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Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi went away quietly, gracefully, very much as he had lived. The poet and lyricist Gulzar, in a tribute to the man he had come to call Baba, compared him with a great shade tree, through whose branches rays of golden sunlight would come dancing down and illuminate those who sat under it. And when they walked away, they felt immensely enriched.

The two men had a strange relationship. Gulzar told Voice of America’s Akmal Aleemi in a phone call from Mumbai that it was Qasmi who wrote to him first, struck by one of his poems. The letter from the maestro was delivered to him by hand. Qasmi did not have his address and when he learnt of someone travelling to Mumbai, he asked him to carry the letter. Gulzar was thrilled. That marked the beginning of a long and affectionate relationship between the two men. Gulzar would phone him three to four times a week and they would talk for hours. The only time they met was when a year ago Qasmi was laid up in hospital with a heart attack. From Mumbai, Gulzar rushed to Delhi where the Pakistan High Commission gave him a four-day visa. He flew to Lahore and went straight to the hospital where Qasmi lay in bed, his condition none too good. Gulzar was not so lucky this time. Before he could move, his Baba had died.

During the dark days of Gen Zia ul-Haq, there were some who objected to Qasmi’s conduct. They took exception to the two speeches he had made at writers’ conferences in 1980 and 1985. As was characteristic of the man, he did not respond immediately but only some years later. Since to this day one hears snide remarks about what Qasmi said or did, it is only fair that the record be set straight, and in Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi’s own words.

Qasmi wrote that because of those two speeches, some ‘extremist progressive friends of mine’ continue to consider him deserving of condemnation. He recalled with some bitterness that at a progressive writers’ conference in London (1983), the letterhead on which the sponsors had sent out their invitations, every major writer from India and Pakistan was listed, except Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi. Ironically, he was at the time the general secretary of the All Pakistan Progressive Writers’ Association. He had an invitation though, but as an “ordinary pen-pusher,” as he put it. He stayed away, which he should have.

Qasmi wrote, ‘The first writers’ conference was held exactly one week after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s hanging, Gen Zia ul-Haq’s most ruthless act. It was cruel of the Academy of Letters to convene a conference so soon after such a great tragedy. That was why I did not attend. I was hurt by the mentality of those who attended it while the smell of Bhutto’s death was still in the air Islamabad breathed. A year later, in 1980, I was invited to present the keynote address at a similar conference. The theme chosen was ‘Literature and State.’ I saw it as an opportunity to say what I felt was right. My speech was a complete and unequivocal denunciation of martial law. The session was presided over by the martial law regime’s education minister, who on realising that I was using harsh words about the government, interrupted me and asked that I read a summary of my address. I replied that my address was brief in any case and he should feel no anxiety on that count. The entire auditorium burst in applause. Most writers were agreed that what I had said was the last word on the subject and there wasn’t much they could add to it.’

Qasmi went on, ‘Five years later in 1985, I attended another conference at the urging of my friend Shafique-ur-Rehman, chairman of the Academy of Letters. The subject was ‘Writer and Freedom of Expression.’ At Shafique’s suggestion, I sent a summary of my address to him, which was passed on to President’s House. The dictator Zia ul-Haq delivered the keynote address, making what I had written the basis of a most intemperate attack on writers. He was savage in his criticism of poets like Akhtar Hussain Jaffrey who had written elegies after Bhutto’s execution. He hurled abuse at those who published such poetry, which meant I. After he was done, I read my brief paper, which many thought was my rejoinder to the president. I had minced no words and made it clear to the martial law regime that we the writers would continue to speak the truth and defy every restriction placed on freedom of expression.’

Qasmi said some of his progressive writer friends are suspicious of him because he writes poems in praise of the Prophet (pbuh). He said his only answer to that is, “Yes, it is true, I do write them.” He had also been criticised for taking part in those two government-sponsored conferences. “There is a simple answer to that. You cannot expose the high-handedness of the state by taking refuge behind closed doors. Instead of sitting at home, I decided to march to the very rostrum of martial law and tell the military rulers what I thought of them. It needs a great deal of courage to look unjust rulers in the eye and speak the truth. This is one quality God has been generous with in my case. If speaking the truth is a sin, then indeed I am a sinner and I make that confession in open public forum.” Qasmi added that when Zia-ul-Haq convened a conference of columnists, he crossed out Qasmi’s name with his own hand, doing that with such ferocity that the nib of the pen he was writing with got bent.

What Qasmi said in his 1985 address to the writers’ conference, with a furious Zia ul-Haq sitting in the chair, he could wear as a badge of honour for the rest of his life. He said, looking askance at Zia ul-Haq, “We writers are proud of the fact that we have not taken the role of government spokesmen. We only speak on behalf of our country and those who live in it. We do not oppose a government simply because it is a government, but if it brings a bit of comfort, a bit of peace to the millions who live here, we promise that we will not be parsimonious in our praise. Literature and parsimony do not go together. But whenever a government makes a mistake, we will look it in the eye and we will make it stay its hand. A state gains in strength and dignity only through such freedom of speech.”

Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi was a man of honour and though he lived in straitened circumstances all his ninety years on earth, he enriched us with his quiet dignity, erudition, courage and creativity. What better epitaph can there be for a man!

General Pervez Musharraf’s visit is going like a house on fire. There have been no hiccups, unless the “bomb into stone age” disclosure to a CBS interviewer can be so considered. The interview is yet to be broadcast on CBS’s flagship news programme 60 Minutes but this is the age of not only news in real time, but news before real time. It has been good copy. Richard Armitage, who has the appearance of a freestyle wrestler, has said that those were not the words he used. What words he did use, he has not said.

One thing about Gen Musharraf; He speaks plainly and is straight to the extent of even answering questions that a politician, old in tooth and claw, would neatly glide past. Once he said he had never stated anything that he did not mean to do. By and large, he is right, although I remember his telling a large Pakistani-American community meeting in New York on his first visit to this country that he was a soldier and he loved the profession he had chosen and he would like to return to it. I am sure he meant it at the time. Things change, so one can’t hold that one against one. Also, we have heard it all before, the latest such promise having just been aired from Bangkok.

President Musharraf’s book continues to elude seekers, I being the more ardent of them. Had I looked for the Holy Grail instead, I might have chanced upon it. Some American reviewers have it but would not part with it or disclose what it contains, having signed, it is said, a confidentiality agreement. The ceremony in New York on Monday is off limits to all officials based here and, so far, to the reptiles of the press as well. I called off my New York visit after being told by Akram Shaheedi, the helpful press minister at the embassy, that he would be unable to get me in, since “we’ve been told this is strictly private”, which means it is not official business. Gen Musharraf has a nice, open temperament, so this cloak and dagger-style secrecy sticks out like a sore thumb. But I am sure we will find out the whys and the wherefores soon.

Meanwhile, word is out that some of those who “helped” with the book at some stage are walking around with a hangdog look because their intellectual labours have ended on the cutting room floor. The General took one look at the material and said “Rubbish, that’s not me” or words to that effect. That’s why I would rather be a pickpocket than a ghostwriter. In effect, the book — In the Line of Fire — is the author’s own work, copyedited — so was the Bible — by the publishers. Every book, I should add, published in the West is copyedited and often there is little resemblance between the submitted manuscript and the published volume.

The security provided to Gen Musharraf is so heavy that only President Bush can be said to have more. In New York, his hotel, the Roosevelt — which really is a dump and PIA will be well-advised to sell it to the first buyer — was surrounded by men with “them little buttons” stuck in their ears, who talk into their sleeves. When he moved out, there were so many sirens rending the air that at one point I thought the Lord had finally decided to wrap up the world. A retired colonel friend tells me this class of security is called B-5 or some such and its object is protected by 101 agents and in case something were to happen, the VIP would be evacuated by helicopter in a matter of minutes. Gen Musharraf being America’s most valued ally in the ‘War on T’, deserves such protection. Reports that the peace deal in North Waziristan had left Washington unhappy or that it was done without its knowledge are first-rate copy, except that they are not true. Those on the other side of the fence from Gen Musharraf will have to come up with a more comforting claim.

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, for the cultural show mounted in Washington on Thursday night at one of the capital’s more upscale hotels. The thing got off to a bad start when a fetching young lady in shimmering white by the name of Ayesha Sana walked up on the stage, after a fish dinner we had all had, and announced that the “Indus Life Show” would not be following the programme printed in the brochure, of which we all had a copy, because the American embassy in Islamabad had refused to issue visas to a dozen of the artists. Her announcement was greeted with boos from the audience. US Ambassador in Pakistan, Mr Crocker, who sat at a table next to ours, went red in the face, unless it was the light that played a trick on me. What followed was a mish-mash, a show that Shakespeare would have called “out of joint”. Number followed number and the dancers, though colourfully dressed, moved as if they were running to save themselves form an oncoming locomotive. The one exception was Akhtar Chanal from Balochistan, who brought the show to life. He is truly a folk artist in the same class as Reshman or the late Sain Akhtar and Pathanay Khan. It is artists like him that represent the vigour and power of Pakistan’s genuine, earthy culture and not the effete, stylised, designer-label performers who received no more than lukewarm ovation — more out of politeness than appreciation.

The final disappointment was Hadiqa Kiani, who I swear is seriously anorexic with the figure of a 14-year old boy. Her outfit, a pantsuit that was far too tight for comfort and had little to show for it, could have been overlooked, but what she then sought to do was an insult to the audience. She lip-synced. She lip-synced that number about doors and windows, which has become her hallmark and she followed it up to the utter amazement if not shock of her audience with ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ that she again lip-synced. If it was “sung” to gladden the cockles of President Bush’s heart, her voice could not have reached the White House. Furthermore, the President hits the bed early because he is up at the crack of dawn.

Gen Musharraf was nevertheless gracious when the show’s creative director Naeem Tahir asked “my President” to come up and say a few words, which he did. He received a bigger hand than all of the show’s numbers put together. Next time, I suggest, they just bring Abida Parveen and she would have them dancing and swooning in the aisles.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Asadullah Khan is not the name he was born with, nor Peshawar is the city he is a native of. CuChullaine O’Reilly he was when he went to Pakistan during the Afghan war to see what he could do to help. He taught, he ran errands, he made friends, and, above all, he rode, because he is a Long Rider. Long riders are men and women who ride long distances, hundreds even thousands of miles through sun and rain, heat and cold.

O’Reilly lived in Peshawar and he fell in love with that city and with Pakistan. He also fell in love with Islam, which he found simple and elemental in its power, a religion that conceives all the creatures of God as indivisible and worthy of respect. It was in Pakistan that he became a Muslim and took the name Muhammad Asadullah Khan. He did not abandon his Irish-American origins of which he is proud. In America and Europe, he is known by the name he was born with, but to his friends from Pakistan, among whom I happily count myself, he is Asadullah. I told him he bears the name of perhaps the greatest poet who ever lived. He loved that because though he may not be a poet, he has a poetical temperament and he is a romantic nomad who loves horses as much as he loves human beings, regardless of their colour, race or faith.

Some of Asadullah’s happiest memories are of his days in Pakistan. He rode all the way from Islamabad to Gilgit by the Karakoram Highway and back, and many years later he wrote an account of that journey and his life in Pakistan in a book he called Khyber Knights. It was also in Pakistan that he was jailed on a trumped up charge. Even in jail, Asadullah made friends. He also came to hate the oppressive and dictatorial regime of Zia-ul-Haq which was then in power usurped form an elected government.

Asadullah is a Pakistani in spirit and at heart. He loves Pakistan and he loves Peshawar even more. That is a city, he says, he would happily go and live in any day. He has friends there and it is a city, which like Manto’s Bombay, asks no questions but takes you into its vast, warm bosom. Asadullah is one of its separated but loving sons. How did I meet Asadullah? He wrote to me to and then I went to Kentucky where he lives and where we met. We have been friends since. Some years ago, he married another Long Rider. She is English and her name is Basha. She has ridden from Russia to England. A more compatible couple there could not be. Their Long Riders’ Guild with members in 35 countries was formed in 1994 and is the world’s first international association of equestrian explorers. It represents men and women of all nations who have ridden more than 1,000 continuous miles on a single equestrian journey. Together, the couple is planning the first non-stop around-the-world equestrian journey which will cover 20,000 miles and take three years to complete.

But right now, Asadullah Khan is an angry man. He is angry because a certain Pakistani newspaper ( The News on Sunday ) printed a piece by one Muhammad Badar Alam along with an illegally published photo of Asadullah above the words ‘Mujahid’ and ‘Terrorist’. Asadullah told me, “The photograph in question was taken outside the old Raj hill station at Pingal, and shows me, along with two companions, during the course of one of my equestrian journeys. While that historic thousand-mile equestrian trip was entirely peaceful, there were in fact a multitude of dangers inherent in such a journey including the threat of being robbed or kidnapped by an assortment of badmash along a trail stretching from Peshawar, to Chitral, to Gilgit, to ’Pindi and finally back home to the Sarhad. It was due to the perils involved in this historic journey, the longest equestrian trip of its kind in the country’s history, that the Pakistani federal government in Islamabad accorded my companions and me the rare honour of issuing us with weapons permits prior to our departure.”

Asadullah said, “Taking this famous photo of Pakistani equestrian exploration without permission from The Long Riders’ Guild website is bad enough. But what is really outrageous is that the photo was stolen from my editorial “Horses and the World of Islam” . To loot this important historical equestrian image is bad enough. But to misappropriate it from an article denouncing ‘terrorism’, then paste it atop an unconnected piece of hind-sight with ‘terrorism’ as a headline, displays a scandalous lack of journalistic integrity. I am especially aggrieved that Pakistan and her citizens continue to suffer from a bad press and wild exaggeration on account of deep-seated prejudices in the Western media. Given these doubtful times, all of us who commit our thoughts and feelings to paper are on notice that we must weigh our words with great care.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) was wise to point out how much more powerful the pen is than the sword. It is a double-blow, therefore, to see my good name as an equestrian explorer, a Muslim, and a friend of Pakistan, sullied in this way.”

“Normally,” Asadullah said, “such a sneaky attempt to steal a photograph and misuse it would be of little consequence. However, given the grave times in which we live, times in which people are abducted, tortured and confined in secret CIA prisons because of purported links to ‘terrorists’, this newspaper has stolen my image and put my safety at stake so as to illustrate an otherwise forgettable rehashing of General Zia’s regime. To link my image to Zia’s name is in itself a grave insult given the fact that I was illegally imprisoned and tortured in Rawalpindi prison during the rule of this infamous tyrant. Anyone who has read my book, Khyber Knights, will remember how I denounced this enemy of freedom. I wrote, “Zia was more than a mere usurper residing in the mansions of the former colonialists and willingly assuming their heavy-handed role in crushing his own people. He lay like an entrenched serpent on the bloody throne he had seized from the murdered Bhutto. The executioner of Pakistan’s Prime Minister had draped himself in the robes of a Pharaoh’s piety, while spitting in the eye of God. General Zia had unwittingly assumed the role of Pakistan’s Macbeth, arrogant, cursed, unknowingly rushing towards his own doom. Thus, as the world’s leading expert on equestrian exploration, a victim of Zia’s military dictatorship, a long time defender of Pakistan, and a Muslim, I find it incredibly offensive that my life and career have been sullied by this example of sloppy editorial incompetence.”

But Asadullah is a generous man with a sense of humour. He concludes, “But we all make mistakes. I will, therefore, accept a simple apology with a redeemable order of a plate of samosas with a steaming cup of Peshawari chai in the editor’s office.”

By the time, this is in print, the General would have arrived, but before he does, enough Pakistani journalists to fill one of those grounded Fokkers would have hit the Big Apple. No good thing lasts very long and neither did the decision taken in the early days of the regime’s materialisation in Islamabad, which said: in God we trust, everybody else pays cash, including the Fourth Estate and its distinguished members. It is not their fault that the public relations Einsteins of the establishment later decided that such paltry considerations as saving public funds should not be allowed to mar the government’s open-handed style of governance. There is a saying that all bad laws wither on the vine. In Pakistan we have made that one stand on its head and proved that while bad laws stay, all good laws and regulations wither on the vine.

But perhaps I am being small-minded. It is no skin off the state’s nose if some members of my tribe travel at its expense in the performance of their most laudatory public-spirited duties, all in the service of the people. On the other hand, I should have not one but several bones to pick with those who weasel their way in when an official visit is undertaken. The President keeps the number of his travel companions small and for that he deserves to be complimented, which would be nice because of late there has been a shortfall in that particular department. However, what the President fails to do, the Prime Minister makes up for, and how! On his last visit to Washington, the number of his image-makers and press handlers was large enough to have attracted the mischief of that evergreen Pakistani law, Section 144 of the CRPC.

In the past, whenever a head of state or government from Pakistan has come to New York for UN business and business of the more urgent kind to Washington, there has occurred a rope-pulling contest between the Embassy and the UN Mission in New York, which, to the regret of many ambassadors of the past, does not take its orders from the embassy. It reports directly to the Foreign Office or maybe it is the Foreign Office that reports to the Mission. When a certain Excellency, who became famous for firing his chauffeur in Geneva for not saluting him one morning, was head of the UN Mission and The Lady in London was not the Lady in Washington, who arrives on these shores but the Daughter of the East herself in all her glory. There ensued between the two plenipotentiaries a most interesting contest for turf. There was little agreement on what was his and what was hers to do.

For instance, when Ms B arrived, she in the company of her ambassador, the Lady in Washington, made a beeline for her hairdresser, while on her way from the airport to her hotel. (O the trouble women have with their hair!). So what does the chauffeur of Geneva fame Excellency do? He follows the two ladies to the hairdresser’s and ends up as the only male in the waiting area. When Ms B comes out of the salon, happily coiffeured and looking quite lovely, and she sees this bursche (a German word which has the same meaning as the Punjabi word burcha, though one should check with Khaled Ahmed), she has a near fit. “What is he doing here?” Ms B wants to know. All her ambassador can do is shrug her shoulders to indicate that she is unable to explain or take responsibility for the unwelcome visitor.

Happily, no such situation prevails at present between Washington and New York. Here we have the most affable Mahmood Durrani and there we have the suave Munir Akram, a diplomats’ diplomat who does Pakistan proud. Accord and goodwill are the order of the day, except this. For the last couple of weeks, the three or four of us who report for the home press have been pressing the ambassador to please provide us with Gen Musharraf’s programme of engagements, here and in New York. All we have been told is, “My lips are sealed.” As a rule, silence is golden, but not always, in this case for instance. However, Munir Akram’s lips are obviously not sealed because on Wednesday, September 13, he called in the NY Pakistani press corps and briefed its members on the when and where of the President’s visit. We have no hard feelings, except that every reporter wants to be the first to know, and is often the last to do so.

But I cannot close this column without a word about Gen Musharraf’s book In the Line of Fire. The publishers, Simon & Schuster, have refused to part with a copy of the book come hell or high water. I have stopped calling them now because I am not sure they will take any more of my calls. All they have said is: the book cannot be released before September 25, the day of its “mahoorat” in New York. And pray why, I have asked? No answer. When I have asked for a copy, I have been told to get it from Pakistan. “But I live and work here,” I have protested. “Matters not, as far as we are concerned, you are Pakistani press and we don’t deal with you.” One day I got so exasperated that I asked one of the underlings if Simon & Schuster was a publishing house or a spy agency. Even spy agencies are not that secretive. Look at ISI, which openly makes and unmakes governments. As a last resort, I asked Ambassador Durrani if he would please get me a copy. So far he has not — and I write this on September 14. And one more thing: I asked Mansoor Sohail, the genial press minister at Pakistan’s UN Mission and Akram Shaeedi, his equally genial counterpart in Washington, as to how the press would get in at the Musharraf book launch. What I was told almost made me fall out of my chair. The embassy and the Mission have no irons in this particular fire. It is between the author and the publishers. Maybe I will ask President Musharraf for an invitation.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

An old army manual, dating back to British days, had a section on punctuation consisting of just one line: Use plenty of full stops. More sensible and no-nonsense advice on what relieves the monotony of print, apart from making it comprehensible, I have not come across. Not only will “plenty of full stops” keep your sentences short but they will also ensure to a reasonable degree that what those sentences contain can be without difficulty understood. It is only when a sentence goes on and on like the devil’s much-feared intestine that confusion arises. By the time the sentence has drawn to a close, the reader has forgotten what he read at the beginning. With the never-ending sentence, you set out to say one thing and end up either saying something else, or nothing much at all. So, “plenty of full stops” is good advice that our leader writers, columnists, bureaucrats and judges of the higher courts should take, though considering the high opinion in which they hold themselves, not much hope can be entertained on that score.

Talking of punctuation, who could have thought that there would be a bestseller about punctuation! Over the years, there have been scores of books on punctuation but their readership has remained confined to those who do not need any advice on the subject. In other words, none of the authors have been able to retire to the South Sea Islands on the proceeds of their work on grammar. That has now changed. In 2003, a small publisher in London, Profile Books, published a slim volume half of whose customers must have bought it because of its intriguing title Eats, Shoots & Leaves. It was a book on punctuation and it was an instant hit. For 30 weeks, it remained the best-selling non-fiction work in Britain. Its American sales have been equally good. Lynne Truss, the author, is now the world’s number one punctuation crusader. This is the world’s only book on punctuation which is also exceedingly funny, providing you with a punctuation “repair kit”, whose presiding deity is a panda. What pandas have to do with punctuation, no one knows, except that both words start with a P.

Speaking of apostrophes in a Pakistani context, I have tried for years – and now given up – to persuade someone in Islamabad that the ‘Ministry of Women Development, Social Welfare and Special Education’ should be ‘Ministry of Women’s Development. . .’ No luck. I even wrote to Benazir Bhutto once when she was prime minister, but you know what happens to such letters. They never get read or answered. I have also mounted a quixotic campaign to have the name ‘First Women Bank’ changed to ‘First Women’s Bank’ – and failed. I hold the abandonment of the apostrophe followed by ‘s’ as Ms Bhutto’s most regrettable act in office. Maybe the National Accountability Bureau is reading this and will lodge another case against her for embezzlement of two apostrophes, each with its own separate ‘s’.

But to return to Lynne Truss, the best compliment paid to her was by memorialist Frank McCourt, who said, “If Lynne Truss were Roman Catholic, I’d nominate her for sainthood.” I don’t care whether Ms Truss is Roman Catholic or not, but I have no hesitation in recommending her to sainthood. She should be called Our Lady of the Apostrophe who ensures that the colons and semicolons of her devotees get placed in their divinely ordained niches. Ms Truss calls on her adherents to be on the lookout for misplaced or missing punctuation marks and take immediate steps to put them right. What she has in mind is a guerrilla army of punctuators who would sooner walk out on their wives than bear the presence of a semicolon where a comma would have done nicely. Her book is dedicated to “the memory of the striking Bolshevik printers of St Petersburg who, in 1905, demanded to be paid the same rate for punctuation marks as letters, and thereby directly precipitated the first Russian Revolution.” The Russian Revolution is done and over with but the glorious punctuators of St Petersburg live.

Ms Truss’s book is addressed to “sticklers” and what gets her goat are misplaced apostrophes – or no apostrophes where there should be apostrophes. How many times, she wails, have you not come across ‘Valentines Day’ and can you even count the occasions when you see a shop sign advertising ‘Pizza’s’? The author will brook no nonsense when it comes to putting punctuation right. Repair it immediately, is her recommendation, and to distract those who might wonder what you are at, she advises, shout, “Look, that’s Madonna, isn’t it?” So while everyone would be looking for the “Material Girl,” you will have accomplished your task.

Ms Truss is incensed at the increasing use of the apostrophe in words such as CD’s, Videos’s and Book’s. All three words have apostrophes where none is needed. And if an apostrophe is indeed to be employed, then the logical question is CD’s what? The apostrophe is easily the least understood of our P marks. This is only an example, but how many times have we not come across a sentence like, “Miss Reema was the toast of Pakistan in the 1990’s.” What on earth is the apostrophe doing in 1990’s. It needs to be immediately beheaded.

Misplaced commas are another of Ms Truss’ big bugbears. Here are two examples she provides to demonstrate what a comma’s placement can do. ‘A woman, without her man, is nothing.’ And, ‘A woman: without her, man is nothing.’ Here is another example the author provides of what commas can do. Example 1: ‘Dear Jack, I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy – will you let me be yours? Jill.’ Example 2: And now the same narration with different punctuation. ‘Dear Jack, I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn! For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Jill.”

My personal gripe is with what is now the worldwide Germanisation of English, namely the elimination of the hyphen and the ugly practise of writing what used to be separate words as compounds. I may be in a minority but I balk at writing ‘non-proliferation’ as ‘nonproliferation’ or ‘under secretary of state’ as ‘undersecretaryofstate.’ The hyphen needs to be saved from the Teutonic invasion. Ms Truss is aware of this creeping menace but is not alarmed by it as she is by the use or non-use of the apostrophe. She does write though: ‘Where should hyphens go, before we sink into a depressing world that writes, “Hellohowareyouwhatisthisspacebarthingforanyidea?”’ Her next book, I hope, will do for the hyphen what she has done for the apostrophe in her Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Not all news travels fast. For instance, I only learnt this week that my favourite columnist Ed Anger of Weekly World News, the tabloid that discovered aliens in the White House and kept its readers informed of Big Foot and Bat Boy sightings, not to mention the live mermaid found in a tuna can, had died in January 2004.

Ed Anger wasn’t his real name: that was the name under which he wrote his column. His real name was Eddie Clonz. He started in mainstream journalism but when he became editor of Weekly World News, he decided that since most journalism was bunkum anyway, the best thing to do was to entertain people by printing nothing that was true.

At every supermarket checkout in America, there peeps out of the shelves to this day Clonz’s weekly gift to the world, a black and white tabloid that one leafs through to find out if any more aliens have descended on Washington or what the latest on the horse which was last seen flying around Manhattan is. A Hong Kong newspaper once wrote that the tabloid’s “low-budget black-and-white layout resembles a ransom note”, and its headlines scream things such as, ‘I keep Mom’s ashes in the vacuum cleaner’, ‘Saddam’s doubles looking for new jobs’, ‘Bible prophecies: Satanic terror the government doesn’t want you to see!’, ‘Jesus’ sandals found’ or ‘Discount body parts business booming’.

Ed Anger may be dead but the Weekly World News continues to come out from the small town of Boca Raton in the sunny state of Florida, as does Ed Anger’s priceless column. Is he filing from the hereafter? If he is in hell, is he using flameproof paper? And if he is in that other place with all those doe-eyed maidens, is one of them typing it out for him on her heavenly Notebook that needs no Internet connection?

When Clonz died, the Economist published a long tribute to him, which said, “As the deviser and, for 20 years, the editor-in-chief of Weekly World News, his delight was to run the wildest stories he could find. He described himself not as an editor but as a circus-master, drawing readers into his tent with an endless parade of fantasies and freaks.” He may be gone but his style continues to outlive him. One post-Clontz story ran under the headline ‘Tiny terrorists disguised as garden gnomes’. It went on to say, “These guys are typical Al Qaeda operatives”, says a top CIA source, “with beards down to their belt buckles.” This would have made Clontz proud, the Economist wrote. The obituary note said, “His own politics were mysterious. Under the pseudonym ‘Ed Anger’, he wrote a News column so vitriolically rightwing that it possibly came from the left. Anger hated foreigners, yoga, whales, speed limits and pineapple on pizza; he liked flogging, electrocutions and beer.”

Here is an excerpt from one of Ed Anger’s columns which always began with the words ‘I am madder than a…’ Wrote the maestro, “I’m madder than Adam with a one-inch fig leaf at how these left-wing heathens, atheists and agnostics are trying to stuff this evolution baloney down our kids’ throats! If we teach children that everything the Bible says is dead wrong and to believe a bunch of cold-blooded scientists with microscopes instead, then is it any wonder that every time you turn on the TV, you hear that some nerd has just gone on a shooting spree at school or that teen pregnancy is skyrocketing through the roof? How are young’uns supposed to know right from wrong if you tell them we’re no different from chimpanzees, pigs and dogs? To a child, that means everything a dog does — whether its humping anything with legs, stealing food, eating its own vomit or sniffing disgusting stuff for fun — is perfectly natural and A-OK for them too. The latest flap over all this cropped up in Georgia, when the state school superintendent, Kathy Cox, slapped a ban on the word ‘evolution’ in science classrooms and ordered it removed from all textbooks too.”

One of my favourite Weekly World News stories was headlined ‘Bin Laden’s wild nights with a goat’. Datelined Kandahar, it said, “Terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden always portrayed himself as a devout practitioner of Islam, but he had some wild-and-woolly experiences — including a sizzling two-week fling with a goat! That’s the shocking claim of six captured Al Qaeda fighters who say that oddball Osama was ‘absolutely smitten’ with his hard-headed companion, named Naomi, and became violently jealous when any of his men tried to approach her. ‘When we pumped these former henchmen for information, we were hoping to learn something about bin Laden’s personal habits that might lead us to him — we were stunned when we heard about this’, said a CIA source involved in the debriefing. ‘None of us had any illusions that bin Laden was any sort of angel, but that he was involved in something this sick is just nauseating.’ ‘At first’, the source said, ‘we thought the men might have been making it up just because they thought we Americans wanted to hear something bad about bin Laden — but the details of their stories all matched. And one of them even supplied us with a photo of bin Laden petting the goat — while giving her the kind of look most normal men reserve for their girlfriends.’”

Are there any lessons in it for Pakistan? The answer is yes. As if there was not enough doom and gloom in the country, every morning about three-dozen columnists in newspapers from Peshawar to Karachi bombard the nation with heavy-duty advice. Since most of it is flung at Gen Musharraf, I suggest he issue an ordinance making it a non-bailable offence to print lectures in the guise of columns. What we need is a Pakistani version of Weekly World News. The closest we came to it was in the 1980s with Dhanak. But what will we do with those who would no longer have that long-captive audience: the Pakistani nation? Perhaps they should be sent to Waziristan now that the army is being withdrawn from there. With luck, Big Foot may come and get them, together or one by one.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

We will have to look long and hard and wait for maybe decades before a man like Ahmed Bashir comes walking this way again. He is the only intellectual who took the mullahdom of Pakistan head on. He was not afraid of exposing the hypocricy, ignorance, intolerance and bloody-mindedness of these men, who, like a swarm of locusts, have descended upon a country whose establishment they had opposed and whose creator they had denounced as The Great Infidel.

Ahmed Bashir alone had the courage and the integrity to challenge them and to show how small-minded and hatre-filled these men in self-designed costume headgear and gowns were. The great iconoclast is now dead and there is no one big or brave or mad enough to step into his shoes. The mullahs are running rampant and pushing us closer by the hour towards the precipice.

The best antidote to the bigotry and religiosity of the mullah is to revisit the classic rejoinder Ahmed Bashir issued after a host of “ulema” had issued a “religious” decree declaring him vajibul qatl, or deserving of death. One can only wonder why Ahmed Bashir wasn’t gunned down by a zealot keen to get to heaven and its promised delights by dispatching an enemy of God to his well-deserved end. Ahmed Bashir did not die of an assassin’s bullet but of a dread disease, the one John Wayne called the Big C.

Ahmed Bashir’s rejoinder that he wrote in Urdu and called Phir raha hai sheher mein Mullah khula (On the loose walks the Mullah in the city) is a masterpiece and should be read by every citizen of Pakistan. It should be framed and hung on school walls. It should be printed in millions and distributed to every Pakistani who can read or who can be read to. Above all, it should be made part of the syllabi at the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul.

Ahmed Bashir earned the fatwa because in a collection of his old articles and pieces of reportage was included a hilarious account of his first meeting with Maulana Charagh Hasan Hasrat, to whom the young gadfly had gone looking for a job. He was hired. They went out for a long drink and ended the evening in Hira Mandi listening to Billo Bai sing the raag Des. The year was 1948. Ahmed Bashir wrote, ‘I am a Muslim by the grace of God, though I am a sinner. I have never cheated anyone of what was his. I have never treated anyone with cruelty. I have never been guilty of enslaving myself to state authority. My reputation as a journalist and human being is a good one. The only charge levelled at me in my 48 years of journalism is that of rebelling against the system. I have no property. What I earn through my work is not sufficient to pay my rent, which is why I live in a single room in my son-in-law’s house. I have no regrets nor do I look at my past wistfully. There are no fears that I live with. The question is: what is it that has led the Maulvis of Lahore, who never tire of bragging about their political and religious acumen, to order my killing.’

‘In 1948,’ Ahmed Bashir wrote, ‘the Quaid-i-Azam was alive. The Objectives Resolution had yet to be imposed. The mullahs were fidgety, wondering how to live down the shame of having opposed Pakistan and how to take over the new country. No movement had so far arisen to turn Pakistan into a religious state, nor had the mullahs yet gained the confidence to treat Pakistan as their personal fiefdom. They had not yet declared themselves God’s deputies on earth. The people of Pakistan still enjoyed civil liberties. Their lips were free. There were of course some who would drink on the sly. Classical music was alive in Hira Mandi. These simple diversions were not confused with revolt against God and his Prophet (PBUH), nor was anyone declared deserving of murder if he indulged in these weaknesses. Jogindar Nath Mandal was law minister and the leader of opposition was a Hindu. The Qadiani Zafraulla Khan was foreign minister. Pakistan was a Muslim-majority state where non-Muslims had equal rights. It was not a religious state. And that was what Quaid-i-Azam’s Pakistan was like.’

Ahmed Bashir continued, ‘Nationalism or love of one’s nation is anathema to the Maulvi; in his book it amounts to rebellion against God and the Prophet (PBUH). If truth be told, the Maulvi worships kingship, when it was considered legitimate to invade and plunder other countries; when the victors were called the Shadow of God on Earth and when the vanquished were put to sword. Eight hundred years ago after the destruction of Baghdad, these Maulvis closed the doors of free inquiry in Islam and pushed the Muslims in the blind well of ignorance and past worship forever. The creative flow of Islam was turned into a cesspool over which the Maulvi has spread his girth like maloderant moss. No Maulvi has ever gone to the Quaid-i-Azam’s grave to say a prayer, because no person of faith is supposed to visit the resting place of The Great Infidel, even if he created a Muslim state. Not a single fatwa-giver, nor any of those who pronounce death on poor Muslims, has ever gone to pay his respects to the man in whose debt he should feel himself to be. The Maulvi did not forgive Jinnah because he created a nation state. After his death, in conspiracy with civil and military bureaucracy and feudal lords, the Maulvi hatched a plot to gain control of Pakistan. But who are these Maulvis? Are they not the very men who assured Yazid through a fatwa that the murder of Hussain was a legitimate act? And are they not the same men who declared at the urging of Mamoon-ul-Rashid that the Quran could be modified and that it was mortal like other creations of God? Are they not the same men who had Imam Abu Hanifa lashed? And did they not declare Halakoo Khan the Just King after he had caused rivers of Muslim blood to flow through the streets of Baghdad? These are the men, remember, who kissed the hands of the British after the destruction of Delhi in 1857 and called on Muslims through a fatwa to obey the British because they were People of the Book.”

Only a few people spoke up for Ahmed Bashir after the fatwa, among them a woman who has brought honour to Pakistan: Asma Jahangir. No newspaper took his side and the courts failed to order action taken against those who had ordered the murder of a citizen of Pakistan because half a century ago, he had drunk a glass of beer with the great Maulana Charagh Hasan Hasrat and spent the evening listening to raag Des in the bazaar where the lights used to remain on all night. It is my view that although there must have been several grounds on which Ahmed Bashir must have been admitted to heaven, the evening spent in the delightful company of Hasrat in 1948 must have been on top of the list.

What is it about the upcoming visit of Gen Pervez Musharraf that is making people so cagey? No one is prepared to tell you when he will arrive, nor what he is going to be doing in the week to ten days — the precise number remains a mystery — that he plans to spend in this country. There are only two dates about which there is any certainty: the day he speaks at the UN General Assembly and the day he has his book — which is another hush-hush story — launched/inaugurated/unveiled/released, take your pick.

The UN General Assembly, Gen Musharraf addresses on the day it opens. The order of speakers is determined on a first-come first-serve basis, which means Munir Akram’s troops have been nimble on their feet. As for the book date, it is September 25.

That he is coming to Washington is also a fact, but when? Those who know have their lips sealed. When is he meeting President Bush? Answer: can’t say. An announcement will be made at the proper time. When will that proper time be? Sorry, can’t say more than what has been said. And what has been said, my short-term memory not being good? Sorry, what needed to be said has been said already.

What I have reproduced is based on not one, but several conversations I have had with those who know, but for some reason are not at liberty to part with that information. The Embassy of Pakistan’s genial press minister is not in town, having gone to Pakistan on official and private business. The ambassador who answers emails and returns phone calls (which has local Pakistanis wondering what is wrong with him, since they are not used to it) is affable but is parting with no information either, such being his instructions. Whose instructions? The president’s secretariat? The Foreign Office? The security establishment? Ours or theirs? This is not clear either. “When the time comes, you guys will be the first to know”, I heard last week; but I fear like a two-timing husband’s wife, we will be the last to know.

However, one has been picking up its and bits from here and there. The president lands in New York from Havana on September 17, or maybe a day later. He addresses the General Assembly on the day it opens and is thus done with that business quickly. Speeches made in the General Assembly are notorious for being boring and long-winded. The only people who listen to them are members of the delegation concerned plus the captive audience, if any, in the home country. Gen Musharraf would be well advised to write his own speech and keep it short.

He comes to Washington the same day he speaks at the UN and is here for two days during which he meets his good, tight friend George Bush, who, I expect, will have the decency to buy him lunch although this White House is not known for its taste in food. Will the two presidents have joint press availability? Probably yes. Last time, I was at one of those things, the then information secretary known to insiders as Sam, had not only earmarked those from amongst the Pakistani hacks who were to ask questions, but actual questions had been given to them. Had I known, I would not have kept my hand raised for as long as I did.

There are American correspondents at these dos of course who pay no attention to the visiting leader and ask the president things that have nothing to do with the man standing next to him. Embarrassing? Yes, but not to the American hacks who find little to interest them beyond their patch.

What else Gen Musharraf will do in Washington, we do not know. A “community event”, as the embassy likes to put it? Maybe, maybe not. Last time, they made him address the US-Pakistan Chamber of Commerce (what business it generates remains a mystery). The General returns to New York after two or three days for a fund-raising event mounted by Dr Nasim Ashraf, fresh from The Oval. A bird twittered to me that the General will return to Washington for a day or two. Why? It is not clear. That we do learn from experience is heartening, because he is not addressing any women’s meeting this time. Yes, last but not least, the book launch. In the Line of Fire, the name of his book. Hollywood would have paid good money to slap this title on a war movie. I am told a roly-poly gent in Islamabad who has been trundling around at parties claiming authorship has been told that he has gone to dinner on that story one time too many. The book is actually written by Gen Musharraf himself, copy-edited in New York. Let me add that the publishers, Simon & Schuster, have been acting like the FBI. They refuse to part with any information whatsoever. They also refuse to supply a review copy, which is standard practice. Any Pakistani correspondent who has called them has been told brusquely that he should get his copy in Pakistan from Feroz Sons, who are publishing the local edition. It is normal to mail out copies months in advance of publication for review. I have been assured by the publishers that no copy — repeat no copy — will be sent out before September 25. A more odd thing I have not heard of in this business.

That’s all for now, except this. In the gloom that has descended on Pakistan after Akbar Bugti’s death, there is one bit of good news. I heard Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan, the army’s spokesman, saying on TV that Bugti’s body would be “delivered safely” to his family.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

In October 1947, the Quaid-i-Azam’s private secretary, KH Khurshid, went to Srinagar – more than three years after he had left it at the age of twenty to work for the man in whose hands the Muslims of India had placed their fate and in whom they had invested their hopes. When he had left Srinagar, while still at college, he had told a friend that he would either die in the struggle for Pakistan or return only after Pakistan was established. In the three years that he had been away, his mother had died, but he had stayed with the Quaid. Khurshid had no assistants or helpers, except the student volunteers who dropped in to lend a hand on and off, but there was never a letter the Quaid received that was not answered nor a call that was not returned nor a visitor who was turned away. Khurshid also took care of all the Quaid’s personal papers and the records of the Muslim League. How could one man do so much, one wonders, when one looks at the large establishments that the President and the Prime Minister of Pakistan maintain today. I have yet to see a letter sent to either of them to have received an answer.

In October 1947, things were moving at breakneck speed in Kashmir. The people of Poonch had risen in revolt against the racist Dogra regime. On 22 September, Maj Gen. Scott, commander of the Maharaja’s army, resigned saying that the government was steadily losing control over large parts of the State. There was a sharp exchange of messages between the Pakistan government and the Maharaja’s prime minister Mehr Chand Mahajan, with Pakistan warning against subverting the will of the people of Kashmir. The Quaid himself wrote to the Maharaja on 20 October, underscoring the “urgent necessity” of a meeting between Pakistani and State representatives to “smooth out difficulties.” Mahajan was invited to Karachi. There was no response to this sincere and positive effort. Abdullah had already been released and was now the principal Indian asset in Kashmir. Patiala state forces had already flown into Srinagar of 17 October and tribesmen under the command of Khurshid Anwar had entered the State on 22 October. The massacre of the Muslims of Jammu was in full swing.

On 12 October, Khurshid wrote to the Quaid-i-Azam from Srinagar (the letter is now part of the Jinnah Papers that the admirable Prof Zawwar H Zaidi has been publishing in volume after volume), giving him his assessment of the situation in the State and making a number of recommendations. Khurshid wrote, “Events in Kashmir are moving very fast ever since the release of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah as an act of ‘Royal Clemency’. Other members of his party, who were either imprisoned or detained last year in connection with the ‘Quit Kashmir’ agitation, have also been released. But the Muslim Conference people continue to rot in jails.” He added that Muslims who held any positions of significance in the State government had been got rid of and there were no longer any Muslim or European officers in the State army, all having been replaced by Hindu Dogra Rajputs.

Wrote Khurshid, “The position appears to be that the Maharaja is dead set against Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan. He is reported to have said that even though his body be cut into seven hundred pieces, he would not accede to Pakistan. . . The State today is a hotbed of dirty court intrigues and all sorts of manouevres and machinations are going on (on) the part of the government to disrupt the Musalmans and suppress the popular feeling in favour of Pakistan.” He reported that “every action of the government unmistakably points towards the road to Delhi.” The deputy prime minister, he stated, was a Sardar Patel nominee. Abdullah had been released “with the sole aim of giving the impression to the outside world that Kashmir’s accession to India, when announced, will have the support of the biggest political party in the State.”

Khurshid informed the Quaid that work on the road connecting East Punjab and Jammu was going apace and another road, connecting Jammu to Srinagar, was also being built. Gasoline supplies, stopped by the Rawalpindi deputy commissioner (Khawaja Abdul Rahim, KTR’s father), were now being flown in from Delhi. Dogra troops had been deployed all over the State and Gurkha and Sikh troops from India were said to be awaiting orders to move in. He warned that if the Srinagar-Rawalpindi road were blocked, Srinagar would be practically cut off in winter. There were clashes in Poonch as people had come to learn of the Maharaja’s intentions. Khurshid told the Quaid that the Muslim Conference was “practically a dead organisation,” with all its leaders either jailed or externed. “There is hardly anybody to carry on the work.” He added, “But there is a very strong undercurrent of popular feeling in favour of Pakistan, to utilise and exploit which, there is nobody here. Spontaneous demonstrations are being held in different parts of the city and the State but there is nobody to mobilise these scattered elements.”

Khurshid nailed the claim, which is made to this day by India, that Abdullah’s National Conference, which had hardly any non-Muslim members, wanted accession to India, telling the Quaid that Abdullah’s “followers feel that . . . the State should accede to Pakistan.” That is why, he added, since his release, Abdullah had been making “equivocal” statements. He wrote, “I am personally of the opinion, Sir, that Pakistan must think in terms of fighting as far as Kashmir is concerned. The other side has practically not decided upon it but is ready for it. Diplomatic pressure has so far failed.” He warned that even if a referendum were to be held and it were to go in favour of Pakistan, the Maharaja and India would not honour it. He asked that Pakistan should be ready to fight for Kashmir and not be caught unawares. He also asked the Quaid to issue a statement to clarify the Muslim League position vis-à-vis the Indian princely states.

Khurshid even suggested the wording of such a clarificatory statement, which included this passage, “The Muslim League has always stood for the right of self-determination of the people all over the world and it was this principle which framed the basis of (the) Pakistan demand by the Muslim League. This is a question entirely different from the interpretation of the position of the States under the (June 3) Plan . . . ” Such a statement was never issued, but while under the Indian Independence Act and the June 3 Plan, the ruling princes were free to accede to either Dominion, it was always to be assumed that they would do so, not against the will, but in accordance with the wishes of their people. The Quaid-i-Azam, being the fair-minded person of goodwill that he was, assumed that this cardinal principle would be kept in view. The Quaid’s ambivalence is also to be understood in view of the soft corner the Muslim League had for the Muslim-ruled States of Hyderabad and Bhopal. The fact, however, remains, that India in league with the Maharaja and the traitor Sheikh Abdullah had already taken the decision to annex Kashmir. Pakistan tried to block it but was just not strong enough to succeed.

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