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This is 2006, thirty-five years after the breakup of Pakistan. No one really wants to know why it happened. This should not be surprising because even in 1971, nobody wanted to know why Pakistan had broken up or why the majority had decided to secede, the only instance in history when this has happened, because it is always minorities that secede.

No one in West Pakistan was interested in what was going on in East Pakistan. The army crackdown, which Yahya Khan described to his ADC as the unleashing of tigers, went ahead without a squeak from West Pakistan. The only man, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman said bitterly, who had stood up for the people of Bengal was Abdulla Malik, who told a student meeting at the Engineering University, Lahore, “ Hum Bangladesh ke mazloom awam ke saath hain (We are one with the oppressed people of Bangladesh),” and was promptly arrested and sentenced to a term of imprisonment by a martial law “court” (a session I attended). When the army crackdown came in the East, there was jubilation in the West. The only regret in West Pakistan was that the crackdown hadn’t come earlier. The Bengalis, it was said and popularly believed, were Muslims in name only, since all their teachers were Hindus and their favourite poet was not Iqbal but Rabindranath Tagore. They had to be reconverted to Islam by force, if necessary. After all, it was for the good of their own souls and in the service of Allah. When the balloon went up and 80,000 of Pakistan’s troops surrendered, it caused no trauma or soul searching in West Pakistan, because it was attributed to a grand Indo-Soviet conspiracy. The only elegy for East Pakistan was written by Faiz Ahmed Faiz: Jamay tau kaisay jamay qatl-e-aaam ka mela (This dance of death is like a festival).

A people who do not want to know their past and who do not want to learn from it have no future. And that is where the great merit of Brig Abdul Rehman Siddiqi’s book East Pakistan the Endgame lies. His is one of the few honest books written in Pakistan and every word on its 220 pages is authentic, based on the author’s lived, first-hand experience as the principal spokesman of the Army, which he then was, and since the country was under martial law, as the principal spokesman of the Government of Pakistan. As I read through its pages, I often thought of the lines by Arzoo Lukhnawi: Ab be dharak aye Arzoo, tu keh dey kharri baat: Rassi bhi yahin rakhhi hai sooli bhi garri hai (The time to speak the truth is come: There lies the hangman’s noose and there stands the scaffold). Abdul Rehman Siddiqi, a man who spent his life in uniform, has paid his debt to society and squared his account with history. He has written the story of East Pakistan and the men who made 16 December, 1971, that day of infamy, come upon us.

Siddiqi sums up his case in direct and simple words. “The saddest and the most shocking part of the whole tragedy has been the deep and arguably deliberate silence of the West Pakistani civil society – and the general public and the political leadership – throughout its nine-month long course. Except for a few desultory voices of protest it might have been little more than muted acceptance of a cruel fait accompli.” The one last chance of retrieving Quaid-i-Azam’s Pakistan from the abyss was missed when instead of boycotting the sham elections held to fill the Awami League’s “vacant” assembly seats, “each and every party, including the largest, the Pakistan People’s Party, the minuscule but relatively liberal Tehrik-i-Istiqlal of Asghar Khan, the reputedly principled Jama’at-i-Islami, the various Muslim Leagues etc unashamedly staked their claims to the empty National Assembly seats in East Pakistan, where they had not won a single seat in the general elections.”

Siddiqi writes that while the military junta cannot be forgiven for its unwarranted use of brute force against the people of East Pakistan, the West Pakistani leaders, the high judiciary, in truth, civil society as a whole, all bear their share of blame and shame. “Their sins of omission, in the final tally, would almost evenly balance the military’s sins of commission.” He calls it a “sinful act of bad faith committed by the military with the support of the civilian bureaucracy and much of the political leadership.” As for the Army high command, it just sat in its armchairs, “hoping for the final victory as a gift from God, without even praying for it like good men of faith.”

My view has always been that Yahya and his cabal at no point had any intention of transferring power. The rest is detail. They also at some point took the decision to jettison East Pakistan. The only debate inside the junta was costs. So incompetent was this lot that it could not even lower the costs of its treachery. Some of those who should have been held accountable have since died. Many remain alive and without showing the least sign of shame or guilt. One such whose role Siddiqi details at some length is Gen Muhammad Omar, who is often seen pontificating on national issues on television. Another, Roedad Khan, federal information secretary to Yahya, who now writes soulful newspaper pieces about people’s rights and accountable government, was one of the prime hawks who, on learning of the Army crackdown of March 25, said to Siddiqi, “ Yar iman taaza ho gaya, ” or “my faith stands revived.” Aslam Azhar and Khawaja Shahid Hosain, leading lights of the official electronic media, were as hawkish as Roedad Khan, making films to highlight Bengali atrocities and asking why action was not being taken against the treacherous Bengalis.

As for “Tiger” Niazi, he single-handedly sunk Pakistan. He sanctioned atrocities, including rapes. After the crackdown, every humiliation to which the Army had been subjected during the three weeks of civil disobedience was avenged and things reached a point where an army uniform became the wearer’s ticket to kill, torture or rape. It is to Siddiqi’s great credit that he brings it all out, offering no excuse for such conduct. It was a sign that all it needed was better public relationing.

Siddiqi’s book is dedicated to East Pakistan, “the land I loved,” to which I would like to add that it is a tribute to the greatness and generosity of the people of what was once East Pakistan and is now Bangladesh that they have forgiven us for what we did to them.

Last time I wrote about the Spanish lottery I had won and how I was waiting for my million dollars to surface in my bank account, a couple of readers, who despite what George Orwell said about truth and newspapers, phoned my family in Lahore offering their congratulations at my good fortune. It was a bit of a downer for all my friends, well wishers and those who were soon going to be my long lost cousins when they learnt that the foolish man I was, I had failed to provide my bank account number and other details that the Spanish lottery accountants wanted. As such, they learnt to their regret, I would not after all be eligible for the winnings. However, good fortune has not stopped coming my way. In fact, it is coming down on me like a heavy downpour.

But first my good fortune with the Green Card for which I had not applied. I am informed by the US Consulate General, 387 Wichayanond Road, Chiang Mai 50300, Thailand that I have been “selected as one of the lucky winners of the US VISA through our Internet email extracting and screening machine”. It seems that my application was applied and processed by an “Internet email extracting and screening machine which randomly extracts and scans millions of email addresses across the world.”

One thing you have to say about America: the left hand does not know what the right hand does, especially when it comes to giving. I am not, therefore, surprised that the State Department knows nothing about this. There are a lot of things the State Department knows nothing about, so it should surprise no one.

The Consulate General informs me that the aim of the programme is to give free visas to citizens of developing countries around the world to enable them to travel to the US and start a new life and work. The “Chiang Mai consulate released 12 visas in this regards and hopes to increase the visa number to 24 by late next year, you are among the 12 lucky people that won the visa and among the five foreigners that won the visa, 7 visas were won by Thai nationals.”

Of course, I am not going to tell them that I am already living in the US. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth to count its teeth. And since the best things in life are not free, I have to remit a “Clearance and Acceptance fee” of $1,015 “only” to the accredited agents’ account and not through Western Union money transfer. Instructions noted Excellency; the money is on its way and should be with you on a week of Sundays.

I have also won a lottery — please no one tell my sister in Lahore as happened last time — from the Royal Pacific International Lottery, Bangkok. I tell you if you are looking for action, Thailand is the place. It just happens that I drew the lucky ticket on January 25 this year and have won one million dollars. It was a computer that picked up my name. I am advised that, “for safety measures and to avoid fraudulent claims you are adviced to keep your winnings information and noti fictions confidential and away from all third parties till your check arrives your address.” These guys may need English lessons but you don’t suggest that to folks who are about to give you a million dollars. Mrs Tom Ong, whose picture is attached to the email, looks like a most attractive young lady and I am happy that she is my “Online Coordinator”.

But I am not done. There is an Urdu saying that when God gives, the money comes crashing through your roof. I can testify that the saying is true to life because I have a terrific “business proposal” from Mrs Rita Diatta of Dakar, Senegal, where my friend Abdullah Malik is Pakistan’s ambassador, but I am not going to tell him. These things have to be kept private, till such time as the Porsche I am ordering from Germany has been airlifted to Washington. Old girl Rita writes, “Compliments of the season. I did like to send to you the best wishes of good health and success in your pursuits particularly through my proposal as contained in this letter. I may not wish to disclose how I got your email address for now. After due deliberation with my son, I decided to forward to you this business proposal, we want you to assist us. I will give you more information. As to this regard as soon as you reply.” Rita too needs an English lesson or two, not that I care.

That is not all. There is more money crashing through the roof, this time from Mrs Mona Lisa Anderson of Amsterdam and guess what! I have won a million Euros. Even if Mona Lisa of Amsterdam had merely smiled at me, I would have felt more than rewarded but she is making me a millionaire. Wow! All I have to do is to keep my winning information confidential and claim my million Euros within seven days — or bust. No one should be surprised if the next column on this page is called ‘Postcard St Topez’. In any case, it is time to get out of a city one has to share with such gents as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and, last but not least, Bush.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Had AS Bokhari done nothing except write Patras ke Muzameen , his name would have lived; but he did a great, great deal more, which is why he is remembered with both admiration and affection, a rare combination, to this day. Even before independence, his distinctions were many. The first Indian director-general of All India Radio, he was principal of the most famous college in the country, Government College, Lahore (which now bears the ridiculous name of Government College University). There perhaps never has been a finer teacher of English than Bokhari.

Here is Bokhari on the river Ravi, which I take the liberty of translating into English. “In this land of five rivers, today there are only four and a half rivers that actually flow. The half river, one should add, is no longer capable of flowing, which is why it is known as the old, decrepit Ravi. If a meeting is desired, one need only be acquainted with the two bridges close to the city, under whose arches the river can be found languishing in the sand. Since it has suspended its occupation of flowing, it is difficult to say whether the city is located on Ravi’s left or right.”

And here is Bokhari on Lahore: “It is said that there was a time when Lahore had a physical location. However, for the convenience of students, the municipality has had it cancelled. Today, Lahore is surrounded on all four sides by more Lahore, which replicates itself constantly. Experts are of the opinion that in a few years, Lahore will be the name of the province with Punjab as its capital.”

I wonder what Bokhari would make of the city and its almost completely disappeared river today. A friend, Tariq Masud in Islamabad, has come upon a wonderful piece of writing by Bokhari. It is a letter he wrote to one of his sons in Liverpool. It is in English, which saves me from the sin of translating Bokhari’s luminous prose. The letter is long and given the constraints of space, what are reproduced are just excerpts:

“My dear Rooney,

“You know all that it is important to know and have seen more of life than I had seen at your age. Nevertheless parents have an incurable habit of giving good advice, in season and out of it, even when it is not needed. It arises from affection and from protective desires and from anxiety for your welfare, born of love. Let me therefore give way to this incurable habit, and if you find my advice superfluous, as I sincerely hope you will – I am sure you will – you can ignore it forgivingly – that is to say without being irritated by it. I will make it as brief as I can.

“First of all, a very simple piece of advice – avoid breaking the law. I don’t mean resist the temptation of committing a murder or robbing a bank. Your life is not heroic enough to have such monumental desires, as you haven’t had the ample opportunities that are provided by having been brought up amongst hoodlums and gangsters. But one is always liable to break laws in little things. One had better avoid that in foreign countries.

“Secondly, women. This is not a delicate subject. I am not going to speak about the ‘delicate’ side of this matter. . . All that I wish to say is that when you meet women, you are bound to show off a little – we all tend to do so, more or less according to the amount of vanity and the amount of desire to appear good and great in addition to being good or great. But do not try to impress women or for that matter anyone with your money . . . It is like smoking. Smoke if you want to – it is a mildly sinful, mildly expensive and mildly soothing activity, but there is a difference between smoking and chain smoking; also between smoking and taking drugs like opium. The next two or three years are important in your life. On them depends how comfortable your life as an individual or as the husband of a wife or the father of children will be in years to come.

“Thirdly, as time goes on, your letters to us will become less and less frequent and also more and more brief. This is nothing to feel guilty about. It will be a sign, not of callousness, but of an expanding horizon and a change in perspective. But two things I will still like you to do. Do write regularly to Mummy – however brief the letters. You are more important to her than she is to you. Also with the years her need of you will grow greater, your need of her less. Therefore be kind and considerate. Her demands will be urgent to her, but not great or difficult to fulfill . . . As for me, write to me just when you feel, whether it is for money, for advice, for consolation or for mere fun.

“This letter has almost become like Polonius’ speech to Laertes. I am too close to it to see whether it is full of clichés and as pompous as Polonious’ string of wise sayings was. But I am not afraid of exposing my pompousness to you, if I have it in me. You and I have been friends for many years – you have been a jolly fine companion to me and I do not mind if I reveal my worst weaknesses to you. I am sure you will forgive them, and at the worst will smile at them with understanding and affection. I am studying the Mexican system of education, on behalf of our government. A large part of the Mexican population is illiterate and backward, but since the Mexican revolution of 1910, there is a great stirring of the soul in this baffling and picturesque country and their struggles to rise and redeem their cultural soul are fascinating and inspiring.

“Mummy asked me to send you some clothes from here. I’ll be sending you money instead, as clothes rationing is off in England – sending stuff from here is expensive and complicated. A little later you might give me a picture of how you stand financially, so that I send you a steady supply of filthy lucre according to your needs. I was going to say that I am not rich, but you know how rich or poor we are. What you may not know fully is that, nevertheless, at all times we should be not only ready but delighted to treat your needs as the most paramount in the family . . . Have a good time – I am using ‘good’ in the Greek sense. The Greeks had the word kalos , which meant three things at once – the great, the good and the beautiful – for in their great wisdom they realised that all three were inseparable.

“P.S. Keep your Urdu alive. Ask Mansoor to keep you supplied with an occasional book or magazine. This is important.”

Last week, a group of concerned students at Tufts University, Boston, both Muslim and others, some from Pakistan, organised a discussion on the Danish cartoon issue. A good deal of what was said during the two hours that the session lasted on that wet, rainy evening, is not likely to see the black light of print in this country. The debate on the cartoon issue has remained largely confined to the Muslim reaction, which has been seen as further evidence that these are wild and angry people who are not in sync with Western democratic values.

The American press, however, barring a couple of exceptions, has refrained from republishing the cartoons, which should actually be called caricatures. The New York Times when criticised by some who wanted to see what was rocking the Muslim world in cold print, said that it had provided a description in words of what the offending cartoons were and did not consider it necessary to actually print them. If any American newspaper or radio/TV outlet said that the cartoons were a deliberate affront and could not be defended under the right of free speech, I did not see or hear it.

The other day, M Yusuf Buch — rhymes with “much” or “such”, as he once told someone who was wondering how to pronounce his name — told me that were he to write a newspaper article denigrating Islam, it would find immediate acceptance. Were he to write something in its defence, he would have to look long and hard to find publication, which will probably be never.

Some of the points that the four people who addressed the Tufts meeting made and what emerged during a lively question-answer session should be of interest. For example:

A cartoon must have context. When Dick Cheney mistakes his 78-year old hunting partner for a duck on the wing, it provides context for the cartoonist. When George Bush slips from his bike that provides context. The dozen cartoons printed by the Danish newspaper had no context because they were commissioned. Newspapers do not commission cartoons. Why then did Jyllands-Posten commission and print them? There is only one answer. The cartoons were meant to be provocative, aimed at causing insult and injury.

Another point that has been lost sight of is that the European newspapers, which reproduced the caricatures could only have done so with the permission of Jyllands-Posten because of copyright restrictions. In other words, even after the Danish newspaper offered an apology, which was no apology at all, it continued to promote the republication of the offending material.

The principal argument used in defence of the caricatures’ publication, namely the right of free speech, is invalid. The same argument was used when Salman Rushdie published the Satanic Verses back in the 1980s. A right is not an obligation. It is a person’s right to yell on the road, “There goes a lame man who can only hobble not walk.” But it is not an obligation. The insult done to Islam and those who follow it was done in the name of free speech. If a billion people in the world unanimously view something as an insult and a blasphemy, then it is an insult and a blasphemy. To claim that those who protest are not enlightened or sophisticated enough to feel otherwise is both arrogant and racist.

One of the speakers at Tufts, a professor of journalism, said that he had researched Jyllands-Posten and found that in the past it had supported the Nazi philosophy. The conduct of the Danish prime minister was equally reprehensible. It is unheard of in any country that the head of its government should refuse to receive a group of accredited ambassadors, as he did, who only wanted to meet him so that the highly explosive situation then developing could be defused.

It was only after the Danish government and the offending newspaper offered no satisfaction and showed no remorse, that a group of Danish imams decided to go to certain Muslim capitals to ask for their intercession. Had the Muslim ambassadors been received by the prime minister, who represents a very right-wing, anti-immigrant party, the situation would have been quite different.

Another point that was forcefully made at the meeting was that those who express their inability to understand the Muslim reaction to the publication of the caricatures do not appreciate the fact that Muslims hold not only the Prophet of Islam (peace be upon him) in great reverence and love, but consider every other prophet worthy and deserving of the same respect. The names of Jesus and Moses (peace be upon them) are never taken in vain and are always accorded the same respect shown to other revered Islamic figures. It is, therefore, inconceivable for a Muslim to accept that a prophet, any prophet, can be insulted or ridiculed.

As for the violence on the streets witnessed in certain Muslim countries, including our own, it was a failure of the respective governments to fulfil their first duty, namely the maintenance of law and order. Had the chief minister of the Punjab resigned after the ransacking of Lahore, his capital city, he would have become ten foot tall overnight. He did not, which reminded me of what Prof Ashfaq Ali Khan once said of Ayub Khan, “Tareekh qadm qadm pe iski ungli pakarti hai, aur ye qadm qadm pe churra ke bhaag jaata hai”

(History tries to hold his hand at every step and at every step he wrests it free and runs away.)

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Those who only associate the city of Gujrat with Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi and other bandy-legged stars of Punjab’s ruling dynasty do great injustice to the city’s greatest son, Ustad Imam Din Gujrati – or to give him his full name, Naz-e-Sukhan, Baani-e-Adab. Mulkul Shoa’ara, Hazrat Ustad Imam-ud-Din, MA, BA, PhD, LLD (ASS). The three letters in parenthesis do not refer to that much maligned animal, but an honorific conferred on the Maestro by the citizens of Gujrat as far back as the 1930s. It stands for Afsar-e-Shai’r au Shai’ri.

The Ustad’s magnum opus Bang-e-Dohhal was written as a counterpoint to Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s Bang-e-Darra . This celebrated and unique collection, first printed in 1932, was reprinted in 1944 and has been in print since, but today only aficionados keep it next to their bed for inspirational reading, especially if they are feeling down or can’t go to sleep despite counting all the sheep in New Zealand. The collection, which must have given the Poet of the East a few anxious moments till he caught on, was published at the instigation of a group of literary devotees and practical jokers of Gujrat. Urdu literature and such of the Ustad’s admirers as I will forever remain in the debt of Abdul Rehman Khadim, Pleader, Gujrat City, who was behind much of Ustad’s arrival on the literary scene. He wrote the introduction to both the first and the second editions, which deserve to take their place next to Patras ke Muzameen and the best work of Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi.

Had it not been for Abdul Rehman Khadim, who, God rest his soul, is now regaling the angels of heaven with the Ustad’s verse, the world would have remained unaware of the genius that the city of Gujrat will always be proud of. If the doyen of the House of the Chaudhrys of Gujrat wants to carve for himself a place in history, he should at once order a monument erected – at least as high as the Minar-e-Pakistan – to the Pride of Gujrat, Ustad Maam Din (affectionately so called) Gujrati. After all, wasn’t it the Ustad who described himself in one of his immortal verses thus: Gujrat di Committee da toon pava Maam Deena. The Ustad served the City Municipal Committee as its most famous octroi watchdog for thirty years. The Committee will ever live in infamy because despite the Ustad’s poetic eminence and his trans-India fame, it never promoted him. One of the Maestro’s more memorable poems – none of Ustad’s poetry is scannable or follows any of the known metric or versification laws – is devoted to this painful theme. There are some who say that the Ustad did get promoted near the end of his service but refused to do any work. A poet is a poet is a poet after all.

As I said, the true begetter of the Ustad’s poetic work was Abdul Rehman Khadim, Pleader. He it was who assured the Ustad that he was a greater poet than Iqbal. The Ustad, of course, had always known that. He reminds me of a lesser luminary of the same literary tribe, Ustad Khaki of Jammu, and later Sialkot, to whom once a couple of students went asking for an interpretation of a certain couplet. Ustad Khaki declared after the couplet had been read to him that it was utterly without any meaning and a waste of his time. When one of the students said, “But Ustad, it is Ghalib,” the Ustad shot back: “Is Ghalib my maternal uncle that I should accept everything he has written?”

But let me quote from Abdul Rehman Khadim’s classic preface to the first edition of Bang-e-Dohhal , published in Gujrat in 1932. “The world has witnessed the birth of thousands of famous personalities. Hundreds of thousands of celebrated men in all their glory and magnificence have appeared in our midst. Hundreds of poets and writers have spent their lives trying to render what they read in the book of nature into words, but the fact is that no one, but no one, can be compared to the Great and Perfect Master, the most exalted Ustad Imam Din whose titles and honours include Pride of the Arts, the Founder and Inventor of Literature, the Exalted Chieftain of all Poets, the Sweet-voiced Bird of Literature, who also happens to be an MS, BA, LLD, PhD (all honorary).” All of the Ustad’s degrees had been conferred on him by his circle of admirers, but the Ustad took them most seriously. One of the degrees given to him by Khadim and friends was USA, which stood for Ustad-e-Shai’r-au-Shai’ri. ASS and USA were conferred at an elaborate ceremony in Gujrat where the audience could not stop laughing. The Ustad looked most grave, as was to be expected of him. One ceremony to honour the Ustad was held in Sialkot under the presidentship of Sheikh Roshan Din, Pleader. That was where he got the PhD.

Ustad Maam Din began to write poetry in 1902. According to Abdul Rehman Khadim, “As soon as the Ustad would make his entry in a mushaira , the entire audience would burst into uncontrollable laughter and start jumping up and down. The very ceiling of the auditorium would appear to reverberate because of ecstatic slogans and deafening applause. Once the Ustad was on the scene, there could be no question of any other poet reciting his verse. There would be only one demand from the audience, loud and clear: Ustad, Ustad. Even the British who kept a stiff upper lip when serving in India, were part of the Ustad’s club of admirers. When the degree of BA (Banni-e-Adab) was conferred on the Ustad, Charles King, the deputy commissioner of Gujrat, was in the chair, as was Mian Ehsan-ul-Haq, Sessions Judge at Jhelum (father of cricketer and cricket writer MU Haq).

Ustad Maam Din’s poetry defies description and just simply has to be read but consider some of the titles of his poems: Ustad Imam Din in military uniform, Crush Hitler’s skull, Town Hall Gujrat and sugar, Ustad Imam Din masquerading as Government, Ustad in Churchillian attire, Advice to all the world’s wrestlers, A ravishing beauty in the form of a betel-leaf vendor, From Sargodha to Gujrat. I close this tribute by quoting a verse the Ustad wrote after he went to Lahore in 1936 to call on Allama Iqbal:

Kisi shakhz ne Imam Azam aur Hanbal ka masla chaira huva tha: Laikin aap jawab bhi dey rehay thay aur huqqa peetay thay haal naal.

Absolutely priceless and absolutely untranslatable.

Art Buchwald, easily the world’s most famous and popular newspaper humourist, now in a Washington hospice, after having decided that he no longer wants to be on dialysis, has just one problem. He does not know what to do about the get-well cards that he has been receiving from friends and fans.

Buchwald has refused to spend five hours on a stretch, three hours a day, hooked to a dialysis machine. He says it is very boring. When he decided that he didn’t want any more of what doctors and hospitals do to people in his condition, they told him he would not be around for very long. He said he was fine with that.

However, he has once again surprised the meds because he is not only very much around, but he is receiving visitors, regaling other residents of the hospice with his stories and eating what he likes. He says people do not know that once you are in a hospice, waiting for the Grim Reaper to come and take you, wherever he is going to take you, you can eat what you like. You are no longer on a diet.

Buchwald is unlike that failed coup-maker before a firing squad, who was asked if he would like a last smoke. “No thank you, Capitano, I’m trying to quit.”

Buchwald, who was born in the borough of Queens in New York city in 1925 — large parts of which have since been taken over by Pakistanis and Indians — did not finish high school and left home to join the Marines when he was just 17. After the war, during which he fought in the Pacific theatre, he joined the University of Southern California but did not finish. That was how he knew Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Omar Kureishi, who were both there at the same time. Kureishi once told me that he wrote some pieces for the college newspaper, of which Buchwald was editor.

The best thing that happened to Buchwald and thousands of millions of those who became addicted to his very funny 600-word column that ran for nearly 60 years (he may have written one of his last ones last week for Washington Post) was that at the age of 23, in 1948, he went to Paris and lived there until the early 1960s. His first column appeared in the New York Herald Tribune and he never looked back.

One day he received a call from the old Aga Khan who told him that he had gathered from his column that he knew all the good restaurants of Paris, so would he take him to one for lunch. Buchwald chose a restaurant and they had a marvellous lunch. The Aga Khan, one of the richest men in the world, had not come alone. He had his people with him.

When the bill arrived, nobody moved, so Buchwald had to pay. When he returned to the office and asked for reimbursement, the editor almost fell out of his chair. The sum was astronomical because in those days $150 went a long way. However, some days later, the Aga Khan took Buchwald to lunch in a black limousine the size of a city block.

Buchwald’s fans are sad that a man who brought a smile to the lips of millions of readers in every part of the world four times a week is dying, but Buchwald says he is having the time of his life. In his Washington Post column last week, he wrote, “So far things are going my way. I am known in the hospice as The Man Who Wouldn’t Die. How long they allow me to stay here is another problem. I don’t know where I’d go now, or if people would still want to see me if I weren’t in a hospice. But in case you’re wondering, I’m having a swell time — the best time of my life.”

Some of Buchwald’s witticisms have gone into the language. When one of the presidential press secretaries, irked by a Buchwald column, said that he wrote “unadulterated nonsense” Buchwald corrected him by pointing out that he wrote “adulterated nonsense”.

The best tribute to this remarkable man of singular courage and infinite good humour is to recall some of his more memorable observations. Here are some: “A bad liver is to a Frenchman what a nervous breakdown is to an American. Everyone has had one and everyone wants to talk about it.” “Every time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new programme comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb was.” “Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television?” “I always wanted to get into politics, but I was never light enough to make the team.” “I worship the quicksand he walks in.” “Just when you think there’s nothing to write about, Nixon says, ‘I am not a crook’; Jimmy Carter says, ‘I have lusted after women in my heart’; President Reagan says, ‘I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope.’” “People are broad-minded. They’ll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn’t drive, there’s something wrong with him.” “Tax reform is taking the taxes off things that have been taxed in the past and putting taxes on things that haven’t been taxed before.” “Television has a real problem. They have no page two.” “The buffalo isn’t as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.” “Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the only time we’ve got.” “You can’t make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you’re doing is recording it.”

And nobody has recorded that satire better than Art Buchwald.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

One of the least known tributes to Saadat Hasan Manto is a memoir written by that matchless writer, Muhammad Khalid Akhtar, author of that most delightful of books, Chakiwara mein Visal , not to mention the boisterous Chacha Abdul Baqi stories. Sadly, the man who wrote about painting donkeys to palm them off as imported African zebras to a circus, died a couple of years ago, but not before he had seen the dawn of the 21st century that he was keen to see, I suppose, just to make sure that it did come in. His Manto memoir survives like the rest of his work that is now being republished in a collected edition by his friend and great admirer Ajmal Kamal of Aaj , Karachi.

The Manto memoir was published by the literary magazine Fanoon , Lahore, more than fifty years ago and as far as I know was never, for some reason, included in any of Muhammad Khalid Akhtar’s collections. It was the summer of 1951. MKA was in Lahore from his home town of Bahawalpur, staying with a publisher friend who was under contract to print some of the maestro’s books. Manto had also produced for the publisher a magnificent literary journal that folded after two issues, something which appears to be the fate of literary magazines, not only in Pakistan and India, but elsewhere in the world too.

One morning, MKA’s friend told him that Manto wanted to meet him after reading a story that the 25-year old MKA had written based on a visit to Hardawar, the city holy to Hindus. The story had been rejected by a number of editors, which had prompted MKA’s publisher friend to give it to Manto for a look. Manto had liked it but edited it brutally, in the process reducing it to one-half of its original length. This story was ultimately printed under the title Khoya huva uffaq – or the lost horizon – in Savera and, according to MKA, “I never wrote a better story.” It was Manto’s editing that had turned a loose narrative into a great story.

They arrived at Laxami Mansions, in one of whose ground-level flats lived Manto, while his favourite nephew Hamid Jalal – who was also married to Manto’s wife Safia’s younger sister, the lovely Zakia – lived in a first-storey flat. Hamid Jalal was the father of the brilliant and waspish historian Ayesha Jalal. MKA’s publisher friend knocked at the door, which was opened by a man with a large, globe-like head. From under a broad forehead protruded a pair of large eyes, that MKA recalls never having quite seen on any man’s face before. This was the great Saadat Hasan Manto. He was clad in spotless white, holding a fountain pen in one hand. He shook hands with the two visitors with great warmth, ushered them in, seated himself on a long sofa on which lay an open exercise book that contained the unfinished story he had been writing. In those days, Manto was writing a story a day for which he would be paid twenty or thirty rupees. On a table next to him, was a vase with fresh flowers and an ashtray. Manto was neatto the extent of being fastidious.

Writes MKA, “We apologised for having disturbed him when he was at work but he shrugged that off and assured us that we had done no such thing because the moment we were gone, he would take up the story exactly at the point where he had left it. He picked up the exercise book and we noticed that the last sentence was incomplete. He did not believe in there being such a thing as mood or inspiration. He told us that before he went to sleep, he tried hard to work out the plot of the story he was going to write the next day, but always without success. When he woke up the next day, he was still clueless about the kind of story he was going to write that day. But in order to survive, a story a day he had to produce. “But then an idea strikes me while I am shaving or taking a bath. A plot springs up in my mind along with its cast of characters, which is when I sit down to write it out. It is the characters who actually write the story. It is not I who create them, but they who create me. I am at the mercy of my characters,” Manto always told his friends. However, once in a sketch he wrote about himself or Naqoosh , he confessed that all that talk was “rubbish” or bakwas , his favourite word.

MKA met Manto several times after that first meeting. Once when he was suffering high fever, Manto walked into his friend’s home, pulled out a bottle of brandy from his pocket and made MKA take several long swigs from it, assuring him that the brandy would set him right. He considered brandy the sure-fire cure for all ailments, from the common cold to gonorrhea. One day, he took MKA on a round of Lahore’s film studios where everybody knew him. Another day, he took MKA to meet two friends of his who were Khoja businessmen from Chiniot and staying at Faletti’s where they mixed their own marijuana with a silver grinder, something that greatly intrigued Manto. He wanted to write a story about them but did not.

MKA recalls a meeting with Manto in the winter of 1951. They met at a publisher’s office in Lohari Gate, where Manto arrived by tonga with Ahmed Rahi in tow. He wanted to take MKA and his two friends from Bahawalpur home but thought better of it because “Africa has landed there.” By Africa he meant some relatives who had arrived from Nairobi. Safia’s family was mostly settled in East Africa. Manto, MKA and party finally ended up in Lahore Hotel where one of MKA’s friends produced a bottle of Black and White which Manto soon saw through. It was a long drunken afternoon. At one point Manto told MKA, “I have read your 200-page novel which is rubbish, utter rubbish. What you have taken all those pages to write could have been said in just six pages. Write but do not be prolix.” Better advice for a writer there cannot be. Another time he said to MKA, “Get me out of here, take me to the mountains.” Then pointing to the bottle he said, “I want to be away from this demon.”

When Manto’s great story Mozail was published, MKA wrote him a letter saying he was the greatest man alive in Asia. Manto’s answer was pure Manto. He cautioned his young admirer not to pump so much air in his balloon that he should rise to the sky and disappear in its immensity. He once told MKA that his own greatest story was Khol-do , the chilling tale from 1947 about a girl abducted from East Punjab, who is finally found by her father in a hospital where she lies in a traumatised state, raped not only by her abductors but the rescuers as well. In Manto’s world, inhumanity is not confined to a particular religion. Manto once said that a writer should not read because that puts an end to his originality. What he should read is the book of life. And, fifty years after Saadat Hasan Manto’s death, there is no question that few have read that book better than him.

When a journalist wanted to know from Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain last weekend in what precise way the Bush visit to Pakistan would change things, the only prime minister in Pakistan’s history to have stepped down willingly (which is where Shortcut came in) replied in his delightful Gujrati Punjabi and his characteristic monotone, not always decipherable even when recorded, “O jeenvay gay nai, aiwain-e murr aaon gai. Koi faraq nahin pai ga.” Or, he will return as he has gone and nothing will be any different.

These are words of wisdom. What the Chaudhry stated in one line puts egg on the faces of all those Aristotles of Pakistan who have been boring us for weeks on radio, television and in print about the political, military and economic implications of the Bush visit.

We met the president of the King’s party at Dr Mubashir Chaudhry’s opulent residence in the wooded recesses of Potomac, Maryland, where he stayed the last time when he came for what was said to be a hairline facture in his foot — commonly found in Pakistani brains — and where he is camped this time, though for a couple of days only. Someone pointed out that more than once what the Chaudhry had said had come to pass, contrary to what Gen Pervez Musharraf had stated on the same subject earlier, expulsion of foreign religious students being one example.

Did it mean that his word took precedence over Musharraf’s? Answer: “It was Musharraf who found what I had said reasonable.” I have not come across a subtler compliment to the General.

And what about those from Pakistan who come to Washington and make tall claims on return? Answer: “They park themselves at the front door of a senator or congressman hoping to be received. Fazool gallaan karday nain (they talk stuff and nonsense).” One quip from Nayyar Zaidi, the Jang correspondent, deserves to be shared. When the Chaudhry was told of the prediction that Islamabad and Rawalpindi will resemble cities hit by a neutron bomb during the Bush visit, with no man, animal or bird in sight, Zaidi said, “Leave birds out; the avian flu has already taken care of them.”

And what did the PML supremo think of cousin Pervaiz Elahi declaring that the General will remain in uniform even if the assemblies have to be broken. “O aihoo jaiyee gul keh hi nahin sakda (no way he can say something like that).” Had Nawaz Sharif’s arrival in London changed Pakistan’s politics? “Baar baith ke byan bazzi karan dayo. Aapi te mulk chhud kai gai nain (Let them keep firing off statements from abroad; after all they left the country of their own accord.) Asked about PML(N), he replied, “Sari Noon te saday wich aa gaiyee vay; gul karan di ki loar vay (All the Noon has slid into our party, so what’s the point of even talking about it.)

The only time Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain got his foot caught in the undergrowth of a to-and-fro exchange was when on the one hand he kept defending the protest marches staged with the government party in the lead and decrying the mayhem let loose by those who had the state’s blessings to hit the roads. These marches and demos must not be used to try to dethrone Musharraf, he finally said. He has been in politics far too long not to know that when you bring mobs on the streets, you can no longer determine what form or direction the agitation will take.

Asked why there was no police to be seen anywhere in Lahore that day, he replied that the sight of police is enough to inflame people (so much for the confidence the people have in their “defenders”), hence its non-deployment. He said the Tahuffuz-e-Namoos-e-Risalat Mahaz had given a solemn undertaking that there would be no violence. And it kept its word, he added.

Then who were those who made the heart of the city of Lahore look like Stalingrad in the Second War? “Jeray pharray gai nain (those now in the jug),” he replied.

Saad Rafiq, he said, was the man responsible for starting the fire in the Punjab Assembly and he and others had to take responsibility for all the bad things that happened in the city that day. He made it clear that Saad Rafiq, now in the clinker, wasn’t in the procession organised by the 22-member conglomerate, the Tahuffuz-e-Namoos-e-Risalat Mahaz. But who were those who went on the rampage? “Those who have no link with Islam”, he replied mysteriously. “That’s their typical way”, he added. The jury, therefore, should remain out on this one.

What Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain said in answer to a question about Kashmir is significant. He said the UN resolutions should be viewed in relation to things as they are. There is no point in rubbing them in (raghra laganay ka koi faida nahin). We should not think of Kashmir but Kashmiris. If they decide that they will be happy in Bharat, then so be it. The oppression they have suffered must be brought to an end.

What is important is what suits the Kashmiris best. It shouldn’t be left to others to say, “Do this and do that.” Saying he had met Yassin Malik, he added thoughtfully, “Wo theek kehtay hain.” When someone quipped that this sounded like “Kashmir Hindustan ka, Kashmiri Pakistan kai” Dr Mubashar Chaudhry, the host, suggested it was time to eat.

So once again, the Lahori philosophy of life won the day: Khao piyo te jaan banao. (Eat, drink and build the body.)

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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