had lived in over the years. A visit to their residence was like visiting a Sadequain museum. When Sadequain lay dying in one of Karachi’s private hospitals, where Abid had had him shifted from the fly-infested Jinnah Hospital, he drew the figure of a woman and calligraphed a verse by Iqbal, both of which, it was his last wish, were to be given to Abid and Nazi.

It was Abid who was instrumental in the writing of Faiz’s moving tribute to Imam Hussain, the great marsiya that Abid had him recite at Karbala Gamay Shah, Lahore. Abid once said to me, “I’ll let you in on a secret. We have a special category we call Sunni Shia’s. Faiz Sahib was one.” Let me close with a story Abid recorded in one of his nostalgic columns. Shortly before Faiz died, he was at Raja Tajammul Hussain’s house for a special evening where only his special friends were present. “Sialkot,” Tajammul said, as the evening deepened, “has produced two great poets, Iqbal and Faiz, but come to think of it, only one: Faiz.” Abid recalled that for once Faiz looked angry. After a while he said, “ Bhai, hum tau Allama ke khak-e-paa bhi naheen hain .” “One is not even the dust that the Allama’s feet touched,” he had said. Abid’s recollection reminded me of what Faiz had once said to me in London about Iqbal, “ Bhai shai’r tau wo tha, hum to bus tuk-band hain.” “He it was who was the poet; we are mere rhymesters,” he had said.

But we must not mourn Abid for he is in good company with Faiz, Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabussum and, no doubt, of an evening, Iqbal himself.

The devastating London bombings could not have come at a more ironic time. Only a day before, Londoners, who keep their emotions carefully hidden, were practically dancing on the streets after news broke that the city had been awarded the 2012 Olympic Games. Their joy was enhanced by the fact that London had streamed past the post, leaving old rival Paris behind. Then came the horrific explosions, some in the heart of West End, another in Aldgate, inhabited in the main by Bangladeshis and a sizeable number of Pakistanis.

The impact of the London attacks on the United States was immediate. Several major cities were put on alert. Security procedures and security systems were put into high gear. Police patrols were doubled and special surveillance was mounted so that transit and transport systems could be more thoroughly monitored. Additional steps are underway as I write this.

A sign of the times and something that will become increasingly common was witnessed on Thursday in New York City which lives with the horrifying memory of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. A policeman got on a crowded bus, began looking under the seats for suspicious objects, scrutinised the faces of the passengers, checked out a couple of packets and gave the bewildered passengers a short talk on how to be extremely alert to anything suspicious that caught their attention.

He also told them what a suicide bomber may look like, something that couldn’t be much use because the moment a suicide bomber thinks he may have been recognised, he will pull the trigger. A nationwide heightened alert on all mass transportation systems was declared on Thursday by Homeland Security, the giant establishment created by President George Bush.

If there is one thing the London bombers have succeeded in doing, it is to bring all Muslims living in the West under suspicion. Since 9/11 one has often heard that though not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorists are Muslims. The London bombings will have heightened this perception, given it fresh confirmation, as it were.

The masterminds behind these despicable and savage acts of terrorism believe that they are fighting God’s war and proclaiming the glory of Islam. That they are doing exactly the contrary carries no conviction with them. Anyone who has ever tried to engage a jihadi, for lack of a better word, in rational conversation will know that it is not possible to do so because the jihadi considers himself God’s soldier who is getting even with the enemies of Islam and avenging every single wrong done to Muslims in the last 1,400 years by “the Crusaders”.

Defeating the increasing sweep of this perverted thinking is the greatest challenge that Muslims face today. Dr Manzur Ijaz, the Washington-based Pakistani writer and intellectual, recently spoke about this dilemma. Only true Islamic enlightenment, as opposed to its fake Pakistani version, could help defeat the dark and reactionary thinking of the so-called jihadi warriors, he said.

The Islam that the Muslims need to follow today is the Islam of the Sufis which is based on tolerance and universal brotherhood. In India, it was these Sufi movements that brought Islam to the people, led by the Chishtia and Qadriya orders. Not only did these orders promote justice and love, but they established the foundations of art and literature in the languages of the people.

These visionary men came into conflict with those whose religion was confined to blind textual interpretations of the Quran and acceptance of the most austere interpretations of the Shari’a and the Fiqh. Baba Farid Ganj Shakr used to listen to music while sitting in a mosque. Off and on, he would get so carried away as to start dancing. Nizamuddin Aulia had willed that he should go on his last journey to the beat of the Qawwali.

Enlightened people’s Islam, Dr Ijaz argued, has always come into direct clash with its puritanical and fundamentalist interpreters. While the Sufis believe that all men are created equal and deserve to be respected, the fundamentalists maintain that the world is divided between believers and unbelievers and it is the bounden duty of the former to kill the latter. The Sufi’s God is personal, while that of the fundamentalists is an impersonal exterminating king-like being issuing arbitrary orders.

The Sufi way is considered by its detractors to be heretical. Khawaja Farid, for instance, believed that Adam was a Hindu. His followers included a sect called the Chajoos who considered both Krishna and Muhammad (peace be upon him) to be prophets of God. Many Sufi orders also believed that Aristotle and Plato were seers and men of vision who would receive the choicest of rewards in the hereafter.

It is that Islam of love, tolerance and fellow feeling, Dr Ijaz believes, that Muslims have to go back to, as against a travesty of their religion that glorifies violence and the murder of innocent men, women and children. Because of a lack of commitment to true, as opposed to fake enlightenment, the Muslims of the world are going to be made to bear the costs of the crimes being committed in their name by those who idolise Osama Bin Laden. The time has come, therefore, to snatch away Islam from the ignorant and violent forces that destroyed the Twin Towers and bombed London.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

What happened to Ahmed Faraz is a matter of great shame but it should not have surprised us because from the day Pakistan was born to the present era of “enlightened moderation” (Thank you Dr Kissinger), that is exactly the sort of thing that has been happening to our best and brightest.

Writers and artists, except those who sell their soul to the devil that every ruling order in Pakistan is, have always been suspect in our country. The oligarchy that has wielded power from the beginning, sometimes in civvies, at other times in bemedalled uniforms, has disliked both ideas and intellectuals. The ruling class has an intrinsic, if not genetic, dislike, indeed ill-hidden contempt, for writers, poets and journalists. In its book, they are lowest of the low. Some members of this so-called elite may pretend to have a literary taste but it is utterly insincere as it has little use either for poetry or for art or for serious music. It never fails to amuse me that the very people who would sway their heads as if they had been transported to another world when Iqbal Bano sings Faiz’s stirring lines about how the mighty will one day fall ( Hum dekhain ge/Woh din ke jiska vahda hai ) were the very tyrants whose fall Faiz had so confidently predicted.

The first victims of official wrath just weeks after Pakistan’s birth were members of the Progressive Writers Movement. In the government’s eyes, the final seal on their treachery was set when a large delegation from the Soviet Union came to Lahore to attend the first major writers’ conference. Anyone and everyone who was involved with that conference, whether he was a communist, a fellow traveller or a mere attendee, was now seen as a “security risk.” His mail was opened, his movements were tailed by plainclothesmen, he was blacklisted for employment under government and every now and then, when the usual suspects had to be picked up and put into jail, he was picked up and put into jail. They were even blacklisted from appearing on the radio or freelancing for any official agency. The old colonial assumption that the greatest danger to India came from the Soviet Union became the official credo of independent Pakistan.

Every writer of note – and they were all “progressive” in one sense or another – was put on the list of actual or potential enemies of the state. Every black law that the British had made – to their great shame, I should add – was not only made part of the penal code but new laws that gave the state machinery meta-judicial powers and made nonsense of the rule of law were promulgated, mostly through executive decree. People were picked up under one emergency law or another. The principal target always remained the writers and intellectuals of Pakistan. If Ahmed Faraz has been thrown on the street today, he should know – and he does know – that he is in august company. After all, was it not one of his spiritual predecessors, Hasan Nasir, who was tortured to death in the infamous Lahore Fort’s chamber of horrors? In passing, it should be noted that Nawaz Sharif’s one great act in office was the abolition of that medieval prison run by the Punjab Police and the country’s despicable intelligence agencies.

Faiz was hounded till the day he died. What can be a matter of greater shame to us as a nation and a state is that a man who inhabits the same immortal hall of fame as Ghalib and Iqbal was shadowed all the days of his life because he was viewed an “enemy of the state.” The Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, in which Faiz was embroiled, sentenced and imprisoned, was a lie because all the “conspirators” had really done was talk about taking over the morally corrupt and anti-people government. When they were caught, the “conspiracy” had long been abandoned. And yet, during Zia’s time, most of which he spent in exile, he was detained while in transit through Karachi. Wherever he went, he was tailed by the regime’s intelligence.

Habib Jailb remined a suspect. Government after government kept him under watch throughout his turbulent life, spent in conditions of near poverty. In another country, he would have been celebrated and honoured as a national hero. Here he was disgraced – from being “found” with illicit liquor to being roughed up on the streets of Lahore in a Women’s Action Forum rally (what happened to those magnificent protesters led by such fearless fighters as Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan!). And what about the greatest of Pakistan’s Punjabi poets, the inimitable Ustad Daman? He was hounded and watched. Once he was booked on that timeless Punjab Police specialty: possession of illicit liquor. One of his poems ends with the couplet: Ais wastay bolda nahin Daman: Mataan lug jaye meri zubaan te tax.( Why Daman no longer speaks is for fear that if he opens his mouth, they will tax his tongue). In Pakistan, every poet who stood for something and who spoke in the name of the people, found himself on the wrong side of the law.

Ahmed Faraz is a national treasure and although he does not believe in the succession system, either in politics or in poetry, the fact is that if there is to be a successor to Faiz, it is none other than Faraz. This is not the first time Faraz has been persecuted by the establishment. He was sent home by Maulana Kausar Niazi, a misstep that was soon rectified. Faraz lost his job under the Zia regime and he spent many years in exile in Europe and America, quite a few of them in London. His great poem Mohasra (The Siege) remains one of the most powerful indictments of military rule. Who else but Faraz could have written Peshavar qatilau tum sipahi nahin (You are no soldiers, you professional assassins). There can be no question that Faraz is also the greatest romantic Urdu poet of our times. Such a man should be placed on a pedestal so high that one should have to crane one’s neck to see him. But what is the reality of Pakistan? Some time last year, he and his family were evicted from their house and the family belongings thrown on the street. There was a nationwide uproar and the government had to eat humble pie. This time he has been dismissed from his post on the orders of Shaukat “Shortcut” Aziz, the City Bank’s gift to Pakistan. This crass and tasteless act is all he will be remembered by after he returns to where he came from.

But let me end this by quoting to Faraz one of his own lines: Dost hota nahin har haath milanay wala (Not everyone who shakes your hand is a friend).

This has been quite a week, the most hyped and the least convincing event being President George Bush’s address carried by all networks, including those which do not normally let even the president stand between them and their huge commercials. There are so many commercials on American television that sometimes the programmes themselves seem no more than brief interludes. PBS, the commercial-free public television network, is being treated by the administration and its friends as if it were a weapon of mass destruction. At least, they did manage to find something, is all that can be said.

But to return to the bird in hand, as opposed to those in the “bush”, the high point of the week for people who still remember 1971 and what led to it was the two-day conference organised by the State Department to mark the release of declassified documents. Not only did the five panels chosen to speak contain experts on South Asia but American diplomats who had first-hand knowledge of those events.

They included men like Sidney Sober, who filled on for the ambassador much of the time because of the latter’s frequent absences from Islamabad. Their reminiscences were fascinating and, at times, surprising. For instance, when Sober was asked what he knew about Yahya Khan’s meetings with Mujib and Bhutto, he professed ignorance. The moral, therefore, is that the Americans do not always know everything. In fact, sometimes, they know nothing.

What came out loud and clear from the declassified papers and from the speeches made at the conference was that the Nixon administration had no illusions about Pakistan remaining united. What is to be noted is that despite the famous “tilt”, it did absolutely nothing to help Pakistan remain one. It did not even make an attempt. The Seventh Fleet was a ploy that fooled nobody and had no effect.

What the US did perhaps do was keep West Pakistan from being overrun by a victorious India after the surrender in East Pakistan. The White House’s assessment of India’s intentions was based on a CIA report, but several people at the conference pointed out that “raw intelligence” cannot always be relied upon. What the White House had was raw intelligence. It has also come to light that Moscow had assured Washington before the fall of Dhaka that India had no such intention. Surely, there were those in India who wanted Pakistan’s “military nuisance” to be finished once for all; but there were also others who did not support that course of action.

Had Pakistan not been playing a role in the US opening to China, it is unlikely that there would have been much support for Yahya or the country. Nixon and Kissinger saw the events of 1971 through the prism of the Cold War. They felt that if they let down Pakistan, an ally, it would be said that America does not stand by its friends in a crisis. However, in the end, it was the American national self-interest rather than any particular love for Pakistan that determined both US policy and its general attitude.

Nixon and Kissinger disliked Mrs Indira Gandhi. They also disliked India which being a Soviet ally was seen as a friend of the enemy and thus almost an enemy. The White House also had no patience with what it saw as Indian sanctimoniousness and the superior moral ground New Delhi always liked to occupy. I need not repeat here the colourful language both Nixon and Kissinger used about India and Mrs Gandhi. This after all is a family newspaper.

Now a snippet one of the speakers shared with the audience. Samuel Hoskinson, who was serving in the National Security Council at the time, was assigned to escort Mrs Gandhi to the White House in November 1971 for a meeting with Nixon. He told the conference that he led the Indian prime minister through the diplomats’ entrance to the White House, took her to a special reception area, picked up the phone and told Rose Mary Woods, Nixon’s secretary, “Prime Minister Mrs Gandhi is here, please inform the President.” She said she would do so right away. But there was no comeback. Half an hour passed.

Mrs Gandhi was getting more and more fidgety and looked visibly annoyed, if not angry. Hoskinson, feeling ill-at-ease and embarrassed, called Rose Mary Woods again. After some time, she said, “Please bring her up.” But it was not the Oval Office where visiting heads of state and government are received; it was the Roosevelt Room. They went in and another wait began, not as long as the previous one but long enough for Mrs Gandhi to begin getting really cheesed off.

Suddenly, recalled Hoskinson, the doors were flung open and in walked President Nixon, arms outstretched and a big smile on his face, “Mrs Gandhi,” he said, “nobody told me you were here!” She smiled back but with a great deal of difficulty.

To sum up, Nixon liked Yahya and thought — quite wrongly — that he was sincere and would find a way out of the political impasse. And what about China in 1971? As the documents put it, “With the Indian army and armed Bengali separatists winning, the US on 10 December 1971 urged Beijing to mobilise troops towards India, saying the US would back it if the Soviet Union became involved. China declined and on 16 December the war ended with the Indian army and Bengali separatists taking Dhaka.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Old soldiers never die, it is said, they only fade away; but there are some like Inder Jit Rikhye who do not fade away because they choose to share with us the lives they have lived, through war and peace and times good and bad.

Major General Rikhye is a son of the soil, born in Lahore in 1920 in a house that stood at the Mall end of Anarkali. His father was a doctor who came from Gujranwala, while his mother’s family came from Hafizabad. His great ancestor Kanhaya Lal Rikhye came from a village near Sialkot and was the Khazanchi or Treasurer of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s treasure, lodged at Gujranwala. His mother’s family also had ties with the Lahore Darbar, and an ancestor of hers was treasurer to the Sukerchukia Sikh chiefs from about 1780. His son and grandson followed him in the same position. Rikhye’s father Madan Lal went to the King Edward Medical College, Lahore, whose principal Col Sutherland was married to Princess Bamba, the daughter of Maharaja Dilip Singh.

I first met Gen Rikhye in 1993 at a conference on Kashmir organised by the US Institute of Peace, but I did not get to meet him again until the other day at lunch, where I asked him to talk about the old days. He joined the United Nations on deputation from the Indian Army in 1960 and remained a close aide to two UN Secretary-Generals, Dag Hammerskjold and U Thant. He was involved in every major UN peacekeeping operation from 1960 to 1969, when he resigned. He has written several books about his service with the UN but the two books that interested me were his autobiography, Trumpets and Tumults , and a history of his cavalry regiment, the 6th Lancers. That was the regiment that Zia-ul-Haq came to join in 1946 as a half lieutenant, Rikhye by then being a major. He told me that Zia was extremely religious even then, though not a fanatic by any means. He also liked Indian songs, which were precisely the two reasons that made him unpopular with the regiment’s senior British officers.

Rikhye recalls starting school in 1925 at Shahpur, where his father was the superintendent of a jail for prisoners who were afflicted with TB. Famous Muslim clans, he writes, the Gakhars, Noons and Tiwanas, populated the region, filling the ranks of the Indian cavalry and displaying fierce loyalty to the British. With the advent of irrigation, Shahpur made way for Sargodha which became the seat of the new district headquarters. Sargodha, he recalls, was built by two young Sikh landlords, Sohba Singh and Uttam Singh Duggal, who were later to build New Delhi and prosper. Rikhye’s father was transferred to Lahore in 1930, where the 10-year old was sent to Central Model School. After a year, the family moved to Chauburji Colony, built for Punjab government secretariat employees. In later years, two Chauburji boys were to gain fame in the movie industry: BR Chopra and Yash Chopra.

The Rikhye family next moved to the newly developed residential area we know as Krishen Nagar. Like his father and other family members, Rikhye joined Government College, Lahore. A grand uncle wanted him to be a lawyer, but Rikhye’s heart was set on the army, despite his mother’s reservations. When Mahatma Gandhi came to Lahore and spoke at the DAV College, he asked the young man who had gone there with his father what he wanted to be and when told that it was the army he wanted to join, Gandhiji said, “But that is good. We want good, educated young boys to become officers of the army of free India.” Rikhye sat for the tests, was selected and sent to the Indian Military Academy in Dehra Dun, where Sahibzada Yaqub Khan and the late Brig Saeeduddin were his contemporararies.

Rikhye joined the 6th Lancers in 1942 and was sent to the Punjabi Musalman Jat squadron where he met Capt FBH Ingall (who was to become the first commandant of the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul). The war being on, the regiment was shipped out to Basra, then ordered to go to Syria and Palestine where it was warned to look out for terrorists, one of them being Menachem Begin, the future prime minister of Israel. The regiment next moved to Egypt and from there to Italy. After the war was over, Rikhye and the regiment were moved to Kohat, replacing the Guides Cavalry. Rikhye was married at Lyallpur in March 1947. Back in Kohat, he did two tours of duty at Bannu, where the brigade commander was KM Kriappa, who was to become chief of the Indian army.

Brig Ayub Khan, later President of Pakistan, was in command of the Razmak Brigade. When Independence came about, Rikhye was still at Kohat, a major by then. His regiment fell to Pakistan’s share. Since no Hindu or Sikh officers or men were to remain in Pakistan, Rikhye was told to get ready to move to India. He writes, “My inability to remain with the regiment and continue my life in the land where I was born, and with the people I knew, dampened my enthusiasm for Independence.” He recalls sleeping fitfully on the eve of Independence, unsure of the future. When non-Muslim members of the regiment were moved from Kohat, it was Bakhtar Rana, who had fought with Rikhye in Italy, who escorted them to Rawalpindi. Soon after arrival in India, Rikhye was rushed to Srinagar to join a battle against the tribal lashkars that had fought their way to Srinagar. He saw action in the city’s precincts and later at Uri and Chamb, the last being the first armour battle between the newly independent countries. It was to be his last battle.

But let me move to the UN. Gen Zia-ul-Haq, as chairman of the OIC, addressed the fall session of the UN General Assembly in 1982. After he had spoken, Rikhye stood in a queue waiting to greet him. This is how he recounts the occasion: “When Zia saw me, he arose to wrap me an embrace typical of Punjabi greetings. We met after thirty-six, years during which the world around us had changed a great deal. So had our lives. He had acquired notoriety as a ruthless ruler and military dictator and I had become a peacekeeper. Zia invited me to Pakistan as his guest and asked me to bring my wife.” Before setting out for Pakistan, Rikhye sought a meeting with Mrs Indira Gandhi and asked her if there was anything he could do to improve relations with Pakistan. Mrs Gandhi’s answer in Urdu was, “ Who to bohat kattar hai .” Rikhye did not think that was so. He writes, “Indeed, Zia was very religious, but I did not recall his ever expressing strong views on Islam or Pakistani Independence when we two served on the old Indian Frontier. Zia had not shown any zeal for the concept of Pakistan at that time. As he rose in the military hierarchy of Pakistan he had remained apolitical.” When Rikhye told Mrs Gandhi that, she replied, “What good did Zia do for Bhutto anyway when he had him strung up at the end of a rope!”

Rikhye asked Zia in a private moment why he had hanged Bhutto. “Zia,” Rikhye writes, “was silent for a while. Then he looked me straight in the eyes, drew his right hand across his throat and declared, ‘It was either him or me.’”

While that has always been the popular theory, and perhaps Zia believed it too, I do not think if elections had been held in 90 days, as pledged by Zia, and the Bhutto-led PPP had been allowed to run and get back into power – which it surely would have – a triumphant Bhutto would have hanged Zia. He may have chosen a worse punishment for him: sent him as ambassador to a joyless Muslim country.

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