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After news having travelled from yet another “well informed” of my countrymen as to what transpired at a secret, off the record meeting held in the middle of the night under tight security in Islamabad, I have decided to do a tell-all, keeping nothing back. Truth like murder must out.

I have never ceased wondering what it is that makes us Pakistanis tittle-tattle so much when we could be doing something far more useful, such as reading a book or listening to the BBC World Service radio. Why is it that the simple explanation is never acceptable? Why do we find embellished accounts of even minor and utterly inconsequential events so fascinating? Why are we always willing to believe the sinister and the secret, rather than the simple and the verifiable? Why do we gossip so much? Why not instead go to the F-9 Park in Islamabad and fly a kite? That would at least have the advantage of violating one or more of CDA’s rules, which is always a good thing.

Let me state what has got my goat. I have it now from nearly half a dozen sources, which claim hundred percent authenticity for what they say they have learnt from their unimpeachable contacts, that I held a secret meeting with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in Islamabad one July night and since then I have been trying to work out how to keep the Inland Revenue Service off my tail. That is at least what one source has learnt. Others have learnt other things, all of which, if true, would make me someone to be envied for his unexpected good fortune.

But let me first state what I am supposed to have managed to acquire under my belt. If no two accounts agree, I may kindly not be held responsible for the divergence. 1. I have been given the responsibility to base myself in Chicago (why Chicago I wonder?) with large amounts of non-contraband dollars at my disposal to help Pakistan get a “soft image”. 2. I have been promised a top diplomatic (or is it administrative?) position as long as I promise not to write another word in Daily Times, The Friday Times or elsewhere. 3. I have accepted an offer to move to Islamabad and join the prime minister’s stable of image-makers. 4. I am going to be reinstated as the Associated Press of Pakistan correspondent (a post from which I was fired in 2002 for reasons that remain secret) with all dues reimbursed. 5. If I keep my nose clean and my copybook free of ink spots, I may be given a shot at one of those international outfits where a black limousine takes you to work and your secretary is a long-legged, doe-eyed, golden haired blonde called Jennifer.

Sadly, none of this is true. But who is going to believe me!

I am sorry for the crash-landing that the reader (if anyone has read so far) will experience, but here is what actually happened. I promise that this is the whole truth and nothing but the truth about my secret meeting with the prime minister. It is indeed correct that I was in Islamabad for a few days, the last thing on my mind being meeting anyone who causes traffic to stop and people to swear. So there I am meeting old friends and trying to avoid neighbourhoods where I may have unpaid bills, when my good friend Afzal Khan calls (I have borrowed my niece’s mobile because a mobile-less man in Pakistan is of no consequence at all) and says where I might be later that evening. So I tell him I would be breaking bread with some friends and drinking the cup that cheers. “Wait for my call”, he says mysteriously and rings off after adding, “we might have to see someone”. Around 10:30 pm my phone rings. It is Afzal who tells me to come out, where I find him waiting in his car. “What is going on?” I ask. He is not alone. My friend Ziauddin is with him. “We are meeting the prime minister, but first we go to Wasim Haqqi’s.” Mr Haqqi turns out to be a highly affable host, who is obviously the pointsman. I ask Afzal and Ziauddin if they are going along. They are. That sets my mind at rest as I will have witnesses.

At some signal that Mr Haqqi receives from somewhere, we all get into his car and are soon at “the House” where we are obviously expected because we cruise right in. Mr Haqqi is a familiar sight to the security detail. It is well past 11. Everything, including the trees, is dramatically lit. The atmosphere is Arabian Nights. It is a huge place, which I have only been to once during daytime over a decade ago. We get down from the car, with lines of attendants in colourful sashes and headdresses and jackets bowing ever so slightly to acknowledge our presence. We are shown into a huge reception room, which has a large, very nice portrait of the young Muhammad Ali Jinnah (in whose name everything un-Jinnah-like is being done, including the recent “Islamisation” of Hudood laws). The prime minister, Mr Haqqi says, is with the Qatari ambassador or some such. Ten minutes later we move to a small study with shelves full of clearly unread books. There are any number of liveried attendants bowing and scrapping in the corridors.

In a few minutes, a dapper looking Shaukat Aziz enters, wearing blue jeans, but not the garden-variety kind. We shake hands and sit down. Tea arrives. I am served first which suggests that I am the evening’s chosen guest. We chat of this and that, nothing consequential. He knows a lot about music directors and likes Khurshid Anwar. He misidentifies a composition which I assure him is Rashid Attre’s not Khurshid Anwar’s. I suggest that he should have the highest state honour conferred on Saadat Hasan Manto and a major road named after him. He does not say yes, but he does not say no. I ask him what his plans for 2007 are. He replies that it depends on what the party decides (by that I take it he means the Army League). Ziauddin tells him that while he appreciates the Nishan-e-Imtiaz he is being given, being a journalist he cannot accept it. We need more Ziauddins in the profession, I tell myself. It is midnight when an attendant, followed by an ADC, appears and hands me a nicely wrapped packet. It looks like a box. I ask the prime minister if in keeping with the rules of “Lifafa Journalism” it contains any money. He says, “You have to put in your own money”. Obviously, he is what the Americans call “an Indian giver”. After I have been handed over the gift (a silver box with the GoP crest), we get up, shake hands and part. Even a prime minister needs to sleep.

If I knew what colourful accounts of this meeting there were going to be circulated, I would have asked Shaukat Aziz for a plot of land on which to build a farm house. On second thought, maybe it is good for prime ministers and presidents to sometimes meet people who do not want anything.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The year was 1946 when the last cricket team from undivided India landed in England. It included the 21 year old dashing all rounder from Lahore, Abdul Hafeez (he added Kardar to his name some years later) who was to become one of the three players to have the distinction of playing both for India and Pakistan, the other two being Gul Muhammad, who was on the 1946 England tour, and the great leg break and googly wizard Amir Elahi, who was well past his prime by then, which was why he played for Pakistan on no more than a couple of occasions.

Michael Melford, writing in 1982 about the historic 1946 tour of England recalled, “In the wet English summer of 1946, India, despite the runs which Merchant, Hazare, Pataudi, Modi, Mankad, Amarnath and Mushtaq Ali made on good pitches – Merchant scored 2,385 runs in first class matches – had some bad days. Of the three Tests, they lost the first by 10 wickets, earned a draw in the second with their last pair at the wicket, and had the third ruined by rain. One of the pleasant memories which that side, led by the Nawab of Patudi senior, will have taken home is of the last-wicket stand of 249 between Sarwate and Banerjee against Surrey at The Oval, the only occasion on which both numbers ten and eleven made hundreds.”

Sarwate made his first appearance for Hindus in the Bombay Pentangular in 1936 and was one of the best leg break bowlers of his time, while Banerjee was a fast bowler who toured England in 1936 as understudy to the legendary S.M. Nisar, who was as fast if not faster than Harold Larwood, but never acknowledged as such, by the British cricket writers of the day.

I have with me – courtesy my cricket-mad friend Donny Joshua in Toronto – a copy of the official brochure of that last tour, which, an inscription shows, originally belonged to one D. Cox of 55 Westminster Road, Handsworth, Birmingham. The foreword by the High Commissioner of India, Sir Samuel Runganadhan says, “1946 will be the first post-war cricket season, and I am confident that the Indian team will make it most attractive and interesting. Several of its members are old friends of English cricket lovers and in particular its Captain, the Nawab of Patudi, has in the past delighted English crowds with his classic batting.” The manager of the team was P. Gupta, MBE, and to my delight, a journalist, which shows that journalists were not always held in low esteem.

The team was made up of Vijay Merchant (Vice Captain), S.W. Sohni, Abdul Hafeez, R.B. Nimbalker, C.S. Nayudu, Vinoo Mankad, Lala Amarnath, Rusi Modi, D.D. Hindlekar, S.G. Shinde, Vijay Hazare, Mushtaq Ali, C.T. Sarwate, S.N. Banerjee and Gul Mohamed. Patudi had played for England against Australia in three Tests, scoring a century in his first one.

The brochure introduced Abdul Hafeez – who will always remain Skipper Kardar to so many of us – in these words, “Age 21. Graduated from the Punjab University in 1945. This youngster started on his cricket career at the early age of 14 at Lahore, and he has blossomed into an extremely good all-round player and is already referred to as the coming “(C.K.) Nayudu of India.” His quick sight of the ball, combined with almost perfect footwork, ranks him in the first class of batsmen, possessing the right temperament under all circumstances. He played in all three Test matches against the Australian Services XI (which included Keith Miller and Lindsay Hasset), scoring two centuries (one was a double hundred). He is a very skilful bowler, his fielding and return a pleasure to watch, and like most young players, is keen and enthusiastic in all his work.”

Of the 22-year old Gul Mohamed, the brochure said, “He is a first class batsman, both steady and brilliant; faultless footwork and correct stroke play are his chief assets; he has played for the Muslims in the Bombay Pentangular and Ranji Trophy. He is full of confidence and courage and with a sound defence whenever occasion demands. There is no finer fielder in the country, with speed, smartness and an accurate return that is unsurpassed anywhere. This quiet, unassuming, rather retiring disposition is typical of his race (remember it is 1946 not 2006) but his keenness and enthusiasm in his work are a tonic for the most severe critic and is certain to please.”

And this is what was said of the debonaire Mushtaq Ali, then 34, “One of the most popular Indian batsmen of today, he received his tuition under that great Indian batsman and sportsman, Major C.K. Nayudu, who fashioned him into one of the most faultless cricketers in India. He faultless 112 runs in the Manchester Test of 1936, sharing a glorious partnership with Merchant of 203 for the first wicket, is still well remembered and discussed. His perfect harmony of wrist, foot and timing is a joy to watch; he fully exploits his height and reach, and when anything loose comes along, promptly hits hard. On the leg side, his glances and glides are perfect. He bats right hand and bowls very effective spinners with the left.”

And this was how 34-year old Lala Amarnath, a true son of Lahore, was introduced, “A member of the 1936 team to tour England, he is one of the finest all rounders in cricket. He leaped into fame against Jardine’s team in 1934, when he had the distinction of being the first Indian to score a century in an official Test match against England. Since then he has 72 centuries to his credit, two recently against the Australian Services XI. He is a first class spin bowler, maintaining a perfect length for long spells; a good keeper and keen field. The whole of his work is characterised by coolness and method which stamp him among the world’s best all-rounders.”

The England team that the Indians faced was led by Walter Hammond and included Len Hutton,, Cyril Washbrook , Dennis Compton, J.D. Robertson, S.C. Griffith, Laurie Fishlock. H. Halliday, Trevor Baily, R.H. Valentine, Robert Pollard, Freddie Brown and D.V.P. Wright.

I want to close this with a tribute to Mushtaq Ali, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s ideal cricketer, who died recently, and about whom the Australian cricket journalist Ray Robinson wrote in 1955, “The only thing that is still about him is the momentary pause to take guard from the umpire. Why he goes through this formality is one of the mysteries of the Orient because after making his mark, he takes no notice of it.” He added that that Dennis Compton, compared to Mushtaq Ali “in full flow” made Compton look “comparatively a stay-at-home.” Mushtaq Ali epitomised Iqbal’s couplet: “And behold yonder the mountain stream leaping/rushing forth in spite of many a curb and twist.” ( Aati hai naddi faraz-e-koh se gati huwi: Sang-e-rah se gah bachti, gah takrati huwi ) Robinson also called Mushtaq Ali “the least law-abiding” batsman, “always delighted to break the rules of batting.” Mushtaq Ali could also be moody. After hitting a six over the minaret of the mosque overlooking the ground, wrote Robinson, he would pat back a few half-vollies. A half-volley is a batsman’s delight since one step out and he can hit it out of the ground. But that was Mushtaq Ali, who loved the game for its own sake and who played for the crowds – a far cry from many of the cricketers of today whose principal interest is money.

My good friend Rehmatullah Rad once said that it was quite true that all Muslims were going to end up in heaven, a statement that caused some surprise, considering that little of what Muslims do should qualify them for the eternal abode of the pure in heart and deed. When asked to elaborate, Rad said that since the parts of the Earth inhabited by Muslims were almost without exception as hot as hell, if not hotter, on Judgment Day the Almighty being a fair judge, would admit them into paradise viewing their time on Earth as punishment enough.

For the last couple of weeks the big story here in America has been heat or what is called global warming. Al Gore has found resurrection in a documentary film — An Inconvenient Truth — he has just had released in cinemas across the country and, I take it, in Europe. The Republicans, who don’t care how hot the Earth gets or whether polar bears have ice fields to roam on or not, as long as no one interferes with their money-minting machine, are worried. They are not worried about the Earth’s warming but they are worried about Al Gore, given all the exposure he has had in recent days on television and in newspapers, including interviews on big-time networks. Prize-fighters and politicians don’t come back, once they are on the ropes, but Gore’s sympathetic portrayal in the media is making the fat cats of the Republican Party uneasy. While Gore has said that he is doing it because he believes in it and he is worried about global warming and the very survival of life as we know it, politicians are suspicious people and they are not so sure if old Al is up to this or something else.

One report says the Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, probably even longer. The National Academy of Sciences, having come to this conclusion in a review of scientific work requested by Congress, has reported that the “recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia”. A panel of top dog climate watchers has assured Congress that the Earth is running a fever and that “human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming”. An agency report quoted their 155-page report as stating that average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century.

The 400-year report was followed by another which said that the Earth had not been as hot as it is today in the last 2,000 years. The Bush boys argue that the situation does not call for new pollution controls, which they believe will mean five million Americans losing their jobs. No political party which is seen as having caused unemployment can hope to remain in power in Congress and get into the White House two years from now. Since climate data only goes back 150 years, the panel of scientists that reported to Congress studied “proxy” evidence from tree rings, corals, glaciers and ice cores, cave deposits, ocean and lake sediments, boreholes and other sources.

Not everyone is convinced, one such expert being Prof Robert Carter of Australia who has said, “Gore’s circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention.” One of the principal arguments advanced by those who believe in global warming is that CO2 levels have risen. But this is countered by such scientists as Prof Tim Patterson of Canada who argues that there is no significant correlation between CO2 levels and the Earth’s temperature. About 450 million years ago, CO2 levels were ten times higher than they are today and it was the coldest phase the Earth has known in the last half a billion years. He says the explanation may lie in the correlation between the Earth’s temperature and changes in the brightness of the Sun.

One European scientist, who does not buy the global warming scenario, says it is not correct that the Antarctica ice caps are melting because the Antarctica has survived warm and cold events over millions of years. A meltdown is simply not a realistic prospect in the foreseeable future. Dr Dick Morgan of the University of Exeter has said, “There has been some decrease in ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic over the past 30 years but no meltdown.”

So who is right? Maybe it is safer to side with those who passionately believe that unless humankind as a whole does something to halt the present trends, life on Earth as we know it will change, with water levels rising, arid zones advancing and cropland shrinking. Anyone looking for doomsday scenarios will be amply rewarded were he to read some of the descriptions of the future that supposedly awaits us. The other day, the celebrated British physicist Stephen Hawking said that ultimately man will have to set up colonies on other planets. Had someone other than Hawking said it, one could have dismissed it as fanciful science but a man who can write a book called A Brief History of Time has to be taken seriously.

So friends, while there is time, choose your planet.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

One of the last pieces of writing, if not the very last, sent out by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from his death cell was a letter to Anwar-ul-Haq, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The letter was delivered to the Chief Justice but it is not clear whether he read it or not. In any case, even if he read it, it was not going to have any effect on him since the decision to execute the elected Prime Minister of Pakistan had already been taken.

Bhutto wrote the letter on scraps of paper during the period when the seven justices were considering his Review Petition, the last legal remedy available to his lawyers to save his life. The letter clearly shows that Bhutto had no illusions about his life being spared because he told the Chief Justice that he knew that what was under preparation was his “judicial assassination.” The bits of paper on which the deposed Prime Minister had written the letter were collected by his lawyers, who got them typed. The document ran into fifteen pages, which they brought it back to Bhutto, who made corrections, and when the letter was finally done, he signed it.

Bhutto told Anwar-ul-Haq that he had been made Chief Justice in 1977 because he had made a “commitment” to the military rulers, then added wryly, “It must be said to your credit that you fulfilled it, but in doing so, you brought no credit to Pakistan.” The commitment of course was the Prime Minister’s judicial murder. Bhutto wrote, “You will soon discover that it was not worth it. Your clandestine and unconstitutional appointment has been challenged in a court of law. This is only one challenge. You will be challenged and chastised by your conscience and by the indomitable spirit of our times without respite until poetic justice prevails.” Bhutto was being generous. Anwar-ul-Haq had no conscience that could have chastised him and what Bhutto called “the indomitable spirit of our times” was whipped into silence and submission by the brutal martial law regime of Zia-ul-Haq during which as many as 80,000 Pakistanis were lashed and hundreds executed, some of them publicly in Lahore. There were also medieval style public lashings, with the most shameful display of Zia-ul-Haq’s version of “Islam” taking place in Rawalpindi before thousands of people. It was like the return of Roman times when slaves and Christians were thrown to the lions in the Coliseum.

Bhutto reminded Anwar-ul-Haq that he (the Chief Justice) had told the then Pakistan Air Force chief, Air Marshal Zafar Chaudhry, in Peshawar in 1972 that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his government must be overthrown. “You cannot deny it because there is official correspondence on the subject, including your own apology of an explanation.” He recalled Tufail Ali Abdul Rehman, Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court, warning him in 1973 of Anwar-ul-Haq’s “pathological hatred” of the Prime Minister. He also reminded the Chief Justice how he had “come running from Lahore to Rawalpindi and begged” him to “immediately get rid of Mr Justice Afzal Cheema” as his “intrigues” were making it impossible for him to function as the Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court.

Bhutto wrote, “Oh! Anwar-ul-Haq, what have you done by becoming a matron of Martial Law! You have committed more than a miscarriage of justice! Oh! Anwar-ul-Haq, what have you done to this fair land? You have paid a very heavy price for a very small gain.” Referring to his own appearance in the Supreme Court, when he made an emotional and moving statement in his defence, ending it with a line from a Sindhi mystic poem, Bhutto showed regret at his decision to appear. He wrote, “By far the most beguiling feature of your intrigue was to permit me to appear in person in the Supreme Court. It was your masterstroke. You wanted to whitewash the sins of omission and commission, including the latest impact of the plot caused by the ouster of Mr Justice Waheeduddin. You thus sought to show our people and to the world that by way of atonement, you would permit me to appear in person.”

When Bhutto appeared he said he was placing himself before the court because he had confidence in it. In his letter to Anwar-ul-Haq, he explained why he had said that. “As for the expression of my confidence in the court … I consider that the powerful dissenting judgments more than vindicate my expression of confidence. It was not an expression of confidence in an individual or in a parochial coterie collaborating actively with the junta for the hegemony of Pakistan.” Bhutto said he had no illusions about Anwar-ul-Haq, having registered a caveat with his original appeal that the Chief Justice should refrain from taking part in the hearings. In 1978, Anwar-ul-Haq commented on the Bhutto case during a visit to Indonesia, when Bhutto once again asked him to recuse himself. On three occasions, Anwar-ul-Haq assumed the acting presidency of Pakistan and Bhutto took exception to it, pointing out “the obvious conflict of interest.” Bhutto said the Chief Justice could not justify “my judicial assassination” on the tenuous plea that he had expressed confidence in the Supreme Court. “You wrote the judgment in the name of the majority. It is your handiwork,” Bhutto declared.

Bhutto pointed out that since three judges hailing from three different provinces had written dissenting judgments, “this means the majority of the Federation of Pakistan upheld my innocence on the basis of a three-to-one judgment, according to the supreme foundations of a Federation. If the other two justices, who were also not from your parent court, or one of them, had not departed prematurely from the Supreme Court, I would not be sitting here in the shadow of death.” He said all the constituents of the Federation, barring the Punjab, wanted him to live as a “free and honourable man in the service of the people of Pakistan.”

He scornfully dismissed the “White Papers” issued by the Zia regime while he was fighting for his life. He called them “garbage” amounting to the most blatant “contempt of court”. He found it ironic that while his rejoinder to the court’s judgment had been suppressed, the worldwide dissemination of the regime’s “poisonous propaganda” had been allowed by the Chief Justice on the unconvincing plea that it would not influence him. He called the military-controlled jail where he had been kept under humiliating conditions a ‘concentration camp’. He said his cell was bugged, which was a serious breach of privacy. He said Anwar-ul-Haq had only one cause: “to see me hang in the gallows”. Bhutto said he stood “exonerated and acquitted not only by the judgments of the Federation, but on the bar of world opinion”. He spoke movingly of “my beloved Indus” and how it would run with blood.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed on flimsy, hearsay evidence. Justice Anwar-ul-Haq is dead and lies unremembered in dishonour. Maulvi Mushtaq Hussain’s body was abandoned on the road by the pallbearers when out of nowhere wild bees attacked the funeral. It was a terrifying and chilling event that people said showed the anger of the heavenly powers that be. Zia-ul-Haq, who did not allow Benazir and Nusrat to see the dearest man in their lives being lowered into the grave, died in such a horrible crash that nothing was left of him.

These are signs for those who understand, writing on the wall for those who occupy, in Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s words, the raj sanghasan today. It is another matter that the only ones who do not read the writing on the wall are those for whom it is intended.

The old chancery at 2315 Massachusetts Avenue in Washington’s Embassy Row looks haunted. It was abandoned in favour of a modern building with a fake Shish Mahal exterior, which sits next to several embassies that agreed to move here when the city and the State Department chose a new diplomatic site. This new diplomatic quarter is located at the northern extremity of Connecticut Avenue, which every good Pakistani pronounces as Connect-ti-cut and not Conneti-cut, even after having lived here long enough to have known that the ‘c’ in the middle is silent. The fact is that people hear what they want to hear and even see what they want to see.

Not every embassy which agreed to move to the new location was situated in Embassy Row, the choicest address in Washington for any diplomatic mission to be at. India, which has two buildings on Massachusetts Avenue, one facing a statue of Mahatma Gandhi walking resolutely forward with a stick in his right hand, the other the base of its consular and visa section, did not move. Pakistan did. It took several years for the new chancery to be built at enormous cost with quite a few overruns. It is a building without a soul. Its maintenance costs are prohibitively high and given our national distaste for hygiene and cleanliness, one can only wonder how long its inmates will keep it clean.

Perhaps the new ambassador, having spent his life in the army, which at least in his time was all spit and polish, will put anyone who litters it in the quarter-guard.

The old chancery was purchased by the first ambassador, sent by the Quaid-i-Azam personally to Washington, MAH Isphahani. The Quaid approved the purchase. Some members of the Isphahani family have spread the myth that the cost of the purchase was borne by Mr Isphahani personally. That is not true, but what could be true is that he may have paid the price in part or full and got himself reimbursed later. A couple of attempts I made in the past to look at the old records at the embassy did not get me anywhere.

On one of his first visits to Washington, probably the first, Gen Pervez Musharraf decided that with the shift to the new chancery, the old chancery would be turned into Jinnah House, a centre for the projection of Pakistan. He announced this himself while still in Washington. And how was the money needed for such a project to be raised? Initially, there were starry-eyed expectations that the affluent community of Pakistani expatriates will step forward to contribute, but that did not seem to happen. Was it that the embassy did not mount the effort with the conviction or intensity that was needed or was it that the soundings it took did not hold out much hope? I do not have the answer.

I do know, however, that at least one Pakistani ambassador, Riaz H Khokhar, in the less than two years he was here — his normal three-year tenure having been cut short thanks to an intrigue hatched in the Prime Minister’s Secretariat itself — made an earnest effort to investigate if it would be possible to raise the money from the community. I heard him say that he had gone to every major US city where there was a concentration of Pakistanis to ascertain if the community would generate the required funds. He heard a lot of speeches and a great deal of patriotic rhetoric delivered in the hyperbolic and emotional style employed on such occasions, but at the end of it all, Khokhar concluded that what the community was likely to come up with would be no more than cumin in a camel’s mouth, to translate a rather delightful Urdu expression.

It is instructive to look at what India has done. Although the Indian-American community is four to five times the size of the Pakistani-American community and ten times richer, the Government of India decided quite wisely, based presumably on its embassy’s recommendation, that the construction of an India house — whatever in the end it was to be called — should be entirely funded by the Government of India. The last two Pakistani ambassadors have done little if anything about the project. Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, who stayed here for two years, was too busy travelling around to have found any time for a project of this kind. His deputy, Muhammad Sadiq, spent all his time projecting himself and his “achievements”. Gen Jehangir Karamat spent 18 months here but never really settled down. He did not even move into the official residence, which nearly two years later, continues to be under repairs.

In between, under whose orders, I am not sure, a committee was formed to come up with a recommendation as to what should be done with the old chancery on 2315 Massachusetts Avenue, surprisingly after the President of Pakistan had publicly announced that the old chancery would become the site of Jinnah House or centre or institute. I am not aware of Gen Musharraf having reversed his decision, so why did it became necessary to revisit the issue? The committee or whatever it was called — no public announcement was ever made — came up with three things that could be done to the chancery building, one being its outright sale. I understand that the course it favoured was the repair and refurbishment of the building and its rental to another embassy. But what happened to Jinnah House and what happened to Gen Musharraf’s decision? Perhaps the Foreign Office would stop running the world for a few minutes to come up with an answer. Miss Tasnim Aslam, we are waiting.

According to one estimate, it will cost $3 million to repair and refurnish the old chancery. That is a tiny percentage of the money our VVIPs spend in a year navigating the world. It is time some of that waste was invested in something lasting and meaningful. And those who have all but reversed Gen Musharraf’s decision should be locked up in the quarter-guard and the key thrown away.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Dorothy Parker wrote more memorable lines than any of her contemporaries and nearly forty years after her death, she continues to delight her large circle of admirers. She was born in 1893 and died of too much living and all that goes with it, including drink, in 1967. Four things, she wrote, she would have been better off without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt. As for curiosity, she said, the cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

And what did she think of spring, about which more poetry has been written than any season under the sun? “Every year, back comes spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.”

Robert Sherwood, her contemporary, said of cowboy hero Tom Mix, “They say he rides as if he’s part of the horse, but they don’t say which part.”

Dorothy Parker’s one-liner is funnier. “That woman,” she said, “speaks eighteen languages and can’t say ‘no’ in any of them.”

Another of Parker’s contemporaries, George S. Kaufman, when asked by a press agent how he could get the name of his leading lady into his newspaper replied, “Shoot her.”

During the 1920s, Dorothy Parker and a dozen or so of her friends met regularly, in fact every day – and this went on for a decade – at New York’s Algonquin Hotel on 44th Street (the hotel still exists) and came to be known as the Algonquin Round Table. They included men like humourist Robert Benchley, Harold Ross, the founder and editor of The New Yorker, columnists Franklin Pierce Adams and Heywood Broun, and Broun’s wife Ruth Hale; critic Alexander Woollcott; comedian Harpo Marx; and playwrights George S. Kaufman, Marc Connelly, novelist Edna Ferber, and, of course, Robert Sherwood. Occasional visitors would be admitted: persons such as the actress Tallulah Bankhead and the British playwright Noel Coward. Parker was engaged as book reviewer and Benchley as drama critic by Ross for the New Yorker. She was later associated with Vanity Fair for long years. The Round Table broke up when the Depression hit America and members moved away, some of them to Hollywood, including Parker.

I should think apart from Dorothy Parker, the only other figure in literature to whom more “quotable quotes” are attributed is Oscar Wilde. But Parker was funnier and more acerbic than Wilde. Her light verse continues to delight. But first some Parker quotes:

‘Brevity is the soul of lingerie.’ ‘He and I had an office so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.’ ‘Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses’ (this was before contact lenses). ‘It’s not the tragedies that kill us, it’s the messes.’ ‘Summer makes me drowsy. Autumn makes me sing. Winter’s pretty lousy, but I hate Spring.’ ‘Men don’t like nobility in woman. Not any men. I suppose it is because the men like to have the copyrights on nobility – if there is going to be anything like that in a relationship.’ ‘I know that there are things that never have been funny, and never will be. And I know that ridicule may be a shield, but it is not a weapon.’ ‘I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.’

‘Sorrow is tranquility remembered in emotion.’ ‘His voice was intimate as the rustle of sheets.’

‘The only ‘ism’ Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.’ ‘Take care of luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.’ ‘You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.’ ‘The two most beautiful words in the English language are “cheque enclosed.” ‘I don’t care what is written about me as long as it isn’t true.’ ‘This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.’ ‘Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.’ ‘If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.’ ‘Ducking for apples – change one letter and it’s the story of my life.’ ‘Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.’ ‘Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.’ ‘Miss (Katherine) Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.’

‘He is beyond question a writer of power; and his power lies in his ability to make sex so thoroughly, graphically and aggressively unattractive that one is fairly shaken to ponder how little one has been missing.’ ‘All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.’ ‘I don’t do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more.’ ‘It serves me right for keeping all my eggs in one bastard.’ ‘The transatlantic crossing was so rough the only thing that I could keep on my stomach was the first mate.’

Dorothy Parker was a marvelous poet. Here are a few of her poems: I wish I could drink like a lady/I can take one or two at the most/Three and I’m under the table/Four and I’m under the host.

Parker and Clare Booth Luce did not get along. Someone told her once that Luce was always kind to her inferiors. “Where does she find them?” asked Parker. On another occasion, the two arrived at the door at the same time. Luce said, “Age before beauty” indicating that Parker should enter first.

As she walked through the door, Parker, not one to be upstaged, said, “And pearls before swine.”

Parker was on her honeymoon but her editor would not stop pestering her about work she was supposed to have sent in. Finally, she sent him a telegram that ran, “Too f…g busy, and vice versa.”

If there is one Dorothy Parker poem people know it is Resume: Razors pain you/ Rivers are damp/ Acids stain you/ And drugs cause cramp/ Guns aren’t lawful/ Nooses give/ Gas smells awful/ You might as well live.

Another one she called Frustration. Here is how it goes: If I had a shiny gun/I could have a world of fun/Speeding bullets through the brains/Of the folk who give me pains/Or had I some poison gas/I could make the moments pass/Bumping off a number of/People whom I do not love./But I have no lethal weapon/Thus does Fate our pleasure step on/So they still are quick and well/Who should be, by rights, in hell. And of men, she wrote: Some men break your heart in two/Some men fawn and flatter/ Some men never look at you/And that clears up the matter.

Dorothy Parker left her estate to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and, upon his death, to the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). Although she had never met King, and had no heirs, she wanted both the civil rights leader and the expanding civil rights movement to be a beneficiary of the income from her writings. Within a year of her death, King was shot, and the Parker estate went to the NAACP. Since 1968, the NAACP has received royalty benefits from Parker’s publications and productions. The epitaph on her grave in Baltimore where her ashes – which lay unclaimed for 21 years – are buried reads, “This memorial garden is dedicated to her noble spirit which celebrated the oneness of humankind and to the bonds of everlasting friendship between black and Jewish people.”

While I keep reminding others never to give advice, that is one advice I do not take myself, and consequently always end up with a bit of egg on my face, which in this cholesterol conscious world is not the best thing to have on your face.

The latest instance of what ought best to be avoided is what I told this nice woman by the name of Mrs Andarabi, who phoned me one day out of the blue and asked if there was anything I could do for her sister. And what could I do for her sister, I asked?

The story Mrs Andarabi told me was disturbing. She said that her sister, who retired not long ago after a lifetime of service, teaching at a fashionable women’s college in Lahore, and who settled down in a nice old house in one of Gulberg’s blocks, a fine combination of the residential and the commercial, had no longer anywhere to go. Her house had been taken away. And how had that happened? Her sister, she said, lived alone, because she had never married. After her retirement, with a lot of free time at her hands, she began to spend a couple of months with Mrs Andarabi, who has been living in America with her husband and children for many years. She is a professional woman, who holds a nice job, as does her husband.

While her sister was on one such visit here, a group of armed men arrived at her Gulberg home, expelled at gunpoint a family of household helpers who had been put there in the owner’s absence and took possession of the property. Besides guns, these men were also armed with documents which showed that the house had been sold to a certain party some time earlier and all that party, the rightful owner, had now done was to take possession of its lawfully-owned property. Nobody was more surprised than the two sisters who inherited the house from their father, because the house had never been sold to the party, which was claiming it, not to anyone else for that matter. The papers the new “owners” were brandishing were fakes. They were either forgeries or they had been obtained after bribing court officials, including a judge. It should be no surprise in a country where it is wiser to buy a judge than engage an expensive lawyer, who won’t make the hearings half the time.

The retired professor has not returned to Lahore for two reasons. One, she says, she has nowhere to live; and, two, she is afraid that if she returns, the people who have taken possession of her home, will kill her. What she has done is engaged a lawyer, but the other side is obviously not only very well organised with a posse of gun-toting hoodlums permanently stationed at the taken-over property, but extremely well connected. The proceedings in the court so far have been inconclusive and in fact have gone against the rightful owner of the confiscated property, which is worth a great deal of money, prices being what they are. In one recent hearing, the judge appeared to have accepted the legitimacy of the claim entered by the illegal confiscators of the property.

Court hearings have been what court hearings in Pakistan are. Sometimes the judge is absent for unexplained reasons — a fight with his wife perhaps — and on other days, one of the lawyers seeks an adjournment on one ground or the other. Then there are those fake medical certificates, which can be had as long as you can pay the doctor his fee. In my own experience some years ago when I was heading a small outfit in Islamabad, I found that every medical certificate put up for one reason or the other by one of the employees was false. One despairs when one thinks about it. What can you do about a system, which is corrupt from top to bottom? A civil suit in Pakistan — and please include India for the satisfaction to the faithful — can go on for years and years and years. One suit I know of in my family went on for years on end and only came to an end after the contenders from one side had all died, waiting for a decision.

And this is where my advice to Mrs Andarabi comes in. I told her that she should write to Gen Pervez Musharraf, who maintains a website and in the past has been known to access it with some regularity and write back to people or order action with instructions, Army style, that he be informed of compliance. So Mrs Andarabi wrote to the General in April in the high hope that he would get her justice. Well, it seems her expectations, for which I take the entire blame, were somewhat premature if not downright unrealistic. She has not heard from Gen Musharraf — and on present showing, is not likely to. Miracles, however, if only to prove the axiom that there are no miracles, do happen now and then. So it is entirely possible that one day Gen Musharraf finds himself in the sort of mood where his favourite dogs are wagging their tails playfully at his feet, there is a drink on the side table and he is reading his favourite book of military history.

But let me reproduce a letter Mrs Andarabi’s sister sent to Gen Musharraf. This is what she wrote:

“Dear General, I sent you a message on 20th of April 2006 describing the misery and helplessness of a retired Pakistani government servant now living in the United States. Our life-long earnings and investment have been taken over by a group of criminals, who in my opinion have no conscience or morals to commit such a crime where we teach so much of Quran and Sunnah so where is justice? I was watching PTV Global a couple days ago and saw you in a public appearance where you condemned the Qabza groups but what have you really done for victims like us or is it just talk during public appearances? We do have regard for your military leadership and background, but your actions I am sorry to say are not supporting what you brag about in your public appearances. I was given your website by a local journalist in Washington DC (I being the guilty party) who said you do take time to read your mail and respond accordingly to help people in distress. After seven weeks, I am still waiting for your help and support to help me recover my lifelong savings that were snatched in a second by some criminals so where is justice? General, I do look at you and our other leaders to be representing Islamic values in the light of Quran so that justice prevails. In the end, Honourable Sir, I do pray to Allah to give you the strength and the heart to feel what we are going through right now so you may take that extra step to help us recover our house from the criminals and punish them for one time at least so that they know that it is not easy to snatch things from women because they are helpless and it is easy to digest because it is a society controlled by men and the voice of women victims may not be heard. Please do take action and let me know if you heard my cry so I can plan to come back to my own house in my own home country.”

I know Gen Musharraf reads Daily Times, because he told me so in New York. The ball, dear General, is in your court. Let’s see what you do with it.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

I am fully aware of the part you have already played in the establishment of Pakistan, and I am thankful to you for all the sympathy and support you gave me in my struggle and fight for the establishment of Pakistan. Keeping in view your loyalty, help, assurance and declarations, we ordered, as you know, the withdrawal of troops from Waziristan as a concrete and definite gesture on our part – that we treat you with absolute confidence and trust you as our Muslim brethren across the border. I am glad that there is full realisation on your part that now the position is basically different. It is no longer a foreign government as it was, but it is now a Muslim government and Muslim rule that holds the reins of this great independent sovereign State of Pakistan. It is now the duty of every Musalman, yours and mine, and every Pakistani’s to see that the State, which we have established, is strengthened in every department of life and made prosperous and happy for all, especially the poor and the needy.”

Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s address to a Tribal Jirga, Government House, Peshawar, 17 April, 1948

The bold, imaginative, patriotic and statesmanlike decision to pull out the army from Waziristan that Muhammad Ali Jinnah took just months after the establishment of Pakistan has been reversed by the government that Gen Pervez Musharraf heads. One only wishes, next time he and his hand-picked lieutenant deliver yet another ‘address to the nation,’ they would have the decency not to do so with the Quaid-e-Azam’s portrait hanging in the background.

I wonder if any of them is even aware of what the founder of the state that they now rule said and did. The Quaid’s decision to pull out the army from Waziristan was taken despite the views of the British commanders of the three armed services, the army, the navy and the air force. It was a political decision and it was the correct decision.

The British fought the Pashtun tribes for a hundred years and were never quite able to subjugate them. How ironic it is that those who rule Pakistan today proudly proclaim that they have sent 80,000 troops into Waziristan, the first time, they brag, since the establishment of Pakistan. Isn’t that something we should be ashamed of? We have undone the Quaid-e-Azam’s first great decision. The poison harvest that the army and its American allies are now trying to mow down, with less than success, was planted by the very people who are the proud front column in the “global war on terrorism.” They are marching to the beat of drums that are not ours.

The Quaid also told the tribal elders and Maliks that “Pakistan has no desire to unduly interfere with your internal freedom,” but “on the contrary, Pakistan wants to help you and make you, as far as it lies in our power, self-reliant and self-sufficient, and help in your educational, social and economic uplift,” and not leave them “dependent on annual doles, as has been the practice hitherto, which meant that at the end of the year you were no better off than beggars asking for allowances.” He said he wanted them to become “self-respecting citizens” who would be enabled to produce what was best in them and their land.

The other day in a conversation with a serving colonel of the Army, I realised that so ingrained has rule by the military become in our system that it is no longer seen as an aberration. On the other hand, it is viewed as the norm. If rule by the military was to be Pakistan’s fate and if those who led or joined the movement for Pakistan had been told that once free of the British, they will be ruled, not by elected civilians but by men in uniform, they would have had second thoughts about the course they had chosen. I asked my friend in uniform, incidentally a man of considerable education and intelligence and the son of a late retired general, if he had ever read or been told of a speech the Quaid-e-Azam had made at the Staff College, Quetta on 14 June, 1948. He hadn’t.

I suggest that next time there is a civilian-run government in Pakistan, the Quaid’s prescient words and his warning should be framed and hung in every defence establishment in the country and be made required reading at the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul.

This is what the Quaid-e-Azam said, addressing the officers and directing staff of the College. “I thank you, gentlemen, for the honour you have done me and Miss Fatima Jinnah by inviting us to meet you all. You, along with other Forces of Pakistan, are the custodians of the life, property and honour of the people of Pakistan. The Defence Forces are the most vital of all Pakistan Services and correspondingly, a very heavy responsibility and burden lies on your shoulders.

“I have no doubt in my mind, from what I have seen and from what I have gathered, that the spirit of the Army, is splendid, the morale is very high, and what is very encouraging is that every officer and soldier, no matter what the race or community to which he belongs, is working as a true Pakistani.

“If you all continue in that spirit and work as comrades, as true Pakistanis, selflessly, Pakistan has nothing to fear.

“One thing more. I am persuaded to say this because during my talks with one or two very high-ranking officers I discovered that they did not know the implications of the oath taken by the troops of Pakistan. Of course, an oath is only a matter of form; what is more important is the true spirit and the heart.

“But it is an important form and I would like to take the opportunity of refreshing your memory by reading the prescribed oath to you:

“ I solemnly affirm, in the presence of Almighty God, that I owe allegiance to the Constitution and the Dominion of Pakistan (mark the words Constitution and the Dominion of Pakistan) and that I will as in duty bound honestly and faithfully serve in the Dominion of Pakistan Forces and go within the terms of my enrolment wherever I may be ordered by air, land or sea and that I will observe and obey all commands of any officer set over me. . .

“As I have said just now, the spirit is what really matters. I should like you to study the Constitution, which is in force in Pakistan at present and understand its true constitutional and legal implications when you say that you will be faithful to the Constitution of the Dominion.

“I want you to remember and if you have time enough you should study the Government of India Act, as adapted for use in Pakistan, which is our present Constitution, that the Executive authority flows from the Head of the Government of Pakistan, who is the Governor-General and, therefore, any command or orders that may come to you cannot come without the sanction of the Executive Head. This is the legal position.”

Why did the Quaid-e-Azam remind the officers to read the oath that they take upon being commissioned? Why did he remind them that under the Constitution, all executive authority flows from the head of the State of Pakistan, a civilian? Why did he say that the only legal orders are those that come with the sanction of the Executive Head? He did so because something he had heard made him fear that one day the Army may disregard its oath of allegiance to the Constitution and take over the State. His wise advice was finally thrown overboard just ten years later by Gen Ayub Khan. Gen Musharraf is the fourth man to have followed Ayub, not Jinnah.

Perhaps it is just as well that the Quaid-e-Azam did not live to see what lay in store for his beloved Pakistan.

The arrest in Miami of seven men with such fanfare on June 22 on terrorism charges may turn out to be an embarrassment for the FBI, whose competence has been under fire since 9/11 with troubling questions about the methods it employs.

The Miami sting operation was staged with a field force of agents large enough to subdue a battalion. Television channels and news outfits were alerted and CNN, as is its wont with important breaking stories, began to provide on-air coverage of the great terrorist plot as if another 9/11 had been all but brought about. And although the men have since been indicted on a host of charges, there is something about the government story that just doesn’t hang right. The men have been charged with conspiring with Al Qaeda to carry out terrorist acts, including the blowing up of one of three of the world’s tallest buildings, the Sears Tower in Chicago, which, incidentally, was designed by a Pakistani from what was then East Pakistan. It was commissioned in 1973.

Muslim-Americans, and indeed Muslims everywhere, have heaved a sigh of relief that none of the seven men is a Muslim. They all bear Christian names and belong not to a terrorist group but to some sort of cult nobody had ever heard of before. Time magazine, which is as right wing when it comes to such issues as, say, the Washington Times, wondered if the story put out by the security agencies about the men hatching a major terrorist conspiracy has any credibility at all. The newsweekly said that as the story unfolds, there are some sceptical questions that are worth pondering.

Was it really an Al Qaeda-linked plot, or were these men simply wannabes? The latter seems most likely, going by what reports have emerged and what the indictment says. Time magazine said that “the arrested men appear to be part of a cult organisation proclaiming itself to be Muslim — although a member of the same religious group says it is, in fact, based on a home brew of Islam and Christianity, and calls itself Seas of David”.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was quick to point out the day the seven men were indicted in Miami that the US media must not refer to the suspects as “Muslims.”

When asked by CNN why group members refer to themselves as “soldiers”, “Brother Corey”, a local sympathiser or member of the group, replied, “Because we study and we train through the Bible”, not only physically but mentally also. Group members also worship in a “temple”, not in a mosque. The group bears some resemblance to the cult of Yahweh ben Yahweh, which operated in the same part of Miami, Liberty City, in the 1980s.

A CAIR spokesman said, “Given that the reported beliefs of this bizarre group have nothing to do with Islam, we ask members of the media to refrain from calling them “Muslims”. Earlier, US Attorney Alex Acosta had noted that the indictment was not against a particular group or a particular faith. The CAIR spokesman urged the government to avoid confusing the public by using Arabic terminology. In a briefing in Miami, government officials did not call the suspects “Muslims”, but did refer to allegations of plans for “violent jihad”. CAIR called on police departments nationwide to protect mosques and other Islamic institutions from any possible backlash prompted by the mistaken linkage of this case to the American Muslim community.

The only connection the group had with Al Qaeda was, according to Time, “a government informant who had infiltrated their ranks had apparently convinced the alleged conspirators that he was, in fact, a Qaeda operative. The oaths of allegiance to the organisation alleged by the indictment to have been taken by the accused were administered not by any representative of the organisation, but a US government agent posing as a Qaeda operative.” In my view, if anyone should be indicted, it is the agent who posed as an Al Qaeda operative and talked these men into taking an oath.

By their nature, sting operations are suspect. The line between a sting operation and entrapment is very thin. The recent arrests in Toronto of a number of youngsters, most of them Pakistani-Canadians, were also achieved through a sting operation. The case against a Pakistani-American father and son in the small California town of Lodi was also a sting operation. The prosecution was also helped by the testimony of a former Pakistani civil servant.

There is no evidence that the Miami 7 were behaving like professional terrorists. Reports, noted Time, portrayed them as “strutting around a poor black neighbourhood in military-style uniforms, wearing turbans, standing guard around the abandoned warehouse in which they lived and conducting late-night exercise drills, while telling neighbours that they had ‘given their lives to Allah’”. The question is, if they were terrorists, why were they doing their “training” in public?

What happens in court is difficult to say but isn’t a fair trial in jeopardy in an atmosphere of hysteria created by the very agencies that are supposed to ensure justice for citizens? One can only wonder how many more such sting operations are in store for the more vulnerable sections of the community, which are already under pressure as much as they are under suspicion for having the wrong names, the wrong colour and the wrong race. Someone said the other day that President Bush is now working on his legacy. While one doesn’t know what legacy he has in mind, it is quite clear what legacy he will leave behind.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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